Rhymes with Orange

I don't know if I mentioned this, but we had TWO holidays this week.

No one worked/had school on Tuesday and Thursday.

Tuesday was the Constitution day, and Thursday was the day of Immaculate Conception.

Neither day contained really any kind of exciting events, although the footage they showed of Madrid on the news for Thursday made it look like it's their own little Black Friday, where everyone starts Christmas shopping.

On Tuesday, Pichon (my host dad's nickname)'s aunts and uncles came over for lunch. They brought their four kids, too, which ranged from 8 to 17 years old.

We had a feast of arroz (what we call paella), patatas bravas, roasted chicken, and of course bread.

After that, Cristina said "We're going to go orange picking...wanna come?"

OF COURSE.

Cristina's dad owns an orange orchard in Castellon, which is about a 40 minute drive from here. All of us (including their relatives) hopped in three cars and drove to the orchard.

We brought crates and those reusable grocery bags and went to town.

The kids were really excited to be there. They started out eating everything they picked. Lucas became our personal tree taste-tester, eating oranges off different trees and telling us which ones were sweet or bitter.

It was nice and quiet since obviously it was just us (there were maybe 13 of us) in this huge field. And there were SO MANY ORANGES:

I would go off on my own and the kids would try looking for me but had a hard time unless we played Marco Polo: "Melissa?" "Aqui!" "Melissa?" "Aqui!" "Melissa?" "Aqui!!!"

After a while, the kids grew weary of actually picking oranges. They also probably were stuffed from eating so many. So while the adults continued hunting for perfect fruits, the kids started playing hide-and-seek in between the trees, or even under them, since they are so low to the ground. They are very dense, so it's easy to hide behind the trees. One of the aunts started barking like a dog so the kids thought there actually was a dog running around. Once they realized it was her, it morphed into a strange animal-themed game of Marco Polo:

In the end, Lucas and Lucia probably ate 10 oranges each.

And we got a LOT of oranges to take home with us...

At the end of the adventure, one of Pichon's aunts found two snails and gave one each to Lucia and Lucas. They were so excited.

However, they complained that the snails were "broken" because they wouldn't leave their shells. Lucas even started singing to his (there is a popular children's song about snails, or caracoles). On the way home, Lucia's started crawling around, leaving a slime trail behind, which Lucia referred to as "snot."

It was SO MUCH FUN.