My Birthday Weekend

Hi everyone. Yes, I celebrated my birthday last weekend. I turned 24 on Saturday. We went out to a friend's party and had supper and a few drinks. It was a good time, and it was also quite an international party: a few Spaniards, a few Americans, a few Brits, a Scot, a French girl, and our Italian friend. We almost invariably talk about the differences between our cultures and the places we know and have visited. It's always educational, of course.






This is a picture of the cake Abby and her parents got me for my birthday (thank you, by the way, Steve and Linda; it's delicious). It's a chocolate fudge ice-cream cake. We are crazy about the pastries, the desserts, and the candy that they have here. We are glad that we have to do so much walking around our city (and climbing up stairs of our apartment). And Christmas is coming soon! So all of the markets have candy on sale; and they have so much traditional Christmas candy and pastry that we are, of course, obligated to try. How else will you all at home know what it tastes like? And if you come to visit, how else will you know what is good if we don't test it first? Don't worry... we're on it. I've already told the pan lady (this is what we call the baker lady on our street--pan, pronounced 'pohn' or 'pawn', means bread) that we want to try everything in her store. I guess she figures we're good business, because every now and again either she or her husband will throw in a creamy sugary treat for us. Our again, we are forced to oblige.



This is a picture of Abby and I eating lentil bean soup at our living room table. As you can see, since we've got the internet the conversation at mealtime has considerably decreased to leave use more time to write e-mails. We're much happier now to be connected in our own home.



This is a photo of some of the amigos of our group. They are all in the same program as us, and they assist in different schools in Logrono and the surrounding area. Left to right, we are: Stuart (the Brit with the red hair), Tim (the tall New Mexican guy behind him), Abby, me (on a particular night--probably at least six weeks ago--when I decided to bring a can of beer with me out on the streets: no not illegal, there are many bars in our city and Spain where the thing to do is order food and drinks and have them outside), Katarina (we call her Kadda: our blonde German friend; yes, she teaches German, but she also was an exchange student for a while in North Carolina and she speaks flawless English with us), Luisa (our Italian friend with the red glasses; she teaches Italian to students and occasionally to us when we're out and about; her Spanish is also very good since Italian is very similar, and she likes to practice her English with us), nevermind the random Spanish dude in the background, and last on the right is Marcos (from Florida, though of Peruvian decent. Marcos is the self-proclaimed Grandfather of the group because he's the oldest; I recently learned he's working on his Master's program to someday become a professor of English at university). There we are! There are several more of us not in the photo, and also several others who we aren't very close to in our nearby cities.


This is another photo of us out at Halloween.

And this is a photo of a meal Abby and I had sometime around Halloween. As you can see, we decorated our place a little with ornamental gourds. We are eating pasta here, with toast, Rioja wine, and some melon we picked up at the grocery store which was wonderful and very much like honeydew. We like to cook. Tonight we're actually going to attempt homemade pizza! We only have to buy a pizza pan and the makings... so we'll see. It's one of our favorite things to do, so I hope that our homemade pizza here turns out as well as it usually does when we make it back home.
Back to the birthday for a second: Abby gave me tickets to a jazz concert that is coming to town next Saturday! It's a jazz duet: a banjo player named Bela Fleck (who I know and am a big fan of) and a piano player named Chick Corea. The concert will be at the RiojaForum (the big concert hall in town). I am very excited and grateful to have such a cool hip girlfriend like Abby. I'll tell you all about how it goes later.
That's all for now. Everyone stay cool. We're anxiously anticipating Thanksgiving here, as we'll likely be doing many lessons about it in school. Hasta pronto (until soon).