Christmas/New Years/Kings

Christmas Break was quite an experience.
Break started the weekend before Christmas day, the 20th.
Break was nice and calm until the arrival of Christmas Eve, after which it was crazy. We traveled A LOT, but for brevity's sake, I'll keep my story to the main stops.

We drove up to Zaragosa to have Christmas Eve dinner with Elena's parents. After spending the night there, on Christmas day we drove through the Pyrenees into France to visit Pep's sister and her family. The Pyrenees are amazing and what I saw of the French countryside was as well. Our stay in France was fun and interesting. Growing up with a French father and a Spanish mother, the two cousins speak both Spanish and French, it's pretty cool. Anyways, our stay was packed. One night, we went ice skating at a rink that had been set up in front of the town hall. I hadn't been ice skating in quite some time, so that was fun. Later during on stay, we toured the town and some landmarks, such as a park that was once a lord's estate.
One day we went out to visit the uncle's pigeon-hunting stand. From his description, pigeon hunting is quite a complex sport. The stand was made up of several different stations with camouflaged tarp tunnels connecting them. It was awesome. However, getting out there was not as awesome. The first road we tried was too muddy, so Luis and I ended up pushing the car out of the mud (which we then had to clean off our shoes. Ugh! It was a mess!) But we finally got turned around, found a different road, parked, and then hiked into the hunting zone. After that, we stopped by his father's house, which has a mill that had been in operation since 1492!!! To have a piece of history like that in the family would be amazing!

Between the different excursions and meals, most of which were family events, the time was passed leisurely at home. We played a lot of Parcheesi, which was fun, except for the fact that they play with each person putting in a Euro. I only won once, so needless to say, I ended up losing some money over Christmas.

Luis, cousin Sarah, and I ice skating.

The lord's house in the park.

Luis, cousin Ines, and I in front of part of the stand.

View of the Pyrenees on our way back to Spain.

After we left France, we returned to Zaragosa to spend a few days with the aunts, uncles, and cousins there. Then a day or two before New Years, we headed up to Navasa, a small village in Pyrenees. Each of the three uncles has a house there that they usually visit sometime during the year, such as for New Years. The village itself is tiny, taking about 20 minutes for my cousins to give us a tour through AND around the village. I think they said the constant population is about 20 people and about the same number own houses and stay on occasion. New Years Eve was fun. I'm pretty sure I've heard of this tradition in the US, but I never took part in it, but they do the thing with the 12 grapes at the start of the New Year. Once the chimes start, you have until they end to eat all your grapes if you want good luck for the coming year. I had a plan of swallowing them whole, to avoid ending up chewing the seeds, but I couldn't swallow them as easily as I thought and the chimes went faster than I imagined. So I only finished four. So I'll have four lucky months this year. Hahaha. After that, we went out to THE bar in town to dance and party and celebrate. It was a great New Years.

The view from the outskirts of Navasa.

January 2nd, we returned to Alicante, since my host parents had to return to world and get back to work. Now, I bet you're asking yourself, but where was Santa? Where were the presents? Surely they must have something like that in Spain? It can't be that different!
And it's not.

Here in Spain, Christmas is an important day, but they actually celebrate on the 6th of January and instead of Santa, the three wise men/Kings bring the gifts. The night before, the 5th, there's an enormous parade for the arrival of the "Kings," which was pretty cool. The streets were packed though.

One of the Kings "arriving" during the Cabalgata (the parade).

On the morning of the 6th is the exchange of gifts.
We ate roscon de Reyes, a traditional holiday food, that morning. Sometimes it has cream, sometimes no. Anyway, supposedly inside the roscon there is a bean and a figurine. Whoever finds the bean in their piece has to pay for the roscon and whoever finds the figurine is destined to become a King or is King for a day, or something along those lines. This was explained on a little card that came with the roscon. However, after eating the ENTIRE thing in our search, we never found the King figurine. Luis found the bean, so he was hoping to find the King to cancel them out. What we did find were a crystal/glass elephant, two little plastic cars, a sucker with a Santa hat, and a dolphin, but no King. So I got crowned since it was my first time eating roscon. After breakfast we exchanged gifts and I surprised with what they got me. A book, a DVD, some slippers (they also tell me I'm going to catch a cold walking around barefoot, but I hadn't brought any slippers with me), a shirt, an engraved pen. The best one was 3-day, 4-night trip to London for Luis and me.
The only problem with exchanging gifts on the 6th was that I was given no time to enjoy them as I returned to school on the 7th.

The roscon.

The car, sucker, car, elephant, and dolphin we found in the roscon, along with the card explaining how there is a King figurine in the roscon.

All in all, it was a hectic, which isn't surprising, but fun Christmas vacation.
Sorry it took so long to write about it though.
Erik

P.S.
Here's the link to my Flickr page with more photos from my vacation (215 in total):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31031028@N03/sets/72157612441101762/detail/

Currently listening to:
Song: Home
Artist: Michael Bublé
Album: It's Time