Boas Festas!

Happy belated Holidays! Winter time in Spain means lots of parties and time off work, which means lots of wine and lots of family, which means lots of food and lots of happiness! Here is a breakdown of how I spent my holiday season.

Thanksgiving

The epitome of American holidays: Thanksgiving. It also happens to be my favorite holiday. Christmas is great, Easter is cute, but Thanksgiving is the embodiment of my binging dreams realized. Unfortunately, Thanksgiving isn't celebrated in Europe! Makes sense though, with the whole holiday revolving around the Americas being "discovered", why the heck would Europe be excited about that? 

So anyway, due to the lack of local Thanksgiving celebrations, I repeated what I did last year and celebrated with a group of Americans, dabbled with a Brit and some Spaniards! I can't compare this year's celebration to last year's because 1) I have poor memory 2) they were distinct groups of Americans 3) the food was different but all delicious. What can one truly complain about at Thanksgiving? "UGH I only had five helpings of pumpkin pie this year instead of the six last year. This SUCKS" heh heh heh. I forget what I made last year...but this year I made a cheesecake with a nutella ganache sauce and I am proud to say that I think I have topped Grinnell D-hall's version (now if only I could do the same with the baked ziti...). As with every year, this Thanksgiving ended with me feeling bloated and slightly ill and thus deciding to go to sleep...but it wouldn't be Thanksgiving if my day didn't end as such!! 

Christmas

Our own little creation!

Professor's Christmas Dinner

Although it takes away a lot from the glory of my birthday on the 29th, I still find the place in my heart to forgive Christmas and enjoy it a little (lololol). We decorated our house the weekend after Thanksgiving and I am very proud of how things turned out! We made our own little tinsel hanging things and decorated our tree in classy white lights and gold ornaments. I have to give props to my friend and room mate from last year, Anna, for injecting me with the Christmas spirit that I haven't felt since I was a child. This spirit is very much alive with me this year as well! So we decorated our house while listening to classic Christmas songs, and we even bought a little pine scented oil to burn as we decorated :) 

The Christmas season was getting into full swing and I was absolutely having every second of it. I started practicing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" with my younger students the week after Thanksgiving. I was so excited when I first saw "Merry Christmas" written in the Zara display in late November. Seeing the mall fully decorated with Christmas ornaments and lights warmed my heart. And I had one of the most enjoyable nights of Christmas celebrations when I went to my school's professor Christmas dinner--I know the professors so much more than I did last year and it really makes a difference!

Dessert!

Mashed potatoes, dinner rolls, mac and cheese, and chicken

It was all a happy epoca leading up to a cute little Christmas with my favorite man, Eddie! Typically, Christmas eve, or nochebuena is big here, and people eat dinner consisting of lots of seafood: prawns, scallops, shrimp, mussels, crab, etc. So that is what I ate at the professor's Christmas dinner, but for our little family dinner we decided to just make whatever our (my) heart desired and not adhere to any of the traditional Spanish dinner rules. So, what did we make? As an appetizer we mounted piles of cheese and jamon serrano on a plate (I suppose that is actually quite Spanish...but next we ventured away from the typical!), which we followed up with buttery mashed potatoes, baked mac and cheese, and honey roasted chicken! No, there were no vegetables to be found in our meal but we didn't want to be too healthy. Dessert was (and always is) my favorite part: Pumpkin Cheesecake and Pecan Pie. It was my first time making each of these and I was 100% satisfied with the results!! So we ate all of this, rolled around and complained about how full we were, drank some wine, opened our gifts, got dressed and went out to one of the village bars to finish off the night! Bo Nadal!

New Year's Eve

Last year, for New Year's Eve I found myself atop Montjuic in Barcelona, screaming "BONNE ANNEE" at the top of my lungs with some of my favorite French and American people around me. It was...the bomb. This year was a much tamer affair; we stayed at home, made a nice little dinner, and rang in the New Year from the comfort of our couch. We had gone out for a long night a couple days before for my birthday, so we weren't dying to have another wild night so soon after! 

My Birthday Dinner

Spain's version of New Year's is pretty distinct from a traditional American New Year's. First of all, because of the meal schedule (I assume), it's typical for people to eat dinner as a family (which is traditionally between 9-10pm), enjoy the midnight countdown together, and then the jovenes go out to party with their friends afterwards. It's nice to see this holiday so family-oriented! I'm used to saying good night and Happy New Year to my family around 6pm at which point I go out and celebrate wildly with friends. 

Hmm...

