It is not easy to celebrate Thanksgiving in Spain. You won’t find whole turkeys — fresh nor frozen — in a supermarket. So when Michael and I host Thanksgiving in this country, our first mission is to go to the butcher shop and order a turkey. We have to specify that we don’t want the…
Category: Villaviciosa
Houseguests
“That poor donkey–being forced to walk all this way,” said a fellow pilgrim on Spain’s Camino de Santiago. I watched the donkey saunter past. He didn’t seem tired. No one was pulling him along. In fact, it wasn’t clear who actually owned him. Knowing nothing about donkeys, I asked the woman, “Are they not good…
Signs of Spring
On our terrace, the first poppy has bloomed and the irises are only days away from bursting open. The afternoon sun makes our living room so warm that Michael has to pull down the shades. But my favorite sign of spring’s impending arrival? The local artisanal ice cream shop has opened. When I walked in…
Learning Spanish: An Update
Yesterday Michael and I hosted Thanksgiving dinner for 18 guests, all but two of whom were native Spanish speakers. And the two who were not native? They’re pretty much fluent. And guess what? I was able to follow nearly every conversation. Whether we were talking about the differences between buying a home in Spain versus…
Thanksgiving Compromises
“She’s bringing potato smoothies?” Michael asked. “Smoothies? Where did she say that?” I asked while scrolling through the messages in our Thanksgiving 2023 WhatsApp group. “Patatas batidos,” Michael said. “I looked it up — it means potato smoothies.” “But did you read what she wrote right after that?” I translated it for Michael. “She says…
A-Camino-A-Day. . .
I snapped a picture of the Camino trail marker and laughed to myself, recalling a conversation I’d had back in 2020 with my youngest sister Meg. “Would you ever do a winter Camino?” she asked me. She had just seen the video I’d made of my first Camino with my father and I knew where…
Can You Say “Villaviciosa”?
“If we’re going to move to this town, I’ll need to learn how to say it!” I said to Michael. Somehow, he already had it down. But after three days, “Villaviciosa” didn’t exactly roll off my tongue. I was, however, optimistic. After all, I could now easily talk about getting our empadronamientos at the Ayuntamiento….
A Day in the Life: Villaviciosa, Spain
“That’s the first time we’ve been invited into a Spaniard’s home,” Michael said as we left the apartment of a local couple. He was right. It never happened when we lived in Valencia. Probably because we knew so few Spaniards there. Which was probably because we could hardly speak their language. — When we first…
These Are A Few of My Favorite Things
“We’re moving to Spain,” Michael would tell people. But me? I couldn’t say those words. “We’re going to Spain for a year,” I’d say. “Maybe we’ll stay longer.” And honestly? Every time I heard Michael say, “We’re moving to Spain,” my heart raced a little. In an anxious, nervous moving-is-a-big-word kind of way. Besides, was…
The Donkey and The Gypsies
I turned the corner and there he was: the town donkey. Well, at least that’s how I think of him. Or her. I’d seen her once before on a different patch of grass on the outskirts of town. Someone told me she and her companion, a mini-horse, get moved around. Days later the donkey and…
RenaissanceRebecca 