Yet Another Year Abroad: Welcome to Madrid: Entroido at San Xoán

Hello Blogger community!
Yet again, I am terribly behind, and rather than post three weeks worth of photos, I'm going to jump ahead, and put up some pictures that I took this afternoon. When I get back from my travels this week, I'll try to fill in the gaps.

This week in Spain is Carnival, or Entroido, as it's called in Gallego. Here's a link to the Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival (for the record, I know that Wiki isn't the best source of information, but it provides a relatively decent background...and it's in English) here's another quick link with a little simple history: http://www.globaldreamers.org/share/carnival06/index.html

In Galicia, Carnival is known as Entroido, and the tradition is quite distinct. This week, Kaydin and I will be taking a car to the province of Ourense, in the south of Galicia, bordering Portugal, to take part in the festivities there. Behind the Canary islands (which we are going to on Thursday.... YAY!) and Cadiz, Carnival in Ourense is one of the most famous in Spain. I'll write more about it when I have photos and experiences to accompany the description, but I look forward to it. We're going to Laza, Verín, and Xinxo de Limia, the "triangle" of villages with the best celebrations, that are supposedly the most traditional.

ANYWAY, we had a mini Entroido celebration at the school today, and I thought I would share. This whole week, the kids have been bringing in pieces of costumes and today was the big day, full of face paints, traditional food, karaoke (or Galeoke as they called it in jest), and the burning of the character of Entroido in effigy. I didn't quite get the full story on this one, but I took pictures. I had a video also, but something went wrong with the import. So, you'll have to use your imagination to envision this guy burning to the ground, plastic mask melting, and bits of ash flying away in the wind. :-)

Here are some pictures of the mini party we set up on the patio:

Me and one of my older students, Consuelo: :-)

One of the sixth-year classes:

Susanna and I:

Yep! These are my colleagues! I got so lucky with this school!

The kids brought in typical foods to share. The traditional desserts here are orejas, filloas, and rosquillas. Orejas are fried flatbreads with sugar, filloas are basically light crepes with a little anis, and rosquillas are fried dough rings. All super delicious and healthy. There's also a desert that's similar to french toast, with baguette bread soaked in milk and fried in egg, with sugar and cinnamon, but I can't remember the name!!