Yesterday was Thanksgiving.........
What a clash of cultures.
I met Olivia's parents and brother at el fuente de Cristo around 10:30 in the morning. Porriño was dead as a door nail and I felt a little strange and out-of-place walking around while everyone else was in school.
But how was I supposed to feel.....as an American on Thanksgiving in a little town in Galicia?
We squeezed out of the minuscule parking garage and drove the rental car to the bar under Olivia's apartment, which her host parents own. Olivia came down shortly, and we had a long, relaxing breakfast with a lovely abundance of English. I remember first meeting Olivia's mom...she immediately started speaking lots of English words and it just sounded to strange to me.
After breakfast, we threw our coats and stuff into Olivia's little red room and got busy right away in the kitchen.
We started with the pie crusts.
We bought tart pans at the "everything" store the day before. They will shallow, but proved to be successful.
Chicho (Olivia's host dad) had a recipe for pie crust made virtually just from cookies and butter that we used. Olivia and I trotted back and forth between Tibi's kitchen and Sita's (Olivia's host grandmother) kitchen across the hall checking the crusts in the oven. There was only one oven rack in the oven...........this proved to be a bit of a problem, but we somehow wiggled around it.
We ended up making two pecan pies and two pumpkin.
After this, we ordered pizza from Pizza Plus (plooooos). We ordered some type of barbecue pizza and it seriously rocked my socks off.
Olivia's 13-year-old brother was a great little asset. Towering above me at 6'2", we ended up with an awful lot of inside jokes. I taught him a bunch of Spanish and he was really great at speaking with and helping Tibi with her English.
After lunch, we started on the casseroles.
We made a corn soufflé thing (yes, we had a family from Alabama on our hands) and sweet potatoes. We cut up apples and super fresh chestnuts (that literally just fell from the tree outside) and ripped gluten-free bread for the stuffing.
Everything was gluten-free because Xandra, sister of Olivia, is celiac.
At this point, with the casseroles steaming in the tiny little oven, we took a break. Olivia's mom, Dylan, Olivia, and I all headed over to the BiCafé to meet all of our friends. Adrián, Paula, Bianca, and Davíd, the usual crew, were waiting for us excitedly. Even my favorite waiter was working that day.
Lotsssssssss of freakin' translating.
The weather was freezing, the kind of cold that is biting and cuts to your bones. Liv and I are totally accustomed to this by now, but our visiting Americans just really weren't.
We left after about an hour, but by then it was already dark anyways and we had to start the turkey.
We had a bit of a fiasco about that awesome little thermometer that you poke into the turkey to see if it's done.
Olivia's dad claimed that h brought it, but we couldn't find it anywhere after searching the house and the hotel twice. We ended up calling every single supermercado within driving distance but NOBODY had this special little device. I guess these Spaniards don't really have much use for them.
Nevertheless, upon our return, Liv and I put on our pretty little dresses, tights, and boots and the pavo-preparing began.
Somewhere in the middle of pavo-preparing, Iria, Xandra, and Alina popped in from their field trip totally decked out in heels and red lipstick. It was great, I never see them dressed up. My sister looked so pretty, but she vehemently refuses all photos unless I have backup enforcements from her mother.
They had absolutely no idea what to do with themselves with all the English and strange food and big dead bird in the middle of the kitchen being fussed over, so they retreated into Xandra's room for most of the night.
More and more family members showed up around 10, I believe.
Oh yes. It wasn't normal Thanksgiving dinner timing....these people don't eat dinner until super duper late.
And then we were carrying everything downstairs; cranberry trays and stuffing and fluffy pieces of turkey.
There is some kind of common thought here about turkey cutting.
Everybody thought that we were doing it all wrong because apparently the fatherly-manly-man of the family is supposed to initiate his manliness and carve the turkey/dissect a dead bird right at the table "like in the movies".
Olivia and I decided to Americanize things a little further and make placecards to put on the looooong fancy black table in the party room in the bar. I ended up sitting by Dylan (Olivia's American brother), Pelayo (Olivia's Spanish brother), Davíd (our special guest), and Olivia. Since there were so many people, we had to skip another "movie thing" of passing everything around the table and do a buffet. It was decided that the people over 40 would go first, and the younglings followed after.
The looks on their faces.........
Can you even imagine?
They just do not eat turkey here at all.....and nothing was what they thought it was.
I don't think the younger girls really ate anything, but Davíd will eat whatever you put in front of him and many people ended up finishing their plates and getting more. Sita, the grandmother, was positively gushing about everything and begging us to translate the recipes.
Nothing was as good as Beezy's Thanksgiving (tehe), but it felt so good to taste normal food.
After we were done with the whole dinner thing, we went around the table saying what we were thankful for.....in Spanish AND English. 
And I had to start. Naturally.
Olivia and I continued our crazy translator jobs.
14 people? My Spanish?
No pressure.
When we reached Davíd, his words were almost too much to handle. He has been the sweetest and most positive person here for me and Olivia. When we feel homesick or awkward or hopeless, a lot of people tend to just make us feel worse, but never Davíd.
He has always been there to peel us off the ground.
He was talking about all of the opportunities and new things that Liv and I have brought to his life. His background story elevates the significance of this, but that's for another day. He talked about how much he is going to miss us and how he doesn't know what he'll do when he leaves.
The weight of how close that is.....is painfully heavy.
Anywho, then came the postre!
All of the supposes for the pies (minus the crust) came straight from America. The first bite of pecan pie was so shockingly familiar that I couldn't even figure out what to do with myself. Liv kept talking about how absolutely overwhelming it was to have her Spanish family an American family in one room.
Culture clashing!
Love it.
After postre, Tibi and Chicho had to bring a little Galician tradition to the table.
Okay. So there was a wooden bowl with fruit-ish-looking things and alcoholic liquids inside. Chicho lit the contents of this bowl on fire and blue flames spewed out. Somebody turned the lights off and Olivia and Tibi put on wigs. The alcoholic stuff was just like.....on fire. I kept hearing the word "bruja" (witch) and over the place, and the stuff in the pot certainly did look like a brewing potion. Tibi began to read some kind of poem chant thing and Olivia read the English version.
Direct translations are always ridiculously comical.
It was truly great.
This fiery liquid and poem thing is apparently done to drive off witches.
Wouldn't want any brujas mulling around on Thanksgiving, would we??
I tried some of the potion afterwards but it was really strong and the fumes were suffocating; I'll probably never forget that smell....but I don't think I ever want to anyway.
By then, it was past midnight on a school night, so we had to go home. I wanted to cap off the night by talking to my daddy because all of that made me homesick, but my international SIM card absolutely would not find service. I sat on the floor in my room in my tights trying to fix that thing for a good two hours. Sigh. I couldn't seem to find sleep after that, so today I have been utterly exhausted. I just stood there waiting for the English teacher to come open the door to my class until I awkwardly realized that everyone was already inside....and just now (currently in my last hour, Galego) in TICS, Pablo kept saying something to me about piroclastos which has something to do with volcanoes, so I bluntly said "Pablo, I don't want to talk about volcanoes, I don't understand them"
......aparcado!
Soooooooo now in informatica I really want my own computer. I know enough to be able to follow along and I just want to be able to create my own stuff because I always know how to do geeky cool things but the girl who works with me doesn't let me touch the computer and asks the guy next to us every question that I already know.....
Those stupid Americans! They have no idea how to make a web page!
Plus, I want to learn how to use these Spanish keyboards. They are very strange.
Olivia's family is gone now, which is sad. I wish I could have just talked to them more. I didn't even get to really say goodbye in all the madness.
I'm sure you can imagine how popular they were.
Happy Holidays!
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