"...Just like my underwear!"

Monday
-I went over to Cristina and Manolo’s for dinner again. The provided me with lots of Spanish ham because they know I love it. I also love how their 2 boys waited to go to bed until after I got there so they could say hi and give me a kiss goodnight. Too cute.

Tuesday
-In conversation with Pilar’s son Carlos and his friend Daniel, we created the boy, fútbol playing version of me on their play station. It was hilarious. And the title of this entry comes from part of the conversation with them. Apparently my nickname Shanno is similar to a brand of underwear over here.

Wednesday
-in my gym classes with the 4th graders, Paco tried to teach them a dance. In the first group, all of the boys were too embarrassed to dance. In the 2nd group, the boys danced better than the girls. The one kid did a perfect robot. It was hilarious and totally unexpected. Both classes were very entertaining though.
-My afternoon classes actually went well. I did various things for Thanksgiving with the kids.

Thursday
-I had a productive morning. I did some grocery shopping, did some laundry, I bought a cactus (and its name is Peter- after my dear friend Peter Knotts who is in Korea teaching too and who has a plant named for me, so I had to return the honor), and I went for an 8 mile run (not bad for not running in 2 weeks).
-It was weird not being around to celebrate Thanksgiving since it’s like my favorite holiday. I wouldn’t have known it wasn’t an average day if it wasn’t for everyone’s Facebook statuses.
-My class with the 10-11 years olds was a little frustrating, but not awful. I don’t think they understand how that Thanksgiving is actually an important day in the US. Here there’s all this hype about Halloween and nothing even mentioned about Thanksgiving and it’s hard to communicate to them the importance of it.

Friday
-Eddie and I attempted to have our own Thanksgiving. I was inspired on Thursday and went out and bought a bunch of stuff and insisted that we could do it. We had green bean casserole, stuffing and turkey burgers. Because turkey is hard to find here and probably expensive if you do find it. And turkey-chicken burgers were the only turkey product I could find in the grocery store. But it was totally a success. Took us longer than we expected, but it came out good. We were pleased.
-I went to see the 6th grade girls basketball game because one of the girls invited me. She’s actually not one of my students but she’s super sweet and always talks to me after and outside of school. And all the kids that were there were super excited to see me there. It was cute. However, the team lost.