Noviembre

Hola!

Can't believe we've been here for over a month already! We spent the weekend in Ponferrada again. We stayed with Amanda's English teacher, Ana, and she lives with her husband and kids, Gonzalo (4), Barbara (16) and Javi (20). I got to practice my Spanish a ton, because only Ana speaks good English. We watched some movies in Spanish, and had some delicious meals. On Saturday we had paella, a traditional Spanish rice dish with chicken in it, which was awesome! On Friday we had tortilla, another delicious Spanish dish with egg, potato, onion, and peppers. The family also has land in the country, and they make their own red wine, which we tried as well. We met some of the kids' friends, and everyone was very friendly and wanted to practice their English with us.

We had a short week last week, because Thursday was All Saints Day (Dia de todos los Santos), so there was no class, and also no class on Friday. So I just worked on Wednesday, which was very relaxing. I gave my presentation about Halloween in the United States to the kids on Wednesday, which went pretty well. The kids dressed up on Friday, and the teachers made part of the school into a haunted house, and a lot of the parents came and they served hot chocolate and cookies. Apparently in Spain, the majority of people dress up scary, instead of the United States dress up as whatever (animals, celebrities, etc). So there were a lot of zombies, witches, etc! There's an event in February called Carnaval, where people in Spain dress up as anything, will definitely have to look up more information about that.

 Ana and her husband and the daughter Barbara took us to the town Ana grew up in (a really small town) and later we toured a colegiata (bigger than a church but smaller than a cathedral) in Villafranca del Bierzo. Then we stopped at a bar and got some tapas (small snacks) and a glass of wine. One of the tapas was pulpo (octopus.. pictures to come!) and I tried it! It was quite scary, especially because you eat it by the tendril, and you can see its like suction cups on its tendrils. They literally just boil it and add salt and pepper. The whole family really likes it and highly recommended it, but I didn't like it very much. It tasted like fish. Amanda didn't try it, but we'll see if people can convince her to try it later on.

I am still adjusting to the school I'm at. The kids are in general very friendly and excited to learn. The teachers speak a lot to each other in Galician (the language of the region that's very similar to Portugese), which is frustrating for me because I can't join a conversation if I don't understand their language. They also complain a lot because their school has suffered from budget cuts this year, so they generally aren't very positive to be around. I really do enjoy being the in classroom though when we get to do lessons in English. I saw one of the kids at the train station and she ran up to me and gave me a big hug, and I met her mom and she said said her daughter talked about me and how she really enjoyed English. Amanda and I both see a lot of the children out and about here in El Barco de Valdeorras, and Ponferrada as well, because a lot of people head there for the weekends as well. I also know almost all of the children because there are only 40 of them!

I am currently working on learning how to cook/ bake here. I made oreo balls here last week (it only requires oreos, cream cheese, and melting chocolate), so that was delicious. Cake mix/ premade anything is really expensive here, so I am going to have to work on cooking from scratch. The hardet part is finding ingredients. I discovered alioli sauce, which is really good with potatos or rice; its made out of garlic, olive oil, lemon juice and eggs, and it's really delicious!

I don't have real plans for my birthday yet, but there is a Chinese restaurant in Ponferrada that looks really good, that we might go to on Saturday night. We made friends with two American boys (Florida and California) in Ponferrada, two girls from Turkey, and a bunch of people from Brazil. There is an English conversation practice on Friday in Ponferrada that we usually go to, so that's where we meet a lot of people. Everyone meets at a bar/cafe to practice/ use their English! Everyone's really friendly and we usually end up talking to people in a combination of English and Spanish.

That's all for now, I will try to include pictures soon!

Besos!