A Spanish Thanksgiving

Spanish Charades

Apple torte

Spanish Thanksgiving

Turkey Carving

Thanksgiving hand turkeys...middle left...Thanksvino?

My third graders

Holidays abroad are some of the most interesting days and times a foreigner can experience. There are so many avenues of emotion and celebration holidays can go down. I think I´ll list the ones that come to mind for you because I have realized all I do is give options in this blog. I had no idea I was such a list person. Why stop now? Might as well keep on following my trend.

After my very exciting list I´ll detail my experience in a Spanish apartment playing charades with Spanish movie titles after eating the most interesting stuffing and apple pie I have ever tried. So here goes, possible feelings about the holidays while abroad...

1)The homesick feeling can hit so hard you finally have that gut feeling that you want to be home more than anything. All you want is your couch, your family and friends, your climate, your food...This is usually followed by long Skype sessions with friends and family and if it´s really serious, it can include a possible session of consuming a more than neccessary amount of a comfort food from home. Techinically, the closest you can find/make in the choice foreign country.

2) You can find yourself feeling more Patriotic than ever. For some reason, you feel this passionate need to detail and describe a sketchy tale about Native Americans and Pilgrims breaking bread together after this religious group of English settlers sailed to your country during a long, hard winter. Even though, of course, you know that a majority of the Native Americans were slaughtered or killed by foreign disease when the new settlers came--But seriously, if only these foreigners could understand how personally important this holiday is to you, gosh.

3) The exchange of culture, customs, ideas, understanding and kindness between yourself and those from the other culture is so intense you get on an abroad, life high. This is one of the best feelings. I don´t think it´s worth attempting to describe because it´s something everyone interested in culture and travel should experience at some point in their life. The world all of a sudden feels so small and connected by our similarities as humans no matter where we are from, yet so diverse and big at the same time-- world peace doesn´t seem that far off. Once again, I called this a life "high" for a reason.

4) The day is the same as others. It holds no special sentiments for you. You go on with your
day functioning with the schedule of the culture you are in because you are functioning as one of their culture. No one says Happy Easter or Happy
Birthday, and it really doesn´t bother you. Just another day in another life.

Hmmmm that´s all I have for now. I think it´s just because I´m tired and not very intelligent at the moment. Liz and I went out with some of my teacher friends last night to watch the Barcelona soccer team play against the Madrid team. BIGGGGG game here in Spain. Viva Barca...I´m obviously a Barclona fan. I made a few enemies at the bar, but we won. Then we all went out for dinner, at 11:30 of course, and I went to bed too late. Story of my life here.

SOOO I spent my Thanksgiving here in Spain, as you may have already guessed. I wasn´t sure how I was going to celebrate it aside from the hundreds of turkey hands that are now hanging in the walls of my schools. I did a short, nice speech in Spanish about why we celebrate Thanksgiving to each class, disregarding most true facts because my teachers told me to. I told them that we ate a WHOLE turkey (this is not normal here) and that we ate corn, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie (to which I always looked out to a sea full of little kids with disgusted faces). Then we happily made our little hand turkeys and they learned how to write Thanksgiving....some better than others. I saw a few "Happy thanksevinos". I love art projects like this though. It´s so fun to see the children who decide to make their turkey different and distinct. They don´t copy my example and they make it their own. I see the little creative wheels turning in their heads and as an elementary school teacher I think it´s natural to let your mind wonder if they will be the next famous filmmaker or art critic. Maybe not, maybe they´ll be a shopkeeper here in their town, but I like my ideas better.

Liz and I found ourselves smack dab in the middle of a Spanish apartment at 2 p.m. the day of Thanksgiving. There were 20 Spaniards running around a kitchen, trying to make mashed potatoes from a box (ew), carving a WHOLE turkey, and examining stuffing with whole pieces of bread falling out of the turkey. The secretary at Liz´s school decided she wanted to have an American Thanksgiving, so she bought a turkey and made a homemade stuffing. I wasn´t going to interfere with my recipes and ideas...she was too excited. I made brown sugar glazed carrots and green bean casserole on our stovetop (we don´t have an oven) the night before. I would have to say it was one of my prouder moments when I had a finished green bean casserole in Spain. Try finding Campbell´s mushroom soup in Spain--ya--not going to happen.

