Muchas Celebraciones! (Many Celebrations!)

My week has been good - a nice mix of productive work, relaxing and getting comfortable in a routine here in Spain, getting a bit better at Spanish, and taking time to celebrate a lot of nice things! Because celebrating is the most fun/interesting to discuss, that's what this post will be about.

There's been much to celebrate - There was Valentine's Day, my host sister Elena's birthday, and now, another one of my good friends is engaged! <3

Happy Valentine's Day! 

I put on some pink (but had to layer cause it's still a little cold) to celebrate. 

I was at or near the SLU Campus all day. 

I won't lie, it was difficult to be so far away from Casey on Valentine's day. I tried to still make it a special day for us. I hid candy and a romantic card for him in our apartment before I left for Spain, and on Valentine's Day I sent him a video message via skype telling him where to find his little surprise. I love Skype video messages. It's fun to leave him an update during my day, even though he's sleeping at the time! Because there's no telling how long it would take to get a card to me across the ocean in Spanish mail, Casey wrote me a long and very romantic email for me to read, in place of a love letter, and it made my day. <3 The one benefit of being apart like this is that it has shown us how important we are in each other's lives, and will help us not take each other for granted. I don't know if absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it does certainly make it more appreciative. Homesickness has been bittersweet that way.

Today Casey and I are going to talk about his visit during Santa Semana at the end of March - make some plans, look at some hotels, etc. I can't wait for him to visit! It'll be like revisiting our honeymoon in Spain two years ago. Luna de Miel, parte dos! We haven't decided if we want to stay in Madrid, and then take day trips to places nearby, like Toledo, El Escorial, Segovia, etc. or if we want to start in Madrid but then stay the latter part of the week someplace different, like Barcelona. Any thoughts/suggestions for us? We want to see some neat things, but overall don't want to be wildly busy, because we are mostly looking forward to having long lunches and dinners with lots of wine and ham and conversation, as the Spanish are wont to do.

Anyway, Valentine's Day alone was an interesting experience. Although Casey, however far away, was my Valentine on Thursday, I decided to be my own Valentine as well. This trip is about research and my academic opportunities, but in a way it is also an important exploration of my own independence. I've never done anything so much on my own before, (and since I'm married, I likely won't again), and as hard as it is to be away from my husband and my friends, it's interesting to learn about myself, on my own. I took a "Treat Yo Self" attitude to the day, with delicious coffee, chocolate, wine, and even a bit of shopping!

MMMMmmm I wanted to make this cup of coffee my Valentine. 

I stopped in a little boutique near the SLU campus, and it turned out to be just the kind of place I was looking for. I was really out shopping for a little present for Elena, my host sister, whose 23rd birthday was on Thursday too, but because it was Valentine's Day, it was easy to justify buying myself a colorful scarf that caught my eye. It's sale season right now, so it's a good time of year to pick up souvenirs from the time I went by myself to live and research in Spain. 

Such a cute little place to shop! 

I didn't really know what to get Elena, since I don't really know what her personal style is yet, but I figured it's hard to go wrong with fun accessories. So I just looked for something simple, but pretty, and tried to use my own taste as a guide. I got her the orange and blue necklace in this display. She liked it and has worn it already out to lunch today. :-)

Shopping success!

And here's a few pictures of the scarf I bought myself. <3 I love all the colors. I think, because I have such a limited wardrobe, changing up accessories like this will be a fun way to make it feel like I'm not just wearing the same thing every day. 

On Friday, we celebrated Elena's birthday. She had 14 friends over from her pharmacy program, plus her boyfriend Carlos. She told me to speak with him in English, because he's taking a big English proficiency exam soon, and needs to practice. He was really shy about using English at first but he is really good, so he didn't need to be. I like him very much and it seems like he and Elena make a nice couple. I was a bit of a wallflower at this party, since aside from one other girl, most people seemed more interested in just relaxing and enjoying the party than taking the effort to engage in a Spanglish conversation with the foreign exchange student. But Carlos hung back and talked with me a lot, which I really appreciated. It's funny, I didn't really say much at this party, but everyone was still really welcoming, if not very talkative, so I didn't feel out of place. It was a very new experience for me to be more of a wallflower, and I kind of liked just observing for once. I'm pretty outgoing so this is not usually how I am at parties at all. They all talk SO FAST that I didn't really know what was going on, but it was fun to just see how Spanish parties unfold. 

