Let’s start with Halloween… Halloween is not celebrated here nearly as much as in the states. All Saints Day (Novemebr 1st) 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, 2nd place got a certificate for a massage, and 1st 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!
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