My Birthday! :)

Wednesday was my birthday! It was a great day. In the morning one of my host moms drove Steph and I to the market in Caceres. This market is every Wednesday, but that’s the day that I have 5 classes in a row so I haven’t had the chance to go to it. So our mom took us there right as it opened. It was very cool. I didn’t know it was that big! There were dresses, shoes, scarves, jewelry. I wish we would have had more time to look at everything. Steph bought me a very cute pair of earrings for my birthday from there.

Our mom dropped us off as school and I had my classes. They actually seemed to go fast. It was our final exam week last week, so we had a lot of tests and essays, but I had most of the work done on Monday and Tuesday so I could relax on my birthday.

After school, Steph and I waited for our host moms to get home so we could eat together instead of just by ourselves like we usually do. Our host moms made us a special lunch for my birthday. We had peppers filled with this Spanish white cheese, which was very good. Then we had gazpacho. It’s a very typical Spanish food during the summer, which is why we hadn’t had it yet. It’s basically an oily cold tomato soup. It was good, it had a very strong flavor! The next course we had some sort of meat filled with something that we ate with an orange sauce. I know that’s not a good description, but it was delicious! Dessert was lemon mouse, which I guess is another typical summer food here. Very very good. We also had apple champagne that’s made here in my city. I was sooo full!

My host moms gave me a present. It was a silver acorn charm. Acorns are very important in the part of Spain where I live. They make a lot of things with acorns and it’s a symbol of my city. So I can wear the charm always have a reminder of this semester. That was very sweet of them.

Later that afternoon, Steph and I met up with all the other students in the plaza for ice cream. So after we all got the ice cream, we took it outside and sat on the steps by the church to eat it. The plaza was very crowded with people!

From there Steph and I went to the apartment of our friends. They are two boys from the U.S. who teach English here in high schools, we met them earlier this year and have hung out with them a lot. They had an American grill-out that night. They made grilled chicken, hot dogs, and hamburgers. We also had potato wedges and melon. It was soo good! I hadn’t had food like that in such a long time. It was very fun to have real American food.

I left from there to meet the other students again in our favorite place to hang out. It was another girl’s birthday the same day as mine, plus that was the last night we would all be together in Caceres, because a few students were going to leave Thursday and another one of Friday. So everyone came out and we hung out for a long time. The other birthday girl and I blew out candles and they sang for us, and it was a fun night. I couldn’t have asked for a better birthday in Spain!