Alexander and Thanksgiving week

To celebrate Avril's birthday with her friends (since the previous parties were all only with family) we went to a movie and then to McDonalds for dinner. We went to this huge movie theater and saw Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Of course, the movie was in Spanish, so I got to attempt to understand it. Luckily, since kids are the target audience for this movie, they used very simple language so I was able to understand most of it. Most of it was physical humor, as well, so that helped me out. Plus some lip reading. It was a good movie, better than I thought it would be. 

 

 Check it out... there was a playground in the theater! So after the movie the kids played for awhile while we adults chatted.

 Noelia bought this candy bouquet for Avril as dessert for everyone. I had one piece, it was very very sweet. More sugar than I'm used to ;)

 On Sunday, we went to the house in the country again to celebrate some more. I'd like this many birthday parties! Don't know if I'll even get one this year...

 The lasagna that we made cooked up great and was super yummy! Here's my awesome cheese-and-tomato-less lasagna.

During the week I had a class that was working on learning how to describe people: long hair, short hair, curly hair, straight hair, glasses, mustache, beard, big/small features... things like that. So, for an activity I had the class describe characteristics of a person to me and I drew them on the board. These are the creations the kids came up with.

 Just for the heck of it, I took a pic of the sidewalk I take when I go to school.

Last Saturday the family went to an anniversary party of one of Jose's cousins, but it was going to be a whole bunch of people I don't know, in a building where smoking is allowed (and most of them smoke) and someone else had already planned out all the food, and there were no vegetarian options. So... not a party I'd enjoy. So I stayed home and made pumpkin bread and vegan mac and cheese.

I have now been eating this mac and cheese for a full week and there is still 2 or 3 servings left. It is super filling! 

 I also made some healthy mashed potatoes during the week, since they are my favorite Thanksgiving food :)

This weekend is another lazy weekend. Noelia went to Barcelona with her sisters and the rest of us are at home. Tonight Alex is going to stay over at his friend Carlos' house and Jose and Avril may go to a movie. Maybe I'll join them... depends on the movie. Otherwise I may just stay home and knit and catch up on some podcasts, or watch some rainy day movies. I'm attempting to knit some socks, since I've only made one pair before and they turned out horrible (the shape was good, but I knit them WAY too tight so they had no stretch whatsoever). Thus far the one I've started is nice and squishy and stretchy, so hopefully they'll turn out well this time.

 

I still have no clue who my next host family will be, or when I am supposed to switch families. I think it won't be until after New Years, but I'm really not sure. Anna, one of the English teachers has offered to have me join her for xmas, and I feel bad not being able to say for sure whether or not I'll be joining her. It would be nice if I do change houses before xmas, since I wouldn't know the new family as well as I know her, but if I'm still with this family it would be nice to have xmas with them. I guess we'll wait and see.



Birthday parties!

Last Saturday we went to a wedding fair, which also happens to be a first communion fair. Since people here don't usually have large houses and no yards, when they celebrate someone's first communion they have to rent a space and cater it, just like a wedding. Though, luckily, it isn't as expensive. Alex's first communion is next June, so they need to find a place to have it, so we were talking with representatives from a bunch of venues. It was much fancier than the wedding fairs in the US, rather than just having booths, each vender had their own room. Walls and all. Of course, I apparently look like a bride, so they kept approaching me about everything, rather than Noelia. Silly people.

LOVED this crepe stand trailer! It was so cute!

So, this week was Noelia and Avril birthdays. Avril's is Nov 10th, and Noelia's is the 11th. To celebrate Noelia's, last weekend her family and friends threw her a surprise party. Jose Luis was tricky about it too. Saturday, he and the kids told her that we were all going hiking in the mountains Sunday morning, so she had to pack a bag and we had to leave right away to get to our destination near the mountain in time. She was confused as to why we were going the night before and staying somewhere, but Jose said it was a surprise. We packed up and headed out of town. He tricked her a couple times along the way, pretending to be pulling into the parking lot of the train station, and then later pretending we were going to her sister's house, when we passed it. We drove for about an hour, then pulled into the parking lot of this cool chocolate factory/store. We got there right before it closed, so we were able to go in and get some goodies, but didn't have time to hang out for very long.
After that, we stopped at a nearby bar and restaurant and had sodas and shared a bag of chips, because Jose said it would be at least another half hour before we got to our destination by the mountains and the kids were hungry. We hopped back in the car and Jose said that he needed to use the GPS to get us to the next place we were going, but didn't want Noelia to see it, so he blindfolded her. This really threw her off, because rather than continuing towards the mountains, we actually turned back and headed back towards Alcampell, Noelia's hometown. After the half hour drive, we stopped at a restaurant and took Noelia out of the car and lead her in. We led her into a dark room and took off the blindfold, flipped on the lights and watched the excited and shocked look on her face as she saw all of her friends and family there.

