FELIZ NAVIDAD!!! Wow it's been foreverrr since I updated! Sorry! The last 2 weeks leading up to Christmas have been really really hectic so I hardly had time to think about blogging. But anyway, I'll jump right in and tell you all about my Christmas here in Spain!

So here in Spain the traditions are a bit different. The big day for celebrating Christmas is the night of the 24th instead of the day of the 25th. This night is called Nochebuena, which literally means "the good night." For Nochebuena, everyone gets together with their family and has a big dinner. After dinner, the people who are religious usually go to a midnight mass, which I would imagine is much like the candle-lighting services in the US. After that, from what my friends tell me, it's common to head out for a night on the town.

Since all my roommates are from other towns, they were all obviously with their families and I was alone in the piso. Lourdes and Jose offered for me to go to Málaga with them to spend Christmas with their family there, but I hadn't really gotten a chance to relax since school had just ended on the 23rd. Plus, I wanted to stay here in Almería because I had made plans to have an AMERICAN Christmas lunch with Kelli and David on the 25th.

So instead of heading to Málaga, I stayed in the piso, cooked myself dinner, watched TV, and Skyped with people back home. My old roommate Reese was officially the first to wish me Merry Christmas at midnight my time! I talked to my brother Ben, his girlfriend, Lavinia, and my mom for a bit as well. My mom had sent me a package for Christmas, so I opened it while I was on Skype with her. She sent me a badass new digital camera, pictured below...

Sweet new camera with front view LCD screen! Thanks Mom!

It's a Samsung TL205--12.2 megapixels, 3x optical zoom, and a front view LCD screen so you can see yourself if you're trying to take a picture of yourself. Pretty sweet! Good job Mom! Now I can take my camera with me everywhere without being worried about losing or breaking Neal's super nice camera that I was using before.

Equally exciting for me, were the other various goodies that she included in my package! I got taco seasoning, guacamole seasoning, gravy mix, chili seasoning, packets of Tang, a gingerbread man, and melt-in-your-mouth peppermint sticks! I seriously liked all that just as much as the camera! If anybody wants to make me a very happy camper, just send me anything food related or anything that I can use to cook that I can't find over here! I'm still in need of Kung Pao seasoning packets...hint hint to anyone who wants to be my favorite person for a few days :)

On the subject of cooking, on Christmas day, I decided to cook a little something to bring to Kelli and David's for lunch. I'm not sure how I stumbled upon the recipe I eventually chose, but I ended up going with Tex-Mex...Turkey Enchiladas with Cream Sauce! Since they're from California, I figured they too would appreciate Mexican food.

As usual, I had to modify the recipe some since sour cream doesn't exist over here, but they ended up turning out really well.

First,  I cooked and shredded the turkey I was going to use to stuff the enchiladas. Nothing fancy, just seasoned the thinly sliced breast fillets with a little salt and pepper and threw them on the little griddle-dealy that was we have

Shredded turkey

Then I sauteed diced onion, red pepper, green pepper, and garlic in olive oil and a little bit of butter.

The beginnings of my Christmas Enchiladas!
Note the apparent X-mas spirit: red & green peppers

Next, I added whipping cream and cream cheese to the mixture to make the filling and the sauce...

The filling/sauce...yummmmmy

After that was all done, I let it cool for a bit, shredded some cheddar cheese, and then mixed about half of the sauce with the shredded turkey and cheddar. After that, I heated the tortillas on the griddle, stuffed them with filling, placed them in the pan, topped them with the remaining sauce (there wasn't really enough to cover them--next time I'll know to make a little more!), and popped 'em in the oven. Since our oven blows, I had to put them back in the oven once I got to Kelli and David's to let them finish. When they were almost done, I added the rest of the cheese on top and let it melt before taking them out of the oven. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but they were delicious! And very easy to make! I'm definitely going to reuse this recipe.

