There is a reason why Thanksgiving is a day, but Christmas is a season.

Turkeys turkeys turkeys. I see most of my kids only once every two weeks, so I've been talking about Thanksgiving since last Tuesday. And let me tell you... I'm a bit Turkey-ed out. I've been starting my classes with a game of hangman, where the word is "Thanskgiving" and for a while, it surprised me that: a) it takes them forever to guess the word, and b) my kids respond "¿Qué es eso?" (or if I'm lucky, they say "What is this?"). I thought, "I've done a Thanksgiving lesson 15 times and you really had no clue this was coming?? Did you not talk to anyone?? However, upon further reflection I discovered the reasons for these absurdities. First of all, the letters G and V are hard for them to pronounce so they volunteer just about every other letter in the alphabet before saying these. And secondly, in contrast to my middle/high school experience, the students here stay in the same room while the the teachers move around. So they're in class with the same people all day every day, and there's none of the "Hey, what are we doing is English today?" discussions between classes. So I guess that explains why they were all so blind-sided. Anyway, there is usually one person that knows it's the day where we eat pavo. And to be completely honest... that's basically the jist of it. And I'm teaching 20 classes about it. OK, enough about Thanksgiving... on to bigger and better holidays!

So, as many of you know, I'm coming home for Christmas!! I'm going to officially have the longest birthday of my life. It will last about 33 hours because I'll be crossing time-zones that day. I'm not sure if that sucks or if it's awesome, but I'm so very excited to see my family and friends for the holidays. I just couldn't imagine spending it away from them. I can't wait to drink hot cocoa, watch holiday movies, eat/make Christmas bread, and see Portland lit up for the holiday season! Every once in a while, I get a rush of that holiday spirit. They have started hanging up lights around Bilbao for the holidays, and one of the teachers brought polvorones for everyone, which are traditional holiday treats that sort-of crumble when you bite into them. I tried the almond, chocolate, and lemon ones and they were all pretty good. Another holiday treat is Turrón, which seems kind-of fudge-like to me... It comes in all sorts of flavors, and sometimes nuts or wafers. I'm not explaining it right, but it's delicious.

Anyway, I'm trying to decide what I'm going to do for my lesson plans in December... I've had lots of random ideas like designing/describing an ugly Christmas sweater, doing a white elephant gift exchange, watching "The Grinch" or that old-school Rudolph movie... There are endless possibilities- and I'm open to suggestions.

Also... this is a shameless plug: I'll be done with this program in June (aka unemployed), so if you hear of any jobs that might be opening up (or know someone who I could talk to), please let me know! I'm leaning towards education of some sort, but it will be a year or so until I can start grad school. Clearly I will have experience speaking Spanish and teaching English as a second/foreign language but I'm also interested in math and sports, and I took lots of business classes in college. If you don't have my email, it's allysoncscott@gmail.com. OK, done. Just wanted to throw that out there.

Have a Happy Turkeyday!

Just checking in...

Had a really low-key weekend since many of my friends were out of town. Jess and I pretty much just hung out, baked some delicious crepes, and went to the gym. We did manage to go out one night with those of us still in town. And we also watched Harry Potter 2. Trying to prep ourselves for Friday, you know. Unfortunately, none of the theaters in Bilbao are playing it in English, so we'll have to bare it dubbed in Spanish. Not ideal, but still exciting.

This week I'm teaching the second-years and the bachillerato students (basically high school juniors/seniors- that plan on going to college). My classes today went really well. The second years are so precious. We played 20 questions with famous people, and then I had them do an activity where they got to draw. It seemed like they were having a good time and they were all really well-behaved. With the older kids, we talked about Thanksgiving... I described the holiday, and showed them a slideshow of typical dishes (It wasn't until today that I realized just how many Thanksgiving "staples" there are. We really do eat a lot on that holiday!). I also found some videos on how to brine a turkey, and how to make pumpkin pie. Unfortunately, I can't get any Food Network shows in Spain, which is a bummer because I would love to show them some of those videos- Giada, Bobby, and Ina are very important in my life...

Anyway, for how much my students talk about food, they don't have a lot of experience cooking it... I asked them if anybody cooks at home, and they all said no, for the most part. I'm curious if it's the same with older generations, but I fear for these kids futures a bit... It makes me really appreciate that Mom let us help in the kitchen. Or, let me rephrase that - in the spirit of the holiday - I am thankful for having learned how to cook throughout my childhood. That's a shout out to you, Mom. And Grammy. And Dad (I'm thinking about making dutch babies this weekend). Anyway, I asked my students what they do know how to cook and I got three answers: pasta, eggs, and tortilla española. I took this as a great opportunity to a) get them talking, b) teach some handy cooking verbs, and c) learn how to make a tortilla española. Perfect!

