An American in Spain: Thankgsgiving NUMERO DOS!

THANKSGIVING DINNER #TWO:

So we rocked out at another Thanksgiving dinner last night at my new friends house! There were like 20 Spanish people and four Americans, :). We made everyone (even though they were embarrassed) say what they were thankful for, and we had a HUGE dinner and desserts, and WINE WINE WINE! We spent hours and hours there, singing Karaoke, talking, and getting to know one another (I only knew 2 people, but made friends FAST) Afterwards we went out to the center to PARTY!

It was a GREAT night, and as always I felt blessed (and thankful) for having such unique experiences and for meeting such great people! WHAT A MIX OF CULTURES THIS WEEKEND HAS BEEN! THANKSGIVING IS MY NEW FAVORITE HOLIDAY!

Oh yeah, and this time there was a Turkey, haha!

The American in Spain: Thanksgiving 2009

Thanksgiving 2009:

Last year at this time, I was heartbroken, in Spain, alone. I passed the day with a co-worker, an older Spanish woman who I loved. She and her husband cooked for me and we spoke and drank wine together for hours. It was a unique fabulous experience.

This year, I am blessed to have the best man in the world at my side. We decided to celebrate together and invite one of our favorite couples over to celebrate with us. It was his first Thanksgiving (obviously, Spanish don't celebrate this American holiday). He was so excited and talked about it all week. On Thanksgiving after we both finished working, we went food shopping together, ALL AMERICAN STARCHES! Cheese, different types of bread, pasta, potatoes, yams, wine, beer, I made home made vegetarian gravy (IT WAS GREAT-- I couldn't believe it) salad, and of course desserts CHOCOLATE CAKE (brought by our beautiful guests!)

YUMMY-YUM-YUM!
mmmmm...

We cooked together and prepared everything with mucho amor (as he says) and it turned out DELICIOUS! Our guests told us that it was the best mac and cheese they've ever had in their lives! TOMA!!! Eso es que necesito, positive feedback!

After dinner, desert, champagne, we went dancing (of course).

It was a fabulous Thanksgiving. This year I am thankful to have Spanish guy in my life, Alex is a blessing that I would have never seen coming at this time last year. I am a lucky woman. I was happy to show him what an American Thanksgiving is like, after all, I am living in his country and he is always showing me and teaching me new things about his culture, this weekend it was my turn!

3 weeks til my 28th b-day:

And I still got a killa SWaG...

GoTTa keep my Brooklyn tude,

it's hard when I'm surrounded by Europeans all the damn time!

BUT I TRY!

Jerez de los Caballeros

I went wild mushroom picking in Extremadura this weekend (the western part of Spain, 4 hours from Malaga by car, 6-7 by bus)!!!

I was there visiting one of my best friends in the world and we drove to the wilderness with cute little baskets and looked for wild mushrooms to take home and eat (I don't like them, but it was fun picking them). I NEVER in my life would think that I would spend hours in a forest looking for and collecting mushrooms, but that I did and it was amazing! I mean, it's not something I'd like to do everyday, I'm not much of a nature person, BUT it was a great experience!

You need to have some special skills to know which ones are edible and which ones aren't OR grow up in the country of course. A city girl like me, coming from one of the biggest cities in the world, New York, I was like, what the heck, they all look the same!!???????? I didn't have any idea what's good and what wasn't. BUT I learned quite a lot along the journey.

Here's some documentation:

This one isn't edible, you can tell by the shape and the color:
This one is edible, the color is duller, but beautiful!:
So as we were wandering around looking for mushrooms (and asparagus) we found the most perfect tree in the world, that's only in fairy tales, and we decided to CLIMB THE TREE! We are young at heart, and there's no better place to get it all out than in the middle of the forest with no one watching!

Here's more pictures of beautiful Jerez de los Caballeros and my weekend there...