Since there were only 3 of us instead of 4 (they were expecting David's teammate from Venezuela, Jesús, to come but he ended up bailing) at Kelli and David's we had a TON of food. Kelli made a pear and cranberry salad with romaine lettuce and a homemade sweet onion salad dressing, mashed potatoes, and some really good stuffed pork chop. Our feast is pictured below :)

The spread: stuffed pork chop, my enchiladas,
pear & cranberry salad with homemade dressing,
& mashed potatoes (not pictured: apple spice cake)

Kelli and David with our X-mas lunch! Delish!

After we finished lunch, Kelli brought out the apple spice cake (which was awesome!) and we decided to play some games. The first game, which they hadn't played in a long time because you have to have at least 3 players, was...get this Audra...

SETTLERS OF CATAN!

I had never played Settlers before, so they had to explain all the rules to me, but it was really fun! I'm not gonna waste anyone's time explaining how to play because it's somewhat complicated, but if you've never played it, you should check it out.

Next, we played one of Kelli and David's new Christmas presents. Kelli's mom sent them a new game for their Wii...Michael Jackson: The Experience!  Basically, you hold the remote and you have to dance around like the figures on the screen. You can be either MJ himself or you can be a backup dancer. In Kelli's words, which perfectly describe the game, "if you can get past how embarrassing it is, it's actually pretty fun."

Michael Jackson: The Experience
Complete with commemorative glove haha

Playing "Michael Jackson: The Experience"...hilarious

In case the picture isn't enough, here's a VIDEO of the two of them playing hahahhhaha! Sorry but you've gotta tilt your head to watch it. David was too tall for me to turn the camera the other way.

And yes, when they were done they did make me play. And of course, I was horrible at it hahaha. Kelli and I were backup dancers for Thriller. Let's just say her score may or may not have been 3 or 4 times as much as mine haha.

After that, Kelli drove me home and I just hung out at the apartment for a while and I decided to make a dessert that I hadn't had enough time to make before lunch...my famous OREO TRUFFLES! Dipping chocolate was too expensive, so i decided just to go with colored sprinkles instead! Yummmm

"Delectably delicious"

While I was making them, Tomás showed up! I was so surprised because he had told me he was coming back on the 26th at the earliest. However, he showed up that evening with 2 of his friends from Carboneras and they all had plans to go out that night. Since I hadn't gone out on Nochebuena, I decided to join them. We had dinner in the piso and then went over to one of their friend's houses for botellón. And after that, it was pretty much a normal night.

While I did obviously miss Christmas at home, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I was able to Skype with my fam (even though the connection was terrible, it sufficed) and chat with friends via text messages so that was good.

I hope y'all all had wonderful Christmases with your family and friends! However, I've been blogging for too long and now it's time to go do something else. I will post again very very soon with the latest story of what has happened in the piso. It's hilarious and absolutely RIDICULOUS. Until next time!

And by the way, keep your eyes on your mailboxes for a little something from me :)

So the FUN FACT for the day is that Almería is officially one of the sunniest cities in all of Europe with around 320 days of sun each year. 

Contrary to the above statement, the last week or week and a half has been cloudy, cold, and even a few rainy days! When I woke up today, it was GORGEOUS outside and much to my surprise, warm! I got up at 11:30 today (since we're on holiday til Wednesday of this week, I've been taking full advantage of being able to sleep in) and was inspired by the weather to go for a run. I was able to wear shorts and a cut off shirt and I even put on some sunscreen since it was so sunny outside! I felt like it was summer again!

Also, I wore my new tennis shoes that I've been trying to break in. Check em out!

Funny story about how I got these BEAUTS. My friend Kelli was talking to me about the situation with her visa and how she was going to have to go back to California to pick it up when it was ready. She then said, "Oh by the way, if you need anything from the states, you can just tell me or have it shipped to my mother-in-law's house and I can bring it back for you." About a month before, I had realized that my running shoes were completely worn out and had switched to running in my volleyball shoes. I had been hoping to buy some new running shoes, but after browsing some European magazines, I realized how much more expensive they were over here. For example, in the US a pair of Nike's might cost $100 and here, the exact same pair costs €120. With today's rate of conversion, that's the equivalent of $160! RIDICULOUS! So, when she presented this idea to me, I was super excited and I ordered them online the very next day!

