Still Alive

Calm your fears! Just a little post to let y'all know I'm still alive over here. Things have been going well... We've had two Spanish national holidays in the past two weeks - these people sure do love their holidays. And no, Halloween was not one of them.

In the spirit of spreading American culture, I did purchase and carve one of the pumpkins they had on display in the grocery store. It was actually really funny - when I went to buy it no one could figure out how much it was supposed to cost. I guess people don't actually buy the pumpkins very often. 

I did see a few kids dressed up, but Halloween is definitely not really a real holiday over here. The only effects you really see are those that bleed over from American pop culture. So, in order to truly capture the spirit, we headed out to an authentic "american" restaurant - TGI Fridays - to try to soak up some of that rich culture. It turns out that Fridays in Spain is quite the Halloween headquarters - the restaurant was completely decorated, all of the staff was dressed up, they had special menus printed up, and, if you can believe it, they gave away free Halloween 2007 at Fridays t-shirts. I will treasure it forever.