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Published: December 1st 2011
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La Huelga (The Strike)
This was one of the many banners around school that day. It says "Don't sell education, defend it." Hello all!!
Holy cow! It’s been what, a month since I’ve written? I sincerely apologize. After the middle of November things got pretty busy here in Cádiz Since we have to take our finals in just two weeks instead of in February we also have to turn in all of our final papers and give our final presentations before we leave, so it’s been a pretty packed last couple of weeks!! To be honest it finally started to feel like I was in college again, haha! Meghan and I were talking about it and it really seems like we got about two extra months of summer vacation and then the last month we had to cram in a semester worth of information…I’ll get back to you on whether I prefer the U.S. way or the Spain way.
So the day after I posted my last blog, there was a strike at the university. Since I am in the “Facultad de Filosophia y Letras” aka the Philosophy and Language Department, the students are very…passionate about rights of youngins such as us and in protest of recent motions to make public education no longer free they
Empty Class
This was what my Pragmatics class looked like the day of the strike. decided to have a strike and not go to classes for a day. There were a majority of Erasmus students that also decided to take the “vacation day,” however we American kids were too scared to skip class because missing class isn’t quite as easy for us. There were 3 out of 33 kids in one of my classes 7 out of 20 in another and 5 out of what varies between 10 and 20 in my last class. It actually worked out great for me because I got some much needed attention from my professors, namely my Pragmatics professor.
That weekend Jeff Clinton, the director of university relations for API, came down to Cádiz to meet with the API students here and see how the program in Cádiz was doing. It’s not a very big program so they don’t have nearly as many personnel here and no one from the Texas office, just SuperJuan, being super. Funny fact, as we were walking with him he says, “Well I originally worked in the study abroad office at Clemson University.” Is it a small world or what!? It wasn’t long before he asked me if I me if
Thanksgiving!
All of us together minus a few. I missed Pot Belly Deli. Do I miss Pot Belly Deli? Um, yes. Yes, I miss PBD. I might miss Groucho’s a little bit more though…but just a little bit. 😊 It was really neat getting to talk with someone about Clemson who actually
knows Clemson! Even though he works for API now, he and his wife still have their house in Seneca.
Other than that y’all really only missed me writing papers on Spanish Oral Tradition and the Use of French in Normandy England. However Natalie and I did take an afternoon off to try and make “Soft American Chocolate Cookies” that Julianna had tried once before. Natalie and I agreed that if we could use Julianna or Annalu’s apartments we would get all of the ingredients and the recipe. The recipe was easy thanks to Nestle Tollhouse.com; ingredients were a little more difficult. The vanilla was a powder not liquid, the brown sugar looked like little brown rice grains, we only had baking powder not baking soda, and we substituted baking cocoa for nutella and Nesquik. All this really didn’t seem like an issue because the dough still tasted really good. When we asked Julianna
El Pavo!
Our Thanksgiving turkey!! where the oven was so we could pre-heat it she showed us what can only be described as what an Easy-Bake Oven from prison would look like. A half-an-hour later we had very delicious, mostly baked, double-chocolate chunk cookies. While they weren’t really picture perfect, they still tasted good!
What you guys really want to hear about though is Thanksgiving in Spain! Obviously they don't have it here in Spain, but they have heard of it and its called el "El Día de Acción de Gracias ," (The day of the action of giving thanks). Turkey isn’t really popular here, as in they don’t have it. SuperJuan, being super and all, found a restaurant that was willing to cook off menu and make us a turkey. It turns out that the place he found has a girl that works there with family in the United States, so they were able to get the recipe from her family.
We had a big meal with Spanish appetizers and then they brought out the turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy. When they brought out the turkey the waiter asked if we wanted the cook to carve the turkey
Even the Roast Beast
See what I mean? Roast Beast turkey fruit cake! or if we wanted to cut it ourselves. “Yeah, we can do it.” Natalie answered.
“Oh, you can do it?” asked Juan.
“Yeah, sure.”
After the waiter walked away I turned to Natalie, “You know how to carve a turkey?”
“No, why?”
“Natalie, you do realize that’s what you just agreed to right? You just told the waiter that you would cut the turkey.”
“What?! I did?! Oh, I wasn’t listening!”
Thankfully Jerica’s boyfriend, Blake, was visiting and has experience in turkey carving, so he was able to cut it for us. However when he cut into it he stopped, “There are no bones in here.” Once he got it cut in half we all just stared. It sort of looked like a fruit cake only it was light and dark meat and intermixed was hard-boiled eggs, yams, almonds, and raisins. It sort of is what I would imagine the Christmas roast-beast from Dr. Seuss would look like.
Blake served it to all of us and…it was GREAT!! It was so delicious! It was different, but a really good different. However, when Juan planned our Thanksgiving “dinner” he planned it for dinner time…
Spanish dinnertime. Therefore we were eating this amazing meal at 9 o’clock at night and we didn’t finish until midnight. It was sort of funny though, because we were actually eating at the same time as most our families back in the states, only ours was literally dinner instead of an all-day eating marathon. Uff! It was rough falling asleep! Natalie and I were SO stuffed! Usually Heather and I go for a walk after Thanksgiving and then we have worked up room for some peach pie, but we were so tired there was no energy for a Thanksgiving walk! Haha!
Overall though, we were really touched by what Juan and the chefs and the restaurant did for us. I was lucky that we got to celebrate as a family before I left, so I really didn’t feel too bad about not being home for Thanksgiving. Still, it was nice to get to celebrate with all of my API friends and Juan. And, because it was an American holiday and Blake (who doesn’t speak Spanish) was there, we got to speak in English for the evening which was also kind of nice for a little Spanish break.
Tomorrow I head off to Italy to visit Chiara! I will be there for about 10 days and get to see her family, her house, her school and we might even get to see some of the towns in the area like Verona! I am so excited! I will still have to do some studying while I am there, but it will be worth it to get to see a friendly face!!
So, next blog will be from somewhere in Italia!!
I hope everyone has had a great November and good luck to all my friends in the States getting ready for finals!!
Talk to you soon!
Love always,
Devin 😊
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