Since there are 90min in an hour....

I completely forgot that I was going to tell all of you guys about THANKSGIVING last week! It got really busy around the big day but I’ll go ahead and tell you about that right now.

My friend and I basically planned out Thanksgiving in Lucena this year. I mean there wasn’t a ton to plan but just had to sort out where the event would take place, who would bring what, etc. We ended up having about 10 people come to dinner…about half the people there had never celebrated thanksgiving (since they were from either Spain or the UK) so we were able to give them their first thanksgiving- how fantastic right! The most planning went into who would bring what food since we had a few people cancel out at the last minute and some others join in…luckily it all worked out in the end. I ended up bringing mac n cheese and the greens (collard greens) which I had spent a few hours cooking earlier that day. I basically started cooking at 3pm and didn’t stop until like 8pm…I mean some of the time was spent cleaning up and running to the store to grab things we needed but still- 5 HOURS!

We were trying to start around 6:30 which got changed to 7:30 which then became 9pmish lol. Like true Spaniards! To give you all some insight into what WE had…pretty much all the traditional food (well southern traditional food haha): Turkey (of course), gravy, stuffing, salad, deviled eggs, another appetizer of cucumber slices with some tuna mix a top, mac n cheese, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, green beans, collard greens (I wasn’t able to find collard greens but I did find chard so just used that instead), corn and dessert which were these little pastry cups filled with like a cream cheese, sugar and berry mix (they were so addicting)! The food was just amazing and everyone was so full after dinner we could barely move lol- just like how it’s supposed to go! We also had tons of leftovers…especially of my food because I am horrible at judging amounts. We were supposed to have about 10 people at dinner and I basically cooked for 20 haha. Luckily people loved the mac n cheese so people wanted to take it home. I was still left with 4 full containers of the stuff though, and a large container of greens, so guess what I’m eating every day for the next month?

*Thanksgiving photos will be added later. I have to wait for my friends to send them to me*

Needless to say the next day I wanted to relax and that did happen for the most part…I had a meeting in the morning for a couple hours for a new job I got. YEP you heard me right- I’m back to my old ways. I now have a 3^rd job here lol although this one is only 2 hours a week plus some prep time since I’m conducting English classes. So anyways, after the meeting I headed back home, hung out with my friend that had slept over since she’s living in a town a little ways away from us. I also had a challenge that day- JELLO SHOTS. One of the girls had made them for thanksgiving and had leftovers at the end of the night. I didn’t want them to go bad and no one else wanted them so I took them with me. THE CHALLENGE: finish the leftover Jello shots...I think there were 9 of them. And yes, I did eventually finish them but it took me all day haha. I think I will be taking a break from any Jello shots in the near future :)

Well, I have already told you about the next day in Rute so let me tell you about yesterday in Cordoba! There was a half marathon going on in Cordoba and some of my friends were running in it so myself and another friend (Andy) decided to go and cheer them on. We headed out on the 7:30am bus, walked about 45 min to where the race was starting and got there JUST on time! There were over 4,000 people running in the race!!! 

We (me and Andy) went and got some breakfast while the other guys were running and then waited for them towards the end. While waiting I had a great blonde moment: I was trying to figure out how fast of miles guys were running so I asked Andy how many minutes were in 1 hour and 20 min...then proceded trying to calculate it by myself. How did I do that? Out loud I said "so then 90min plus 20min..." not quite sure when an hour changed to 90min in my mind but it was great humor for the rest of the day. After getting laughed at we continued to wait for just a little bit longer- and then we saw our friends! They did great, finishing in about 1hr 37min and 1hr 42 min...which is about 8min miles throughout the race. CONGRATS STEPHEN AND AGUSTIN!

Me, Andy, Stephen, Agustin

random guy drinking beer

When the guys finished we celebrated by singing the Fresh Price of Bel Air theme song haha- well we were actually just trying to remember the words but same diff. The part I thought was hilarious about the race was that all the running got free sandwiches, water/juice and  BEER! I mean really- BEER? I did find out that they had non-alcoholic beer but I was just thinking that alcohol is probably the last thing you should be drinking after a 13mile race…maybe that’s just me though lol. 

After chatting for a while and hanging out, all of us headed towards a Christmas market that they had just started that day. They were just selling “Christmas/winter” stuff like scarves, umbrellas, holiday treats, etc. Although I said I wasn’t going to buy anything I, of course, was the one who walked out with the most stuff LOL! I bought 2 scarves, gloves and an umbrella since my other one is kinda flimsy. All great purchases considering it’s now starting to rain about every other day now :( not my favorite but there’s not much I can do about that. 

Afterwards we all just got a ride back to Lucena and headed home. I pretty much relaxed the rest of the day, didn’t do any chores that I was supposed to do haha, and talked with my boyfriend for hours. I will have to make up for my laziness though later this week since the next 2 weekends I will be in ITALY!!!

YES- ITALY. I haven’t told you all much about it just because I was focused on other things but now that it’s coming up I suppose I should let you all in on the trip. My new friend from Scotland and I are going to Italy for 9 days. We will be going to Florence, Cinque Terre and Assisi (small towns outside of Florence), Rome, Venice and Milan. I have no idea what to expect and I CAN’T WAIT! This week will be spent planning what we will do in each city. If you have any suggestions PLEASE post them on here to let me know! 

OH! Random side note:

Mystery fruit...I will get the name at some point

Caqui/Kaki

I forgot to mention that I tried some more fruits that I thought you all may be interested in seeing…and took pics of course! Caqui/Kaki and some other one in the same family but a little different, unfortunately I don’t remember the name of the second one. Caqui is eaten by just cutting in half and scooping out the insides…its really soft and I’ve never had anything quite like it. The other one is a little more hard and is eaten more like an apple, but you peel the skin off. Well I just wanted to tell you about that so check out the pics!