Buddy the Elf, what´s your favorite color?!

hey all!! well, once again I have lagged a little in the blog entries. My roommate came back from her month visit with the fam in Argentina so I don´t really have access to the computer in my piso anymore since she is usually on it. I have also been more busy than usual at work making it harder to write entries when there either.

Anyways, I good news is that my boss, after having asked her two times before, changed her mind and told me the beginning of December that I could go home for Christmas. Very exciting!! I am going home the 22nd until the 31st and am looking forward to celebrating Christmas with all my family!

Update on the weather here: it´s been cold, hitting freezing during the nights and not being too much warmer during the days. Well, this past Sunday it snowed! It was only for a few hours and most of it melted away the next day but it was kind a cool to see the snow. It´s nice that it´s gone though.

Well, that´s all for now. Hope to see some of you soon!! with love,

Amy

Christmas plans and the new piso

I forgot to mention that before I went to Alicante, I changed flats. I now live quite a bit further away from school, in a normal apartment flat I found advertised in the county newspaper. I share a 4 bedroom with 2 Spanish guys. One is into cross country skiing and climbs a little bit. We did a little hike (8 hours) the other day to the mountain where the three kingdoms meet (Aragón, Valencia, and Cataluña). It is the current day boundary as well.

Tonight I am catching the bus to Zaragoza and then directly to the airport in Madrid, I will spend a few days in Chicago and then I will spend a few weeks in California with the family for Christmas.

Alicante

I was offered a ride to Alicante last weekend so naturally I took Sergio up on the offer and Daniel and Valentina came along too. After staying with Sergio the first night, he dropped us off near Sella where we stayed in a refuge and enjoyed the mountain scenery while rock climbing

in the sun.

Thanksgiving Alcañiz

He´s 4.7 kilos, a little over 10 pounds

Pilgrims crossing the river to settle in Alcañiz

The feast

Valentina and I decided to prepare a thanksgiving dinner. I went to a butcher´s shop the week before thanksgiving and asked for a whole turkey. The lady there told me to come back by on Wednesday and they would have a whole turkey for me. I was a little nervous about this word of mouth arrangement, never having set foot in this butcher shop before, but sure enough the following Wednesday I went back and my turkey was on it´s way (it arrived Wednesday afternoon).

Tuesday night I printed up some apple pie recipes and showed up at Valentina´s apartment with apple pie ingredients. (I don´t have an oven at my apartment so we did most of the cooking at her place and carried the food down to my place to eat.) The apple pies were delicious.

Thursday, I skipped my typical rock climbing excursion and we cooked the turkey. I made the stuffing seperate and we did the turkey for about 3 1/2 hours. We finished off the legs in the micro because they weren´t quite done. The turkey barely fit in the oven, we had to let the legs go sideways to get it in. We also made mashed potatoes (no gravy though because I didn´t get any juices from the turky), sweet potatos with brown sugar, corn and people brought some things as well (Spanish potato omelette, russian salad, wine, and quince desert).

We had my roomates, a couple rockclimbers and their girlfriends, some professors/students, and Valentina. I gave a thanksgiving day prayer in Spanish. All in all it was a good time and everyone was stuffed and impressed with the American feast.

Also, in rockclimbing news, there is a new boulder problem in Alcañiz named Accion de Gracias (Thanksgiving).