Life's getting real

In college, November was always when the rubber hit the road. In November, the weather would start to get cold and gray, schoolwork would start piling up, HUDS would run out of new meal ideas and start serving strikingly similar pasta and sausage entrees, etc. Luckily, Harvard-Yale & Thanksgiving were always two bright blips of fun on an otherwise black radar screen destined to durar hasta Christmastime.

I saw Bon Iver live in concert last weekend.
And that show would've shaken off even the
worst case of November blues. SO great. 

Now that I’ve painted such a bleak picture of November, I will confusingly say that it has always been one of my fave months, and this year is no different. Sure the weather here is cold and gray, but that gives me an excuse to wear mittens and scarves and feel very warm and European. (Anyone who thinks Spain is always warm and sunny is right, but only if they’re accidentally thinking of Tucson.) Lesson planning only becomes monotonous if you let it, or at least that’s what I tell myself. And the actual up-in-front-of-the-class teaching part is actually something I always look forward to.*

As for HUDS, well, this year I am my own HUDS, so if I’m bored with my options, it’s my own fault. I’ve been experimenting with different recipes lately (“recipes” is a loose term heh heh). For example, this past weekend, my friend Rachel and I made coconut curry with veggies and chicken for my sister and her friend who were visiting me yayyy, and it was flippin’ delicious. (Thanks for the recipe, Liz!) Fruits and veggies are super cheap here if you buy them at your local mercado (my local mercado paid me to say that), so I don’t even have to break the bank to eat healthily. But I am trying to avoid getting tooo attached to nutella, mangos, and avocados because those will be expensive addictions when I return to the States…

The roomies + our homemade Mexican meal,
which you can't really see, sorry about that.

Eating out is also relatively cheap, but my one complaint for a while was “where’s all the good Mexican food?” I went to one place that was delish but charged like 4€/tiny taco and I was like whaaat that is ABSURD, I went to another place that should not have even been labeled Mexican, and one night, my roommates and I even cooked a Mexican dinner from scratch out of desperation (including the corn tortillas, which were remarkably successful but also remarkably time-consuming to make for our inexperienced selves). Finally, my friend Pamina came to town/the rescue. She knew of this little place called Taquería Mi Ciudad, which serves cheap, tasty chips & guac, tacos, margaritas, and it is the BEST, and I plan to return every weekend. (But actually. I’m going again tomorrow with two of my fave Fulbrighters/mexicanas, both of whom could probs use a michelada fix haha…)

The only things I’m really missing right now (besides my friends and family obvi) are: the beautiful fall foliage in Cambridge and American football. So I will close with a very loud GO PACK, GO! :)

xoxo,

E. 

*In college, if a TF didn’t know his or her students’ names by the end of the semester, it bugged me. I now have more sympathy... I teach a total of 300 students. And there are a LOT of names that repeat. If I manage to learn them all by June, I will be proud of myself haha.