Friday, November 23, 2007

La Accion de Gracias en Bilbao

After class on Thursday everyone in my program met at school to walk down the river to eat Thanksgiving lunch at this nice hotel together! All our professors and people who work in the office we there eating and gossiping together. I was initially not super excited for lunch since I was not with family or eating turkey, but it was so much better than I could have imagined. When we arrived we came in from outside in the rain to a warm open room with a bunch of tables with Kas soda (a very popular drink in Spain) waiting for us and fancy settings. I sat with Matt and Nikki, my own little family here in Spain. Right away they served us our first dish- pumpkin soup. It was so amazing and tasty and warm! Although I must say the pumpkin puree that Conchi makes is a little better. Oh and we had a couple peices of warm bread, since bread is eaten with everything here. Then everyone started getting their turkey with practically built in cranberry sauce and stuffing. Just when I started drooling over the smell, I got a full bowl/plate full of vegetable lasagna smothered in cheese! I was in heaven. I couldn't wait to try it, so chewing and burning my tongue at the same time was the end result! But it was the most amazing lasagna I have ever had. It was a decent sized portion too, so I was very happy. A very fitting food for vegetarians on Thanksgiving. Jared, a guy in my program made a toast in spanish then finished by saying gracias for becoming my friends, since he didn't know how to say it in Spanish and we all laughed. Then he said something like may God turn this water we have into wine. So my professor Isabel thought that was funny so she brought him a glass of wine in front of everyone. Then I said "you know Jared, God shared." We had a good laugh. Then came the pumpkin pie and apple ice cream. Yummy!
After lunch, most of us students and professors headed to a bar called Crazy Horse. The theme is American music from the 70's and 80's. So there were posters and instruments all over of famous people like Janis Joplin, the Beatles and other bands. Themed discotecas and bars are all the rage here. Especially dark themes, like dungeons and dragons...weird, but entertaining. So some people got drinks, but I headed straight for the pool table. Steve, my friend from Chicago, and I decided to play against another team. Usually a new team plays the winner, and Steve and I won. So then we played our second and third game against Guillermo and a student. Guillermo works in the CIDE office and also teaches he is maybe 23 years old. His English is good, but he kept saying "I am going to win you this time!" Funny little dark haired Spanish guy. He was a little upset when I finally hit the 8 ball in. Three great games.

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