It starts, as all parties do, with food. It started around 9pm, Spanish dinnertime. Elena and her mother prepared a lot of food, and everyone just grabbed a plate and made an appetizers dinner snacking throughout the night. After that was done, everyone grabbed a dish and helped clear, and they moved on to dessert. Her friends had made her a "tarta" which translates to cake, but it wasn't really a cake. It tasted like it was supposed to be a chocolate cake, but there wasn't quite enough flour or sugar. So it was very dense and chocolatey, but not very sweet. I liked it though! Her friends had used fondant to decorate it with a pharmacy theme, which was SO cute. I snapped a few photos. I thought that might be weird, but everyone was taking pictures all night long, and they included me in quite a few of them, which was nice, so I decided not to worry about it. 

Elena (dressed in red) taking a picture of her cute little cake.

Spanish birthday party :-)

Around midnight, 3 hours into the party, Casey got off work and called, so I took a break from observing and trying to understand bits of Spanish conversations to talk to him for a long while. I decided after that to call it a night and retired to my room, which was just as well because they were all getting ready to go to take the party out to a pub for the night. They invited me, of course, which was so nice, but honestly, by 1am I was so tired! I bid them all good night. I was glad too, because apparently they were out until 5am!!! Spanish parties start late, and go really really late. I may only be 27, but I'm way too much of an old person to stay up that late!

Elena had gotten silly bow clips at the party, so the whole next day Trufa was wearing a little bow. 

SO CUTE! "Ay, que guapa, Trufa!"

There was another party, a smaller dinner party, with another group of friends last night, so at 9pm again I joined Elena and her friends to celebrate. It had been a busy day, so by then I was ready to just sit back and enjoy the entertaining company of friendly strangers in a foreign land. This was just a group of 8 of us, so everyone fit around the dinner table. 

Dinner party! We drank Spanish wine that Carlos's family distributes. Yum!

This party was for Elena and Carlos's group of mutual friends from school, before she joined the pharmacy program. There was Carlos, his sister and her boyfriend, a guy with red hair and his girlfriend, and another girl. The ginger guy and I bonded over us both being so pale. This group was more intimate, and although the party  the other night was interesting, at this one I really enjoyed myself. Carlos's sister speaks perfect English, and some of the other people spoke pretty good English, and they had a chance to practice talking with me, so I was was able to participate so much more in the conversations at this party. They were so nice to make sure I was involved, and as they talked in Spanish together every once in awhile someone would give me an update on the conversation topics. 

What I'm studying, the fact that I am married, what my husband is like, and my engagement ring have been popular topics when meeting people. It seems that in Spain young people marry around 30, so the fact that I got married at 24 is always this huge shock to them and they exclaim how young I am to already be married already, even now at 27. Also, the engagement ring tradition is catching on but not universally popular in Spain, so they were asking about that. They also said that our style of proposals is not really the tradition in Spain either - you kind of just have a conversation at some point and decide when to get married. They love the romantic surprise thing though. It seems as though most Spanish young people stay living with their families throughout much of their twenties. Perhaps that's just this economy though? I'm not sure. They say it's going to be very hard to find jobs when they graduate in a year, so they expect that they'll have to go to England or some other country to find work. Apparently that's not a big deal to them - no more than needing to move to another state to find work in the US. 

After dinner around 1am they were headed out to the discoteca, and while I appreciated the invitation to join them, I again declined, though this time the offer was a little harder to refuse. They insisted that I need to join them some night to see Spanish nightlife, and I agreed. Sometime before I go maybe! (Though I'm not much of a nightlife person even at home!) It had already been such a good day already though that I just wanted to talk with Casey, take a hot shower, watch an episode of Friends, and get some rest. They stayed out until 4am. Ay dios mio!

And then there was another small celebration today, and I joined Elena and her parents for lunch. Her dad seems really nice and we talked about history. He seemed pleased that I was aware of the conflict between Americo Castro and Claudio Sanchez Albornoz. Crazy Spanish historiography, ftw!  :-) Lunch was very yummy and pleasant. I think my Spanish is getting a little better too. Of course that could have just been the fact that we had wine with lunch. It seems wine is perfectly acceptable to have mid-day here, and I'm fine with that.

While I'm on the theme of celebrations, my friend Sammi is engaged!!!!!
HUZZAH! What wonderful news to get on this quiet Sunday! I'm so happy for her and Marc! <3 Another lovely friend wedding to look forward to! :-)