Kelli just got back from California this past Thursday and she brought them by to me on Friday. I went for a short run in them that day and a longer run in them on Sunday (with Kelli). They are awesome! They felt a bit snug at first, at least in comparison to my last pair, so I was a little concerned--obviously it wouldn't be easy or cheap to ship them back to the states to exchange them for a bigger size. However, after the first run, I could tell they were just fine. Today was my third run in them and so far so good. They haven't given me any blisters or any sort of pain whatsoever. They're BREAK-IN FREE! I love it when that happens.

Other exciting news, Kelli found an 8.5K race in a little town called Adra (like 40 min away) that's going to be run this Sunday. She sent me all the info for it and we're both signed up to run it! It'll be my first official race! Exciting :)

After ordering my new shoes, I was also inspired to start a serious search for a half marathon. I’ve been wanting to train for one for a long time now. By the time I started thinking about doing one in Texas, it had gotten way too hot to train. However, since arriving here and having plenty of free time and new places to see, I started running a lot more...especially before I had my gym membership. Once again motivated to run a half, I decided it’d be cool to run my first one in some cool place in Europe to which I’d never been. I originally thought about Paris, but the Paris half isn’t until April and I don’t want to wait that long. So I finally started looking last week and I think I found the perfect race!

I found one in Mdina, a city in Malta, which is a little tiny island country off the coast of Italy (58mi south of Sicily)! I started reading about it and it sounds like the perfect place for my first race. Apparently the island is like a wedge, higher at one end and steadily sloping downward towards the coast. Luckily for me, the course will start at the higher end of the island and the entire race will be slightly downhill until finally you finish along the water. If you want to check out the course, here’s a DESCRIPTION and a MAP.

After browsing some other races, I decided that this sounded like the best one for me. So, I checked my schedule for February 27^th , and whadyaknow, I’ve got a 5 day weekend that weekend for Día de Andalucía! I was worried about having to travel the same day of the race (Sunday) to get back in time for work, but it turns out I’ve got a holiday Monday and Tuesday and I won’t have to work until March 2^nd. So not only will I get there with plenty of time to get acclimated and rested, I’ll even be able to do some sightseeing, if not before, definitely after, the race!

Also, I looked at airfare and it’s only gonna cost me like 260€ (that’s about $345) roundtrip for the flight, which is quite a bit cheaper than some of the other places to which I’ve been hoping to travel—not horrendously expensive and since I’ve basically done ZERO travelling thus far, that’s definitely an amount I’m willing to spend.

Since I’ve been running quite a bit already, I don’t think it’s gonna take me too long to train. I asked Kelli who just finished running the half in Granada to help me with a training program and she said she would. As I said in a previous post, she ran at UC Irvine and is a beast (got 2^nd of all women at the Granada half with a time of like 1:27ish). I’m hoping she can help me come up with a training schedule to get me running at a faster pace, so I can knock some time off of my run. Later, when I get a more concrete idea of where I stand, I’ll set my time goals and publicize them here so that I’ll be more motivated to meet them haha. Also, I'm trying to see if I can get Kelli to run the race with me. She said she'd like to but she doesn't know if she'd be willing to spend the money to get there. Also, I'm going to ask Tomás if he wants to run because when I told him I wanted to train for a half-marathon, he said he'd like to do one too. So we'll see! I might be going by myself or I might have some buddies for the trip...too early to tell right now!

OHHHH and the BEST part is, my friend Audra from school HOPEFULLY is gonna come visit around this time! I’m trying to talk her into coming with me to Malta for the race. If she’s gonna be in Europe, might as well do a little travelling while she’s over here, right? The correct answer is yes, absolutely. Audra I know you’re reading this. Make it happen.

That’s all for now! P.S. aren't y'all surprised that I updated 2 days in a row?!?! Impressive, right? Let's see if I can keep it up.

