The Spanish Belén – The most, ummmm, "interesting" nativity scenes in the world.

This blog post is going to be short and sweet.  One of the most, ummm … we will use the word “interesting” ways the Spanish celebrate the Christmas holidays is through their much coveted nativity scene, Belén, which is Spanish for Bethlehem.

Almost every family in Spain has some form of a surprisingly elaborate nativity scene set-up in their home.  It’s the typical nativity scene with a mother Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus, however, these nativity scenes will usually include over 100, sometimes up to a thousand, different pieces.  Most are built on a massive scale – but they can be found everywhere from banks, to schools, to a family’s home.

A large Belén -- Spanish nativity scene.

However, the interesting part of a Belén is how the Spaniards illustrate their, shall we say, sense of humor...

Most Belén nativity scenes will include a secret cagón (literally translates to “a huge pooper”).  So, as you might gather, somewhere included in the nativity scene, usually hidden along a building or in a corner, the Spanish have included their own personal touch!

Allow me to introduce you to Señor Cagon…  Hello, sir.

A Christmas Vacation in Europe

  Vrolijk Kerstfeest!

That's "Merry Christmas" in Dutch.  This year we will be spending Christmas in Amsterdam!  The funniest thing about planning a trip to Amsterdam is telling someone you're going to Amsterdam.  No matter who it is, you will be met with a chuckle and a knowing 'smile'.  Immediately most people think of hookers & weed. 

Bier en chocolade.   

La bière et du chocolat.   

Bier und Schokolade.       

"Beer and Chocolate" in Dutch, French & German.

Where can you go to get some of the best 'blonde' beer in the world?  Belgium.  Where can you go to get some of the best chocolate in the world?  Belgium.  Need I say more?  I have to admit, I am slightly embarrassed that beer and chocolate were the main inspiration behind our desire to visit the country of Belgium.

Bonne année!

 

That's "Happy New Year" in French! 

Geographically it just made sense...  We would be in Belgium, heading south and what city "happened" to be on the way home to Spain?  PARIS!!!  What an incredible place to spend New Years Eve!  

And to make the trip even better, two of our best friends (and the people responsible for Todd and I being introduced 4 years ago) - Liz and Mike Stanton are flying to Paris to meet us for 4 days!

<--- We hope to have pictures of our own (just like the one to the left) to share when we return !

* I apologize in advance for any misspellings or errors in translation.  All translations were made using Google Translate.  Todd and I are not fluent in Dutch, French or German... still working on the Spanish!

The island of 'eternal springtime' - One week in Tenerife

First, we decided we would be going to ‘Tenerife’.

Then, we decided we would be calling it ‘The Canary Islands’.

Finally, we settled on calling it ‘an island off the coast of Africa’ – in order to make it sound as majestic as possible.

Even though it was all the same place, we were so excited to have the opportunity to spend a week in such a ‘far away’ island.  The more we thought about where we going, and when we actually located the island on a map, the more excited we became.

Honestly, I couldn’t but feeling like I was John Locke on the LOST, arriving on this mysterious island, ready for a ‘walk-about’.

The Canary Islands are an official territory of Spain, but in our opinion, they should really belong to Africa.   It’s kind of like French Polynesia … how does France get to claim a group of islands that is literally half way around the world?  But, I digress.  Tenerife is referred to as “the island of eternal springtime”.  The high was in the low-70’s every day with the low in the mid-60’s – pretty enjoyable for the first week of December.  It is also tagged “the friendly island”.  The island is full of British people that have settled there (that have a strange love for ‘The X Factor’) and eastern European tourists escaping from their less than warm winters.

Thanks to Sharon and Amanda Perzel for their help in making it possible to book an entire week in Tenerife on a discount.  Our room even provided a balcony view of  ‘Los Gigantes’ which are (as the name indicates) a series of gigantic volcanic cliffs – very similar to the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland.

We invited two friends, who are also auxiliares with us in Linares, Kelsey and Alex to join us for the week.  We took a 4 hour bus ride to Seville, a 2 hour flight to Tenerife, rented a car, and we were off to explore every inch of this magical island.

From the middle of Tenerife, the volcano Teide towers over the entire island.  In fact, this volcano (mountain) is the tallest point in all of Spain and the third largest volcano in the world!  The last major eruption was in 1792 and you can literally see where the lava flowed and how the new vegetation has only recently started to grow around it.   

The more we drove around the island the more we realized that every single feature of the island -- mountains, hills, valleys, ravines were influenced by the ever-present Mount Teide.  I think we were amazed by just about everything we saw.   

