OOOO hey girl hey. Yet another international Thanksgiving in my life. Still nothing close to the amazing times I have with my family and friends back home, but it was as close as it could get. My first thanksgiving celebrated abroad was 2 years ago in Ireland. We had a bitchin good time on the emrald isle where we rented out the local party house and got rowdy with about 100 of closest and not so close international friends. Good food, good people, great black out. I will be the first to tell you that during that irish thanksgiving I started drinking around 8 AM, puked on the way to my 9AM class, and then rallied afterwards with more booze. God, how great it would be to be young again... Anyway, I had some really great friends over there and I blacked out with them around 2 in the afternoon and somehow managed to party until about midnight that night without remembering a single thing. Those were the wild days, I'm tellin ya! So things were different for this international thanksgiving although the company was argueably just as amazing. Although there were not as many amigos to celebrate with, the quality was outrageous. It amazes me every single time I think about how incredible my friends are over here in Espanya. I have somehow been gifted the right to have the most genuine, loyal, and all around greatest people in the world as my very spontaneous yet wonderful friends. You don't fully understand how it happens until you are in the situation, but somehow one day you are living in a country minding your own business and the next you move to a different country without friends or family and are suddenly closest to complete strangers. You share amazing life experiences and live extraordinary lives abroad with complete strangers that somehow over night turn into your closest friends and confidants. Theresa, Lisa, Callie, Rio, and Stanek were present during our wonderful thanksgiving abroad and I need to confess that I am so thankful for them being in my life here. Without them I am not sure just how functional I would be (Also mad props to James for setting me up with such amazing people in spain!!!). They were strangers to me as of August and now I can't see my life without them. They mean the world to me and I can't wait to see how much closer our friendships grow over time :) My spanish family was also in attendance. And by that I mean my absolutely fabulous co-worker, Belen. I work at a school that I am completely in love with (pretty sure I've said that before...about a million times) and the teachers there are just perfect. Almost none of them speak english but all of them are making incredible efforts to communicate with me. It's an incredible blessing to absolutely love what you are doing with your life every single day. Well anyway, Belen is one of those amazing teachers at my school that I have been growing closer to as the school year progresses. She has let me into her home and I finally had the chance to pay the favor back to her. I don't know if it's lame on my part to say that my closest spanish friend that I have made is another teacher at my school who is just a bit my senior or if it just means she is wicked cool (no seriously, she is) but she's great. She brought her niece with her (slowly I'm planning on working my way into her family, meeting each member one by one!) and they celebrated their first american thanksgiving with us. We had the usual spread: green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, stuffing, mashed potatoes, etc. HOWEVER, due to the lacking demand of huge turkeys at the end of November, we couldn't find one good enough in time and settled on chickens. Surprisingly, I didn't really notice the difference. Could have been all the wine, but they tasted just as good as turkey tastes every year :) After quite a few bottles of wine, a bunch of photos taken, an uncountable number of laughs, and of course the cha cha slide, the night came to a close. We also had some British guests over as well and I am hoping they enjoyed their first american thanksgiving as well. All in all it was a spectacular evening and I can't believe how great my friends are over here. Not exactly the same as spending with my family, but it was a nice and very much appreciated substitution :) Needless to say I am a little girl with A LOT to be thankful for :) :) :)
<3
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