Picatostes

So today was the last day of school before break and it was one big dance party. :) To celebrate Christmas, I wore my Peruvian alpaca sweater and some Christmas socks (Thanks, Taylor). We had a big dance party all morning where the students danced to both English and Spanish songs, including the song from the movie Frozen, Baby by Justin Bieber, and Gangnam Style. Boy, let me tell you it is quite entertaining to see a bunch of first graders break out their dance moves for Gangnam Style. The party was also complete with food and games so the students had a lot of fun with that. After two and a half hours of partying, the students went to the gym to sing the carols for their parents and to give a letter and get a gift from the Three Wise Men. The carol went awesome and I wish that I could put a video up, but obviously, I am not going to do to some privacy laws (makes sense, right?). I will however post pictures of the Three Kings and the awesome gym decorations. The Wise Men gave every student a book, which was awesome and really exciting for the students. It's really interesting to see how big the Wise Men are instead of Santa Claus. Santa Claus has only been becoming popular here in recent years because of films and such, but really the Wise Men are where it's at. I have heard that some people celebrate both now, but the majority do not. Also, the main reason that I have heard people are doing Santa Claus, too, is so that their children have more time to play with their toys. Ha. The Wise Men come strolling into town on the night of January 5th, the children get their presents on the 6th, and then the children go back to school on the 8th, so that is barely anytime for them to play. The other reason I have heard people celebrate Santa Claus is to avoid the religion aspect of the Three Kings, but yea, that's that.

Los Reyes Magos (The Wise Men)

Cool paper Christmas tree

After school, I had to wait about 20 minutes for the train to come because there was another strike today and once I finally got home, I made lunch and then started packing for my trip. I took my sweet time packing and now I actually need to go back and unpack a little so I have room for other things like souvenirs. After that, Karin, Stephanie, and I planned to meet with one of our professors from college. He and his wife are both Spanish professors at colleges and his wife is originally from Madrid, so they are here with their daughter celebrating Christmas with her family. I was really happy to be able to see him and we had a nice visit with him and his family. We went to a restaurant and ate hot chocolate with picatostes, which are kind of like french toast sticks. It was their treat, too, which I thought was extremely nice! It was so great to see a familiar face and to be treated to a delicious hot chocolate and picatostes. Also, I should mention that we were about fifteen minutes late meeting them (whoops) because of the metro. The metro came, but then everyone got off of it and we had to wait about five minutes for the next one to come, then we got on that metro, but it didn't start moving until about 10 minutes later. It was kind of ridiculous and I have experienced anything quite that bad on the metro yet and it was a little unfortunate that it was when we were meeting my old professor, but everything turned out alright.

After the bite to eat and good conversation, Karin and Stephanie briefly came over to my house so that Lucia could say goodbye to them before break and then we ventured on over to Karin's house to watch the movie, The Holiday. I had never seen it before and I actually thought it was a pretty good movie. It doesn't beat the Christmas classics, but I'll take it. It was a good way to spend our last night together before Christmas vacation. I also got the chance to skype my sister tonight and I will be skyping my boyfriend soon just to talk to him before I leave on vacation. I can't believe he will be here visiting soon, too. I am so excited!! :D Anyway, that was my day. It was a pretty good last day before break and I am ready to travel around for a few weeks.

Lastly, I want to make a point to tell you that I have no idea how much time I will have to blog while I am away. I will have internet access in all of the cities, but I most likely not take too much time out of each day to write a blog, but I will try to write a brief one whenever I get the chance. Just in case I don't talk to you. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!! :D