The idea that an island can completely sprout up out of the ocean from a volcanic eruption was completely foreign to us – but this is exactly what you see on Tenerife.  Never having been this close to a volcano before, everything about the island seemed different, from the vegetation, to the geography, to the weather.  According to the statistics, there are 15 species of plants on the islands that don’t exist anywhere else in the world. 

The Tajinaste flower.  It is a true indigenous species of Tenerife.  It flowers from late spring to early summer and is red in color (see picture below).

 
 And the volcanic rock was surreal.  The idea of “dirt” didn’t exist on the island.  The ground was covered in volcanic rock of varying colors.  It was amazing to see how many different colors of rock were created by the same volcano.   

Much of the terrain of the island reminded us of what you would see on Mars (at least how I would imagine it) rather than the typical Caribbean island with white sand beaches.  In fact, our favorite discovery was the black sand beaches that were created from lava getting into the ocean and then being eroded away, resulting in black sand!  While all of us were enamored with the idea of black sand, all of the locals look at it with disgust, as if it’s the inferior, “red-headed step-child” of the sand family.  It was the first time we have ever seen a black sand beach, so we were loving this “red-headed step-child”.  Just to prove our point, some of the ‘superior’ white sand beaches in Tenerife were actually created by importing sand from the Sahara Desert in Africa – a strange affinity for this white sand.

For me personally, it was absolutely one of the best week-long vacations I’ve ever experienced.  Everyday brought something completely new and foreign.  At night, the tunes from the touristy karaoke bars below our resort would float up into our room, to serenade us, while we went to sleep.

One specific highlight from this week was our first live viewing of a UGA football game.  Of course, if we had only known that we needed to travel to an island in the middle of the Atlantic to watch UGA play, maybe this wouldn’t have been our first trip.  Because of the amount of tourists in Tenerife, way more than the non-existent amount in Linares, the island has several bars with … wait for it … ‘satellite television’.  Apparently, it doesn’t exist in Linares, Spain yet.   Anyways, we were able to find a British sports bar that happened to have a channel called  “ESPN America” which happened to be playing the SEC Championship Game (UGA vs LSU).  Side-note:  Thank you ESPN America.  You call it luck, I call it fate.  It was the most fun I’ve ever had, or probably will ever have, watching UGA lose a football game. Even though we were being respectful, I’m pretty sure we quickly cleared out the bar with our cheering and shouting.  I’m sure we seemed crazy as everyone in the bar had previously been watching the UK’s beloved show… “The X Factor” in silence.  No joke.  I’m talking about the most crowded, most silent bar you’ve ever experienced.  The show is treated with so much respect; it must be revered in some religious sense.  So, there we were, 4 Americans at a British bar in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, watching UGA football, in English, with beer, chicken tenders and tequila shots.  Even losing quite badly, it was a special night.

Our first American visitors in Spain!

I feel so incredibly lucky to have two amazing friends who came to visit me (and Todd).  They came all the way to Spain to travel and to catch a glimpse of our new lives here in Linares.  It's amazing how quickly the time goes by...  Here are some of the highlights of trip, along with pictures. =)

We started off in Sevilla, which is spelled Seville in English.  As you can imagine this led to a little confusion in the initial planning stages... It was raining Saturday when Beth and Alexis arrived, but we made the most of it and got the day started out with some drinks and tapas -- what else is there to do when the weather is bad?!?  Besides shopping?  (Which we did immediately after.)  Then we ordered more tapas and headed to a flamenco show nearby...

Beth and Alexis were troopers going to a flamenco show their first night despite feeling a little jet-lagged and Alexis took drowsy Spanish cold medicine on top of it all (my fault)!

After the flamenco show we decided to call it a night, so my visitors could get nice and rested for all we had planned for the next, busy day of sightseeing.  We all slept in on Sunday and went to breakfast where we ordered 'tortilla española' one of my favorite dishes in Spain.  We sat eating breakfast, overlooking the cathedral which we planned to visit as soon as it opened (not until 2:00pm on Sunday).  It was a great view for breakfast.

The three amigos (amigas, to be proper) reunited at last!  Here we are at the top of the Giralda tower, an original minaret from the original mosque that was built on the same site in the 12th century, it is the only remaining part of the mosque.

Standing in front of Christopher Columbus' tomb inside the lavishly decorated Cathedral in Sevilla.

It's always an adjustment getting used to Spanish time... especially when you try to fit in some shopping into your sightseeing time.  But, ahhhhh, what a life!

