Thanks, Man!

I’m starting to get a little sad and nostalgic about being so far away from my wonderful family during the holidays. However, I was able to make my Favorite fall food the other day thanks to a certain M. Flapjack Ramsour who sent me the mix for Sprinkles pumpkin cupcakes!!! DELICIOUS!I have also been teaching Thanksgiving themed classes this week to a variety of reactions among my students. In one class I had them work in teams to invent an entirely new holiday and all of the details. These teams came up with ‘International Chocolate Day’ and ‘Dessert Celebration!” They are my favorites.

For the actual day of Thanksgiving I had to work (but I’m thankful that I have a job) and so we weren’t able to celebrate until late. Melinda (Rhode Island), Dan (Chicago) and I ate a lovely meal in a British-owned bar (the one my roommate Will works at- Casa Lopez Corea) that consisted of several appetizers, a WONDERFUL pumpkin soup, turkey with stuffing, gravy, veggies, etc, and of course several delightful desserts including Apple pie!

We were stuffed! (pictured: Mel and I enjoying the desserts with power-ranger spoons. Since we were some of the last to eat, they had run out of normal, clean cuttlery. We found it very festive!)

Other notable events this week include a birthday party for my friend Pablo (my favorite of Angel’s friends) on Tuesday night, another jazz concert last Friday night (wonderful! An Italian ‘big-band’) and a little day-trip on Sunday with Angel up into the Mountains towards Güéjar-Sierra so that I could play with my new [hot pink] camera!

A highlight of this adventure was stopping at a little-old lady’s roadside veggie stand and seeing some of the MOST ENORMOUS onions, gords, etc. that I have ever seen in my entire life. The seems-like-a-good-idea of the day was buying a lot of stuff from her and trying to safely get it home on the moto. (We were successful in the end and celebrated by making a delicious veggie paella with some of the purchases.

People-watching has also been in high quality this week. On Tuesday night on my way to meet everyone at a bar across town for Pablo’s birthday I walked past a small hotel called Don Juan Hotel. It looked a little skeezy. Outside there were three Italian men dressed in their Saturday night best and smoking cigars. They were speaking in the ideal stereotypical accent and cat-calling at every girl who walked by. Way to feed the stereotypes, fellas. I also saw a younger woman (cute, small, blonde) on Monday morning in the official jumpsuit uniform of the city’s street sweeping staff. She was pushing a giant trash can onto which she had Duct taped a huge boombox circa the 1990s! She was BLARING music and singing very loudly. I found that a little strange as well. God bless this city. They’ve just passed a law trying to clean the community up a bit that bans pretty much everything in the streets (eating, drinking, singing or playing an instrument, selling anything, gatherings of more than 4 people at a time, etc.) Hopefully it won’t scare all of the crazies away- they sure do keep it interesting.

SABES QUE
The world record for the heaviest onion is a 16lb 8½oz (468g) onion grown in West Midlands. The previous record was a 15lb 15½oz (454g) onion which held the record for ten years.