First of all, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!! After being homesick on Thanksgiving, I anticipated that Christmas would be even worse; however, I actually had a really great holiday season here so far.  One of my roommates went home to Wisconsin for break, another when to Wales to visit family, and my other roommate had her family come here to Spain, and they arrived Christmas afternoon.  So, Christmas Eve my roommate and I had dinner together around 8:30 and headed into the center to check out the lights.  It turned out though that the center was totally dead because everyone was still at home eating with their families. The only people out were tourists with their maps and cameras looking for a place to eat, except pretty much everything was closed.   So we decided to go back to our place for a few hours and try going back out later.  We invited a few other Americans over to our place to have some drinks.  Then around 1:30 -2 am I got a skype call from my family.  It was pretty funny because my friends and I were a bit tipsy by then and they were trying to talk to everyone too. Being with friends and being able to actually talk to my family made being away for Christmas so much easier.  Then after the skype conversation we went out to the bars and had a great time.  As usual, we stayed out until about 6am Christmas morning and I didn’t wake up until about 1.  Later that afternoon, my roommate’s family arrived and they all left to spend the week traveling around Andalucia.  After they left, I sat myself down on the couch and opened up the presents from my parent’s package and then bummed around for a while. At 7, I went to see a nativity play at one of the local elementary schools with some of my Spanish friends. It was actually really great and well done. After that I had dinner with some of my American friends and we went out for a little bit.  I started to feel kind of crappy so I went home early and went to bed. Unfortunately, I spent the next few days laying on the coach all day because I caught a really bad cold and cough.  My guess is a little too much partying and not enough sleeping.  So we’ll fast forward to New Year’s because I doubt any of you are interested in the quantity of mucous coming out of my nose and lungs or how many rolls of toilet paper I went through blowing my nose. But first, here are some pictures of the lights in the city and just some other randoms from my holiday season here in Sevilla:

My roomies and I in front of our stockings and mini tree. 

Great view of the lights from the center of Sevilla

Christmas lights in front of the cathedral

 

Ok, so a typical New Year’s here in Spain consists of a big dinner with your family at around 9:30ish, then the eating of the grapes and cheersing champagne, followed by a party at a club or a bar.  My friend Carmen invited me over to her family’s house for dinner, and I had a great time.  We started with a huge round of appetizers consisting of things like chorizo, ham, cheese, different kinds of bread and pate, shrimp and crab legs, and potato salad.  Then, we had a palate cleansing course of one of those creamy fruit salads, which was really delicious.  The main course was cordero lechal, which is basically a lamb that’s somewhere between 4-6 weeks old and has only been fed milk. I was a little weirded out by this, since I don’t like to eat veal since I know it’s baby cow. But then again, I ate suckling pig in Madrid, and that’s essentially the same idea.  So I pushed aside that pesky little moral dilemma and dug in.  It was really good and tender, but to be honest, I don’t think I like the flavor of lamb that much.  Slap it on a gyro with some tzatziki sauce and I’m a happy camper, but that was my first time eating regular lamb and I wasn’t too excited about it.  Overall all though, it was a really great meal.  As midnight drew closer, we flipped back and forth between different TV specials.  There didn’t seem to be a go-to like the Dick Clark Times Square ball drop, but various different programs.  The tradition is that at midnight, the clock strikes 12 times, and on each chime, you each a grape, and for each grape you make a wish (or just one big wish for the whole thing).  Then, if you don’t keep time with the chimes and finish all your grapes by the end of the chiming you’re said to have bad luck for the whole year.  This is actually harder than it sounds because a clock chime is pretty fast, especially when you have to eat another grape every time, and when you add the fact that I was trying to video tape this happening, it was pretty hard.  But I succeeded in eating all my grapes and getting it on tape, so good luck for me for 2012.

Getting ready to eat the first grape!

  After the grapes, we toasted the New Year with champagne, just like at home.  We stayed at her house until about 1am, and then Carmen, her cousin, and I all went to her cousin’s apartment when some more of his friends were meeting us. 

Cheers!

 

 

 There we listened to music and drank and danced and all that fun stuff.  One of my goals this year is to learn how to dance the sevillanas, which are the 4 typical flamenco dances of Sevilla, before the Feria in April.  As a result, my friends like to sing flamenco songs and dance with me when we’re drinking.  I keep telling them, though, that it’s going to take more than that for me to actually learn the steps.  We stayed there until about 4:30, then we went to a bar/club where all of our other Spanish friends were.  That was really fun because I got to see some more of my friends from last time that I hadn’t seen yet since I’ve been back.  We stayed there dancing until 7, right as you all were ringing in the New Year, and I made it to bed by about 8.  Needless to say, a fun time was had by all. 

 

Well I think that’s about all the excitement for the holidays. I felt really lucky to have such great friends because being with them combined with being able to skype with my family made these holidays really great.