The night before Halloween, Elisa invited us to go to one of her friend Kati'e's Halloween party/event (some students in her tourism school were raising money for a trip). I didn't dress up, but went anyway. At the party, there were quite a few people dressed up.
 |
| Random Halloween cookies made by Katie's baking students |
During Halloween (as well as the day before and the day after), I saw a lot of kids dressed up in costumes. I didn't realize that Halloween was quite big in Spain, since I remember not celebrating it at all the last time I lived here. While talking with one of my co-teachers yesterday, he told me that Halloween started getting popular over the last 4-5 years. In my school, we didn't really celebrate Halloween (Elisa dressed up at her school and Lyle's school had a Halloween program). The classrooms of the lower levels had some Halloween decorations up (that they presumably worked on in art class), but that was pretty much the extent of the celebrations at my school.
 |
| Random Halloween decorations at a book fair in a nearby plaza |
On Halloween night, Sarah, one of the
auxiliares I met at orientation invited us to watch Hocus Pocus at her place and have some tapas. There was a group of us girls, and it was nice to go out for drinks and tapas and meet other people. Back at her apartment, she offered us some Spanish pastries that she got from her school and some goat cheese which she paired with some blueberry jam (so delicious!). I ended up falling asleep through half of the movie, but had a good time nevertheless. Sarah lives in the Albayzín area, and as we were walking to her place, we got this amazing view of the Alhambra:
 |
| Imagine living in Albayzín and getting to see that every night. Beautiful. |
Sunday was my flatmate Elisa's birthday, but since we all had work the day after, we celebrated on Saturday. We went out for dinner at a Moroccan restaurant,
Los Arrayanes (Cuesta Marañas, 4), in Albayzín. It was nice to have a full meal - not just tapas - and one I didn't have to cook myself. I ordered a rice and lamb dish, which was delicious, and even though it looked a bit small, got me full. At €9 it was a little expensive for the serving size, but not that bad.
After, we met up with some of her Spanish friends who took us to several cool bars that night. The first bar we went to had shots named after football teams and football players, which I found really cool. Another bar we went to had a list of maybe 70 or so shots, and each of them just cost €1.
 |
| Happy birthday, Elisa! |
On Sunday, Lyle and I decided to surprise Elisa for dinner. We cooked her
bistek tagalog (she's been wanting to try Filipino food), which didn't come out quite like how I have it at home, but with some banana, tasted okay to me; bought some cakes and balloons; and made a sign. :)
 |
| We forgot to take a picture with us in it :P |
November's actually a weekend of celebrations for us: Elisa's birthday on the 2nd, Lyle's on the 7th, mine on the 16th, and Thanksgiving on the last week!
Comments