Día de Acción de Gracias (Thanksgiving)

Hey, everyone.

So I'm going a little out of order, you might have seen I just blogged about yesterday, but now I'm gonna jump back and blog about Thanksgiving last week. Hope that's okay :)

Thanksgiving was a good day. I made plans with some friends to make dinner at my piso, because most of my friends live with host families, and inviting friends over isn't really allowed (especially if you plan to take over the kitchen).

However, before Thanksgiving dinner, I had plans to go to the Museum of Fine Arts here in Sevilla. It was a free tour put on by some professors at my school - why not? I was persuaded by a Spanish friend to go on the tour in Spanish, and I'm glad I did. I didn't think I'd be able to handle the tour in Spanish, but I actually was able to follow the guide very well! Our guide was named Rafae, and he's an Art History teacher at our university.

A courtyard in the museo

Listening to him for 2 hours speak about art in Spanish made me kind of wish that I had taken my History and Culture classes in Spanish. I had considered it at the beginning of the semester, but had decided not to because I felt that I would learn a lot more from the class if I took it in English. And I think that was correct - I've gotten SO MUCH out of my classes. But I wonder if my Spanish would be even better if I had taken them in Spanish too. I guess I'll never know :) and it doesn't really matter. But it was really cool to be able to listen to his explanations of art and understand him completely without really trying that hard.

Another courtyard

One gallery of the museum. Check out the people on the left - shows you how HUGE the paintings are!

Almost all of the art in this museum was religious in some way. Really makes it obvious that I'm in a very Catholic country. This piece was one of my favorites. Rafae said it represented a more human Jesus, just a baby sleeping. It also had symbol representing his "destiny": the cross.
Nino Jesus dormido by Schut

After the tour, I went home where my roommate and some friends had already started cooking. I had told my Spanish roommate that Marcela and I were having friends over, just to be fair to her and give her a heads up. I also invited her to dinner. She said she couldn't come because she had to work, but she made us a cute note:

Dinner ended up being a success! We ate homemade mashed potatoes, corn, broccoli, homemade stuffing (really good, none of us had ever made it before, props to Lindsey!), turkey (filets that we bought in the store, we couldn't cook a whole turkey because I don't have an oven), and an apple pie. It was delicious! Ohh... and of course, wine. :D

Fanciest Thanksgiving feasts use plastic silverware...

Pre-dinner picture: Kaley, Katie, Marcela, Lindsey, me, Elesa
You have no idea how hard it was to pose for a picture instead of digging in...

So yeah - pretty nice Thanksgiving. I missed you all a lot (really wanted to be in Naples with Charlie, Barbara, mom, Russ, and Mike!) and I would have liked to be with family. But these girls are kind of like my family over here, so it worked out :)

Besos!