Fresh Baked Sword Fish

Christmas Eve I had a very fancy dinner with my host mom, one of her daughters, and her daughters husband. They cooked all day, we ate, we watched a movie, and they all fell asleep 15 minutes into the movie. Christmas morning I went to an American couples house in a neighboring town and then in the afternoon I went to an American/British household in another town. It was kind of nice to speak English, but it actually seemed a little strange! The 6th of January is called Dia de Los Reyes Magos (Day of the Three Wise Men). It's actually bigger than Christmas. All the kids are taught that the Kings will come in the night and deliever presents, just like Santa Claus. The morning of the 6th I ate Roscon with my host mom. Roscon is the typical pastry shaped like a very large donut. It's cut in half and in between the top and botton halves there is whipped cream and in the whipped cream there is a little figurine. If you get the little figurine you'll have luck for the whole year (I got the figurine, and elephant with it's trunk pointing up which means extra luck!).

"Sword Fish", "Fresh Baked", these are a couple of the crazier logos I've seen here in Spain. I don't think most Americans realize how big of an impact we have on the rest of the world, and I'm not just talking about politics. I've hardly seen any article of clothing with writing in Spanish (except for maybe camp T-shirts or stuff like that...but even those have English). Almost all of the clothes here have writing in English even if it's a saying as crazy as, "I love winter, wrap a blanket around you, sit in front of the fire, drink hot chocolate, cold days are great." (This I saw in a rather popular, trendy store). Sometimes when I walk down the street I feel like I'm in America because lots of the advertisements and store names are in English!

Some of you may be wondering how my Spanish is doing. I can say almost whatever I want to say, and I can understand the majority of what I hear. It really depends on who I'm talking with. I can spend an entire day with friends and only have to ask them how to say something or what something means a few times. However, in my history class I hardly understand a thing. On Monday I finished a 200 page book (in Spanish) that I recieved as a gift the Monday before; I understood the whole thing (minus a few words here and there)!

Hope you all had a great Christmas season and feliz ano nuevo!