Felíz Turkey Day

This year yet another holiday season has arrived in Madrid. And when you're an American living abroad in a culture that doesn't understand a holiday based on stuffing your face with things like cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie, you come to truly appreciate the presence of your Californian friends and East-Coast coworkers. I was fortunate to spend two Thanksgiving dinners- yes, two! - with some amazing people here in Spain. The first was spent on Thursday evening with my roommates and some other American friends. We cooked all of our dishes from scratch (which was somewhat of a stressful process, as we had no days off of work that week), said what we were thankful for, ate way too much, and cooked inventive dishes with our leftovers afterwards. Basically, in most sense it was a successful Thanksgiving meal.

Chicken (we had an excuse for no turkey, we're overseas!), stuffing, mashed potatoes,
dinner roll, and my mom's sweet potato-marshmallow casserole!

My second dinner was on Saturday night- which fortunately gave my stomach some time to recover- and was definitely a unique experience. My coworker from New York hosted a dinner for me and our Spanish friends, a group of 9 in total. And she went all out, making an oven-roasted turkey, green beans, gravy, cranberry sauce - the works. But we also had some Spanish touches to the meal: roasted chestnuts (a winter tradition here), amazing red wine, and turrón for dessert (which is like an almond brittle and is a typical winter holiday treat here). It was really neat being able to share one of our traditions with them and explain things like why the stuffing does not actually go inside of the turkey anymore (though I'm still not sure if they were content with my explanation or not!)

Earlier that evening, while we were waiting for the turkey to finish cooking, I took advantage of my friend's spacious wood floor and taught an impromptu salsa and bachata lesson! It was quite the cultural mix- dancing to latin music in Spain while waiting for our Thanksgiving dishes to finish cooking! Then during dinner I asked one of my Spanish friends about a Spanish saying I'd heard the other day. After we discussed that saying, he continued to teach me more phrases and sayings. The rest of the night he and others would remember another phrase to teach me, and would pause their conversation to take note of a phrase one of them had just used and yell "Kelsey, quick write that one down!". By the end of the night my brain was over-saturated with new Spanish sayings, but I appreciated their help! One friend used an expression he'd taught me to poke fun at me, and it adequately described the experience. "Estaba lloviendo a cántaros- y ahora está lloviendo frases a Kelsey!" (It was raining cats and dogs, and now it's raining phrases on Kelsey!) Needless to say, it was a great Spanish/American holiday, fit for an American living in Madrid- and a Felíz Turkey day indeed.

Dance lessons in the living room!