Christmas celebrations started the week of Christmas in my classes. Starting Tuesday, the 21st my classes were working on Christmas vocabulary, doing holiday crosswords and even singing Christmas carols along to audio cds my professors had prepared. I decided I wanted to bake cookies for my classes. Christmas at my house is always a time for baking a ton of different types of cookies, then freezing them and setting them out on Christmas Eve to enjoy with the family. So I found a few recipes online for chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies and peanut butter blossoms. The main obstacle was finding all the ingredients. I had no such luck finding baking powder or vanilla extract for example so had to make a trip to the American Store off of the metro stop Islas Filipinas on Paseo de San Francisco. After spending about 30 euro I had everything I needed, including hersheys kisses, powered sugar, vanilla extrachen was impressive- especially for someone like me who lacks the basic skills to cook.
ct, cookie cutters, light corn syrup and brown sugar. Tuesday afternoon around 4pm I started the task of baking about 90 cookies in my apartment. My first batch of sugar cookie dough was an utter fail. I had tried to substitute baking soda for baking powder and my cookie dough resembled bread dough. After only a few minutes in the oven the middles of the cookies were still raw and the bottoms were black. I threw all the dough away, searched online for a sugar cookie recipe with baking soda instead of baking powder and tried again. This time I had success. Unfortunately for me, the recipe called for four cups of flour so there was so much dough to work with. I was rolling out dough with a glass cup (since we had no rolling pin) and then using my star, ornament and present-shaped cookie cutters to create tray after tray of cookies. I think with that recipe alone I made about 70, decent-sized sugar cookies. I also made some peanut butter blossoms which turned out slightly more greasy and doughy than I had planned but were still tasty. After the sugar cookies were done cooling I whipped up some very expensive frosting (a bag of two cups of powdered sugar was almost 7€ which equals over $9 USD). The finished product after about 5 hours in the kitchen was impressive, especially for someone like me who lacks the basic skills to cook.
Wednesday I overslept and was about two minutes late to my first class. The 4th grade students were happy to see me and also looked curious as to what I might be hiding in the bag I had brought to class. We worked on some Christmas vocabulary and crosswords and at the end of class I gave them each a sugar cookie. Everyone had smiles on their faces which was the only thing I had really hoped for. The class following this was a 5th grade class with a professor named Mario. We spent the entire class trying to sing "On the Twelve Days of Christmas." The students particularly had a hard time saying "Seven Swans a-swimming" and "Eleven Pipers piping." Eleven pipers piping sounded like "eleven peepers peeping." After going through the vocabulary in the song, listening to the audio recording of it and then practicing it a few times we finally were successfully able to sing it all the way through. These kids got to try my peanut butter blossom cookies. Some of the students looked nervous to try them since they are so oddly-shaped and with the hershey kiss on top but they all seemed to enjoy them. Some of the professors even got to sample a few of the cookies and finally 6th period, my last class of the day, the most wild group of kids I've ever encountered: 4th graders group C. We sang carols the whole class and then the kids were rewarded for participating in the songs by my sugar cookies. This class seemed the most excited about receiving a treat from me and even asked me for the recipe!
Thursday was the last day of class before winter break for the students and the staff. Students came to school for the first two periods and then were given their report cards and then could either stay and watch the school concert- which consisted of ONE student band, or they could go home. There were probably only 50 people that stayed to watch this concert and many were staff or family of the students in the band. The band of high schoolers, three boys, played a number of American songs by ACDC and the Foo Fighters for example but none of us could really tell they were these songs because it sounded so horrible. I feel bad saying this but sitting through six songs was enough to give me a headache. I couldn't even in all honesty tell whether it was english or spanish that they were singing in, and neither could the other teachers. After every song a few more people would leave the gym. The poor band sure didn't have much of an audience at the end but they seemed to have at least enjoyed themselves.
Following the concert was the staff Christmas party in one of the meeting rooms at 2pm. It was much more exciting and drawn out than I thought it would be. There was bread, cheese, olives, pickled artichokes, salmon, ham (of course), sardines and chips. In addition there was a TON of alcohol. Me and the other teaching assistant soon realized that our fellow staff sure liked to have a good time. There was red and white wine, alcoholic cider, champagne, port wine, beer, sparkling wine and soda. Some of the professors even lit up their cigarettes in the room which I had thought was not allowed (smoking on school grounds). We sang Christmas carols in spanish and chatted and chatted for a total of about 3 and a half hours and ended the party with some delicious cake. The sun was starting to set by the time we got on the metro train. It was a lot of fun though and a happy way to start my holiday.
Dessert at the party- a type of moist cake.
Friday, Christmas Eve I woke up and went to the Christmas market in Plaza Mayor which is in the center of Madrid. There were many festivities going on such as Micky Mouse walking around and handing out balloon animals, a merry-go-round and people trying to sell those annoying pieces that you put in your mouth to make every noise from your mouth sound like a series of squeaks. I just walked around and watched all the happy families and children and took some pictures of the festivities. I didn't buy anything but was very tempted by the displays of lights and Christmas trees. Had I come a few weeks prior I might have bought some. Though it hardly seemed worth it at this point since it was already the day before Christmas.
