Today was a very lovely day in the colegio. It was the day that the school celebrated Easter (or Pasqua in valenciano) and it was also the last day of school until the 17th of April. I have been looking forward to this day because I am in desperate need of a vacation. This week in school, we did a whole lot of nothing. As we do before most holidays, the children mostly colored Easter pictures and did word searches and things. I did, however, make a presentation about my trip to Paris and I presented it to my 5th and 6th graders this week. That was about the only productive thing that occurred.
Apparently, on the day before Easter break, most schools in Spain spend the day at a beach or park outside of school. I’ve heard that a lot of schools didn’t do it this year, because of the financial crisis in Spain, but fortunately our school did. At the beginning of the week the teachers and administrators were very nervous because it was supposed to be raining and thunder storming all week, and although it was cloudy this morning, it didn’t look like it was going to rain immediately so we decided to go to the park.
The park was a little far from our school so we took about 4 buses there. One by one, each grade level loaded onto the buses. Even infantil came along, wearing their hats and colored handkerchiefs so that they would be easy to identify.
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| My Mona de Pasqua |
Once we got to the park the children were free to run around and play. There were, however, designated areas to play in for each grade level and the infantil classes played inside of a fenced area of the park. I watched along with some of the other teachers as the 4th and 5th graders attempted to climb the monkey bars. Eventually, some of the children persuaded a couple of the teachers to give it a try. So some of the teachers tried it, and they weren’t very successful. For about an hour and a half the children played. Then, a couple of the parents came to bring the Easter monas for everyone to eat.
An Easter mona (or mona de Pasqua) is a traditional Easter treat mostly eaten in the Catalonia and Valencia regions of Spain symbolizing the end of Lent. The typical mona is a round or doughnut-shaped treat made with eggs, flour and sugar with one or more hardboiled eggs embedded in the surface. The egg in the mona symbolizes the resurrection of Christ. Traditionally godparents (padrinos) make or buy the monas and give them to their godchildren (ahijados) on Easter Monday and they eat them during family picnics. Also, according to old tradition, people normally crack the boiled eggs of the mona over someone else’s forehead. Although the traditional monas still exist, nowadays, many monas come with chocolate eggs to eat instead of the real hard boiled eggs and sometimes there is a small treat in the middle of the chocolate eggs.
After we gave the children their monas, we then set the table for the teachers to have their “breakfast.” This was basically a small traditional Spanish feast that we have had many times before at the school. We set the table with potato chips, nuts, chorizo (Spanish sausage), mussels, olives, mini pizzas and other stuffed pastries and we also had different carbonated beverages, water and beer. Normally when I am at a Spanish table setting like this, I am usually trying to figure out what the heck is in each item so that I can avoid the seafood. Spanish people really love anchovies and tuna and these things are always in a lot of the items that they cook. There were two types of pizzas, one had different vegetables on it, and the other one was decorated with anchovies. There were also different types of pastries, one was stuffed with spinach, one had tuna and some other stuff in it, and I didn’t bother to ask what was in the last kind. The teachers ate, drank, and socialized at a table in the middle of the park while watching the children. I mostly ate a lot of nuts and chips and had a vegetable pizza and a spinach pastry and I was very full at the end.
After eating, there were plenty of monas left so we each had one. It was my first time having a mona and to me it tasted like a donut. The funny thing about the monas that we had was that they were decorated with Disney’s High School Musical theme and when you opened up the chocolate egg, there were High School Musical stickers inside. Apparently that movie is still very popular in Spain.
When it was 12:00pm (we stayed at the park for 3 hours) we packed up all of the things, lined up the kids, got on the buses and headed back to school. We got back to school just in time for lunch so I went home, as well as some of the other children and teachers, and returned to school at 3:00pm.
The teachers originally planned to spend the afternoon having game sessions outside with the kids, but because it had just started to sprinkle, the games were cancelled. Therefore, most of the children just watched movies in their classrooms or played board games for the hour and a half that we were at school. The infantil English teacher and I had been planning an Easter egg hunt for the 4 and 5-year-olds to do that afternoon with their homemade Easter baskets that they made in class. We decided that we were still going to do it since it was only sprinkling.
I would barely call this an Easter egg hunt; it was more of a “Pick up the chocolate” game. The teacher had a small bag of chocolate and we just dropped the chocolate on the ground. We didn’t want the “hunt” to take too long because of the rain so we didn’t bother hiding the chocolates. We took each class outside one by one and told them to pick up only two chocolates. We also said that once everyone had two chocolates then they could go back and pick up more. Because we are their English teachers we gave them the instructions in English. The classroom teacher then asked one of the 4-year-olds what we said to them and the student repeated everything in valenciano. The teacher was amazed at how easily the 4-year-old understood what we said in English. She didn’t even understand it.
Because the children are so competitive, they immediately ran to pick up the chocolates and placed them in their Easter baskets. They were so excited about it and I must admit that it was the cutest sight ever! Although there wasn’t much chocolate, both classes got their candies and happily went back to their rooms. Later the English teacher told me that she would have bought more chocolate but she wasn’t sure how much she could buy because of the tight school budget.
Eventually, 4:30pm came around and as soon as the music started playing I gave everyone a Spanish kiss and said goodbye. Everyone asked me if I was going back to the United States for Easter break. I told them that I wasn’t going back to the states but that I also wasn’t yet sure what I was going to do. I then went home and studied a little for my valenciano class. As soon as my roommate came home from school she cleaned her room, packed her bags, and told me that she would see me on the 17thof April.
Later that day, I went to my valenciano class, came home and had a glass of wine to celebrate.
My Easter Break has finally begun!
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