English version

This is the text-only English version of the Spanish blog Noches de Harlem. To see pictures and other multimedia files, and to leave comments, please go to the Spanish version.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

San Guivin

I always remember fondly how, when I lived in the US, I was subscribed to a mailing list of Spanish people in the Boston area, where people would send news related to Spain, etc. This was at the beginning of the internet, when the Web wasn't as ubiquitous as it is today, and the newsgroups and mailing lists were quite common methods to communicate to large groups of people with similar interests. The association still exists, and if you dig in their website you will find El racó d'en Pep [Pep's corner], a guide to Boston restaurants written by yours truly. It's from 1997, so it's quite outdated and half of the restaurants are closed by now, but it must still be of some use since they don't take it out.

With traditional Spanish witticism, Thanksgiving was called "San Guivin" [which would be something like St. Givin's Day], a bad Spanish-ification of the word "Thanksgiving," but which sounds like a legitimate Spanish holiday. The name "San Guivin" always brings fond memories, and yesterday I got an e-mail from my friend Aldo saying "Happy San Guivin," which brought a smile to my face and made me remember the good old times.