For those of you who are unfamiliar, a Spanish tortilla is like a thick potato omelet. So, absolutely nothing like a Mexican tortilla. They serve it in wedges at pretty much every bar/cafe. It´s kind-of bland and ugly, but it's probably the most recognized Spanish dish. Therefore, I would probably shoot myself if I didn´t learn how to make one of these before I left. So here´s how it´s done (according to my students):

• Peel and dice the potatoes.
• Fry them in a frying pan.
• Beat eggs in bowl (I think it takes about 6-8 eggs, but I forgot to ask).
• Add the potatoes to the eggs and mix them.
• Pour the mixture back into to pan and fry it.
• Flip it in the air like a pancake (if your talented enough). Or, as a safer alternative, use the age-old "flip the tortilla onto a plate and slide it back into the pan" trick.
• After it's cooked, remove from the pan and serve.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy. It ended up being a really fun lesson! We all had a good time and learned something new. And don't worry- I didn't let them leave without learning some basic table manners and saying something they're thankful for. I still have yet to attempt a tortilla on my own, but it did inspire me to order one at the little cafe by our piso this evening.

Tomorrow's my long day. Hopefully the next few classes will be as good a the ones today.

¡Agur!

Finally, a beautiful day!

It is so gorgeous outside! Since this is my day off, I slept in until 8:30 this morning and woke up to sun streaming through the windows in my piso. After slowly eating breakfast and sipping my coffee, I decided to take a walk. I walked through the Parque de Doña Casilda and then strolled along the river past the Guggenheim and finally back through the city to my piso. The thermometer outside read 18 degrees, so I was perfectly comfortable walking around in a light sweatshirt. This is after many days of cold, rainy, windy weather, so I'm especially appreciative of the change. I should've brought a camera...

There not much to report on, except I finally joined the gym across the street (I'm still kind of sore...) and I taught my younger kids the Hokey Pokey. 

Oh! Portland got a shout-out in the newpaper this week! Not for any particular reason, just to shed some light on the city. The title is "La nueva meca de la bohemia blanca" (The new mecca of the white bohemian). Here are some quotes I thought were interesting (translated to English for you):

• "I'll trade you two dozen eggs for some goat cheese." 
• "[Portland] has become one of the new bohemian meccas of North America. Not only for people that pursue a lifestyle that's part rural-part urban, but also for thousands of young artists that search for inspiration in it's streets."
• "Portland is also the best city in the country for pet owners."
• "Portland has the profile of being one the the most attractive, little-known destinations in North America."

They also mention how some landmarks in Portland inspired the names of some characters in Los Simpson (like Ned Flanders and Montgomery Burns). If you didn't know already, The Simpsons is huge in Spain. In fact, they actually have a Simpsons mural on the outside of my school. 

Well, enough time on the internet, I've got to go take advantage of the weather before it gets dark. 

Cheers.

Fall-time in the Basque Country

Let’s start with Halloween… Halloween is not celebrated here nearly as much as in the states. All Saints Day (Novemebr 1^st) is a much more important holiday where people go to cemeteries and honor their family and friends that have passed by putting flowers on their graves. However, being the American that I am, I celebrated Halloween instead and had lessons about it in class. Since I had my younger students, I basically just played games with them, after asking them what they know about Halloween. They knew a lot more than I expected them to know- my kids were about to fill whole chalkboards with Halloween vocab, but I also noticed that their impression of Halloween is much much scarier than mine. They came up with lots of scary costume ideas like (ghosts, zombies, witches, vampires, mutant clowns, any character from a horror film, etc…), but were completely shocked when I said that you could dress up as things that weren’t scary like superheroes, princesses, or fish (I didn’t mention coffee cup, lipstick, or recycling bin costumes because it would’ve been way too confusing).

Anyway, Halloween was also Jessica’s birthday, so we headed over to our friend Claire’s house for some delicious birthday cake and drinks. From there we hit the town dressed up in our costumes. We got lots of looks on the metro, being the only people dressed up, but I think people loved it. Jessica got meowed at a few times (she was a cat). We went to one of the only bars open (this was a Sunday, so the choices were limited), and then to a Halloween party at a club, where we finally found other people in costumes. They had a contest for the best-dressed people, which itself is very exciting, but I got a kick out of the prizes. Third place got a 50€ gift certificate to a restaurant, 2^nd place got a certificate for a massage, and 1^st place (this would only happen in Spain) got A LEG OF HAM! Congratulations dude in a scuba suit- you get to carry around a huge leg of ham for the rest of the night!

Moving on… Ever since I got an email from Dad saying that all the leaves were changing in Portland, I started really missing trees… I hadn’t really noticed until now, but there aren’t any trees around my house and school. I got my fix yesterday though… Three friends and I took a bus out to the wine country which is absolutely gorgeous at this time of year. The trees and vines were all different shades of yellow, orange, and red. We were all awestruck- especially Thomas, who is from Oklahoma and never sees hills or vineyards. We got a tour of the Fabulista bodega (a bodega is a winery), which is one of two remaining underground wineries in Laguardia. It was really cool. In the lobby, they have the grape stomping basin (or whatever you call it), which filled the room with an overwhelmingly strong smell of vinegary wine. From there, we went downstairs into these little underground tunnels where they were storing all the barrels. We tasted some joven (young) and criado (matured) wine while the tourguide cracked jokes… most of which I didn’t understand. We hung out in the town the rest of the day, ate some food, tried some more wine, ventured down to the vineyards, and waited way too long for the bus to arrive. Overall, it was nice to see the countryside and drink some yummy Spanish wine.

That's all for now! Happy fall!