christmas time in españa

it has only been two weeks since i last posted, but i feel like its been months. christmas time (aka hanukkah time for us judios) has been very event filled (eventful?) for me. in fact it has been so eventful that i can only really remember a few of the things i have done! (will recount events later)

this christmas time has been very special to me. although i do not technically celebrate christmas, i do celebrate the happiness and family time that comes along with this season. unfortunately, being in spain, I was unable to spend time with mi familia. this is actually the second year in a row i have been away from home for the holidays (promise ill be home next year), because last year i was volunteering in belize at an orphanage. working in an orphanage really made me appreciate the things i do have. so although ideally i would have loved to be home for the holidays, i am extremely grateful for the people who took me into their homes so i wouldnt spend christmas eve/day alone.

on christmas eve, i ate dinner with ismael's family. his mother or father, not sure, cooked a delicious typical spanish meal. there were plates para picar: jamon, cheese, another kind of jamon, olives (i think), and some form of pork as the main course. i made latkes to share a little judaism with the family. although i consider myself quite a terrible chef, i think they came out well. at least ismael's family was polite and told me they were good. also, i found applesauce in corte ingles! so mixed into this typical spanish meal, we ate latkes. of course, in typical spanish tradition, we ate them as a tapa, as in each latke was cut into 4 and picked at with a toothpick. not a bad idea, no wonder spanish people stay so skinny. whereas we are at the table eating 3 too many latkes per person, the spaniards are tapeando (tapa-ing)

i think this was in fact my very first christmas dinner, anywhere in the world. in my mind, im not exactly sure why, i imagine families sitting around and singing christmas carols while getting drunk on christmasy beverages. i dont recall any villancicos (cool spanish word for christmas carols) being sung, although they were playing on the radio. but i do recall beverages being drank/drunk/drinked? (yes, i am here teaching english)

on christmas eve night, after dinner with ismael's fam, i went out with my spanish amiga isabel. we went to a bar/club in a part of sevilla i havent been to yet (good to know sevillanas). i had a lot of fun, i met her friends and danced and drank until 6 in the morning.

the next day, christmas day,(which was actually the same day i went to sleep) i woke up and went directly to another christmas celebration. this time it was with the family of another friend, pilar. i met pilar through some auxiliar friends that live in the same building as her. pilar was very sweet to invite me to spend the day with her family. i went to her house around 2:30. turns out lunch wasn't actually at her house but in the apartment across the hall, that of her aunt/uncle/cousins. (jennie if you are reading this, i hope one day we live across the hall from each other)
well, spanish families are typically pretty big, and pilar's was no exception. when i walked in the door i was introduced to about 20 people. everyone was super welcoming and friendly. even though im jewish and american, i didnt feel out of place at all at this spanish christmas celebration. again, we had the typical feast. there was jamon and cheese and stuffed peppers and some meat i couldnt identify to start. by the time the main course came out, i was already stuffed. but i was told by various family members that i had not eaten anything...same thing happened with ismael's family. i guess you havent eaten enough unless you feel physically ill and can no longer put food in your body. well i didnt feel physically ill, so i ate the main course, didnt want to be rude.

at 9:30pm, after watching elf in spanish (awesome!), i was about ready to go home. i had very little sleep the night before and was going to madrid the next day and hadnt begun packing. i went to say goodbye to everyone, and they said to me "you can't leave, we haven't eaten dinner yet!" dinner! yikes i was still full from the 5 hours of eating i had recently finished. but to have the true christmas day experience, i stayed for dinner, which was mostly just leftovers from lunch. no one really ate that much, i think everyone was as full as i was. we all eventually migrated to the couch, where there is a coffee table with a heater under it (genius) and watched el diablo viste en prada (the devil wears prada). i really like watching movies i have seen 100 times in spanish because i feel like i actually understand what they are saying even though its more likely that i just have the lines memorized.

there was also a christmas lunch at school which in the sequence of events actually happened before the other two meals, although i am writing about it last. we ate at a restaurant in pilas. i think we had the whole restaurant to ourselves. there were about 100 courses and lots of drinks included. after the lunch we went to a "club" in pilas, and danced and drank some more. it was really fun partying with my coworkers. i feel like i know them (some at least) much better. it was a really good time and a great way to start my vacation.


so it turns out i havent actually been doing all that much this christmas season, just eating a lot! but isnt that what the holidays are for afterall??

lots of love from madrid!
felices fiestas

my trip to PRAGUE blog

I woke up 4:45 last Friday morning to go to Prague. Needless to say I was exhausted when I got to the airport at 6am. But the good news is I checked in and got through security in approximately four minutes, so I had an hour and a half to do nothing before my three hours of doing nothing on the plane. I had a layover in Barcelona and a short five hours after I left Seville, I arrived in Prague.

