Saludos - from Cadiz

Saludos!

What a fabulous weekend. It’s been a bit too long for my liking, once again, but apparently there is another St. or Virgin whom we need to celebrate. J Nah, I’m just kidding, well, not really about anything: there is another Spanish fiesta today, the weekend was long, and it was fabulous.

The past two weeks have been pretty normal. Just doin’ a little bit of this and a little bit of that. There has been lots of planning for school and for my Clases Particulares, which we’ve informally began calling them CP’s. These are the people we private tutor on the side, you know, for some extra cash….and a bit of fun I must say. I know I’ve mentioned them before, but I really like them both. They offer a lot of newness, newness in the teaching, the learning and the networking. The nine year old is very polite and tries really hard. The other day we were on the word “FAST” for about 6 minutes but he wasn’t going to give up until he got it, and did he? Yes, about every 5 times he gets it perfectly!

Last week at school was crazy. All the teachers wanted me to do something about Halloween. Which is cool, but how in depth can you go about the history and the meaning of the name and how EXACTLY the difference in celebration is between different cultures and countries, with elementary schoolers? I’ll tell you. With the three year olds, I held up an Orange pumpkin I made. “What is this?”….”CALABAZA!” “Yessss!!, but in English we say Pumpkin. P U MP-KIN!”…Teacher: “Did you hear that everyone? Everyone repeat with me, Punkeet! Pun keet!”……ooooo gooddd…..No no, that’s not right. But okay, we’ll go with it. Nah, I really try my best to not the let reinforcement on the wrong pronunciation slip by. It’s really important, especially at a young age. But really, “My nah- is” isn’t going to fly when someone asks you your name.

……….three minutes later…….

Pumpkin holding up. “Okay, class. What is this?”

…….”YELLLOWW!!!!!”……

..grrr…..BIG SMILE! “no, that’s not right…..PUMPKIN!”

……”punkeeeeet”

“oooookay.”

I made a really fun Green Monster puppet for some classes which turned out to be a big hit. Plus it was fun! I’m having fun being a kid again. AND, learning a BUNCH! Not sure if I ever learned it, or just have forgotten it all by now. But the difference between oviparous and omniparous (?) animals was on the agenda last week. Also, there were two teachers that specifically requested I do something with coloring pumpkins and talking about Halloween. Easy enough, right? Well when I got to them, BOTH of the classes apparently something else must be done, or there was a DIFFERENT photo someone had brought in to draw, etc. So needless to say we had about 55 photocopies of simple pumpkins…..hum…..

HOUSE DECORATION! Yep, Friday night was WILD! The girls and I sat around the living room table, pigging out and coloring pumpkins. It was soothing and quite fun. We were having some intimate table talk and really having fun with our colors, and each one of those dang 55 pumpkins turned into a different pattern and color.

Saturday morning I arose and stuck them ALL on the walls, in the hallways, on the doors and all over the living room. It was sooooo funny looking, like a fun-house really. Then later on in the evening some others helped with really cool spider web decorations. We had some black plastic bags up to help out and the best prop we didn’t even have to make, pay for or ask for: el viento! The wind, was creeping through the terrace doors and was blowing the spider webs a bit as well as the strips of black plastic bag we’d cut and hung up. It was eerie and totally natural. I had one of those hand wreaths made out of fall colored paper, which I’d made with the kids, on the door of the kitchen as well.

So yes, we had a little pre-game party. A good number of people came and we had some yummy grub. It’s fun playing host! Lets see….I made these yummy wheat tostada cracker things with tomatoes that were soaked in an olive oil, balsamic ving. s & p, and herb concoction then laid ever so delicately on the bread cracker things. There were some with cheese, and some with not. I also whipped up some “homey” smelling and tasting hot Apple Cider. Some real cheap apple juice, with cinnamon sticks, cinnamon and on the stove for a good while, it created the best aroma and was actually quite a hit! It was lovely. Celi made some Guacamole, so we had that and chips. Of COURSE there was a plethora of garlic stuff green olives. And when I say garlic stuffed green olives, I mean WHOLE cloves. Yum! Well, we did need to ward off all vampires AND boys aren’t important so….;-) so a job well done I suppose. There was wine and beer, soda, and apple cider. We had some cats and witches and a She-Devil, which attended. There were more people that didn’t dress up, but no pasa nada.

So we danced around, acted silly, chatted and STUFFED our faces. More people came, and then a few more. We had quite the eclectic mixture of people: Americans of course, a few from here in Cadiz and then some that are teaching in Algeciras (which is right next to the Med. Coast facing Africa), the group of Spanish lady friends whom we’ve met through our good friend Sandra were there, two Spanish dudes from Algeciras/Cadiz, and they brought along a kid who looked like he’d stepped out of a 60’s gangster movie from London. His name was Billy and he had like a “zuit suite” hat on, black belt and shiny shoes, not even dressed up for Halloween. He was a nice kid though.

About 2:00ish and we (yes the ENTIRE group) went out and walked down the street for a bit and ended up at this club/bar thing that is in the same of a cave, so we spent a good portion of the night dancing in a cave bar. It was filled with people, a lot of them with funky and crazy costumes on. Oh man, you should have seen us when MJ’s Thriller came on. We DOMINATED the stage with our group of people dressed in black (cats, witches and normal people). It was preceded with Billie Jean so we just took off again. It was really fun. It was fun, sweaty, dark, upbeat and very Spanish, all the while not being Spanish at all, with American music playing, an American tradition of dressing up and with our drinks too. He he. I got a bottled water, but it came in a fancy black bottle, so at least I LOOKED really cool. :p

About three-ish Celi and I left early, shoes in hand and a really classy rip in my black nylons, and plodded back to the apartment. There were sooo many people still out and about. We grabbed our computers and went to the park. Yes, we are addicted to them. (Dad: “multi tasking….multi tasking” p.s. I send about 2 texts a week here by the way). The city was so alive though, It was like it was the middle of the day or something. We then came back around four or something and found our apartment filled with 4 or 5 people making these deep fried sweet donut croquette things. Oh, don’t worry, we knew these four or five people. So Celi made some really intricate pizza at five in the morning and I loaded pictures up. None of us seemed tired for some reason. But as soon as the make-up came off and the shoes were thrown in the closet, we FELL in to bed and slept to our hearts content. Another AMAZING blast of a Halloween!

I’m still the tallest. I think I was bout 5’11” the night of Halloween, what with heels and all. I’m only bringing this to direct attention now, not to brag or anything, but just to comment that in some of the pictures I am crouched down in some to avoid looking like a Mrs. Shrek. My room mate Jacque, ended up wearing what I deem as a shirt, as a witches dress (that totally reminded me of you Thea) and I was lumbering over everyone. But whatev, I’m average in the States, regarding height only, NOT to be confused with an “average Joe” of a person.

Yesterday was November 1^st and I was on the beach in a bathing suit. What the heck? How fabulous, huh? But today, I woke up and there was the most pleasant breeze, which carried a slight chill. The air even smelled different. I think that the winter/fall is finally approaching.

HAPPY NOVEMBER TO EVERYONE! I hope it’s amazing, full of “bouquets of sharpened pencils”, fun leaf crunching and yummy warm smelling apple pie, dried apples and nectarines, maybe some frutos secos (what they call nuts here) and all kinds of laughs and smiles.

Much love and many thanks.

Abrazos!

Ciao ciao,

Lillian Catherine-“Zeta” Jones.