Last week while my family and friends crowded around a stateside table set for 33 feasting on turkey and sausage-leek stuffing, my friends and I hosted a tomato, mozzarella, fusilli pasta party.  We plunked ourselves in a circle on our living room floor, sharing our greatest thanks and our family’s Thanksgiving traditions. We were collectively and overwhelmingly thankful for adventure, cappuccinos, and aperitivi.

Buenos días faithful readers,

I just wanted to give you the link to my intercambio’s blog about cultural diversity, since I’ve written about my experiences with it a couple times. Just click on “diversidad cultural” in the sidebar. There is also a plethora of other topics if you want to learn more about the many facets of Madrid! (I know you do.) The photo gracing this post below is a glimpse of what future Madrid abroaders have to look forward to in their homestays…if they get as lucky as I am with their family’s cooking!

For our last member-state trip we had the option of choosing between three excellent choices: The Northeast (London, Tallinn, and Stockholm , the Southeast (Athens, Sofia, and Bucharest), and the South (Rome, Madrid, and Barcelona).  At first, I flirted heavily with the Southeast trip – when would I ever get to go to Eastern Europe and see real live vampires? After conferencing with pretty much everyone I knew, we decided it was best for me to get in touch with my non-existent Spanish and Italian roots.

Having been in Japan for over eight months now, I have had the opportunity to try and enjoy so many awesome new foods. From the food that my host mom prepares every day, to the places I’ve gone and the local specialties I’ve eaten, I’ve learned to appreciate a whole new set of foods and tastes here in Japan. Remember anywhere you go to give yourself time to adjust to the new tastes. There were lots of foods that I hated when I got here that I only started to like over time. I even learned to like pork here, which seems kind of ironic, but just goes to show.

So Halloween has come and gone here in Japan, and I saw the best costume I’ve ever seen during it this year. Most girls go for something risque, sexy cop or a satin clad temptress. And I really don’t know the route guys usually go, just nothing anywhere nearly as well done as my friend Roro’s costume this halloween. He made the costume himself, and well deserved, got lots of attention for it.

Seeing as I celebrated Kanda’s yearly festival, I was super intent on skipping my own school’s. However, our senseis had a little something else in mind. So us Meikai IES students had the privilege of putting on a play for the campus. After throwing some ideas around about what play to do (I was gunning for Mulan) and some not so democratic cast decisions, the play was chosen and the cast picked. Contrary to how bad we thought we were, after a good week and a half of practice, we put on a pretty decent show and made a lot of kids happy.

So in Japan, all colleges have a large festival in the Fall. It’s a festival by the students, who run food stands and small shops even to raise funds for their clubs. They have some delicious food, like kebobs, burgers, and other foods that you don’t usually run across in Japan. And then for the clubs that are performance based, like dance or singing, put on shows at various places and times. Some of my best Japanese friends go to Kanda Daigaku, so I went to celebrate and see them perform.