P.P.S. Completely unrelated...I FINALLY got my residence card! I picked it up like 2 weeks ago but kept forgetting to post a picture of it. 

My beautiful residence card! Too bad I'm not a student hah

The blacked out rectangle below my picture is my NIE (numero de identificación para extranjeros) which I was finally able to give to the bank in hopes of getting my PIN number for my card. I've been in Spain almost 3 months now and I STILL don't have my PIN for my debit card. Every time I go to the bank I ask them about it and they give me some BS excuse about why it hasn't arrived and they always tell me it'll be there "by the next week, and if not the next one, definitely in 2 weeks." I think by the time I actually get it, I'm gonna be changing banks because this has gotten a little bit ridiculous. 

Hello everyone! I'm definitely overdue for an update, so here goes...

This past Thursday, as promised, we celebrated Thanksgiving in the piso with a FEAST for 11 people! We didn't decide on what day to celebrate it until late Wednesday night when the grocery stores were closed, so I was feeling especially unprepared that evening before I went to bed. I was up til like 3 in the morning boiling eggs for my deviled eggs and calling my mom and various others for help with recipes. When the morning arrived (very quickly, might I add), I headed off to work, already very excited for all the food I was going to be preparing. Luckily for me, I finished work at 11 and got to leave early with one of the teachers who was also finished for the day. If I hadn't been able to do that, the meal would've been a massive disaster!

As soon as I got home, I changed clothes and went straight to the grocery store to pick up all the stuff I needed.  Finding that the first grocery store didn't have everything I needed, I came back to the piso, dropped off all my stuff, and went to the other grocery store to get the remaining items. As soon as I got back from my second trip to the store, I started cooking around 2:00.

First, I prepped the chickens since they had to sit in the fridge to marinate for a little while before I cooked them. By the way, I was so surprised to find that you can buy whole cleaned chickens at the grocery store for 4euros! Very cheap and lots of food...gonna have to start cooking them more often! But anyway, I used a recipe that my friend Kelli had recently told me about...super easy and the result is really good! All I did was chop up some cloves of garlic and then lift up the skin of the chicken, rub it around, and leave it there. Once I had put garlic under all of the skin, I put some cloves inside the chicken (whole or diced...doesn't really matter) and also some wedges of lemon. Lastly, I squeezed some lemon juice on the outside of the chicken and put it in the fridge to marinate for a few hours.

After I had the chickens out of the way, I started doing a little bit of everything...peeling eggs, snapping green beans, peeling sweet potatoes, chopping onions, peppers, celery, and mushrooms for various dishes, etc. A couple hours in, Martín's girfriend, Raquel, came over to help me chop, peel, and do whatever other odd jobs I needed help with.

The first thing to be finished were the deviled eggs. Second, were my green beans. I made them from an old Grandma Mac (my Mom's mom) inspired recipe--green beans, steamed with onions and small pieces of bacon. Deeeelish. After I finished the green beans and boiling the sweet potatoes it was already like 6:30, so I decided it'd be a good idea to get going on the cooking of the chicken.

That sounds like an easy task, but it was actually a whole lot more complicated than I had hoped since our oven doesn't really work. It heats from EITHER the top or the bottom, but not both. Endika had tried to cook a chicken in it before and it failed miserably, so I knew I wasn't going to be able to rely on our piece-of-crap oven. Since Raquel lives only like 2 minutes away from us she offered to let me use her oven. Thank goodness or I would've been screwed.

So after removing the sweet potatoes, and getting the regular potatoes boiling, I ran the chickens through the street to Raquel's piso on a baking pan. I covered it in foil to avoid strange looks from the neighbors and people in the street haha. I tossed it in the oven at Raquel's and she agreed to keep an eye on it. Then I ran back to the piso as fast as I could since my potatoes were still boiling. They were done right when I got back and so I started work on the garlic mashed potatoes. Didn't take too long to get those looking and tasting good!

