Holidays and trip to Florence

I know it's been a long time since my last post, but a lot has happened, so this one may end up being pretty lengthy! We just had Thanksgiving and obviously the Spaniards don't really have anything to celebrate so my roommate and I hosted our first Thanksgiving for several of our international friends - a few Irish, one Italian and one Venezuelan. It was a huge success. Of course one of the Irish boys wanted to make the mashed potatoes, but we made two chickens (turkey is too big for our oven), green bean casserole, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. We had to go to an American Store here for the canned pumpkin. Those are pretty cool. We only stopped by one, but apparently there are several throughout Madrid and they have things from the States that you can't find here. For example, bagels - and with all the carbohydrates these people eat, I can't believe they haven't caught on to bagels. They also have things like Ken's Ranch dressing, KC Masterpiece rubs and barbecue sauce, boxed cake mix, etc. I bought a York peppermint patty when we were there and I was so excited until I bit into it and literally couldn't. I guess things aren't that fresh there, but it's comforting to know it's there. I guess cranberries aren't very big here either because we looked all over our big grocery store for dried, fresh, frozen or canned and ended up settling on the last box of frozen mixed berries. It was still quite delicious! Our friends loved all the food and were so excited to learn a little more about our culture, which was pretty cool. My roommate and I were both a little sad to not be at home with family and friends for Thanksgiving, but it turned out very well. We had a lot of fun being hostesses as you all know I learned quite well from my mom!

Now that Thanksgiving is over, Madrid has turned on all their Christmas lights at night. About two weeks ago was the first night they turned them on and Sol (where I live) was a bit crazy. Everyone was in the Christmas spirit though! We actually got to see a choir in one of the plazas nearby. They sang a lot of songs in Spanish, but they sang White Christmas and Deck the Halls in English, which was a lot of fun for us. :-) I love how excited everyone gets here for Christmas! We probably won't decorate our apartment too much just because of cost, but I've already been listening to Mix101.5's broadcast over the internet so I can hear all the Christmas music in English. I'll post pictures of the street lights soon.

Pictures I'm posting today are of my trip to Italy! I went to Florence a little over two weeks ago to visit a friend. It was my first time traveling anywhere completely by myself and I still can't believe how smoothly it all went. I had to take a two hour plane ride, one hour bus and three hour train, but it was all so worth it. The city was beautiful and the food was delicious. Florence is such a historic little place and the people there are so proud of their culture. We saw several churches and museums, ate pizza and gelatto and did a little shopping as well.

This was my favorite building we went to in Florence. It's the baptistery and is famous for it's giant gold doors. The ceiling inside was nothing short of spectacular. My favorite site, by far! The pictures I took hardly do it justice, but you can see some of the biblical stories depicted here. Each level follows a certain theme or person from the Bible: Jesus, John the Baptist, the book of Genesis, etc. It was just amazing to take time to look and see each of the stories that were painted on the ceiling of this church thousands of years ago.

This is arguably the most famous church and building in all of Florence. It's called the Duomo and is probably some of the most elaborate architecture I've ever seen and is actually colorful, which is quite a change of pace from all the other European churches I've seen so far!

This is me in front of the Ponte Vecchio. Lovely view!

Just a couple of pictures showing the view of the whole city.

With my friend from North Carolina that I stayed with while I was in town. She's studying abroad for the semester and let me stay at her apartment for the weekend.

Okay, so this is just a replica, but I did get to see the real David while I was there! You just weren't allowed to take pictures of the original. I don't think pictures can really do it justice anyway.

I actually got the opportunity to go to Barcelona this past weekend and will be posting pictures of that trip hopefully at some point this week. I just wanted to give everyone a quick update. I'm getting really excited to come home this month for a few weeks, but I'm so excited to come back to Madrid in January so I can continue all my adventures here! Just as an idea I'm most likely going to London and/or Paris when Jarrod comes to visit me in the spring. I also have a friend that's coming for a couple weeks in February and we have yet to concretely decide where we're going. And everyone keep praying on my parents selling at least one house so they can come travel around some with me when I get done with school in June!! Teaching is still pretty much the same. I'm pretty ready for a break at this point, but I'm still enjoying it overall. We are going to a friend's Christmas party tomorrow night, so that should be fun. I'm guessing it's going to just make me want to hurry up and get home to celebrate with everyone I haven't been able to be with for the last few months. Can't wait to see everyone in just over a week!!!!!