We waited until the sun came out the next day (Monday) to take a picture in front of the Cathedral.

Our 'penthouse' in Granada!  We made it finally... after a little mishap trying to catch a bus.  Who knew there are TWO bus stations in Sevilla?!??  Oops!

I love the Moorish architecture!  Here we are eating falafels, kebabs and drinking tea... yummy!

A whirlwind, less than 24-hour trip to see Granada.  We visited the La Alhambra in the morning and then did some additional sightseeing and souvenir shopping after lunch.

Beautiful fall colors!  Not to mention two gorgeous ladies!

Enjoying the beautiful sunset from our patio in Linares... it never gets old and company only makes it better!

Delta Delta Delta

Proudly showing Beth and Alexis what our town does best --- tapas!  Which are free with each drink you buy!  In this picture we are out with some friends in Linares at one of our favorite places - La Carbonería.

I love it when you order something on a menu, and you have an idea in your head of what it might come out looking like, and then when the food comes it looks NOTHING like you ever would have expected, sometimes with ingredients that weren't even mentioned in the description.  Another favorite part of life here and very true for our week together.

We couldn't have asked for better weather in Madrid, beautiful, blue sunny skies!  Finally!!!  Here we are outside the Palacio Real (Royal Palace) which used to be the home of the royal family.  They have since moved locations to another home a little outside of the city center and today the Palace is only used for ceremonies and official events.

Jump!  Being silly in the streets of Madrid!

Mercado de San Miguel - always a Madrid favorite!

A delicious pre-siesta snack of patatas bravas and tortilla española with brava sauce.  Brava sauce is basically a creamy, slightly spicy tomato sauce... delicious?  YES!  But probably not the best idea to pig out on before laying down for a nap.  I don't think any of us felt the same when we woke up!

All in all, it was a great trip and I miss my friends already!  We can't wait for our next visitors to begin a whole new adventure and to discover all sorts of new places!

Thanksgiving = Día de Acción de Gracias

Thanksgiving = Día de Acción de Gracias (a Spanish mouthful of words).

Teaching my students about the Pilgrims and the Indians and the history behind Thanksgiving Day a.k.a "Turkey Day".   It was a little difficult to translate all of the traditional Thanksgiving foods - like stuffing or gravy, for example, because they have nothing like that here in Spain... but, from the picture you can see they understood the main idea - TURKEY!  And I also explained to them, that we use Thanksgiving as a day to express our thanks to God for all of the blessings in our lives.  You can see the little boy here wrote - school, family, girlfriend (!), and teacher.

Our Thanksgiving Day FEAST!

On our first Thanksgiving Day as a married couple in Spain, I'm proud to say that Todd and I were able to eat some turkey, it still counts even if it's sliced sandwich meat, right?!?  Really, we were just saving ourselves for a proper Thanksgiving Day feast on Saturday with a group of 'guiris' (Spanish for foreigners) and other Spanish friends here in Linares.  

We volunteered to bring garlic mashed potatoes.  I'm not going to lie, this was the first time I have ever made mashed potatoes in my life (sad I know).  I was a little nervous knowing that I was going to be serving them to other people, however with some very specific directions thanks to Beth and Alexis the potatoes were a hit!

Too bad we don't have any of our beautiful serving pieces here in Spain... Todd is carrying the potatoes through our main square, Plaza de Ayuntamiento -- definitely received some weird looks walking around the streets of Linares with a big pot.

 It's amazing that in our little town of Linares there are about 15 other auxiliares (English teachers) and combined with our friends from Linares we had more than enough food - it was delicious!

First plate.  Of two.  It was so heavy I was worried the plastic plate was going to break.  I couldn't help myself.  You should see most of the American Thanksgiving staples in the picture - mashed potatoes, mac 'n cheese, stuffing, cornbread, rice, turkey, sweet potato/ pecan casserole - pretty impressive considering the lack of "American" food in Linares.

Walking home from our Thanksgiving feast to see a big Christmas tree lit up in front of the main department store, El Corte Inglés (also in Plaza de Ayuntamiento)... I love the holidays!


We definitely have a LOT to be thankful for this year!  God is good. Celebrating Thanksgiving here in Spain with new friends is a memory we will cherish forever.

40 Hours/Week? Life is (not so) tough.

A quick update on life in Linares …

I am filling in for the Queen Nanc-y today as she is off gallivanting around Spain with the wonderful, newly married Beth Banta, er, Moneyhan and the always lovely (sometimes critical of my new haircuts) Alexis Snell.  Two of Nancy’s “besties” are visiting and I am sure they are sipping red wine and eating at a tapas bar at this very moment.

