To make up for Valverde’s lack of spirit during Halloween the town and its people have decided to go all out for Christmas. Surprisingly I haven’t felt the same homesickness I felt during Halloween and I think it’s because Valverde has provided me with the same comforts I’m use to at home: Christmas decorations, candy, lights, and Christmas music. The town is beautifully decorated with bright lights of stars, moons, and bells across all of the main streets. Most of the houses have a Christmas tree with lights and a nativity scene. My school has its own Christmas tree, Nativity scene, and decorations. In Pocho’s class she is teaching the kids to sing Jingle Bells in the younger grades and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer to the older kids. Next week at the conservatory all of the kids from all of the schools are supposed to perform a song and Pocho informs me that it is supposed to be in English but she has her doubts about the other schools. In the supermarket they blast Christmas songs in English and even though I am the only one singing along to the music nobody gives me weird looks. Success! When I walk to my tutor sessions I can hear children practicing Jingle Bells on their recorders. I remember the days when I had to play the recorder. I guess it’s not just an American thing.
While the familiar candies and cookies I’m use to are nowhere in sight (gingerbread, chocolate chip cookies, Christmas M&M’s, and candy canes) Valverde has its own Christmas goodies. I got one word for you: Turron! Turron is a chocolate candy bar that comes in many varieties and is only around during the holiday season. You can get it hard (teeth cracking hard) or soft (melt in your mouth soft) forms. Most of them come with some type of nut, either peanut or almond (they LOVE almonds here. Almost every baked good has almonds as its main ingredient). I decided to test them out and bought one hard turron of coconut and chocolate and one soft turron of chocolate mouse. The soft one was the best chocolate bar I have ever had! Only 2000+ calories, no big deal. I’ll try to save some and bring it back to the states—I just hope I don’t eat it hehehe. This reminds me of a FRIENDS episode I just watched were Ross eats all the Maple Leaf candy so Chandler has to hide it from him. When Chandler gives a box of the candies to Monica she opens it and they are all gone. I’m not making any promises but I’ll try.
Christina took on the daunting task of teaching the kids how to make gingerbread houses. Just substitute gingerbread for thin wafers and it was basically the same thing. I sat in the back of the class and observed as she tried to get them to listen to her and follow her instructions. Most of the kids didn’t listen and ended up building their own version of a “house”. One group’s house collapsed so Christina told them they could eat it. Like vultures the kids attacked the plate of sweets and devoured it in lightening quick speed lol. After the houses she began telling them about Christmas in America. Now its important to understand your audience when you have to speak about something so I have no idea why Christina decided to tell these fifth graders about how Christmas is all about consumerism, greed, that we are celebrating the death of a Saint, and that the true origin came from some other country, and all that religious/cynical stuff. What was she thinking? Kids don’t want to hear that, please, I don’t want to hear that. Kids only care about the magic of Santa Clause, reindeer, candy canes, snowmen, and all that fun stuff. I was just shaking me head and thinking why, why, why??? That’s just the type of person she is I guess. As Ruben put it, she “speaks perfect Spanish but her English is horrible”—and honestly its true.
My tutor sessions have been a lot of fun because I’ve decided to take it upon myself to educate the children and adults about Hanukkah. I made a dreidel out of paper and played dreidel with them. To no surprise I ended up winning each game. What can I say I’m kind of awesome at dreidel…. I couldn’t find authentic gelt, but the candy store did have chocolate coins so I used them. I contemplated making potato latkes but I figured a bad latke would be worse than no latke so I didn’t make them. I was able to find a English AND Spanish version of the story of Hanukkah so that helped me teach the kids the significance of the eight days. I played the YouTube video of Adam Sandler’s Hanukkah Song accompanied with the lyrics. I got mixed reviews with that one, but I enjoyed it. For Christmas the past bilingual assistant had made colored, laminated, flashcards of important Christmas vocabulary terms with the spelling on the back. They were quite impressive and too good to just use in school so I used them in my sessions as well. I also taught the older kids The 12 Nights of Christmas song and made them sing it with me. I took turns reading Twas the Night Before Christmas with the kids as well. When I read it I got all into the story and would try to act out the words as I spoke. I can’t wait to have a little (American) kid to read that to and have them get all excited about Santa Clause. I forgot how many good Christmas songs or poems there are. For my own personal enjoyment I printed out the lyrics to my favorite Christmas songs (Silent Night, Winter Wonderland, Up of the Rooftop, and The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers) and I sing them to myself when I need a pick me up hehe. I would just play YouTube videos of the songs or listen to iTunes 24/7 Holiday Radio Station but that would require the Internet.
