Thursday: the best day of the week!

For as long as I can remember, I've loved Thursdays. (Similarly, I've always hated Tuesdays, but that's another story for another time...) While Thursday isn't quite Friday, the day signifies that more than half the week is over and assures us that yes! the weekend's almost here. For the past two weeks, I've had even more reason to love Thursday due to some very fun events. I'll start with Thursday, November 18th. On that particular Thursday, instead of leaving work to catch the 2:15pm bus back to Granada, I stayed in the teacher's lounge until 2:50pm, the end of the school day, so that I could join the teachers at their monthly "jamón y queso" party. A few teachers were setting up extra tables and covering them with paper. As soon as all the students had left the building, all of the teachers began bringing out plate after plate of Spanish ham (including my favorite, jamón serrano), cheeses, breads, nuts, chocolates, potato chips and flan. There were dozens of bottles of wine (delicious red rioja!) and plenty of beer and soda for those who weren't fans of the wine. About 25 in total, we ate, drank and chatted for a few hours. The teachers and I exchanged lots of stories and colloquialisms about the USA and Spain and spent the whole afternoon enjoying each others' company. After an hour or so, someone brought out a guitar and we began singing popular Spanish and American songs, complete with dancing of course! Around 8:00pm, we all cleaned up the lounge and headed to a pub in town for a cocktail before calling it a night around 10:00pm. It was a great evening and I definitely feel that I bonded a lot with my coworkers.

Last Thursday, November 25th, as all of you already know, was Thanksgiving. While I wasn't home with my family enjoying my beloved "traditional" Thanksgiving Day celebrations, I by no means forgot the holiday. As you all know from my last post, GRIIS' director, Amalia, invited the students and me to her house to join her family at 9:00pm for a Thanksgiving dinner. I didn't know what exactly to expect but was pleasantly surprised with not only turkey and mashed potatoes, but with cranberry sauce, stuffing and pumpkin pie, too! We spent a good two hours eating and like every good American, we left the tables stuffed and barely able to walk. Here are some pictures from our Spanish-American Thanksgiving:

Here I am with Paula, 15, and Amalia, 12. They're Amalia's daughters whom I tutor in English every Monday and Wednesday afternoon.

The first table, patiently awaiting the start of our Thanksgiving dinner!

The second table, digging in and passing the food around.

¡Qué buena pinta tiene la comida! Doesn't that look delicious?!

Amalia cutting into the "tarta de tres chocolates" that Ana made for our dinner.

Dessert! Ana's tarta, chocolate ice cream and... yes!...pumpkin pie!

Tomorrow's going to be another great Thursday! I work a full day tomorrow, from 9am-2pm, after which I'll head home for lunch before catching the bus to the airport at 6:00pm to start a six-day trip to Barcelona and Valencia! I'm very excited... I've never been to either of the two cities before and I've heard nothing but amazing things about them. Next week, there are two holidays in Spain, on Monday and Wednesday, and a teacher holiday on Tuesday. This means that I have a six-day weekend (can I even call it a weekend if it's practically the length of a normal week?! Hmmm...) starting Friday. Tomorrow night at 8:55pm I'm flying with John and six other students in GRIIS from Granada to Barcelona. The following afternoon, Anais will meet us there as she's flying in from Madrid. We'll be in Barcelona until Monday morning, when we'll split the group up a bit. Five of us, Anais and John included, will head down to Valencia for two days while the other three will go their separate ways on different trips. Wednesday morning, after two days in Valencia, Anais will head back to Madrid and I'll come back to Granada with the rest of the group. The weather's been pretty rainy and cold here in Granada this past week but I've been checking the forecasts for Barcelona and Valencia; if they stay the same, we should have partly sunny skies and mild temperatures for the duration of our trip. Not exactly summer weather but I'll take it!

Alright, time to go. It's midnight and, true to my style, I have yet to pack for tomorrow's trip. I'd better get on that right now... ¡Buenas noches!