Christmas Celebrations

Tuesday evening I went with Cecilia and her teachers to their English-teacher dinner. We had tapas at a restaurant in Priego. Her principal came and we ordered fried sardines (which looked like French fries), fried calamari, eggplant (also fried) with a honey sauce, roasted peppers, meat with French fries (I didn’t eat it) and some tiny fried fish. Basically I was sick afterwards from having eaten so much fried food so late at night. It was still a lot of fun to be out to dinner with them and everyone was really nice.

Wednesday afternoon, David called me to tell me that he had received an email saying our identification cards had come in. Thursday morning, Cecilia and I woke up early to walk Erin to the bus station. Then we came home for a little while before returning to the bus station to take a bus to Córdoba. We (finally) got the cards and she took a train to Madrid. I came back to Priego for my school’s faculty party. At 3:15, I put on a dress and went up to the center of town to meet the other teachers. They were standing around the bar having a drink while waiting for everyone to arrive. After a few minutes we went upstairs to the banquet/party room. The following describes yet another marathon lunch.

Our appetizer courses: first we had a paté, which I think was Cornish hen (I know it was a bird like chicken, but smaller). It was pretty good, mostly because there was some roasted pepper on the plate, which I added to my cracker and paté. Next, the servers brought ham and cheese plates around. The other teachers were shocked that I don’t like ham (this was jamón ibérico, the most expensive and “best” ham). Appetizer three was artichokes with garlic sauce and pieces of ham. I ate the artichokes which were delicious. Fourth, we had a mixed fried seafood plate (calamari, shrimp and chunks of a white fish).



After eating all of this food (there was also olives and bread on the table), our lunch was served. I had swordfish with seafood sauce and garlic potatoes. Drinks were included in our price, so everyone drank a lot of wine. That meant I got to taste a few different kinds of wine. I prefer the Rioja to the Rivera. For dessert (which I didn’t eat) there were little portions of things that looked like bread pudding. We also had coffee/tea and rosolí, which is a liquor made of anis and coffee. It’s really good and many people make it at home. It’s light and you can’t taste the alcohol in it.

We toasted several times during the lunch. At one point, José María, deputy principal and husband of the principal, was leading the toast and said we were toasting three things: our families, our friends, and the child growing inside his wife’s body. The entire room stopped. No one (except Lourdes) knew that María José was pregnant. I think she was even a little surprised that he announced the pregnancy like this. Of course, everyone had to have another shot glass of rosoli to celebrate. There was another school at the table next to ours and they had to come over and congratulate her also.

We also had a singing contest with the other school. They started singing Christmas songs in Spanish and our group sung some in response. Then they sung on in English, which we followed by singing much louder in English. This kept going for a while, until they sung Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. I yelled out that it wasn’t really Christmas song and my teachers started by singing more (actual) Christmas songs in English. We clearly won the singing contest.

After lunch (at around 7pm), we went back downstairs to the bar for our “digestive” cocktails. I didn’t drink, but most of the teachers had mixed drinks. We stood around talking and singing until 10 pm, when everyone wanted to go to another bar. At this point I went home because I was tired and my lungs could no longer handle the second-hand smoke.

Friday morning we went to Teatro Victoria for the children’s holiday concert. Getting into the theater was a pain because of all the parents outside. Amazingly, we got all the kids seated and the show started early. First, the sixth-graders “performed” a play about Christmas, which no one could hear because the microphones were too far away from them. Then, each class sung a song in Spanish and another in English including the nursery school kids (the 3, 4, and 5 year olds sung together).


The first grades sung "10 Little Angels."

The concert was great and the children did a really good job. The only problem was the length: it was way too long for the nursery school kids to sit through. They weren’t interested in watching the bigger kids and kept asking to go to the bathroom. They were also too small for the seats. The kids squirmed a lot and when they did, the seats would close with them inside.



Three-year-olds before the concert.

After the concert, we walked up to the school where the kids had a Christmas party for the rest of the day. Some classes played games, while other kids were allowed to play with clay and puzzles. They had tons of food. A group of parents dressed up as the three wise men and came around giving each child a bag of candy.



Here in Spain, most children get presents on January 6th rather than on Christmas. I went around saying goodbye to the students and teachers before taking a photo of the nativity scene the children had made and then leaving school to run my errands.