We stood in the kitchen, having a glass of wine, talking to the teachers from Liz´s school and trying not to get in the way (OK we´re the Americans here) of the buzzing Spaniards preparing and tasting all of this food. We found ourselves in the middle of a long table (After I finally was allowed to heat up my carrots and casserole) full of appetizers. Spanish appetizers of course...chorizo, cheese, olives, potato chips...I loved it. So cute. They were making such an effort.

After the plates of turkey and mashed potatoes and salads (and and and and) filled the table I decided to share our custom of going around the table and saying what each was thankful for. I was just going to say my family, but after seeing how much effort these 20 strangers had made in an effort to make me feel at home during my culture´s holiday and to learn about it as well to the extent of this huge, Thanksgiving party, I couldn´t just say "my family". I had twenty Spanish faces smilling at me, waiting to hear what this strange American girl was going to say. OK I´ll be honest I got a little emotional, so I had to say more. All of a sudden I saw an image of my Aunt´s cozy kitchen in Northern Minnesota and my Dad´s smiling face from his stove and the moment got to me. I explained to them in Spanish that I was thankful for all of them and their overt kindness because Liz and I weren´t with our own families celebrating, and that I considered them my family today. Cheesey? Maybe. But that´s how I felt, so maybe I´m just cheesey.

After Thanksgiving dinner, it was followed by coffee, tea and a smoke break( as every meal is here). Then they prepared some sort of apple torte that was delicious. It wasn´t the same as my piece of apple pie or pumpkin pie doused in whip cream, but it was good and different, and I like different. Then we had more coffee and tea (normal). Then we all sat down and those who were still sticking around munched on different nuts and olives and snacks as two bottles of hard liquor and sherry were placed in the middle for an after dinner drink. Here enters the most interesting part of the day...Spanish charades of movie titles.

They separated the Lizard and I and each of our teams came up with movie titles to give to other team to act out for their team. These of course were movie titles, but, in Spanish. I know Spanish, I love Spanish, but I don´t know how every movie is translated from English (a large majority of their films are from American pop culture). Sometimes at the movie rental store the titles aren´t similar to titles in English when I translate them, so let´s just say charades was interesting. I got "Tomates verdes fritos" (Fried Green Tomatoes). Fun fun fun to act out. However, when you find yourself acting out the word "fried" for a group of Spaniards in the apartment of an ancient town in Spain, jumping up and down and exchanging enthusiastic high-fives when they actually guess the title, you have to smile at life.

The Fisch (Liz) and I then ended up at home where I made the largest batch of mashed potatoes from real potatoes with real milk and real seasonings to share with our American friends at the dinner we went to at 8 with some friends from Rincon (the city we live in). This included a lot of red wine and mashed potatoes mixed with corn, one of my favorite delicacies. I attempted a sort of pumpkin dessert by frying pieces of pumpkin in brown sugar that we all agreed needed a scoop of ice cream. It was nice to share the holiday with fellow Americans and friends and to realize how crazy it is you are breaking bread with people you did not know 2 months ago for a major holiday.

And that´s it. My emotions from the day...I missed my family, friends and loved ones. There were a few minutes I just wanted to be cuddled up on a couch, full from my family´s perfect food with the people I care about. I won´t say that I didn´t. But a Spanish Thanksgiving is something that I will remember forever. It was such a unique experience. And if I´m honest with myself, I come from a separated family, so the holidays are always a little tricky. My ideal day is being in the foreign and exotic, so I can´t complain. I had an amazing day and once again was welcomed by these Andalucians with open arms. I really do love these people.