Even though I’ve been in Spain for over two months, I still haven’t had an authentic home-made Spanish meal. Yes, I’ve eaten at restaurants and tried octupus, tortillas españolas and stuff like that, but don’t most people want to be able to come home, relax, and have a nice meal with your family?? Even though I couldn’t have that home-cooked meal with MY family (miss you guys!), having it with someone else’s family this week was special. While driving back to Santiago from Noya today with two teachers from my school, one of them, Fran, a gym teacher at the school and someone I’ve talked to a bunch and is really cool, surprised me by asking if instead of dropping me off at home, did I want to have lunch at his home and meet his family? Sooooooo, I said yes!
When we got to his house, I met his wife (7-months pregnant) and his 5 year old daughter (ADORABLE) and 2 year old son, along with his wife’s two sisters. We sat down for lunch and his wife was asking if I wanted more of this or more of that or if she should prepare something else if I don’t like fish, etc, etc. She was so welcoming and friendly and I liked her immediately. Fran and his wife’s daughter also knows a tiny bit of English from school so she said a few words like “I’m five” and she was so cuuuuteeeee. And both the little ones gave me kisses on the cheek when I met them and when I said goodbye. 🙂
Anywayyyy, this Spanish lunch was definitely more like a U.S. dinner than a U.S. lunch because the biggest and most important meal of the day in Spain is lunch. They aren’t into the whole “eat-at-your-desk-in-under-30-minutes” or “eat-on-the-go” type of thing. Families all get together, with students coming home from school and parents from work in order to have lunch together. I was very grateful to be invited to Fran’s house to join his family for a home-cooked meal! Everyone at the house was so friendly (which didn’t surprise me at all) and they really made me feel at home 🙂
Soooo, for lunch we had merluza (hake), potatoes, salad, jamón serrano (Serrano ham), white asparragus and fresh bread.
hake and potatoes
mmmmmm. not kosher, but yummm.
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Thanksgivukah!
Although I was sad not to be in MA or NY for Thanksgiving, auxiliars here still made an effort to celebrate Thanksgiving as we would at home. Like 10 people (American, British, and one Spaniard) came over to my and Nicole’s apartment to have as close to a Thanksgiving dinner as we could! We had green beans/peas (defrosted haha), quinoa with pieces of turkey (unfortunately, we didn’t get to celebrate with a big ol’ roast turkey,) candied yams (made with pink and white marshmallows which made the dish look a liiiiiittle strange), mashed potatoes, mac & cheese (something I don’t really think of when I think of Thanksgiving, but at least it’s an American dish), and for dessert, apple pie and pumpkin pie (the girl who made them actually had to buy a pumpkin to make the latter because they didn’t have canned pumpkin in the grocery stores).
That’s about it… we weren’t able to stream any American football games and we didn’t get to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on tv, but at least we attempted to celebrate this lovely American holiday and give thanks for this amazing opportunity we have to live in Spain for a year!
Gringa En Galicia 