¡Feliz Día de Acción de Gracias!

I must have been extremely sad yesterday.  I felt fine and then when I was in my first class of the day we showed a video that I had made.  It was nothing special, "My name is Richelle, I come from the United States, etc." You can see it at the school's blog if you're really curious.

When the picture of my state came up and I saw that skinny little arrow pointing to Austin...I don't know what happened, my eyes started leaking.  I didn't feel especially sad but three or four times the exact same thing happened.

One of them was when some of the students at school showed me these as a surprise:

I was balling.  I had to explain to them in Spanish that I was crying because it was beautiful and because today was a day for family and that I missed mine.  I think the real reason that I've been so weepy is because I'm really far.  Even if I didn't go to Thanksgiving every year or every holiday every year, I could have if I wanted to.  Not the case this year.

But don't worry.  Friday I went to a Thanksgiving dinner with a bunch of other auxiliars and no offense to any of my family, but it was one of the best spreads I've seen in a while.  I was very impressed by all of our cooking skills.  Especially in another country where you can't always obtain the ingredients that you want.

Huelga desconvocado!

Ahhh, such good news!!  On Mondays one of my teachers, Lola, drives me and another teacher (also named Lola) to school.  After teaching with Lola (the first one) for my first hour between 9 and 10, I usually go and sit in the office for the gap between my two classes.  I do things like check my email, etc.  Last Monday though, I had to go to Molina de Segura, a neighboring town, to pick up my NIE, or Número de Identificación de Extranjeros.  It's not too difficult, the bus that I ride every morning passes through that town.  It comes by my stop a few minutes after every hour.  So I could ride the 10 o'clock bus to Molina and take the 11 o'clock bus back to school.  Simple.  So I left my class a few minutes early and ran down to the bus stop.  I arrived in plenty of time and so I sat down on the bench and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  After 40 minutes I walked back up the hill to my school.  I have to say, I was pretty much in a state of shock.  That bus is sometimes late, but it always comes.

So I went into the office and asked two teachers there, "Qué pasó?  Estaba esperando por 40 minutas y el autobús nunca vino."  (What happened?  I was waiting for 40 minutes and the bus never came!)  So they discussed in for a few minutes saying things like:  I'm not really sure, maybe it's at another time, maybe...etc.  You get the idea.  Then one of them says, "Ah!  Hay una huelga!"

"Qué es una huelga??"  Let me get to the point already, a "huelga" is a strike.  So, the bus drivers were on strike.  Now I'm really panicking here.  I was driven to school but I usually take a bus home.  How was I going to get home?  I have absolutely no experience with strikes at all.  So maybe it's common knowledge that strikes don't completely stop production or maybe that's something specific to government jobs, or  transportation jobs, or maybe it's just a Spain thing, but the strike was only on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays and the buses still ran, but less frequently.  More like a bus every 2 hours instead of every hour.

Today though, is the last day of the strike.  Huelga Desconvocada.  I had to look up that last word, but it means: called off.  Yay!  Now I don't have to worry about how I'm going to get home tomorrow.  Last week a teacher drove me so I didn't wait for an hour.

And I did get my card.  Isn't it pretty?

Madroño

I'm finally alone!  Now, don't get me wrong, having a constant visitor for the first 2 months was great, but certainly not for my "followers" because I have been very neglectful.  

But have no fear!  I'm here with plenty of news for you!  But, we'll start small and maybe write more frequently.  Yesterday I got to try a madroño for the first time.  What is a madroño you ask?  Well, it's a fruit that looks like....

this!

It's a small piece of fruit that comes from this tree:

Whhaaaaat????  ¡Que guay!  (How cool!)

Here's a picture of the actual tree.  It's just coincidence that I have these two last pictures.  They were taken in Madrid during a tour that we took and they told us how this is the tree of madrid.  El oso y madroño are the symbols of Madrid, though the tree is not native to Madrid, this one was planted there along with a few others:

These fruits aren't ripe yet.  I read online that the fruits aren't very good raw but make a great jam.  I have to disagree.  The fruit was very good, nice and sweet.  It was soft on the inside but the outside is sort of crunchy.  To me the crunch of the outside was similar to eating blackberries which have little seeds.  One of the teachers brought the madroños to school from her garden.