Mama Laura made a bunch of cookies as party favors. They were yummy!

They had a LOT of food. They had escalivada (with tuna on it), pan con tomate (slives of French bread with tomato smeared on top), salad (with tuna, of course), potato omelets, calamari, snails, meat and cheese, and shrimp. About 8 plates of EACH thing. Obviously, none of these are up my alley, so Janet ordered me some grilled veggies for my dinner. Twas yummy.

 Special, long toothpicks for eating snails.

 The shrimp still had heads and legs. Icky!

 Janet acquiesced to Avril's request for makeup.

 Cousins :)

 After dinner, Jose set up a projector and played a video for Noelia. Everyone had contributed pics and videos about and with her. It was super sweet. I was even in one video with her friends, which we taped the weekend before in the country. Then, the party moved outside into a tent set up with a stage and a band. Her family performed a song for her: Jose played bass, Alex played drums and Avril sang. It was very cool. I had to spend a lot of the time inside though, because people were smoking and it was hurting my throat. Plus the music was super loud and I didn't bring earplugs. There were a few other people inside too though, so at least I wasn't alone. We stayed over at Noelia's parents house that night and on Sunday we went to Jose's sister's house for lunch. She made fettuccine and a cream sauce similar to alfredo. Despite my attempts to avoid dairy, I didn't want to be annoying and say "oh, I can't eat that," so I ate it. Ok, ok... it looked good and I kinda wanted it too. I was just afraid of what it would do to my stomach later. I was right. I was up all night with horrible heartburn from the dairy. Oh well, learned my lesson.

On Friday, Noelia and I went to the doctor to see the test results from my blood test, to try and figure out why I've been so fatigued and had so many headaches lately. Turns out everything was fine. Perfect actually. The doctor actually seemed surprised, because despite my weight my cholesterol and blood sugar were both ideal. See what eating well does? I'm ideal :)
So, it's most likely stress from having so many things change at once, and maybe some homesickness as well making me feel ill. So... I need to get into the habit of meditating every day. I think that should help.

Today, we are celebrating Avril's birthday with her friends. We are going to go to see Alexander and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. After that we are going to McDonalds for dinner. I'm curious to see if they have the same salads we have in the US.

Tomorrow, we are officially celebrating both their birthdays at the house in the country. Noelia made veggie lasagna (no sauce on mine ;) ) for everyone to eat tomorrow, and the rest of us helped assemble them. Jose even cut out letters from the noodles and spelled out their names to put on top of the lasagnas. Super cute!

See that cheeseless spot on that one? That's mine.

Halloween/Castañas

It's been awhile! Mainly, due to me not feeling well. For the last couple weeks I have been extremely tired, regardless of how much sleep I get. So, I keep going to bed really early because I just can't stay awake, hence skipping my blogging time. Noelia took me to the doctor on Monday to get me checked out, and today we went to get some blood drawn for them to test. Currently, we are thinking it's probably because of my change in diet since I arrived here. I've been eating more things like pasta, bread and potatoes, rather than the mass amounts of greens and veggies that I ate at home. So we are thinking my iron is probably low, as well as my protein. After my doctor appointment on Monday we went to the biggest grocery store in Lleida to try and find some of the foods I ate back home. We managed to find peanuts and cashews, black beans, and raisins. On Tuesday Noelia found a place that had peanut butter. Only one type, with added sugar and oils. Not the best in the world, but it'll do until my care package from mom and Ryan comes with my Smucker's natural pb ;)

Ok.. let's see if I can remember everything that happened during this gap in blogs...

The weekend before Halloween we went to Jose's parents house in Tamarite, along with his siblings and their families to celebrate the first birthday of Biel, his nephew. We chatted, had lunch, and went to a park to play for awhile, then went to a gym where there was a man singing kids songs that are common here while using puppets, before heading home.

On Sunday we went to the house in the country again to have lunch together. I love this tradition ;)
I also tried a new braid that day, the zipper braid. Not bad for a first attempt, and with no mirror!