The rest of the cooking is all pretty much a blur. At some point, when Tomás got back from class, he told me he would go to the store for me to buy paper plates, water, drinks, bread, etc, so on his way, I sent him to Raquel's with my bits of thinly sliced turkey breast smothered with garlic, onions, green peppers, mushrooms, and olive oil, as well as my sweet potato casserole. The turkey dish was my own creation. I just made it up so that I would at least have something with turkey in it to serve since it was a Thanksgiving feast, and no Thanksgiving could POSSIBLY be complete without turkey. When I found the bits of turkey breast, I decided not to go with the turkey leg idea that I mentioned in my previous post since I figured the legs would require more time to cook since they're thicker. The sweet potato casserole was an adaptation of a recipe from my brother, Ben, that I had to adjust since Spain doesn't have brown sugar or molasses (from which apparently, I could've made my own brown sugar). The topping was the only part that required brown sugar, so I was able to make do without it. Also, I had to use almonds for my topping instead of the traditional pecans, since I don't think they have pecans in Spain either.

Somewhere in the mix and rush of things, I managed to finish up my homemade stuffing and and corn on the cob. People started showing up around 9 (more or less on time for once...Martín says they only showed up on time because it was to eat...if it were for anything else they would've been AT LEAST a half hour late haha). Fran and Raul were the first to show up and they brought the beer with them. I insisted that the only beer that we drink would be BUDWEISER hahahaha. Only AMERICAN beer for my AMERICAN dinner celebrating a very AMERICAN holiday.

The last thing that we had to do was run over to Raquel's and get all the goodies from her oven. When we entered the piso, I was surprised and EXTREMELY pumped at how good everything smelled. We debated for about 5 minutes about how we were going to get the chicken back to the piso without spilling all the juice out of the pan, and eventually, Tomás just ended up carrying the tray with two towels and walking reallly slowly. This time we didn't cover the food and it was HILARIOUS to see the looks we were getting while walking through the streets with plates full of food. I wish I had had a camera and a free hand to take pictures of Tomás with the chickens!

Much to my surprise, I finished up with everything relatively on time, and all the food was on  the table around 9:30. After taking pictures of all the dishes, I said a short prayer in English, translated it for them, and then we dug in! I've posted some pictures of how it turned out below. Click on the pictures to enlarge them if you'd like to inspect more closely the deliciousness of all the food I prepared :)

The whole crew: (L to R) Tomás, Cheti, Jose,
Fran, Juanmi, Raul, Endika, Martín, and Raquel
(not pictured Noelia)

The crew with the COOK! I didn't know our ping-pong
dinner table expanded to seat 11! I'm gonna have to
start expanding it so I can win at ping pong hahaha

Corn on the cob, deviled eggs, and
green beans with onions and bacon

The main course, lemon garlic chicken!

 Baked turkey breast with mixed vegetables,
homemade stuffing, and garlic mashed potatoes!

Much to my surprise EVERYTHING turned out really well. Everybody ate the deviled eggs first while I was getting the rest of the stuff on the table, and they were a big hit. A few people even told me that the eggs were their favorite thing that I made. The stuffing was really good too and was one of the first plates to be empty. I was proud and surprised at how much my homemade stuffing actually tasted like the Stove Top kind. All I did was toast some bread in the oven, chop it up into little squares, sauté some onions, celery, and mushrooms, mix it all together, then add a little bit of chicken broth to soften up the bread, and then bake it. Really simple, not very time consuming, and much more impressive than saying that you used a box of stuffing mix!

One thing that didn't surprise me was that no one was too crazy about the veggies. Hardly anyone was even brave enough to try the green beans. I made Tomás try them and he didn't like them. Noelia, however, said she LOVED them and since I had so many left over, I sent her home with a whole tupperware full of them (I had a full one too!). The corn was more liked than the green beans, but overall, everyone was more interested in the other foods. Endika was surprised when I served the corn on the cob the way that I did--boiled then topped with butter, salt, and pepper--because he says his mom makes it that way and whenever he prepares it, everyone else thinks it's really weird. Apparently Basques and Americans like to eat their corn on the cob the same way...who knew? 

