We're in the Newspaper!

Hola familia y amigos,

It’s almost Thanksgiving in the land of no Thanksgiving.  Fortunately, we will not have to go through a Thanksgiving turkey-less, without mashed potatoes topped with savory gravy, without scrumptious pumpkin pie, and finally without lots and lots of dinner rolls (we are in charge of bringing dinner rolls). 

This is my second Thanksgiving in Europe.  While studying abroad, I spent Thanksgiving in Ireland with friends where we attended a Thanksgiving gathering put on by members of the church community there.  The Irish made us feel at home except for the portion sizes, which were very un-American.  Let’s be honest, we each had about a Tablespoon of mashed potatoes.  I guess Irish people don’t love their spuds as much as I had imagined.  Nevertheless, they were so kind and generous to cook us a Thanksgiving meal and to attempt to make Pumpkin Pie when there isn’t a single pre-made piecrust or can of sweetened condensed milk in all of Europe as far as I’m concerned.  Well, maybe not all of Europe, but I am surely having difficulty finding half of the ingredients needed to bake a pumpkin pie for my students to sample.  However I am determined to make this pie, and I will make my own sweetened condensed milk if I have to.  I will update you all if it turns out well :)

Back to the good news… We will have a traditional Thanksgiving meal here in Vilagarcía, Spain on Thanksgiving Day.  We have to celebrate a little later at night since we all have to work still.  Come on, Spain! If you can celebrate Halloween, you can surely have yet another day off to spend time with family and be thankful together.  I mean food and family is what Spain is all about.  I digress.  Our Thanksgiving meal will be hosted by our missionary friends from Ohio.  They are opening up their home to all Americans in our program.  There are seven of us total.  We have so much to be thankful for!

One thing we are very grateful for is the new relationships we have formed at church.  Everyone has been so hospitable to us.  This past weekend the pastor of the church, Eduardo, invited Robin, myself, and the other married couple Cory and Stephanie to the house that his father built in the countryside in the little town of Silleda.  People live differently in the rural parts of Galicia.  Life is not as convenient, yet perhaps this is why one of Eduardo’s neighbors is still alive at the age of 103.  Apparently, he even still helps a bit on the farm.   The entire house is heated by a wood-burning stove.  The simplicity of the land is so beautiful, even though I know the work that goes into maintaining the land is not simple.  It’s just so fun to be in touch with nature.  Eduardo encouraged us all to try the grapes from his vine that are all natural (not treated with any chemicals).  They were so sweet and delicious.  They do have seeds, though.  Robin is so great at separating the seeds from the grape and spitting them out.  I am not.

Outdoor Barbeque...it smelled so very good! I think the sticks give it a different flavor.  To the right is his indoor stove that uses sticks to make a fire to heat up the house as well as cook.

The view from Eduardo's window...the picture of the cats was taken at his aunt's house nearby

Look! There's cows outside the window!

 

Don't these grapes look delicious?

   

Travel Tales

Plans have been made.  Tickets have been reserved.  Calendars have been filled. It’s official.  We’re spending Christmas in Prague!  Prague is the capital of Czech Republic located to the south of Germany and the north of Austria.  We will be visiting our dear friend, Sir Václav and his family there.  He doesn’t really use the title, Sir, but if you met him, you would probably want to call him Sir Václav.  He is so clever and extremely knowledgeable about European as well as American History…a natural diplomat.  He is actually studying to become a doctor.  This is his first year of studies, and he has a lot of studying to do over the winter break.  Robin and I agreed to help him study haha.  We will be in Prague from December 22^nd to December 30^th.  His family invited us to go with them to their cabin the day after Christmas to ski.  The good news is we will have a future doctor nearby in case we injure ourselves.  Just kidding! We plan to take it easy…baby hills for me!

The good news continues! My host family that I lived with for over three months in Toledo, Spain invited us to spend the New Year with them.  So we will travel from Prague to Madrid where we will take a thirty minute bus to the BEATUFIUL, BREATH-TAKING, STUNNING city of Toledo!  We will spend one week there so Robin will have enough time to see why I truly loved my time there!

 All these travel plans are very exciting since they are truly a once in a lifetime opportunity.  We are deeply grateful that we will at least get to spend Christmastime with friends.  However, we will still miss our families because nothing beats a Christmas at home with the ones you love.  We will miss you all and will pray for a magical Christmas season for all of you filled with the hope, joy, peace, and love of the birth of our savior Jesus Christ! We will miss you all!

Random Ramblings

1. Apparently, I have extra large feet in Spain.  Literally, the bottom of my boots that I just purchased say XL.  When I went to the store to try the boots on the two workers were struggling to find my size and said that my feet are big.  Now that I’m self-conscious of my foot size, I have been observing the size of women’s feet around me and noticed that they are rather small. 

2. I was reading a recent article that revealed Spain to the be the country with the highest life expectancy in Europe after Italy of course.  Both these countries follow the Mediterranean diet consisting of a lot of fish, olive oil, bread and legumes if I remember correctly.  To me, it’s almost a paradox since Spaniards smoke quite a bit, drink a lot of alcohol and start consuming at an earlier age, and eat very strong meats and cheeses.  Remember our meal last weekend with Eduardo? Three types of red meat and a slice of bread!  My theory is that it also has something to do with the siesta…Spaniards nap more.

3. Students here eat like adults! If I were to ask a handful of third graders in America what their favorite food was, I would probably receive a small assortment of responses including cheeseburger, macaroni and cheese, and chicken nuggets.  When I asked the same question to fourth graders in Spain, about 90% said some form of seafood.  Drum roll please for the number one favorite food of all fourth graders at my school…..TRIPE!

4. Robin and I walked to his school on our day off since I wanted to see the scenery.  This is his view outside of his window at school. I think the donkey should be the school mascot since it’s literally right next to the school.

    

5. We had to pick up our temporary residence card in the province capital of Pontevedra. It has a beautiful old quarter.

La plaza de Leña (The Firewood square) named as such since Firewood used to be sold here

The open air market....can't buy that in Wisconsin.  How appetizing!

6. We were in the Galician Newspaper, La Voz de Galicia.  They wrote an article about us and our friend's participation in fencing and slack-lining.  Our friend from Seattle is very good at slack-lining and lets us practice on his slackline.  Usually, people do not slackline while fencing.  I hope Spaniards do not get the wrong impression haha.  Robin was wearing his Wisconsin t-shirt.

  

Cooking Chronicles

There is not too much new in the kitchen lately other than these blood potatoes.  Just kidding…but really, why in the world did red water come out of my brown potato when I squeezed the excess water out to make hashbrowns?  They tasted good, but restaurants still do it way better! I have yet to discover their secret for the perfect golden hashbrowns.

This week, Robin and I have the goal of eating five servings of fruits and vegetables each day.  Sounds easy? It’s been difficult since we’ve pretty much been sticking to buying fruits and vegetables that we are familiar with in the United States.  However, the fruit and vegetable stores have a wide variety of fruits and veggies that we’ve never seen before. This week, we will explore some never before tasted fruits and veggies! For today, we will stick to baked butternut squash for lunch (my absolute FAVORITE).

We hope this post finds you all well! We hope that reading this post was not the equivalent to un día sin pan (a day without bread).  To say Spaniards love their bread would be an understatement.  There is a saying they use here when they want to communicate that something is unbearable or very unpleasant, one can compare it to a day without bread.  Watching that never-ending Packer versus Vikings game last Sunday was like un día sin pan. 

Blessings,

Alyssa and Robin