In my tutor session I always ask the kids and adults how they celebrate Christmas and New Years. I learned that the kids only open maybe one or two presents on the 25th of December. The rest of the presents are opened on January 5th when everyone celebrates the 3 Kings Festival (3 Wise Men from the Nativity scene). Once the 3 Kings have brought their gifts to the town the kids are allowed to open their gifts. Every town or city has some sort of parade to celebrate the holiday. I learned that in Valverde there is this auction a few days before and the families that donate/spend the most money get to dress up as the 3 Kings and toss candy to the town people. They dress up in robes, hop on the back of a tractor that drives through town, and toss candy out to the kids on the street. It’s a very cute tradition. Then everyone goes home and watches the big parade, like the one in Seville, on the television and afterwards opens their presents. Its just like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. Well I decided that since I return from my winter break on the 4th that I would stay the extra two nights to witness the parade and celebrations of the 3 King’s Festival in Seville. Might as well right? Margarita told me that in Seville the 3 Kings are always famous people (soccer players, politicians, actors/actresses, ect). I’m crossing my fingers, praying every night, and holding my breath that Sergio Ramos will be in the parade and that I’ll get a picture of him!!!!!! He’s from Seville and started out at Seville FC so it only makes sense that he would be in the parade.
For New Years I was informed that the adults normally stay home or go to a special restaurant where they pay for a dinner and unlimited drinks for the night and bring in the New Year there. The teens or younger crowd so to special discotecas to get the same deal but more alcohol and dancing. Ana told me that its kind of expensive and the tradition has sort of died out because now there are maybe six or seven little parties that people attend instead of one big party. Also I learned that at midnight instead of counting down The Ball and kissing the closest person to you, everyone listens to the chimes of a clock and eats a grape for each chime. That comes out to twelve grapes in a very short time period. In Spain the grapes come with the pits in them so it can be somewhat uncomfortable if you don’t prep your grapes before hand haha. I also learned that in the supermarkets they sell tins that have only 12 grapes in them just for the occasion. How cute is that? I really like that tradition so when I return the states I hope to carry it on.
The greatest Christmas present I received was the gift of HOT WATER! The man came on Tuesday to fix our pipes and now I can FINALLY take a hot shower. The funny thing was he came on Monday but I was the only one home and when I opened the door he spoke so fast I couldn’t understand him. All I got from him was that he wanted “to see it”. I tried my best but I couldn’t understand him and I had no idea that someone was suppose to come to the house so I told him I didn’t understand him and that he should come back when my roommate returns. About three hours to late Elisa texts me that a man should come to our house to fix the pipes. DAMNIT! Alas, I had good fortune because the man returned the next day and I let him in and he worked his magic. It took less than 5 minutes and I swear all he did was turn a knob or something really simple like that. Despite the hot water I still put the heater in the bathroom with me but I no longer shiver INSIDE the shower. Not only does my shower now get hot water, but my faucet does as well. It was the worst in the mornings when I would already be freezing and then I would have to wash my face with spine tingling cold water that would make my hands numb and would force we to eat my cereal with gloves on. My room is still pretty cold. The one night I was to lazy to put socks on before I went to sleep turned out to be a bad idea because it was impossible to sleep. I finally gave in and at 5am I got up and put my sock-slippers (thank you Dani!) on and tucked my pajama pants into them. Honestly, if I don’t do that every night I can’t sleep because I’m that cold. This whole week I’ve been alone in the apartment because Elisa has been sick so she stayed in Seville. It’s Wednesday right now so I think it is safe to say she probably won’t be coming back to Valverde before the break starts. I also think its safe to say I won’t be getting a ride to Seville with her. So yeah I now know what its like to live alone. I don’t like it, well, I think I wouldn’t mind it if I wasn’t so far away from everything.