 Beth, Nancy and Alexis.  Beth and Alexis got off their flight 
looking like this -- pretty amazing.

I just got back from a run and was amazed how full of activity our small town can be, when only a 45 minutes before, the mood would best be described as ‘idle’.  I left our piso around 5:00pm and the town would just be ‘waking up’ from its siesta.  Allegedly, after confirming with many locals, not too many people actually sleep during the ‘siesta’ -- Nancy and I are choosing to ignore that piece of information – only during the summer do they actually take naps, because they normally aren’t able to sleep very well at night due to the heat.  Not sleeping well for an entire season … sounds pretty brutal.

One of the paths we have been known to jog ... on occasion.

Taking into account our travel, we’ve technically only been living in Linares for a little over two months.  I think things have finally started to slow down for us enough to feel like we are ‘living’ in Spain.  Before, it was one new experience after another, which was amazing.  But, it also didn’t feel like real life.  Now, Nancy and I have settled into somewhat of a routine.   Combining both of our official work hours, we work 24 hours a week in school – however, I’d like to add that, taking into account travel time and break time where we are stuck in the neighboring town of Bailen, it’s probably closer to 34 hours.   I guess that doesn’t deserve any sympathy either.  Nancy works Monday – Thursday and I have classes Tuesday – Thursday.  Between the two us, we have developed several private English conversation classes.  These classes are in the evenings, after we’ve finished our long day of work at school and had lunch.  I try to remember to appreciate the little things like having lunch together, because I can’t think of too many other scenarios where I will get to eat lunch with Nancy almost every day.  However, the point is … adding in our private English classes … we arrive at the magic number of 40 hours/week, just like all of you (even if it is between the two of us). So, you see, we aren’t that different, after all.

Feeling more settled has been great.  Here are some of our observations so far:

• We love living in the Comunidad Autonima (similar to what we call a ‘state’) of Andalucia.  What it may lack in infrastructure and income levels it more than makes up for in its strong cultural identity, rich history and the origin of several distinctive Spanish ideals, such as flamenco dancing and bullfighting. 

• There’s no better way to feel connected to the Spanish lifestyle than going for a walk in the streets.  “Vivimos en la calle” (We live in the street) – their self-proclaimed national slogan is very true.  We love late dinners and seeing crowded streets well into the night.

• Living in a town surrounded by olive trees will never get old.

• Likewise, I have eaten more olives in the last two months than in my entire life combined.

 

The olives are harvested in December.  These are about ready, and will eventually turn green.

•  It was a wee bit colder than we expected here in Linares.  It misses some of the coastal warm air, since we are more in the mountains than by the coast.  However, we love the lack of humidity.  Linares is located in the more mountainous region of Andalucia so it doesn’t receive any humidity from the coast.  The nights can be a bit chilly.

• Andalucian Spanish is a little bit more difficult than anticipated.

• We are pretty sure home-insulation doesn’t exist in Linares.  Who wants to start a business in Spain?

• Since the day we have arrived, we have yet to see a single cup of ‘to go’ coffee.  The idea doesn’t exist here.  Why would someone take it to go, when you can sit and enjoy it.  No one here is ever in a hurry.

• As great as my schedule is, I have to wake up way earlier here (7:00am), than I ever did in the US (at least on the three days I work).  Yes, it’s worth complaining about.  I don’t understand how teachers do it – or everyone else for that matter.

• I haven’t watched a single TV program in 3 months.   Likewise, I haven’t had a haircut in 3 months.  I’m not sure if the two are related.

• Nancy and I love Spanish food, tapas, paella, etc. but sometimes you just want a McDonald’s hamburger – well, let’s be honest … A Big Mac.  At first, it was difficult to get used to the Spanish diet because we didn’t exactly know to prepare their big meals and we ended up eating lots of ‘tapas’ which are more like heavy snacks, sometimes not as filling as you want.

• We love Spanish coffee.  They laugh at American coffee, “oh, that stuff is like water”.  There coffee is essentially what we call an ‘expresso’, however, there is about 20 different ways to order.  We are still learning.

• We love living in city where we don’t need a car and we can walk everywhere – except on days when we have to buy groceries.

• Every interaction in a large institution is an adventure (banks, post office, etc.).  Apparently, there is unspoken and unwritten etiquette that we have no idea how to follow.

• No matter how many or few hours you put in at a job, it will always feel like ‘work’ unless you want to be there.

• We miss burritos.