Bill (nickname of my lacrosse friend Lindsay) gave me some instructions regarding how to get to her house from the airport. Luckily, everyone I encountered in Prague spoke English, because Czech is not a language I can even kind of understand. On the half hour bus ride from the airport to I noticed about 3 mcdonalds and 5 KFCs. I know that america’s nasty food chains are all over the world, but for some reason I was shocked/surprised by the number of chains I saw.

My weekend was filled with lots of sightseeing, beer drinking, and going into stores to keep warm. It was a good 30 degrees colder there than it is in Seville. Although I am from New York, my four years in California really thinned my blood. Luckily, the people of Prague believe in heating their building. (side note-my school no longer turns the heat on because of something about the price of oil, ergo it's really cold inside and joanna is not very happy)

Bill and Ted, my other lacrosse friend (yes as in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventures) showed me a good time. I met their new study abroad friends. I ate some delicious food including a fried cheese sandwich, some delicious version of a hot dog, and hot wine, mmmmmm. and beer of course.

*my fried cheese sandwich

Since I was there so close to Christmas, the city was filled with Christmas markets and Christmas trees. Decorations make me so happy!

Prague is a really beautiful city. I am so glad I had the opportunity to go! Thanks to Bill and Ted for an awesome weekend.

PS-After almost three months of promises, I finally went kayaking with Ismael today! It was not the most beautiful day but I still really enjoyed it. Kayaking is a cool way to see the city. But unfortunately it's not as easy as it looks.

Yooooo quiero dar, sevilllaaaa mi corazón

This past weekend was an incredible experience for me. I was volunteering at the Copa Davis (Davis Cup) final between España and Argentina. I met lots of new people: English, Spanish, famous, not famous. I got Nadal and Ferrer to sign my hat, and I got to go down on the court after Spain’s victory. I also was able to watch the final game on Sunday from 1000 euro seats, that I paid nothing for, except my time.

Speaking of which, this weekend I did not sleep much. I was pretty much busy from early in the morning until really late at night. I was a transportation volunteer for the ITF (International Tennis Federation) which meant that I was in charge of coordinating private cars and shuttle buses going from the hotel to the stadium and back for kinda important people. It was quite an interesting mix of people we (me and my partner Nacho) had to deal with. Some people weren’t given clearance for a private car but thought they were entitled to one. Some people apparently never learned to read because everyday we had the bus schedule posted on a board in the hotel, and still people asked what time the buses were leaving.

Each day we caught the last bus to the stadium to watch the match. Since we were transportation volunteers, not ushers, we didn’t have any official duties during game time. Instead we were told to find seats where we could and enjoy the match. And I took full advantage of that instruction. I found pretty good seats each day, but Sunday’s seats were by far the best.

After the final match on Sunday, and after spain was presented with the cup, the volunteers were able to go down onto the court and TOUCH the very clay that the players had played on, QUE SUERTE. But really, it was cool to be down on the court, especially since Rafa and some other teammates were still down there doing interviews. When we left the stadium, a few volunteers and I decided it was time for us to celebrate. We may not have one a davis cup, but we did work hard over the weekend and deserved a little celebration.

At first we went to the hotel where the Spanish selection was staying to try to get a few more pictures/signatures, but it was so heavily guarded that we decided it just wasn’t worth it. Then we went to the argentinian’s hotel, where there was less police security. We waited for almost an hour and half because one of the other volunteers wanted a picture with one of the players, SJASJ, so badly that she wouldn’t let us leave until she got it. Which she did, so it was a success. In the mean time, we made some friends with argentine fans. We all got some dinner together, seven native Spanish speakers and me. I thought the andaluz accent was difficult to understand, but holy cow, I think the Argentineans were speaking another language entirely.

En fin, it was a really great experience for me. I would give up all that sleep in a heartbeat to do it again. Now I am getting ready to go to Prague tomorrow. My life isn’t too bad right now…

my video of nadal's winning point:

ps-the title of this blog is part of a song that was played every time spain won a game or set or match. the spanish are very into their songs. the argentineans might be even more enthusiastic if possible.

pps-sorry if the video doesn't work. blogspot is giving me some problems.