Turkey Day!

I realize that there hasn’t been much time since my last blog post, but I am leaving today to visit Russ for the weekend in Cadiz and I thought I’d better say a little something about my Spanish Thanksgiving before embarking on this new adventure.  Thanksgiving was a different experience here, but a memorable one that won’t be forgotten.

First, before the actual day of Thanksgiving, I spent the week and a half leading up, talking to my classes about the american holiday.  It was a lot of fun actually as I found out that they really new either nothing or next to nothing about our important and one of my favorite days of the year.  We talked about the history, traditions, Macy’s parade, football, and of course all the food we eat.  It definitely made me miss the family a bit during this time, but that’s okay.  Next year I’ll have to double up on my mashed potatoes!

As the day approached, myself and the other auxiliares here in Baeza began to plan a Thanksgiving dinner of our own.  We knew that we could find certain things here in the stores; corn, beans, desserts (although no pumpkin pie), and mashed potatoes.  But my main concern was the turkey!  Where could we find a turkey here?  They do have deli packs of turkey in the big super market here, but I wanted to do a little better.  So I asked the mother of the boy that I tutor every night where I could find one.  Her response was (translated in english for you), “Turkey?  Oh, we have about 15 of those running around our hacienda.  Would you like one?”  At first I thought she was joking, but on the Monday before Thanksgiving I asked again and she told me that she had already made the call and one was to be killed for me on Tuesday morning, skinned and prepared so that all I had to do was stick it in the oven!  How great!  Well as you can guess, I was the hit of the party.  I got up and cooked the turkey on Saturday morning.  (We obviously didn’t have the day off on Thursday and even though I don’t work on Fridays, some of us do, so we waited until Saturday)  It wasn’t the biggest turkey but it turned out to be quite good.  I was a bit surprised at my turkey cooking skills.  But it actually wasn’t that hard.  The one problem was that we ended up having 17 people at our dinner!  Americans, Belgians, Spaniards, and Scots. The turkey was rationed, but everyone got some and I think really enjoyed it.  Along with the aforementioned food items, we had a pasta salad, a baked pasta dish with lots of cheese, lots of desserts, and enough wine and beer for everyone to enjoy.  We ate dinner and then sat around and talked in a mixture of both Spanish and English.  A couple hours later we watched Love Actually, one of my favorite Christmas time movies, and then went out on the town in Baeza for a bit.

I definitely missed my family for this holiday, but my Baezan family and I had a great time and it will be one that I won’t ever forget.  And just so you all know, I will be thinking of you during Christmas and New Year’s, but Russ and I are traveling to Rome for Christmas, then Venice, and Zagreb for New Year’s before returning back to Madrid where I will meet my friend Julia who is coming to see me for a week.  So don’t feel sorry for me as I am unable to enjoy the holiday season with you all!

Well, I must prepare for my bus/train ride to Cadiz!  More on this adventure next week.  As always its great to hear from you.  I hope you are still enjoying my stories.