An American Thanksgiving... in Spain?

Novermber 26th, 2010 -

So in order to keep up tradition while away, the other American Language Assistants decided to host a Thanksgiving Dinner at the end of November on a Friday evening when we would all be available. We all did our portion of cooking to contribute to the feast… Luckily my roommates and I are not half-bad cooks and brought along a sweet potato casserole, some roasted potatoes with garlic and rosemary, and of course some carrots with basil (it’s a Texan thing, apparently). Thanks to Jessica’s friend Christopher – a guy who works at the local Mercado de absastos (indoor market where they sell fresh meat, veggies etc) – we didn’t have to ride the bus with our pots and winebottles in tow and made it directly to our destination in Don Benito… for FREE. Life is good, ain’t it?
Our hosts were Erica and Victoria who kindly allowed all 13 of us to use their kitchen as a prepping station at 5:00pm to reheat the food and open up a few bottles of wine, and Spanish beer of course. Considering none of us are “cooks” and we didn’t have access to some ingredients here in Spain, or even fresh/unprocessed turkey, we all somehow managed to not burn our pisos down and cook a meal consisting of: 2 green salads, 2 meatloafs, stuffing with apples and raisings (as cranberries are a thing of fairytales here), 2 roasted chickens, garlic/rosemary potatoes, sweet potato casserole, basil carrots, pumpkin pie (made from a real pumpkin), apple pie (made from scratch too), and roasted vegetables. How we managed to eat all that then still want to go out bowling afterwards is still astounding to me… We walked only 20 minutes to the area in Don Benito known as “Las Cumbres” which is a big “centro de ocio”/leisure-mall.. so basically it is filled with movie theatres, bars, kids playplaces, a small shopping area and a “bolera”/bowling alley consisting of – drum roll please – 6 lanes!

No, it wasn’t busy when we went on Friday night for a few reasons.

1)      We were there too early, 9:30pm is time for dinner and not for bowling.

2)      Bowling just isn’t popular here, unless there is drinking involved.

With regards to the second reason, there is a full bar and live-music stage in the “bowling alley” and they don’t rent shoes, so I and the other girls were stuck trying to bowl in high-heels. Go ahead and laugh, it was pretty funny to watch.

The day after, one of Jessica’s sponsor teachers invited us to his house for a small gathering on Saturday afternoon. Thinking it was nothing formal, I brought along some chocolates as a hosting gift and Jessica brought a bottle of wine – turns out this was a party celebrating his baby’s Baptism.. so we arrived a little unprepared with strange gifts that only a foreigner would bring to a baptism, but we had fun anyway. We spent the hours chatting in Spanish with his family and friends and tasted a jaw-dropping paella which was so large that it had to be carried in by 3 people!! A local man prepares these huge paellas for special events I’m told… so I’ll have to track him down and maybe teach me how to make one, as it was truly the best Spanish food I’ve had so far! That and jamon iberico and serrano. They invited us to stay longer than the 4 hours we were there, telling us that these types of parties usually continue for about 12 hours (from about 2pm until around 3am or so) once the “grandparents” get tired and go home, all the “young” ones continue drinking, eating, and head to bars. Wow, I think Spain can out-party the latinos anytime… guess it’s all in the genes!

Our lovely hosts Victoria (from England) and Erika (US)

The auxiliares familia! Happy Thanksgiving!

Roommates of Calle Donana 9 4D - myself, Jessica and Veronica

Disaster strikes when a chair is broken! But all is well as Tom comes to the rescue...

Then on Sunday – just two days after digesting Thanksgiving – I took a much-needed walk out past Villanueva on a “nature trail” that basically is a dirt road past the garbage/scrap-metal dump first, then onto the countryside between the “quintas”/countryhouses and olive groves, I returned after only 10km, though this route apparently goes for 50km connecting with another small town. Next time I’m renting a mule.