Red and Green Tapas and White Elephant Party

Wednesday night after our failed trip to Córdoba we threw a party for our teachers at our apartment. The trip was a bust because on November 11, the people at the immigration office told us to come back in a month to get our residency cards and yesterday they told us to come back in seven to ten days because the cards had not arrived from Madrid. The first time we were there, they told us not to call (they actually wouldn't give us a phone number), but this time we have the phone number. So, next week I get to go back to Córdoba....for more paperwork. It's only really frustrating because if I leave the EU (like when I go to Morocco in January), there is a chance I won't be allowed back into Spain without this card.

So, the party.....everyone was told to wear red or green. Some of the guests (mostly other teachers, Spanish, American and Polish) wore Santa hats and we wore reindeer ears.

We had also asked everyone to bring some kind of tapa (appetizer). We wound up with a ton of food. We put out meatballs, a veggie plate, cheese, olives, and patatas bravas (essentially steak fries in a spicy sauce). People brought ham pate, big tuna empanadas, pasta salad, a big round ham and cheese sandwich, more olives, and tortilla (an omelet with potatoes and onions inside). We also had tons of stuff for dessert: chocolate ice cream truffles, cookies, candies and (we made) ice cream sandwiches.


Virgen de la Cabeza teachers singing Christmas songs (in English!)!


Everyone who wore something green...

Everyone ate tons of food, but we were still left with a bunch of stuff. They were also told to bring the worst/silliest gift they could find for a game we were going to play. It was similar to the worst gift game we play at Chaiken's house every New Year's Day. We picked numbers for the order and then choose gifts. The way it works is that person number two can either choose a gift or rob the gift person one had chosen. However, a gift can only be robbed three times.

Some of the gifts included: a toilet seat (actually robbed because some of the guests wanted it), a thong with a stuffed chicken on it, a light up flower vase (what I received), fake hair, a slimming belt, a toilet paper dispenser....Everyone had a great time and laughed a lot.


Fake hair!

Toilet seat!
They also stayed much later than they have stayed for our past parties. Even so, cleaning up was really easy because they had brought most of the stuff and we used plastic cups (we don't actually own enough cups to serve the 13 people we had at the party).