Also, Spain has a cool tradition of eating twelve grapes to ring in the new year. Essentially, 16-20 seconds before midnight there's a bunch of chiming on TV to warn you to get your grapes ready, and then for the last twelve seconds of the year you are to attempt to eat twelve grapes for good luck. Everyyyyyyone in Spain does it! Sounds easy, but I dare you all to try it! At midnight I had eight grapes in my mouth and only two making their way down my esophagus. At a supermarket I had seen a tiny can of twelve handpicked seedless grapes but those appeared to be a bit suspect, so we opted to challenge ourselves with seeds! And failed. But it's all about the experience :)

Reyes Magos

January 6 is known as el dia de los reyes magos, or "Magic King's Day" (aka the three wisemen). This is truly the big winter time holiday for Spaniards, from what I can tell. Christmas and Santa Claus/Father Christmas are slowly becoming more and more prominent, but most people as young as 30 years-old will tell you that when they were children, winter was all about los reyes magos and Santa Claus was just an urban legend from a faraway country! Essentially, the children behave exactly as they would with Santa Claus...but with one of the three kings: Baltasar/Balthasar, Gaspar/Caspar, and Melchor/Melchior. Kids have their favorite rey to whom they write a letter requesting gifts. On January 5th there is a big procession welcoming the reyes, and this is called the cabalgata. Apparently they throw out candy to all the children and, I don't know, they wave? Anyway, because January 6th is a holiday, everyone has vacation up until at least January 8th! I took advantage of this very long break by going to visit France...

Pueblo Living

Our street in Sobrado

One ordinary September day, I was walking through our village of Sobrado do Bispo, minding my own business. As I was walking, I came across a group of three elders, talking about who knows what in their Galician language. I continued on without acknowledging them, as I always do when I'm in Ourense. Last year, I quickly learned that smiling or acknowledging people as you pass them by is not standard Ourense behavior. Acting in such a manner provokes strange stares from women or, worse, big overtly friendly and slightly suggestive smiles from particular older males.

So, as I said, here I am innocently walking in Sobrado, and I pass by this group of elders. I continue walking, their voices serving as background music to my little Cynthia world. I'm about 20 meters away and the voices are still quite loud. 40 meters away, still loud. Doesn't sound usually get quieter as you distance yourself from the source? I turn on my "Spanish active hearing" (yes, I have been here for two years but I still have to actively listen in order to figure out what people are saying), which, in reality is only half useful because the elders are speaking Galician. So my Spanish active hearing detects something along the lines of  "HEY. Why don't you say good afternoon?". Oh f, they're talking to me! I turn around, laugh nervously, and send a "buenas tardes" their way. From that point forward, I have never passed by someone in the village without greeting them. You should see me nowadays. I'm now the one who will call out from across the street "hola" to someone who doesn't even realize I'm there. I just want to keep my bases covered.

A pretty vineyard in Sobrado

I'm not sure how many people live in Sobrado, but I would guess less than 200. There are two bars and a grocery store, but other than just a bunch of houses with huge vineyards and other big green fields. The experience of this daily life is totally distinct from that of living in Ourense. I wake up in the morning and hear a rooster crowing. When I gather the courage to run around the inescapably hilly terrain I come across some farms that reek of a manure that only induces nostalgia of days in my youth, visiting my family in Mexico. Everyone in the village knows everyone else in this village. When I come across someone new and they ask me where I'm from, they say "Oh yeah, you must be Eddie's girlfriend! The American!"

Magosto en Bentraces

Living in this village twenty minutes outside of Ourense does have its downside: the commute. The first few weeks of getting used to it were kind of awful. I've always been highly reliant on using a car and arriving wherever I want at whatever time I want (late) and thus leaving at whatever time I want. But after getting used to the commute, it's just another part of my day! What's even better is that I recently applied for a special card that allows me to buy the bus tickets for half the price. Cha CHING. Another interesting thing about the bus commute is that by riding the bus every day, I have gotten to meet some of the other daily commuters. One nice older lady, for example, commutes every day from the same bus stop in Sobrado and so we always exchange friendly hellos, or if she's carrying lots of groceries I offer to help her out. She has told me she travels to Ourense to spend time with her two daughters, but then she likes to come back to her own house in Sobrado and have her own freedom, a.k.a. she is a PARTIER!!! Just kidding. I met another man recently who lived in New York for twenty years, was too shy to speak any English to me, but told me to knock on his door anytime I'm around so we can chat. So essentially, the village people (heh heh) I've met so far have been super friendly!

Me and our friend Brais at Magosto

The community has been very welcoming, and it's been nice to see this kind of environment as opposed to city people doing their own thing in Ourense. I saw part of that community atmosphere during la vendimia (my previous post about harvesting grapes for wine) but I also saw it during Magosto. This is the chestnut party of Ourense during November, and I kid you not I have asked various born-and-raised Ourensanos and none have known the origin of the party. Last year I went up on Montealegre mountain with a bunch of other people to make a  bonfire and eat chestnuts and chorizo and drink wine and licor cafe. This year I opted for a more tranquilo event, which took place in the village next to us called Bentraces. There was also roasting of chestnuts and meat and lots of drinking of wine and licor cafe, but in a more controlled environment. Everyone from the village and surrounding villages met up in this club house-type building to eat, there was live entertainment and people began to dance eventually, too. There was also a funny older lady who was a dancing machine, going around asking all the younger guys to dance. It was very cute to see the community come together and everyone seemed to take advantage to catch up with neighbors they hadn't seen in awhile!