This is what Christmas trees look like in Spain (pretty pathetic if you ask me)
Having Nativity Scenes are much more popular than trees
After the market I headed to Corte de Ingles which is essentially a huge department store. There are multiple locations of Corte de Ingles' in Madrid but they all seem to have a grocery store on the bottom level. It's the best place for Americans to come in search of familiar foods since they often carry a wider selection of about everything. I bought some necessities- things that I haven't seen at any other grocery stores- bacon, free-range eggs and Tropicana orange juice NOT FROM CONCENTRATE!!!! Orange juice does happen to be popular here but its the non-refrigerated type that is full of sugar. I was in desperate need of real OJ that was not from concentrate. I took the metro ride back to my apartment and spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing and talking to my family and boyfriend on Skype. I then had to get ready around about 7pm because the Metro happened to have limited hours on Christmas Eve. I needed to get back to the center for "La Misa de Gallo" (literally translated: the rooster mass), which is the midnight Christmas Eve mass. I definitely wanted to experience a Catholic mass here in Madrid and especially on a big holiday like Christmas Eve. I arrived in the center at 10pm (two hours before the mass since the metro closed at 10pm). I met my fellow teaching assistant at my school and we walked around the desolate and freezing streets of Madrid, admiring the lights until the Church of San Isidro FINALLY opened a half an hour before the service started.
The church was beautiful. Though it was the alternate mass location since the Almudena Cathedral was currently under construction. The congregation, not to my surprise, appeared to be many other foreigners like us. The service started around midnight and as a Catholic I didn't really know what to expect, even though it was a Catholic service. It was very similar to a service in the US except for the minor detail that everything was in Spanish. There also happened to be many priests (about 6-7 on each side of the alter facing the main presiding priest). The other main difference occurred after the sacrament of communion when the priest took a baby Jesus doll from the Nativity Scene on the alter, blessed it and then each of the priests proceeded to kiss the doll. The doll was then brought down to the congregation, similar to the way communion had and people got in a line and each kissed the baby Jesus. Seemed slightly odd and very unsanitary but interesting nonetheless.
The beautiful choir on the balcony
The baby Jesus in the center is the one everyone kissed.
After the mass we had about an hour to burn before my night bus came to Gran Vía. Normally it runs about every 20 minutes but on Christmas Eve there was a bus only every 90 minutes. So since I had no chance of catching the 1am bus I had to wait until 2:30am to catch the next one. We walked near Puerta del Sol where this is this wonderful Chocoletería named San Gines that happens to be open 24-hours a day. Truly a life-saver since it was not only shelter from the cold but a wonderful place to sit down and enjoy some churros, porras, coffee or hot melted chocolate. Casey and I each got a porra and a mug of hot melted chocolate to dip it in. Delicious! Churros or porras (which are just like churros but larger) are like greasy donuts that you dip in hot melted chocolate. It's a specialty of Spain!
I was very tired by the time I got home but knew I had just experienced by first Christmas Eve abroad and alone but that I had enjoyed myself.
The next morning I finally pulled myself out of bed around 11am. I wouldn't have slept so late had I not gotten home at 3:30 in the morning. My roommates seemed to all have left by the time I made it to the kitchen. I was attending a Christmas lunch with some Americans not far from where I live but I was supposed to bring a dessert so I had to not only get ready and eat breakfast, but also make a dessert and get to my friend's apartment by 3pm. So I mixed up some dough for cookies- AGAIN but this time to make chocolate chip cookies. It's very hard to find chocolate chips here and if you do they are usually a fortune so all the Americans I know just buy a bar of chocolate and cut it up into pieces which is exactly what I had to do. Not after long I was sitting in the kitchen with a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies and enjoying some scrambled eggs, bacon and fresh Tropicana Orange juice. I was in heaven.
I got a little lost wondering the streets of my friend's neighborhood but I arrived in "spanish time" which was about 20 minutes late. Lunch was already ready, it was prepared by my friend's roommate Wally who loves to cook. He made us a wonderful meal. I really wish I had taken some pictures because not only was it very delicious but it also looked wonderful. We started off with a typical spanish soup. There was chick peas in it, some ham and some roast beef. Then we had the main course which was a cabbage salad with peas and red bell pepper, a seasoned chicken breast, red potatoes, more ham (or sausage) and some mashed potatoes made by our girl from IDAHO! My friend Lindsay made some sangria for us as well. It was such a spectacularly amazing meal with some Christmas music playing in the background and some lively conversation. We all ate way too much but were completely satisfied at the end. We finished the meal with my cookies, wine and cider. Then proceeded to converse for the next four-five hours until we decided to go out to the center since we heard it was the "it" night to hit the town in Madrid: Christmas day night.
We made it to the Metro around 9:30pm since we weren't sure if the train had limited hours again like the night before. In the Metro we saw the first indication of "spaniards gone wild" with a young man passed out on a bench near the platform of the metro. This was even before 10pm.
We went to a few bars in the center but I was so tired from being out late the night before that I ended up leaving my friends around 1am to head back to my bed. It was a very chilly night, or so I thought. I later found out that at 2am, when so many of us were complaining about HOW freezing it was, it was actually 28 degrees Fahrenheit. I seem to have lost my tolerance for cold, or merely just become accustomed to a winter in Madrid rather than a winter in MN.
I went to bed Christmas night content. I spent the holidays with good company, met some new people, enjoyed some wonderful food and when all was said and done, hardly felt homesick in the least. I hope this is the last holiday that I spend away from my loved ones but I surely will remember this holiday for the rest of my life- the Holiday season that I spent abroad in España.
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