Before leaving for Boston tomorrow, I thought I would update once more on the Spanish holiday season. Before Christmas, Spaniards all eat dulces called Mantecados and drink shots of Anis, which tastes like licorice. Rachel, Rachel’s sister Liza, and I went to Antonia’s for lunch the other day where we were introduced to all of these Spanish Christmas goodies. Antonia told us a story about how her grandmother loved drinking Anis, and just before she died she asked for one last shot. Since it was summertime, however, Antonia’s family had to search high and low for the traditional Christmas drink. Finally finding a bottle, they gave her grandmother her final shot of Anis. This is one example of how important the drink is in their culture. The same goes for Mantecados. When we answered no to Antonio’s question of whether you can find mantecados in the US, he looked like a little boy who had just had his Christmas taken away. His face was a mixture of shocked, unbelieving, and as though the world as he knew it was crashing around him. Of course, at this point, he didn’t understand why we burst out laughing at his response.
This wasn’t the only time we burst out laughing at Antonio’s antics. During lunch, he began one of his usual monologues, this time on the history of Sevilla and the patron saints Santa Justa y Rosario. Needless to say, we were all bored out of our minds. Ten minutes into his speech, long after Rachel and I had given up translating to Liza, Antonia looked as though she was going to fall asleep, and Jose Alberto, Antonia’s son, started to blow his nose. This sent Rachel into a fit of silent giggles, picked up quickly by me and Liza. Soon we could no longer contain ourselves and burst into hysterics, causing Antonia too to catch on and start laughing. Throughout even this, Antonio continued trying to plow on with his speech, but finally realized that he was fighting a losing battle and admitted defeat.
For my last day of school before the holidays, I watched the kids perform the Christmas carols that I have been teaching them for the past couple of weeks. I got to the auditorium first period with the sixth graders, and we watched as the adorable first graders sang a song about Christmas trees with cute choreography. My sixth graders were singing the Destiny’s Child version of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, which they nailed perfectly. The only issue with their first run through, however, was that despite the hip hop melody of the song, they were standing stiff as boards as they sang. So I showed them a few moves and helped them loosen up, and they performed again with a funkafied hip hop performance. My second period fifth graders performed Deck the Halls, which proved to be a little difficult for them given the old English lyrics. They carried it through with some fun dancing, though. For my last period, my favorite class of fourth graders performed Santa Claus is Coming to Town. After their performance, as it was nearing the end of the day, we went back to the classroom for some treats brought courtesy of the three wise men. Upon leaving, they all ran up to me and we shared a huge group hug - me and 25 fourth graders. They then individually had to run up for hugs and besos, and to give me little Christmas cards that they made. This parting made me realize just how sad it will be at the end of the program to say goodbye to these kids. For now, I still have five months to go with these little rascals, and am looking forward to heading home tomorrow morning!
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