All over the northern hemisphere, February is a cold and dark month. Spring seems forever away, and the light and gaiety of the holiday season is far behind. It’s not surprising that it’s a month when colds run rampant, and old remedies for the common sore throat once again assert themselves. When I lived in …
Spain has produced quite a few world-renown artists, and one of them is Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí I Doménech, or just Salvador Dalí, (pronounced Dah-LEE) who lived from 1904 to 1989. He was a colorful character, eccentric and proud of it, from Catalonia, on the east side of Spain, close to France. (Barcelona, a gorgeous …
¡Feliz Año! ¿Que tal las uvas? This is an expression that will be said thousands of times today in Spain. “Happy (New) Year! How were the grapes?” No, it’s not that everyone owns vineyards, and grapes are not code for anything else—they really do mean, “How were your grapes?” To understand the question, allow me to …
One of my favorite Spanish holiday treats is turrón, and if you’ve never had it, you are missing out! It’s a typical sweet eaten around this time of the year, along with marzipan, and it’s similar to peanut brittle, except much less sugary. In the picture you can see that the proportion of nuts to …
(Several quick notes before you begin reading this blog post: unless you are from Spain and already know what I’m talking about, this post is best read with access to the internet—and perhaps headphones—so you can listen to the songs as I discuss them. Also, for most of them, you might want to minimize the …
Everything about being in Spain was so new and different for me, that it’s no wonder that Christmas was too. I grew up with Santa, Christmas trees and stockings hanging over the fireplace, and naively thought these were universal. Not so. Santa only recently got exported to Spain and is still not very popular. …
This week, Friday, December 6th, is a national holiday in Spain: the Day of the Spanish Constitution. It’s equivalent to our 4th of July holiday, though it’s not commemorated with fireworks, nor do people happily don the colors of their flag. But it is a day when everything is closed, and the Spanish will celebrate …
My first Thanksgiving in Spain was marked indelibly with the feeling that something was “wrong” as I went about my day; it felt like there was a hole there. Sure, the weather was cold and it may have even snowed. I spent the day with friends who were becoming as close as family. Turkeys are …
Non-verbal communication, as we all know, is a huge part of how we interact with each other. A smiling “no” can be an invitation, while a morose “yes” should probably be considered a negative. But what about other gestures and sounds we make? I had not really paid much attention to how people communicate thoughts …
“Can you tell us which way to the dolmen?” my friend asked the woman standing outside the last house of the village. She seemed very old to me, though my best guess now is that she was in her 50’s. She shooed the clucking chickens away and stepped a bit closer, asking us to repeat …