This is Laura making homemade aioli. It was tasty, but I didn't have much since it had eggs in it.

My lunch, since I don't eat snails and meat. Penne with pesto! Mmmm...

One of the common things made here this time of year is Panellets. Little bite sized desserts made with coconut, almonds, pine nuts, sweet potatoes, chocolate or lemon. The coconut ones were my favorite!

Not sure what this one is called, but it's basically a cream filled cake. I tried a little, and it was quite tasty.

Olives are ripening!

What a great place to sit and do homework.

Laura gave us some butternut squashes to take home, so I looked up recipes online to find something I could do with them. One was this pasta salad. It turned out quite well.

Well, for Halloween week at school for most of my classes we played a game I remember playing for Halloween ages ago in school. Pass the orange. Anyone else remember this game? You have to pass an orange from one person to the next using only your chin. If you touch it with your hands or arms you're out, as well as if you drop it. The last person standing gets a prize. In this case, I brought little Jack o' Lantern and candy corn erasers that I bought at Target before I came here. It's a Halloweenish game because you look like a vampire biting someone's neck while you pass the orange. The kids loved it. They got to use up some energy, and potentially win a prize. For some of the other classes I had the kids do fill-in-the-blanks labeling Halloween themed things, such as cemetery, vampire, witch, spider, bats, werewolf, etc. Whoever got the most correct answers won one of the erasers. For a couple classes we also played Halloween hangman, which is the same as regular hangman, only you have to use words or phrases that are Halloween themed.
I took some great pics of the kids playing the games, however I can't post any pics of the kids online for privacy purposes. Sorry! I can still show some of Avril and Alex though, so here they are playing the game at home on Halloween (there was no school that day).

Since we didn't have to go to school that day we decided to use the free time and try making some olive bread (Avril's favorite). I found a recipe online and we whipped this up in no time. It turned out super nummy, and the whole loaf was gone in about a day.

We also made some zucchini bread, which they had never had before. They don't do fruit/veggie filled non-yeast breads like we do in the US. I need to make them banana bread at some point as well.

On the evening of Halloween/Castañas we went to a nearby park where all the kids set up houses they had made and where they sold panellets and other goodies. Of course, this was a chestnut festival, so there were a bunch of stands where they were cooking chestnuts and selling them. Yum!

Later Friday night, we went to Tamarite to meet up with a bunch of Jose and Noelia's friends and have dinner together. It seemed kinda nuts to me that they went to a restaurant and didn't start eating until about 11pm. We were there until about 2. They had pate and crackers, octopus, and fish or steaks with potatoes. I had half a salad and two bites of asparagus (it was super over cooked and vastly over salted) and plenty of wine.
The next day we were going to the house in the country to have a party with more of Noelia's friends, so we stayed over at her parent's house so we didn't have to drive back to Lleida and then to Alcampell again.

First off.. we need these chips in the US. They're Lays, but they don't have this flavor back home. It was super good! Veggie-tastic.

 More wine, of course ;)

Salads for all.. mine, of course, is the one with no clams or tuna.

I noticed I'm more inclined to try to speak in Spanish with a little wine in me.

Roses make me think of mom :)

Since they had seen it in so many American movies, they wanted to try roasting marshmallows. The texture was a bit different than the US ones, but they were still pretty good. If only we had chocolate and graham crackers.

On Tuesday of this week I had a bunch of free time between my morning classes and my afternoon ones, so during the break I used some more of the butternut squash and made gnocchi. It is delicious! Especially with the fresh sage from Laura's herb garden. Not vegan, but vegetarian at least. It had one egg, and 1/4 cup of parmesan.

Last night I went with Noelia on a walk with her friends again. This time there were three other girls with us. We walked for around 20 minutes and then as we were passing a restaurant they like to go to together, one of the girls said she wanted to stop in the restaurant quick and say hi to someone. They lead us in, and it turned out they had brought presents and it was a surprise birthday party for Noelia (her birthday is Nov 11th, Avril's is the 10th). So we all sat down and ordered some food (I wasn't very hungry so I just got some melon and shared some of the potatoes they ordered as an app). They gave Noelia two gifts: a book and a salt lamp (very pretty). She thought it was funny, because she never eats before they go walking, and this time was the one and only time she actually ate first, so she wasn't very hungry. We gabbed and had a good time, then we walked back home.