Thursday, November 22, 2018

Thanksgiving

This year I'm thankful that circumstances allow me to live for a year in Spain. There aren't many folks that have the opportunity to pull themselves out of their lives for a year to explore something completely different

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This week, Laura's Spanish teacher led us on a tour of the Archivo de Indias. This is a central storage archive for all of the documents related to Spain's commerce with the new world. There are documents in the archive that are nearing 600 years of age. This was my second visit to the archive. I mostly tagged along because the tour was given entirely in Spanish and it's a good listening exercise for me. I took a few pictures though. The tile floor in the archive is a beautiful brown and white checker:


Visitors can rest on velvety benches. They resemble pews quite a lot:


The weather was rainy and miserable as seen through this window looking down on a square below:


The archive is adjacent to the cathedral. The cathedral and palm tree were well-framed by this window:


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Thanksgiving is not a thing in Spain. However, Laura was determined to create a traditional Thanksgiving meal with the available resources. While you can't buy a whole turkey here in Sevilla (at least not easily), Laura made stuffing and baked it under some turkey breast. She also worked hard on some gravy (noting that she would kill for a whisk):


I would rate her efforts a major success. The stuffing and turkey were wonderful. The gravy was excellent. This is what the full spread looked like. I was in such a hurry to eat it, that I didn't even wait for my camera to focus (which is why this shot is horrible):


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This was the first time having Thanksgiving without Emily and Rachel. While we missed them, it was nice to know that they were spending the holiday with each other. Rachel flew to Santa Barbara to spend the holiday with Emily there.

I managed to talk to Betty and Jo-Anne on the phone. For those I didn't talk to directly, I hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving. According to google, that translates to: Feliz acción de gracias!