Delayed as usual, I'll have to breeze through the updates a little. Before Christmas, I had the kids make a giant advent calendar with various Christmas vocabulary, and every day we gathered around, guessed what we would find beneath, and opened each window. They loved it. If they guessed correctly, they got a Santa sticker. They have advent calendars in Spain too, but they end on the 5 of January, because that's the bigger day of celebrations here. It's called the día de los Reyes Magos, and it's the day that the 3 wise men visited the baby Jesus. Sort of the less convoluted version of Christmas traditions. Unfortunately, Santa Claus is a common presence here (apparently he showed up in the last fifteen years or so), and all the shops are now boasting Americanized Christmas imagery. I had some interesting conversations with my colleagues about the loss of Spanish culture and the globalization of holidays, etc.
Anyway, more about Spanish traditions. In Galicia at least, on Christmas they eat Turrón. Which now comes in a TON of varieties, but was originally a brittle-like delicacy made in Alicante for the holidays out of Almonds and honey. The turrón we had was chocolate, peanut, white brittle with almonds, and some egg custard thing I couldn't quite understand. Basically, delicious, but overwhelmingly rich.
Check it out at Wikepedia. (seriously, there's a link hidden there. Fun!)
The other typical dessert here are polvorones, dusty cookies that are made out or powdered almonds, sugar, and pork fat. Yep. Pork is in EVERYTHING here.
So, the last day of school we held a "turronada," in which the kids all sang with their respective classes, and ate as much turron as they could. It was really fun. I sang Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer with one of my classes. Here are some photos:
And a video of me singing Rudolph with my one of my classes:
We also celebrated New Years during the festivities, by eating twelve grapes. In Spain (and Portugal) at the countdown to midnight, everyone eats a grape for each second, beginning at 12. It's really quite difficult, and really fun to watch. So, since we were adjourning school until the new year, we also had a countdown with the kids, and shoved grapes in out mouths. REALLY fun, and definitely a bonding experience.
Here are the little grape packets I took two hours putting together... counting, counting the grapes. But it was definitely worth while.
And here's one more video to leave you with-- it's all the kids singing a classic and fun Galician tune. Don't remember the name... Pim pa dim pim pim? Something like that... I tried to upload the video but it was too big of a file. So, below there's another rendition of it.
After school let out at two, all the teachers had our own celebration, which was just as rowdy as the kids. We went at ate at a restaurant in Fene, which is just across the bridge from Ferrol proper, and indulged in the typical holiday mariscos (shellfish!). There was wine a flowing, and more food than I'd have imagined. Naturally, since I'm the foreigner, I was also obligated to eat three times as much as my colleagues.
Before (notice the abundance of wine...):
...And after:
We ate, drank, and were merry. There were four other tables of teachers from other schools, but we were the only group that hijacked the downstairs television to rig up a makeshift karaoke session. I kid you not. After the meal, we all sat around clapping, singing, and laughing until 8 pm. I love my school, and an grateful to have such wonderful colleagues. For example:
I ended up meeting a woman from another school who used to work with some of the people I work with now, and she and I sang a few jazz songs for everybody. It was incredible, but I don't have a video, unfortunately. We exchanged contact, and hopefully we can get together in the future to sing!
So, there's round one of the holiday festivities and meals, up next, round two, three, and four...
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