So last night I had the wonderful pleasure of having dinner with Ana and her family. She had to cancel all of my tutor sessions this week with her and Paco because they both had conflicts but to make it up she invited Christina and me to dinner. My first dinner at a family’s house, how exciting!!!! I finished up my last session at 9pm and then headed over to Ana’s with Christina at 9:30pm for dinner. I finally met her husband who was very nice and loved to talk. He spoke very clearly so I understood almost everything he said in Spanish. He knows English better than Ana, which is saying something because she speaks very well, so anytime I had a tough time translating a word I would say it in English and he understood. That was comforting. Normally with someone new I get very tense about having to try and speak Spanish, especially when I’m with Christina because she’s fluent, but with him I felt at ease and comfortable. BUT despite everyone’s ability to speak and understand English we only spoke Spanish, which I really liked. It only came out a few times here and there. Sergio also joined us for dinner but he didn’t talk and was in a bad mood because he had just returned from soccer practice out in the cold and was now sick. He claimed it was bronchitis. Well we started the dinner with tapas of sheep’s cheese, goat cheese on a cracker with anchovies (some without anchovies thank god), chips, salad, bread, and shaved ham. To accompany the food we had two bottles of red wine. For the main dishes Ana made individual Spanish tortillas (a thick potato pancake made with eggs, onions, and sometimes other ingredients. In this case mushrooms) and bite sized fried cod bites (they were AMAZING). She made this because Christina is a vegetarian but she eats fish. I tried to eat around the mushrooms but in the end Ana picked up on the fact that I didn’t like them so she brought my pork loin. The pork literally melted in my mouth. It was a great filling meal. For desert she brought out two trays. On the first, an assortment of different kinds of Turron and on the second mini wrapped baked goods of crème, cinnamon, and almonds. Naturally they put the put down directly in front of me and said “EAT!” They know their audience. Everything was so good. We talked and ate from 9:30pm to 1:45am. The only reason the meal stopped was because I told them I was tired. I had more wine that night than I have had this whole trip thus far. When I lifted my head I was a little dizzy.
In the middle of the meal I had a one on one conversation with Ana husband Antonio about how hard Spanish was for me. He told me that I just need to take every opportunity I have to ask what things are and build up my vocabulary base. When I told him I have a hard time conjugating verbs he gave me some key phrases that I should memorize in order to not have to worry about conjugating. For some reason the way he talked to me about it really gave me hope that I would get better at. He assured me that I spoke very well (I think he was just being nice) and told me that he had no doubt that I would be fluent by the time I leave Spain. I’m glad someone believes that. The manner in which he approached learning a new language was just so new to me and very refreshing to hear. I really enjoyed talking to him. He also talked about his aspirations for his son. How he wants Sergio to learn as much as he can now so that when he’s older he can pursue anything he wants and have as many options as possible. He emphasizes the importance of speaking other languages more for his future rather than at the moment. I understand his perspective and I can relate to why Sergio resents it a little. Looking back I wish my parents had enforced the importance of knowing another language upon me. It’s hard sometimes in school listening to first graders remembering vocabulary so well when I can’t remember the sentence someone said to me a minute ago. Anyways, the meal was fabulous and I had a wonderful time. Both Ana and Antonio told Christina and I that we are welcomed back anytime. I think my next meal will be with Pocho and her family but not until after winter break.
A lot has happened for me in 2009 but I’m fairly certain that 2010 will bring a lot more adventures. Things to look forward too in 2010: Bringing in the New Year in Prague, Czech Republic with two new friends, London Trip in February where I will finally see most of my family for the first time since September, a week of craziness in Cadiz in honor of Carnival, random long weekends exploring other cities in Spain like Valencia, Galicia, Bilbao, and possibly Mallorca, a week long celebration of Semana Santa, a visit from my friend Kerry and her sister (my first and probably only friend visit), a ten-day visit from my parents in Barcelona, Seville, and Valverde, a three-day weekend in Morocco, and lastly an end of school trip to Scandinavia. This is all assuming I have enough money to go to these places. We will just have to wait and see.
Happy Holidays and Happy New Year! Enjoy your trip.
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