Tales of the Alhambra -- Granada, Spain.

Nancy and I just got back from an incredible 4 day trip to Granada, Spain.  It was a long weekend, but I guess we should simply use ‘weekend’ since our normal weekend in Spain is usually 3-4 days – not rubbing it in, just want you to be informed.

The town of Granada is nestled (great word, I think) alongside the Sierra Nevada mountains, which creates some pretty dramatic scenery.  Learning about the small city of Granada and its often-times violent history was one of the highlights for me, I think Nancy preferred the small-town feel, endless tapas bars and cafes – something for everyone.

Overlooking the 'nestled' Granada.  Almost all of the buildings and houses are painted white to reduce the summer heat.

I was really looking forward to this “puente” weekend, since I had never visited Granada, only passing through it for a couple of hours on my way to Morocco when I studied abroad 7 years ago.  Nancy had already visited Granada, but I’m pretty sure she had a better time this weekend, since she was with me.  Back to the term “puente”… It is Spanish for "bridge".  In Spain, Tuesday was a bank holiday, and the mentality in Spain (got to admire them for this) is that instead of working on Monday, they simply give everyone the day off on Monday to create a four-day weekend.  Why work Monday when you are already have Tuesday off?  God bless them and this country, yet another reason to love Spain.

The highlight of the weekend was our visit to ‘La Alhambra’.  This is Arabic for “the red fortress”.  It is an absolutely amazing 15^th century palace/fortress/garden/government building, overlooking the city of Granada.  In all of my travels, the amazing architecture was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen and I was in awe and admired each and every room that we entered.  For anyone that is able to visit, it would be one of the top things on our list for you to do, and it would be an easy daytrip from Linares.  Granada, and most of Spain, was ruled by the Moors (Muslims from Northern Africa) for over 700 years, until the areas was completely re-conquered by the Christians in the 1492 led by Ferdinand and Isabel (the same people that granted permission and funding for Christopher Columbus to sail to the Americas).  This petition allegedly took place in the Alhambra.  Admittedly, I was so smitten with the place that I bought Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra (which was written in the 1800's) and read it within the week.

Catching the sunset from the Mirador (lookout) de San Nicolas across from La Alhambra.  Amazing.

 

Granada is a lively, vibrant college town.  The streets are crowded in a good way, the town feels historically rich and there was a lot to keep us busy over the 4 days.  We were really lucky to end up in a hotel that not only was along the uphill path to the Alhambra, but we could actually see a slice of the Alhambra from our hotel room!  We stayed in a family-run pension that has been in the same family for three generations.  We are still debating if it was the cozy feel of the hotel we liked, or the fact that they served a breakfast of eggs and bacon.  Either way, we enjoyed the hotel and meeting the family that ran it.

The terrace outside our hotel room in Granada.

Nancy pointing at our hotel from atop the Alhambra.

One final highlight of the weekend was gaining entrance to a local, members only flamenco show.  In Granada, flamenco is very famous due to the fact that it was started by gypsies dancing in the mountains outside of the city.  On the outskirts of Granada, there is an area called “Sacromonte” where gipsy families have lived and still live, for hundreds of years.  There, the spontaneous dancing in the streets, backed by Spanish guitar-playing, formed the beginning of ‘flamenco’ in the late 1700’s.  Flamenco is now a national pastime of Spain and celebrated in all corners of the country.  Finding ourselves in the birthplace of Flamenco, of course we wanted to find a show.  Unfortunately, most shows were of the 30 Euro variety, catering to tourists, that didn’t even include dinner.  Of course, I was way too cheap for this.  Instead, I made a couple calls to check out other options.  We was able to use my recently acquired “gift of the gab” (see Ireland blog post) and ask the guy I talked to, if there was any way we would be able to attend the “locals only, members only” flamenco show that was taking place that night.  I also informed him that we were both very good-looking.

To our surprised, if we agreed to have dinner at their restaurant, they would allow us to attend the show.  For the price of dinner, which included a huge plate of paella and a bottle of wine, we were able to attend a private flamenco show on the hills of the Albayzin (the hilly Moorish neighborhood, opposite the Alhambra).  We were absolutely the only tourists at this Saturday night show and we were completely underdressed (who am I kidding, Nancy ‘backpacks’ with all of her accessories and no less than 5-7 belts … she would have been prepared for a trip to the opera)!  Regardless, we were able to see an authentic flamenco show at one of the highly-acclaimed ‘top 5 places to watch a flamenco show’ in all of Spain – La Peña de la Planteria.