Postin' 'n' Toastin'

It's amazing how much can happen between a Tuesday and a Sunday.

Aside from life's little (sometimes big) frustrations and loads of joy, an American national holiday has been celebrated, two excursions outside of Sevilla have been made, and what may be an exorbitant amount (or un montón) of photos has been taken.

I was not, however, flashed.

If you want to see pictures (there are lots...some of me even) you can go here and look at albums 17 (with 3 sub-albums) and 18.
http://s7.photobucket.com/albums/y292/ihaveaclevernickname/Espana/

After experiencing a thoroughly dampened Tuesday in Sevilla, Wednesday passed by innocuously enough, but then came Thursday, the day all you smug Americans in your snug America thought that you was gettin' you some turkey, but that I was not.

Incorrect my friends. Incorrect.

Not only did I have a Thanksgiving meal (for which I was thankful), and not only was there a football game (and yes, it was fútbol americano), but I also skipped about the ruins of a second-century Roman city and stayed out until 2:30 in the morning pretending to dance salsa in a Cuban club. Take that, tryptophanomaniacs.

I woke up Thursday, cursing the alarm, and took my usual quick, alternately hot (when the water is on) and freezing (when the water is not) shower, put on my face and my clothes, and ate breakfast while my cold toesies toasted underneath the table cloth which hides the little heating bulb which has fast become my most extreme appendages' best friend as Sevilla's hot climate has slid into the cool of fall.

Ellen and I walked through our familiar, somewhat soggy construction site surrounding our apartment building to our bus stop, coger-ed the 34 bus to school, and then coger-ed another bus to Italica, because in Spain, you take field trips to ancient ruins (not like 6th grade, when I took a field trip from which all I remember is a formaldehyde-preserved two-headed piglet in a jar...which I believe I heard was stolen at some point in recent history).

So my Día de Acción de Gracias began quite nicely as my schoolmates and I walked through the stone corredors of the gladitorial amphitheater, which gave my imagination a run for it's unpleasant money...to think of how many men were marched into the arena, nervous and determined, and then how many were carried out through the other side, defeated, dead, devoured for the sake of public entertainment, and then to think that there I was standing in the same spot where some guy with dark, Mediterranean eyes spurred his heels and took a final blow or bite while a crowd jeered and cheered at the fragility of his humanity...not to mention all those poor, fuzzy aminals...It all made me very thankful, that I am not in any danger (I hope) of being chucked into a ring of death.

Though, when I think about it, perhaps Italica wouldn't have been so bad. The city did have a pretty high-tech sewage system and fancy-pants statues and who-knows-what-else, because the majority of the city is still buried beneath the rolling Spanish countryside.

After our excursion, the majority of my classmates and I decided to Thanksgiving it up by coger-ing yet another bus, which took us to a park where, not only did I liberate a stranded crayfish, but we played football (and by "we" I mean "they played and I took pictures as if I were the proudest soccer mom in the world"). It rained a little, and the game went a little long (2.5 hours), and some weird Spanish guy watched everyone in amazement for a while, but it felt really homey to be sitting on uneven grass, soaking in the chill of the wind, and watching a bunch of Americans play a decidedly American game. Eric "Sin Huesos" DeVries even sprained his ankle, generously taking one for the team by enacting the Thanksgiving creed which states that someone needs to be injured before sundown.

Exhausted, I rode the long, long bus ride back home, talked to Mom and Dad, took an all-too-short nap, and arreglada-ed myself for the long awaited Thanksgiving dinner. Because we are all Americans, and because we have all been in a different country and culture for over three months, Acento arranged to give us a little bitty break by hiring a club to make us a traditional Thanksgiving meal, providing the ingredients and the recipes. It was nice to walk into Azucar de Cuba (Cuban Sugar) and see all of my classmates, dressed to the nines, and share communion with them. We watched a slideshow of photos accompanied by a lot of "aww"s (obligatory and genuine alike) and then we waited eagerly for our food. It was surreal; surreal because the food, though "traditional", had been prepared by a Spanish chef, and so was made with a Spanish understanding of a decidedly non-Spanish tradition. We had glazed turkey served on the bone, Spanish green beans, corn, really sweet sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, and a cake-like piece of stuffing followed by a desert plate with carrot cake, pumpkin-pie flavored flan, and kind-of apple pie. It was so appropriate for study abroad group of Americans, not to mention so, so good.

After dinner we all mezcla-ed and chatted and took more pictures and exchanged Secret Santa gifts (or as the Spanish like to say amigo invisible gifts) and then the club opened to outsiders and the salsa-ing began. I thought I was all cool dancing with the Americans, and then I saw them, dancing in the corner, the actual Hispanic-Americans, the people who could apparently disconnect their hip bones at will. Ellen bravely danced with a Mexican who was causing all of us to stare in bewildered wonderment as he tossed around shimmying women and put them to shame with his latin-ness. As for myself, I danced with Alfredo, a very nice, bouncy man of undetermined nationality who was very encouraging as I stared blankly at the ground trying to figure out what the heck he was doing with his feet.

Then it was 2:30, so Ellen and I went to bed, because we usually say our goodnights at about 11:00.

Saturday, Ellen, Amy and I went to a pueblo in Andalusia to visit La Rábida, the monastery where Columbus and his son chilled for 6 years waiting for a thumbs up from Isabel. It was closed when we (finally) arrived at the door, so we walked around a park for a while, sniffing excitedly at the pine-fresh air. Once the doors opened, we entered, armed with nerdy electronic tour sets, and began wandering about, weaving in and out of an elderly English touring group. For me, the monastery in and of itself isn't much to see, but hearing the calm voice in my ear phones repeatedly mention how Columbus faithfully Christianized the indigenous peoples of the Americas actually made me giggle a few times. There is actually a room with dirt from all the American countries, including the USA, which makes me wonder: if I were to break that glass of the over-fancy box and put my hand in it, would I be on American soil?

La Rábida was on beautiful grounds, which I enjoyed more than the inside, but inside I was hit upside the face with a wonder that I have not experienced in much too long: silence. I was sitting in a pew in the sanctuary, staring at Amy, who was staring at the ground, when I suddenly tuned into some noisy birds outside. Birds. Nothing else. I could get used to that.

I look forward to that. I will be home in 18 days. It's so weird to me that people are counting down the days. Why?

And yes, I did have to explain to María that Thanksgiving and Independence Day are two entirely different holidays.

"Thanksgiving is the day you all won independence from the Indians, right?"