sábado, 26 de noviembre de 2011

Two Fantastic Feasts

When she heard that some of the students in our class still had not tried paella, our professor was shocked. So shocked that she invited all six of us in her class over for dinner on Monday night just so we could try the paella along with some other Spanish favorites.

Professora Ana
So, on Monday night we all went over to Ana's house where we met her two sons and a family friend who I actually already met at church. We all gathered around a small table in her living room and enjoyed chicken paella, tortilla de patatas, and my personal favorite, arroz con leche for dessert.

The meal tasted wonderful and we all loved spending time with Ana outside of class. It was really cool that she likes enough to want to make us a meal and spend time with us discussing something other than what we are learning in class.

A few days later, it was Thanksgiving, where we had another delicious meal. Before that, however, we spent the morning in Italica, a city just outside of Sevilla that contains Roman ruins.

The first stop on our tour of Italica was the monastery where I think everyone will remember a moment with our tour guide, professor Jose Maria. While walking through the monastery, we came upon a painting. "Now the lion in this painting," Jose Maria explained, "is what you would call a little...gay." Everyone laughed at this because we just did not see it coming from him, but it was true that the lion did not look like a typical, scary lion.

After the monastery, we walked to the third-largest amphitheater in the Roman empire. I was surprised by how much of the structure was still in tact after so many years. When we went to the middle, where they had the actual events, we could see tunnels that were dug out underneath the ground where animals or gladiators would emerge to surprise the fans. Obviously, after being in such a cool building, us guys were inspired to watch "Gladiator" the following night.

Thanksgiving ended with a feast at a Cuban restaurant with everyone in the program. All of the professors have been saying that this is usually one of the most special nights of the fall semester, so we were excited.

Everyone got dressed up and we ate all the American foods (turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and stuffing)...at a Cuban restaurant...in Spain. It was in fact a great meal, but it was still strange to be away from my family on such a family-oriented holiday.

The night ended with the exchange of our "Amigo Invisible" gifts, which is what they call "secret santa" here. When I received my gift, I knew exactly what it was and who it was from because Luke happened to draw my name. It was a deck of Spanish playing cards, which is basically the same as American cards but with a few extras.

No hay comentarios:

Publicar un comentario