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| Christmas Decorations |
Today was the busiest and also most awesome day in the colegio. Not only was it the last day of the fall semester, but it was also the day that we celebrated Christmas in the school. The Christmas celebration started with a visit from los reyes magos, the three kings, or the three wise men as my family would call them. In America, we refer to the three wise men as the kings who brought gifts to baby Jesus, but in Spain they are like the staple of Christmas and they're even bigger than Santa Claus. They also have a day devoted to them (January 6th) when kids receive even more gifts for Christmas, not from Santa Claus but from los reyes magos. This makes more sense if you ask me.
The three kings came to visit the smaller kids in the colegio, those of infantil and 1st, 2nd and 3rd grades. The kids went up to the kings, gave them their Christmas list and the kings gave each of them small toys. The kids were so excited to see the kings and get the toys.
While the three kings were spending time with the younger kids, the older kids were having a basketball tournament. At the end of the tournament, it was almuerzo time, so everyone got together and had hot chocolate and fresh bread. The hot chocolate was sweet and thick and the hot bread was delicious. Spain is going to make me so fat. During the 30 minute break, I talked to the teachers about a typical American Christmas and how beautiful it is in my country during this time of year. Sorry Spain, but you just don’t compare.
When the break was over, all of the children gathered for an assembly and each grade level (including infantil) sang a Christmas song or presented a Christmas play. My roommate, who is the music teacher at the school, organized everything and provided the music and choreography for most of the songs. I was so proud of her. The presentations were entertaining. Afterwards, the teachers thought that it would be fun to present a song and dance for the students and their parents, so we put on Santa hats and sang and danced to Feliz Navidad. It was really fun and the students really enjoyed it.
Right after the assembly, the parents were allowed to take their children home. Most of the parents were there for the assembly so they left with their children. School ended early that day because of the holiday. Afterwards, all of the teachers gathered together to exchange amic invisible gifts. After one teacher carefully distributed each of the gifts to us, we all simultaneously opened our gifts up. Although the amic invisible that I had was on maternity leave, she came to school to celebrate the last day with us and she loved the handbag that I bought her (thanks to my roommate for basically picking it out for me). My amic invisible bought me a really nice umbrella, which is actually something that I needed.
After the long school day, the celebration really began. All of the teachers went to have lunch together at a really nice restaurant outside of the town. The restaurant was owned by one of the student’s fathers, so although it was normally expensive, we got a good discount. The food was great. It started off with a lot of beverages and tapas of course and we each picked a main dish. You would think that when you look at a menu and have at least 6 options to choose from one of them would at least be something with chicken, right? Wrong! Half of the options on the menu were fish dishes, one was of lamb, one was duck, and one was cerdo iberico, the cheek of a pig. I tried the cerdo before and it was way too chewy; obviously. So I decided to be very adventurous and order something that I would usually frown upon, lamb. I am very proud of the fact that, since I’ve been in Spain, I have become adventurous as it pertains to food. I’ve never tried lamb before, and it certainly had a very unique and very strong taste to it, but it wasn’t bad. Along with the lamb were French fries and vegetables so I ate a lot of that also. For dessert, I had some kind of cake and of course I had some café con leche. The dinner lasted for approximately 3 hours and it was full of laughter and conversation. Fortunately, the people that I was sitting next to spoke Castellano to me. After my roommate told them that I can speak some Valenciano, they were very surprised and entertained when I described my Valenciano teacher, in Valenciano.
As the dinner progressed, I couldn’t help but notice the very pregnant teacher, who went out to smoke with some of the other teachers. One of the other teachers noticed too; and when she asked another teacher if she was smoking, the other teacher tried to justify it by saying that smoking is actually not bad for pregnant people because it helps with the stress. Um, ok… (Look out for that blog)
After lots of hugs and kisses and wishing each other a Bon Nadal (Merry Christmas in Valencian), everyone went their separate ways. My roommate and about 3 of the other teachers; however, decided that it was too early to go home, so instead we all went to the beach area of town to have drinks and do karaoke. Unfortunately, though, when we got to the karaoke place it was closed, so we ended up going to a bar instead for drinks. We had drinks and chatted and told a lot of jokes, and at this point I was frustrated because the joke-telling was in Valenciano and I barely understood anything. So basically, there were two people telling jokes, and when everyone laughed I just smiled to keep from looking very uncomfortable. Even when they explained the jokes to me I still couldn’t really understand much of the humor in it so I occasionally pretended to laugh.
When we got up to pay for the drinks (by the way, my cosmopolitan was delicious), the bartender told us that some guys that we had been talking to earlier had already paid for our drinks. “Bon Nadal,” they said!
Some of the girls really wanted to do something else, but my roommate told them that she was tired and that I was tired. I thought that it was funny because I had never said that I was tired. I was pretty sure that my roommate was using me as her scapegoat to go home, but I didn’t object because I was very anxious to go home also.
Before we each departed, we decided to do one more fun thing, so instead of going somewhere, we had a small party in the parking lot of the bar. One of the teachers played a CD really loud in her car, and my roommate took her drums out of the car and started playing it. The teachers danced, while I videotaped them, and one of the teachers really gave us some Michael Jackson moves. It was so hilarious. A couple of people walking by stopped and smiled.
Finally, we went home after the longest day ever. I’m not sure how other people spent the last day of fall semester, but I couldn’t have asked for a better day.
For Christmas break, I’m going back to America and I’m so excited!!!
Bon Nadal a tots!
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