Beautiful and delicious home cooked meal SOME PEOPLE KNOW HOW TO WORK IT!:
Low lying clouds on the fields of Jerez on a lazy Sunday morning:
a magnificent night with my BFF keeping warm by the fire:
Whatcha think, I can't keep the fire going? I AM A SAGITTARIUS I GOT TONS OF FIRE TO KEEP BURNING, haha:
The city wall:
I made a friend with a dog (as always) I think I need one in my life!:
Extremadura, Jerez de los Caballeros November, 2009. More to come baby! Happy and safe Mushroom hunting everyone!

fiesta de aceitunas!

There's an olive party happening right now, in my house, in Spain, in the south, in the sun, in MALAGA! VENGA YA!!!!!

:-p

Estepona-- beautiful but with no action.

Our weekend in Estepona-- a beach town on the Costa del Sol.

I can NOW say that I visited all the towns that make up the Costa del Sol (Coast of the Sun in the South of Spain), and that makes me a happy girl!

This town is more laid back than the rest. There are a lot of old people and there aren't many parties, at least where we were. On Saturday night at 7pm all the shops were closed, and there were only a few people walking on the main street. We were shocked, but the truth is that neither of us knew what to expect, all we knew was that it was a beach town...




We got dressed up to go out at night, normal dinner time for Spanish, 10-10:30pm. We didn't find anything but a GREAT Italian restaurant! It was okay though, it made the weekend very romantic for me and spanish guy. No partying, just me and him.

We spent our time eating, exploring the beach and dancing to a live Brazilian band that was playing on the beach. It was BRILLIANT!

____________________________________________________________

Our relaxing sea experience. We sat on this rock and didn't move for a long time, it was pretty hypnotic for us:

Our beach exploration:

Breakfast on the boardwalk on a lazy Sunday morning:

Gorgeous mountain view.
Our hotel is on the left (we didn't have a mountain view though, haha):

Tapas while Alex watched the Barca game at a place called Gaudi--
typical that a place called Gaudi would show the game, eh? :)

Very relaxing weekend after a very stressful work week. It's exactly what we needed!

wow.

I'm thinking marriage and kids.

:-X

OH MY GOD, did I just say THAT??

Working the fields/ Olive picking

I have something new to put on my resume:
OLIVE PICKING

One of my best friends in Malaga asked me if I wanted to have lunch with her and her family at their country house, "sure" I said, "what time should I come?" "Well, we'll be olive picking all morning, soo around---" "WHAT??? I WANT TO PICK OLIVES TOO (like a lil girl!!)!"

So the next day off I went, with my army of foreign friends in stow of course (we all wanted to experience this). We got there around 11am and worked in the fields scraping off olives from around 15 trees for about 5 hours with a 2 hour break in between to have lunch and jump on the trampoline (my dream come true, it was one of the best experiences of my life).

My friends family told us we can pick olives to take home and marinate ourselves, so that we did. We learned how to not only pick olives, but also marinate them in preparation to eat. It was surprisingly simple, we filled up a bucket with water and put 2 eggs in it, we added salt until the eggs started floating (that means there is enough salt in the water). Then, we chopped up garlic and red peppers and marinated all the olives in this mix for 10-12 days (we are only on day 6 today, 6 more days to go!). Amazing-- I felt so lucky to learn this from someone that grew up in a field of olive trees-- an olive expert-- my friends uncle!

This was such a unique experience for me. Coming from a huge city, I never thought I would ever work the fields, let alone learn how to make my own olives! We also went around the farm picking mandarins, tomatoes, avocados, eggplants, peppers, and lemons! I've never felt so connected to food and the earth in my life! Food home grown and prepared has an undeniable energy that feeds the soul!

Cleaning and preparing the olives before we took them home:
Los aceitunas colgando del arbol:
The olives in the net after we combed them off the tree:
The fields:
Taking a break to play with my friend, haha:
My BFF in Malaga and Daniel picking them out!
The cutest baby in the world playing with the olives we just picked, adorable!

This was an unbelievable sensation that I can't describe. I felt like I was so liberated and free. It was my first time jumping on a trampoline and the environment I was in added to the amazing sensation, PURE BLISS!
Tracy, the trampoline jumping champion, xo:

The olives in our kitchen marinating, and all the fruits and veggies that we picked fresh:It was an amazing, unforgettable day, I enjoyed every single second of the experiences, every single second!

This weekend, olive party at my house!