It's Christmas day 2010. Katie and I opened our presents this morning. I got some shoes, a watch, a sweatshirt, and another shirt. Katie got a nose piercing (in gift certificate form), a hat, gloves, socks, and a PATA! A pata is an animal leg, not to be continued with a human leg, which is a pierna. Over here in spain they love to eat ham. More specifically they love to eat Jamon Iberico. They slice really thin pieces off directly off the leg, and they're delicious! I need a sharper knife though because I butchered it this morning...and not in the proper way.
Christmas has been good so far. Katie has transcended beyond her normal holiday anxiety. She hates buying Christmas presents because she is worried that people won't like them! But I like everything present she's ever given me (wink wink). It's doesn't really feel like Christmas though. There is no snow and It's really beautiful outside, which i spose isn't all bad.
I think it's time that I should tell you about all of the wonderful people that we've met here. But they're so few, so I'll just tell you about all our friends! Let's see, what order to go in... chronologically, topically... I think I'll go by stature, but bottom up. Shortest to tallest. Allow me to introduce you to Emily Lloyd Hamilton.
When we arrived at our school for the first day we met the other full time assistant. A bright eyed little ray of sunshine from a tiny speck of land called Whales. For those of you in Nebraska scratching your heads, Whales is basically England. They carved out a little chunk of that Island for themselves and I think they may even have a representative in British Parliament. Emily hails from a town called Swansea (Pronounced Swanzi - lol). She speaks with a very funny accent is very fond of using the word "loads". Loads of this, loads of that. She is 21 years old and has a boyfriend named Jim (James in Whales, but we call him Jim). Jim plays american football for his University team so we have been trying to explain the game to Emily with limited success. She asks questions like "when do they do the thing where they throw the ball between their legs?" It's going to be a long and laborious process...
I am going to have to lump the rest of our church friends into one. Warren, Karen, Andrew, Andrea, Brian, Kate, and Simon. Simon is the lone single man of the group. Now, I'm not going to blame this on his Northern Irish heritage... but... FYI it is not polite to refer to the drink an "Irish Car Bomb" in the company of the Irish OR the Northern Irish. Surprisingly they have another name for it. Anyway, Simon teaches PE at the American School here and is the leader of our house group. He's a good guy and has exactly one good joke. It goes like this. "Have you heard about that stalker that stabs and kills those celebrity women from romantic comedies? Like that one lady, Reece......" and then you say "Witherspoon", and he says "no, it was with a knife." ha ha. Katie loved it.
Warren and Karen. Warren is from Manchester, England and Karen is from those parts too, but I'm not sure where. They've lived in Madrid for ten years, but Warren's Spanish is still embarrassing (same goes for Simon) :). Karen is fluent. They were quick to welcome us invited us to eat dinner with them right away (and Andrew and Andrea). Warren is a huge fan of giving people a hard time. We get along well.
Andrew and Andrea are from Texas and Canada, respectively, though neither of them carry the expected accent though. They both work at the American School here, Andrea as a teacher and Andrew as an IT guy. They were the first people that we met at the church and have been good friends. Andrew helped me jailbreak my iphone which was a godsend.
Well that's all for now. This blog post took about 3 weeks to finally complete and you can expect another one very soon.
Ciao,
Luke
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