April Fools!

I just had a successful day, despite the dreary Alicante weather we have been having. It was one of those days where I just felt motivated, and everything was making me laugh and making me crack jokes in Spanish. I am sure I think things are funnier than they really are, but I love laughing with mi familia, because it reminds me of my family at home. I tried to explain April Fool's day to mi madre, and she just said she was glad that Fransisco didn't have an entire holiday that he could dedicate to tricking her. Come to think of it, I am thankful for that too. He is the kind of brother who would put a fake spider on my pillow and say "April Fools."
Today I got my haircut! I was very fearful that it would turn out to be just like the most popular hairstyle in Spain... the mullet. But no worries, it turned out normal. And Mom, I have bangs (kinda)!
I decided to go ahead and post some pictures of the American party we had 3 weeks ago at Mi amiga Vicky's house. Better late than never right?
I might have briefly mentioned this earlier, but Vicky invited 10 people, which ended up being about 20 people, and I invited 2 of my friends, which ended up being four, and we had quite a party. We cooked what we thought are the most typical American foods, hence the high carb, high butter, high sugar foods that follow. We made a spinach artichoke dip, macaroni and cheese, celery with peanut butter (whoops I forgot to buy the raisins!), PB&Js, Grilled Cheese Sandwiches, Sloppy Joes, and Cookies and Brownies for dessert. The one request Vicky had was that we made punch, because they thought that punch is the drink of Americans, because it is apparently in a lot of movies made in the U.S.... I have never noticed that, but I guess her and all of her friends had.
We were quite a site to see in the tiny kitchen. Ben told me to mention to all my friends about my cooking habits, which consist of cooking at triple the speed of any other human while never cleaning up after myself. At least my bad habits (which I think is more of a skill really) came in handy. When you are cooking for 25 people and every recipe calls for melted butter, a lot of speed is needed. We ended up serving the food in rounds, and explaining the significance of each food as we brought it to the table. It was interesting cooking with Spanish ingredients. The differences between what ingredients are sold here verses in the U.S. are endless. In the cookies alone we substituted granulated brown sugar for regular, couldn't find baking powder (or soda maybe?), brown eggs vs. white, sugared vanilla vs. liquid vanilla, whole wheat vs white flour, and cut up chocolate bar vs chips. Those were just the substitutions for one recipe. So needless to say, the sloppy joes did not taste at all what my Mom's sloppy joes usually taste like. But, the Spaniards didn't know the difference, and they loved it all! The only thing that really didn't work out well was the punch, because we couldn't find sherbert and had to use lemon ice, and that just wasn't the same, but it looked close enough.
After we ate we played charades for awhile... that was an interesting experience because even if I knew what they were acting out, I usually couldn't put it in Spanish words.
I really am glad I found such a great group of Spanish friends! Vicky is in the picture of me with the brownie mix.
Well, I need to get some sleep, I have to get up at 6:00 tomorrow morning so I can make it on a bus to head to Granada. Adios y Hasta Pronto!