Felices Fiestas!

Hi. Remember me? I'm that one chick who promised all her friends and family to diligently blog this year in Spain......and I seem to have gotten caught up in my own thang and forgot about that promise. I am dearly sorry...

So! Nothin' too new here. In exactly one week I leave for Christmas holidays to Holland! I was in Holland for Christmas last year to visit my dear friends Janneke and Aagje (two awesome chicks who studied at Iowa for a semester a few years back) and hang with them and their families. I had SO much fun last year and I am really looking forward to going back again. Actually, that is an understatement......I am positively freaking out with anticipation! Okay, maybe not freaking out, but everytime I think about it I give a celebratory fist pump in the hair. Hooray!

Home life is going good. My roommates are pretty awesome. Marco has been replaced by a Brazilian woman named Silvia. She is getting her doctorate in (get this) FLAMENCO. boo-yah! I've always wanted to learn the art of flamenco and now I have a professional dancer living with me. The girls of the house had our Christmas dinner before everyone goes off to their respective places for the holidays, and Silvia suggested going to a Cuban bar and restaurant to see a cuban salsa band. It was a lot of fun, but I realized a) i can't dance salsa, b) i want to learn how to salsa, c) i want to go to Latin America, namely Cuba. I guess I'll just add that to the bazillion places I want to go.....sigh....

It is cold here. Well, not IOWA cold, but I can definitely see my own breath in the morning when i walk to school. Today it was about 15 degrees Celcius, which would be in the 50's in Fahrenheit. basically it was a sevillian blizzard, without the snow. everyone had on their big fluffy down coats and knit gloves and fleece scarves like it was nobody's business. i have to admit that my body has adjusted to seville temperatures, and a day of 15 celcius feels FREEZING to me now. but, this is mainly due to the fact that andalucian houses at much colder inside than it is outside. they are constructed to be a refuge from the ridiculously hot summer months (high ceilings and marble floors) but they so unbelievably cold in the winter. And since we don't have central heating in our apartment, we have little tiny space heaters in each of our rooms. Mine radiates little heat, and i have the biggest room in the house. needless to say i am constantly in layers. (My warmth has greatly improved, however, since our shower has been fixed and has hot water for more than, get this, 2 minutes!) Anyway, most homes don't have central heating but have small space heaters in every room, plus a brasera (is that the name in spanish? i think so) in the dining room. It is a special table with a heater at the bottom near the floor. then a very long, heavy tablecloth goes over the table so when the family is eating or sitting at the table they can just put the lower half of the body under the tablecloth and keep warm that way. we have a huge brasera in the teacher's lounge at school that can sit more than 10 people. if you aren't sitting in the teacher's lounge with your legs in the brasera, it is deathly cold, and you must wear a jacket and scarf around the building, in the halls. once last year it was so cold that i crawled entirely under the tablecloth and laid under the table in a heat for a few moments, but just for jokes.

our annual christmas dinner with the professors is on thursday, followed by an afterparty at a club. i am so excited since last year it was HILARIOUS to see my fellow coworkers go crazy on the dancefloor!
and something that seems to be a bit of a tradition during christmas at work is to drink anise liquor. at WORK. all week. no joke, there are a few bottles on top of the brasera at school. spain is crazy. i personally find it to taste awful, like cherry cough syrup, which just gives me bad memories of my mom forcing that disgusting liquid into my mouth when i was sick. ugh.

the kids are doing great. i love them so much, they are so great. they applause for me after every lesson. i mean i thought that they would stop doing it after the first month, but they still do it everyday. today i got some real "oohs" and "ahhhs" from my powerpoint presentation on Natural Disasters. I talked about hurricanes and tornadoes and floods and wildfires, and for the floods and tornadoes i showed pictures of the occurences in iowa. and the kids went NUTS. they were asking so much questions and were so fascinated by everything. be reminded that tornadoes generally do not occur in europe, so for me to talk about a tornado warning like its nothing was, for them, UNREAL. the lesson was so successful that they actually groaned with lament at the end of the slideshow. cha-ching!

alright, more later. i will be posting some pics of christmas in seville in the next few days.....stay posted.

Happy Holidays!