Bon Nadal!

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I know, I know. It’s been almost 4 months since I’ve written anything in this travel blog. But honestly, in order to have any material to wrtie in a travel blog, I really should be doing some travelling. It’s gonna seem crazy, but right now I’ve been doing less travelling than I do when I’m living in the US. I’ve been unbelievably busy working at the school where I work. In addition, I have a job at a language academy, private classes, as well as personal Spanish classes for myself. All in all, I’m probably working somewhere around 40 hours a week, not including all the planning I have to do. I’m not complaining at all, in fact I’m having a really great time. I’m just trying to give some weak justification for not having written in my travel blog sooner. Please forgive me.

And now… on with the blog.

For Christmas this year, I decided to go back to Catalunya and spend it with my Catalan family. So in this blog I am going to write about their bizarre and amazingly wonderful Christmas traditions.

The break started off on the 22nd of December. At the school where I am working we had a big Christmas pagent. The children dressed up as shepards or Santa Claus and sang songs to the parents. It was really cute. Some of the songs in English could even be understood! After the pagent all the teachers went out for a big meal. We went to this amazingly cute restaurant right on the water in the next town over. I didn’t even feel like I was in Spain, it felt more like La Jolla or Del Mar. The meal was great, 5 courses of delicious food, wine, and shots of Orujo at the end. After the meal, the principal at my school drove me to the airport to fly to Barcelona.

Christmas is celebrated over 2 days in Catalunya, on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. There is a tradition in Catalunya, instead of a Christmas Tree for the presents to sit under, they have a tree trunk. It is given 4 legs and a face is painted on him. He also wears a hat and is covered by a blanket. The way the trunk works is that the children go into another room while the parents hide gifts underneath the trunk. Once the parents are done, the kids come into the room and are given beating sticks. Yes, beating sticks. They then sing a song while beating the trunk. The song translated more or less goes like this, “Poop trunk, Christmas trunk. We put the pork with salt. Then hen in the pasture. The pony to the top of the pine tree. Touch, touch Valentine!” I kid you not, this in what the song translates to. Once the song is finished, the blanket is removed and the kids find their gifts underneath. Of which the trunk apparently pooped out. The kids then open their gifts and the whole thing is repeated again about 4 or 5 times until the trunk poops out onions. Then you know there’s no more gifts. In addition to pooping the trunk, there’s a big family meal. This was at my friend, Marta’s grandmother’s house in Cassa de la Selva near Girona about an hour north of Barcelona. One of the traditional Christmas eve foods is snails. They were made with some sort of red sauce and stuffed with sausage and were absolutely delicious. I would recommed them to anyone. We also had steak with mushrooms. Haha, my family would die if they knew how I was eating now since I had gone two years without eating any type of pork or beef. Then there is dessert which for Christmas is turrones. Turrones are basically sweet bricks made of all different types of things. The two most traditional types of turrones are duro and blanda (hard and soft). The hard one is similar to peanut brittle in texture but it’s white and has almonds inside. The soft one is similar to peanut butter, but harder, sweeter, and made of almonds. After the meal, everyone goes out partying. We went to the bar in Marta’s town, Nou Toc (which either means new or nine touch in Catalan).

On Christmas Day there is another big family meal. This meal was at Marta’s house. It was an amazing 3 course feast with soup, roasted calamari in a tomato-almond sauce, dessert, and of course lots and lots of catalan wine. Several hours are spent at the table even after the food is done; just drinking and talking.
All this time completely submersed in a new culture and new language is about the best thing that anyone could ask for when wanting to pick up a new language. It is truly reminescent of an intensive language course. By the end of the day, people were addressing me in Catalan and depending on the complexity of the sentence I was able to answer them in Spanish. “Que something, something menjat…?” More or less meant “What did you eat?” To which I could reply, “Menjo…(listing whatever I had eaten in Spanish).” The whole Christmas experience was amazingly interesting to see how another culture celebrates it, and to realize that in the United States we aren’t the only ones completely obsessed with food.
Additionally, I learned that other families in the world are just as quirky as my own. By the end of the meal, I had both of the grandmothers showing me their bras, to ask my opinion of them, and them offering to buy me similar ones. Dear lord, please don’t tell me that I need a jiggle-control, lift-action, boob-separating bra at the age of 23! I really can’t decide which grandmother behavior is more inappropriate the Catalan bra expose or playing the euphanism game “slide the stinky” with Grandma Mac. You know you liked it, Sean.

One would think that after these two days of gut-busting feasts we would be given a break. Luckily for me, a food-loving and gluttonous young lady, the following day as well is a holiday in Catalunya. Apparently the 26th of December is San Sebastian, or Esteban, or some saint…I apologize, so many saint days I can’t keep them straight. In any event, as soon as the meal from the previous day was digested we headed on over to Marta’s aunt and uncle’s house for another meal. Marta and I decided to bring a taste of California to the party and we prepared guacamole and bought a bag of tortilla chips. After the meal when almost everyone passed out of the sofa thanks to 3 unprecendently large meals, I decided to hang out with Marta’s young cousins.
The house being out in the middle of the country, is surrounded by dirt roads and trails. So we set out on one of the trails. Within 15 minutes we came upon the house of the closest neighbors. These neighbors happen to be a very old couple who live in a completely stone house which is completely free of electicity. They heat their house with a fire, cook over a fire, and go to the bathroom in the outhouse in the back. Upon meeting these two you would never guess that they were living a life without modern conveniences. They were just as happy and as capable as the next. And I feel like I’m roughing it this year without connection to the internet at home, or anywhere near my home.

The following day we headed to Barcelona. From there I went to visit Tarragona on my own. Tarragona is about an hour south of Barcelona by train. As a city itself, it really isn’t all that nice. But it has amazingly well perserved Roman ruins that and a great museum that explains the history and construction of it all. The best part of the ruins is what they call the Circo Romano or Roman Circus. It basically was a stadium that was used for chariot races and games. The ruins are reinforced by modern buildings so that they are strong enough to withstand foot traffic passing through. You can walk through these ruins, take pictures, enter every small room with at your own speed. The really interesting thing is that when you look at the walls because they are reinforced by modern buildings, you’ll find hand carved, irregular bricks, next to perfectly uniform, modern bricks. If you like Roman ruins, and ever find yourself in Catalunya, go check out Tarragona, it is amazing.

I realize that this blog entry is rather long, and if you’re still with me, I consider you a very patient person. I do want to talk about two other points, New Years and Wise Men’s Day, but my patience is beginning to run low with this blog entry. I will save the next two points for the following blog, which will likely come in May. Haha, seriously I’ll try to make it sooner than May. How’s April for you?

Much love,
Dannie

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Photos

Christmas Crios
Just a few of the kids dressed up for the Christmas pageant.

Christmas Tios
Christmas logs just bringing some spirit!

Loading him up!
Aunt Mila loading up the logs.

Smack Down
Claudia, mid log smackdown.

Cutting the ham
They let me take the reins and cut the ham leg.

Tarragona
Coastline in Tarragona, in December.

Tarragona II
Roman Ruins

Comments

[Mom]

Christmas
I'm so happy!! Finally I get to see some pictures. Will we ever see you for Christmas again? Miss you a lot. Love, Mom

[Auntie N.]

Slidding the Stinky
Ha! Ha! Love it!!!