I think you are wondering how (or if) we celebrated this here. We did!
On Thanksgiving morning, we went to school and then went on an all school field trip to see 2nd C. Roman ruins that are about 30 minutes away. First though, we watched a movie that showed what it would have looked like in the second century. It was complete with temples, private homes that still had mosaic tiles, a smaller version of the Colosseum, and a bathhouse.
After this, we took the bus back to the bus station and a majority of us went to a park on the outskirts of Seville to eat our picnic lunches and play some football Americano style.
We ended up tying, but I learned how to catch the football and did so repeatedly. Photo curtesty of Samantha. You can see that I am about to be stopped by Margi's ferocious two-hand touch tackle.
After about 2.5 hours of football madness (seriously? that's about as long as a real game), I went home.
That night we got all dressed up and went to Azucar de Cuba, a classy Cuban restaurant close to our school. The school rented the place out and gave them recipies and so we had a delicious normal meal of turkey, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, green beans, bread, fried eggplant (okay, maybe not as normal, but good!), and stuffing. After that, a live Salsa band came in and so did the Spaniards. We all pretended to know how to salsa and then watched the really good Spanish people actually do it correctly. I danced with one of them, a guy from Mexico, who was really good and almost (but not quite) compensated for the fact that I had no idea what I was doing. We ended up staying out until 2:30am and it was great fun.
Yesterday, while some of you were out shopping in the herds of people, I did something cool. Samantha, my friend Amy, and I went to La Rabida. Doesn't sound cool yet? Well, La Rabida is home to the monastery (which is technically a convent) where Christopher Columbus lived for 6 years with his son while he waited for Isabel and Fernando to give him an answer about leaving. It's a monastery in Huelva (another "district" in Andalucia) which is about an hour and some minutes away from Seville. It's right on the Atlantic Ocean and is surrounded by well groomed forests, beautiful gardens, and silence. It's been a loooong time since I could sit somewhere and listen to the sound of absolutely nothing.
We spend about 2 hours climbing and exploring the woods, as we arrived right at siesta time and it was closed. 5 monks still live there and we saw one of them. It's a Franciscan order and they wear the brown robes and sandals like you always pictured but don't shave their heads.
Here's me rooting around in the woods:
The monastery itself was very small but well worth seeing and looked like... a monastery. It's been restored a lot and has a lot of flowers, but the best part was definitely just being still in the silence with two of my favorite people.
4 comments:
Hi Ellen, Thanksgiving here had nothing on what you did there. Michael played Wii baseball against Eli and had a "turkey" like in bowling where he hit three home runs in a row and actually won the BB game. You should ask him about it. Right now on Sat. morn it is lightly snowing on my leaves that were about to be picked up. Oh well. Can't wait to hear about Friday... Love, Dad
I did join the masses of shoppers on Friday morning and I missed having you to come with me! Mom had knee surgery so she was out too, poor Brett got dragged to Wal-Mart at 5:00.
No mass shopping here either. Good food though, amazingly similar to yours, without the eggplant, but including Sour Cream Raisin Pie.
Amelia, I'd have gotten up to go to Herberger's with you.
I'm still trying to figure out who packed a football into their 50 lb. suitcase.
You're one of my favorite people too and I'm glad I got to go with you to la Rábida after all.
Post a Comment