The rest of December

Sorry about not posting sooner; I’m sure some people are waiting to hear about my Christmas vacation, so I’ll just wrap up the end of December now and start working on the other posts.

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December went by really quickly, probably because we had a couple of breaks. The first was a four day weekend due to the Inmaculada, or celebrating the immaculate conception (I still don’t know why it is on December 8). That weekend I went snowboarding for the first time, had the first of four choir concerts, and made pumpkin muffins. Snowboarding went much better than my first attempt in Washington (nobody went home with a broken ankle this time). I had a really good teacher and understood most of what he said, though it was a mix of Catalan and Spanish. I started to get the hang of it by the end of the day, but then I was too tired to keep going. We finished the day off with crepes in Ordino.

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The International Singers had a bunch of concerts in December. Our first was at a Christmas fair in La Massana, where we had to sing outside in the cold, but there was free hot chocolate and coca afterwards. Then we had two concerts with just our group, one in Ordino and the other in Escaldes, and then finally a concert in Andorra la Vella with a bunch of other choirs. Everybody sang a couple of pieces and then we all sang one together. All of the concerts were a mix of carols from different countries, in English, Catalan, Spanish, German, even Latin. My favorite part of every concert was singing Silent Night with candles and all the lights turned off. I did miss having a Christmas Eve service singing all of my favorite Christmas songs though.

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Music really makes a big difference, and not hearing Christmas music this December meant it really didn’t feel like Christmas for me. There were other things I missed, like Christmas cookies, Christmas movies, having a real Christmas tree, or any Christmas tree. (Risha also complained about it not feeling like Christmas, so she brought in two little trees from outside and put lights on them. One was dead so her mom spray painted it gold). I remember tearing up during one of the choir rehearsals when Helen was singing a solo of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and got to the part “Some day soon we all will be together, if the fates allow, until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow…”

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The school had a couple of things planned for Christmas. There was a special lunch at school for the teachers and later another dinner for the teachers (but I thought 30 euro was a little much, so I skipped that). The last week of school we had class on Monday and then a party on Tuesday. (If I’d known that, I’d have tried to leave for vacation early! I could have skipped the two days this week, ski week, and would’ve had a month. Enough time to go home! Of course, if I’d have gone all the way home, who knows if I’d come back) Anyway, the lesson I did with my second level students involved watching how Christmas cookies are made (most students were horrified that you could eat colored sprinkles), watching a clip about Rudolph, and making Christmas cards. Basically they had a list of things they could write and they got to choose. Some didn’t understand and wrote out their Christmas list, but lots of my students ended up writing their card to me J It was funny to see what they chose to write, though. One wrote to Santa and said that she’d call more often in the new year.

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The Christmas party was basically breakfast with their homerooms, then a movie, then lunch, and then a little show. Risha and I went to the movie, but getting there was a nightmare. The whole school took the public bus to the theater and planned on walking back to school (a half hour in the snow). And nobody knew what was going on! We watched Spanish Movie, which was a little weird. But it was free. I was going to stay to watch the students’ show, but my one of the teachers said it wasn’t worth it. So instead Risha and I went to Caldea, a pool/spa complex in Escaldes. The coolest part was swimming in the outside pool and looking up at the mountains covered in snow.

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Did I mention that I got a whole ham leg for Christmas from the Andorran government?