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.
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.
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