People who find out that I live in a village seem to be surprised that I opted to do so. I won't lie, I am also surprised that I was persuaded into doing so haha! But I can honestly say that life out here is superior than city life, in my opinion. I don't wake up to my windows shaking from the traffic passing underneath my window. I don't have a bitter landlady sucking me clean of all my euros. We have privacy that you don't get when you're sharing an apartment in a building. I love going on walks and inhaling clean fresh country air. Shoot, I think I just might be a country girl at heart!

La Vendimia

This year, I am living in a small village outside Ourense. It's been a bit of an adjustment, but I'm finding that I enjoy the tranquility of living in a village. I prefer waking up hearing a rooster crow in the distance, as opposed to waking up to my windows shaking from cars passing by in the busy road beneath my window, as often occurred last year.

Village living is distinct, but I'll get more into that in a separate post. For now I want to explore a very cute and ancient tradition of Ourense and the surrounding wine regions: La Vendimia. This is the practice of going out to harvest the grapes used to produce wine. It's usually a full day of family fun, and though it only consists of cutting grape bunches using sharp scissors, it gets to be tiring!

Eddie and Me

We woke up at the crack of dawn!!...just kidding, just kidding. This is Spain, only the bakers wake up early. We met up with the group of harvesters (the family of Eddie's boss) around 9:00, and ate a leisurely breakfast before getting to work. All twenty or so of us were sitting around a table, with the owners of the house urging/forcing everyone to eat the muffins and churros and to drink coffee and Cola Cao. Then the pick-up trucks (which, may I add, I had never previously seen pick up trucks in Spain. They're all about compact cars here.) were loaded up with materials and all of us packed into two trucks.  It's truly a family ordeal, with grandparents holding hands with their grandchildren, who are equipped with safety scissors, as they move along the rows of vines, cutting the grapes down. Then of course there are the middle-aged members of the family as well. Everyone has their own job according to their ability. It's very cute! We arrived to the first grape field and everyone got right to work. Me, being a noob but a competitive little sucker, ran to my own row of grape vines and started imitating what the others were doing. Some of the others were well over 60 years old yet somehow they worked faster than me! The task was simple:

1. Cut the grapes off the vines 
2. Fill the big black buckets with grapes
3. Haul the buckets to the large blue sacks
4. Call out helplessly for a stronger person to empty my bucket into the sack
5. Repeat

My couture outfit for the day

We finished the first field in under ten minutes. I thought to myself, man, this is a breeze. What are these people talking about, saying we'll be cutting grapes for four hours??...I spoke too soon.

We made our way from grape field to grape field, my endurance crumbling progressively after each one. I will say the experience is particularly cute because it is a good way to get to know the others and makes you feel like part of the family. Of course, everyone was speaking Gallego so I constantly had my eyes squinted in an attempt to better understand, but you know what, by the end of the day I understood it better. Everyone shares anecdotes to pass the time as we're all snipping away, and it's a nice feeling. It's what kept my spirit from disappearing completely.

I'd never seen such pretty grapes!

Around 1 o' clock we finally made our way to the last field. I had been deceived 100% by the first field. It had been a grain of sand compared to the other beach sized fields that followed! (I exaggerate a little...). The last field surrounded the family's house... in every direction.... for about 500 m. Before we could muster the energy to finish this mammoth field it was necessary to refuel...Spanish style! We gathered inside the house to eat a hearty lunch consisting of boar and fish and empanada and garbanzos and salad and cheese and ham and wine everything my little Spanish mind could think of. The mother of the family had single-handedly created this feast for all of us, and for that I deeply admire her. Who would have known that a short stout woman could produce so much wonder in a kitchen!! Ugh it was so good and I ate as much as I could, and she kept urging everyone to eat more. I didn't even have room at the end of the meal for licor cafe nor dessert...that should tell you how filled to the brim I was.

Once we were refueled and buzzed enough to gather the courage to conquer the remaining field, we equipped ourselves with shears and headed back out. This. Field. Took. FOREVER. There were red grapes and white grapes and grapes hanging from fences and grapes hanging from an overhead trellis and grapes on the ground and grapes on trees. It was nuts. It took us a good two hours to complete it and we were absolutely pooped afterward! Once we finished, we washed the grape juice stickiness off ourselves and collapsed into chairs. The host brought us cool glasses of beer as well as rice pudding. Oh, did I ever devour both of them. I'd like to think I deserved it!

The family invited us to stay for dinner, but we declined and opted instead for a couple hours of napping at home. It was an exhausting but very fulfilling day. Here's to hoping that the family remembers us when they are handing out the bottles of wine they make with the grapes we helped pick :D :D :D