The garlic mashed potatoes were really good but they didn't really catch anyone's attention since they're less out of the ordinary here. My favorite part was actually the turkey which is strange since I usually prefer the sides. I was surprised because I totally just threw random vegetables on top of the turkey in hopes that it would produce a good flavor and sure enough it did. At first I wasn't sure that people liked it because there was lots of it left in the pan, but then next time I looked at the pan, it was all gone, so at least one person liked it haha. 

Out of all the things I prepared, my least favorite was the chicken. Don't get me wrong, it was still actually really good, but I think it was the fact that it didn't really blend with the other flavors as well as I would've hoped. The lemony-ness of it made it stand out from the other dishes. Since I didn't prepare any gravy, I knew I would have to give the chicken a stronger flavor, but I think lemon was the wrong route to choose. Something that might have blended better would have been maybe a rosemary basil chicken. But oh well, it got eaten and everyone liked it, so maybe I'm the only one who noticed that it didn't fit in!     

And now, here comes the bad part of the story. When we left Raquel's with all the food, my sweet potato casserole still wasn't crispy on the top like it was supposed to be. So, bravely, I decided to toss it in our oven to let it finish up, slash to keep it warm. I kept checking on it every few minutes or so, and it was not getting any crispier. So, I decided to move it up a rack to get it closer to the heat that was coming from the top of the oven. Naturally, I got sidetracked by eating and forgot all about it after that. It was only when Tomás went into the kitchen to grab something that he reminded me that my dessert was in the oven. Oops. Pulled it out and sure enough, the top of it was blackkk.

As you can probably imagine, this was quite disheartening. Everyone was enjoying all the food so much, and the buildup for the dessert was huge as no one here had ever heard of making a dessert with sweet potatoes, or as they're called here, boniatos. Also, when preparing the sweet potatoes, I, too, was super excited because I kept tasting it, and it was delicious. I was so proud that it was turning out so well as I was totally ad-libbing the recipe. When I opened up the oven to see my beautiful creation ruined, I literally almost cried. The dessert was supposed to be the grand finale.

My burnt sweet potato casserole :'(
as you can see, it still got eaten haha

But anyway, everyone was really nice about it, and luckily, the topping--a mixture of almond slices, sugar, flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg--was the only part that got burnt. It was super easy to peel off the black part and underneath everything was fine. Raquel actually told me that despite the fact that it got burnt, it was her favorite part of the meal, and she wants me to teach her to make it! Of course I would've liked for the dessert to have come out perfectly, but I suppose I can't really complain as that was pretty much the only thing that went wrong the whole evening.

All in all, after 7+ hours in the kitchen, my Thanksgiving dinner turned out WONDERFULLY. Everyone was super complimentary and the roommates told me that they were VERY shocked haha. They kept asking me, "Wait a minute, have you just been pretending not to be able to cook this whole time?" hahahahhah

All the excitement that I had all day was definitely worth it, and I'm not gonna lie, I really made myself proud. Not only did I prepare an entire Thanksgiving dinner BY MYSELF, but I did it for 11 people and nearly everything was super legit. Another thing that I was surprised about, was that I actually got the timing nearly perfect. Everything finished up right around 9 and the parts that I had finished before nine were easy to reheat and get on the table with the rest of the food. Overall, I've gotta say, GREAT SUCCESS! (Borat voice haha). I think I made America proud :)

Lastly, I had forgotten how good Thanksgiving leftovers are! It's currently Monday, and I haven't cooked since Thursday. I swear the food keeps getting better everyday haha. Unfortunately, today will be the last day for leftovers, as they're nearly gone now. DAMN. 

Hope everyone's Thanksgiving was as good as mine and that you're enjoying all the Christmas spirit that I'm sure has filled the neighborhoods, stores, tv and radio stations, etc. I'll be updating again soon as we've got a holiday til Wednesday and I'll have a bit more free time for updates. I still haven't finished writing about my volleyball team, so I'll get that update to y'all soon!