Sunday with the kiddos

Today Monica and Cristina's parents (Alicia and Pepe) invited me over for lunch with them, Jose Enrique, Monica, Dani and Maria. I already knew it'd be great because Dani and Maria are so entertaining.


Dani asked his parents the other day, "How come Lucas has two mommies?"  referring to me and Cristina.

Sara, Alicia and Pepe's cat, was sitting on a chair near the window and Dani sees me near her and says "Isn't Sara just beautiful?"

Dani and Maria were playing hide-and-seek, and Dani was looking for Maria. We were on the top floor, and I was about to go to the bathroom. I enter the bathroom as Dani says "She's not up here anywhere." As he is talking to me, I am opening the lid to the toilet. I tell him "She might be downstairs." He looks in the toilet, then looks at me with a really confused face, and says "She's down THERE!??!"

We eat lunch (yummy meatballs and broth!) and had fresh strawberries (picked from the garden) for dessert. And then, out of nowhere, I get bombarded with unexpected gifts. Monica and Jose Enrique give me a ring and matching pin, and Jose Enrique jokingly says "I picked that one out. I spent all day in the store trying to find the right colors." Dani was by my side, helping me open every gift, telling me before opening each one "It is a SURPRISE!" I open a little box and inside is a personalized piggy bank with a photo of the kids dressed up for Las Fallas. It was from Maria and Dani. Then Alicia passes me a package of beans for when I make paella. She also passes me a wrapped gift, which was an apron and washcloth with a fallera printed on it, along with a recipe for paella. She told me "It's even more for your dad, who will be making the paella. Can you imagine him wearing this flowery apron?!"  Then Monica passed me yet another package, which included little earrings that Marina designed for her brand, Manitas de Plata. I loved them. Then I went around and gave cheek kisses to everyone as I wished them thank you.

Dani was rambling on about me going back to Chicago, and he said "And I am going with her. She'll drive the plane, and we are going straight to New York City."

An hour later, still clearly thinking about it, he told me out of the blue, "I want to go with you on a plane to Chicago."

Me too.

Pulled pork and Budweiser.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have photos from American night. I didn't go overboard this time, and only took several. 

Click on any picture to blow it up full screen.

I just love this picture because Lucia is at the end of the table wearing a leotard, looking super serious as Maria and Dani listen intently to whatever she is saying. "...And that is how the Union won the American Civil War."

This photo (and Lucia's facial expression) make it a lot more believable when I tell you that Lucia wore the skirt UNDER the leotard instead of on top. And she wore it allllll night.

You can see the chips and guac and cocktail meatballs in the foreground.

Left to right: Maria, Monica, Lucas, Lucia, Maria, Dani, Marina, Mayte.

Cristina and Mari Carmen. Here you can see the punch bowl!

Mashed potatoes, baked mac and cheese, punch, green beans, Caesar salad, iced tea, pulled pork, hot dogs...it's like HOME!

That's Laura peeking in on the left, and Mari Carmen's husband holding up his pulled pork and Budweiser. Pichon and Jose Enrique are standing up.

Marina, Miguel (Mayte's BF), Maria, Josep (Maria's BF), Lucia, Dani, Maria, myself

Oven baked smores. Mmmmmmm....

I know, there weren't a lot of close ups of food. I figured faces were more important.

Anything with the word storm sounds cool.

STORM CHASERS! STORMIN' NORMAN! STORMTROOPERS!

Everything sounds cool when it is associated with storms.

And that is why our casal faller's theme for the pre-fallas parade was communication in the future...with storms! And satellites! And planets!

This was a giant parade in the first weekend in March, which we began planning for back in February. The theme was communication in the future: the planets communicated with satellites, who fought with storms to send their messages around the universe. 

The parade was kids only. The older girls were the planets, the boys were the storms, the younger girls (early school age) were satellites, and the little tots (ages 3 and 4, therefore no Dani or Lucas) were stars. What the stars' roles were, I don't know. Look cute, I guess, as you will see below.

The parade went all through the city, and it was huge, because almost every casal faller participated. If you still have no idea what a casal faller is, look up my other posts with the "las fallas" tag to learn more.

Here are some photos from the day-long preparations. I made them super small to load quickly, but if you click on each one, they'll expand to full size.

Here is the group of kids practicing. The building for our casal is a bit small, so we finally got to go outside and practice the formations in a large plaza.

That's me and one of the planets. I volunteered to do makeup since I love it so much. It was a lot of fun getting creative with the girls' faces. I also helped with the satellites' makeup, as well as chasing down the boys to put on their silver lipstick. 

I feel like these girls look ready to attend a KISS concert. Especially Maria, on the left, who has her hair sprayed with water and seems extra goth. The girls were in the group of satellites. After getting their makeup done (I did Lucia's!), they got their hair done.

One of the older girls dressed as a "Fallera of the future." She stood on an elevated platform on wheels which was pushed from the inside by an adult. She had her hair sprayed gold, with a super tan and "futuristic" makeup look. Her sleeves featured gold foil doilies, and she also had satellites all over her skirt.

I just had to capture her frozen look of terror. She was quite nervous, and it showed. I wouldn't wanna stand on a rickety moving stage 20 feet off the ground, either.

Lucia, Dani and Maria. Dani brought a Spiderman costume because his parents knew he'd feel left out when he saw everyone else get to dress up and not him. So he dressed up. And the mask he wore meant he was constantly bumping into people, chairs, and walls.  

This is "Earth" with a moon headband.  The dresses had these huge metal hoops in them that were very Lady Gaga-ish.

The storms. Very super hero-y. I don't know if you can see any of them, but they are wearing these boot sleeves to look like they have giant cartoon shoes. It's great.

In case you missed this adorable little munchkin in the corner of the previous photo...I snapped a close up for you.

I just love these little satellite hats they have. Like a cross between a Baptist church attendee from the south and a 1960s flight attendant.

All the satellites, ready for the parade. We arrived on site an hour early. The kids began like this, but were pretty antsy 45 minutes later.

TOO MUCH CUTE!

This is Mercury, the girl I did makeup for in the previous photo of me with a paintbrush. 

The poster says "Communication in the future," the theme of our group. The "sun" is in the front. That girl also starred as Mary in the living nativity back in December. The "planets" held their skirts high while walking to the square, but I am sure by the end of the city-long parade, these skirts got quite dirty. 

And I have tons of footage from the parade. I am "editing" it. And when I put that in quotes, I mean it is on my to-do list and nowhere near started. Like my Fallas video. Sorry. But at least you got pictures here! From early March!

YA ESTAMOS EN FALLAS!

Fallas are here! Fallas are here! Fallas are here! Fallas are here! Fallas are here! Fallas are here!

If you are somewhat familiar with Las Fallas, you are probably like "Um, no, they aren't...it takes place on March 19th, always the day before Father's Day in Spain."

Well, yes, you are right in the fact that the main burnings happen that day.

But today commenced the Fallas season, with several fun happenings.

And if I don't tell you them right now in quick fashion, I will probably never get around to writing this blog and you will forever be in the dark about this wondrous occasion.

Onward!

First, a little background. I have mentioned this Fallas thing for you several times before, even providing links describing Las Fallas. But some of you aren't listening (Read: Eric, my brother).

So, to really really simplify it for you, this is what it is: Las Fallas is a celebration in Valencia (the city, not the province) and ONLY Valencia, where they build giant expensive Fallas (made out of wood and styrofoam and paper mache...that somehow manage to cost several thousand dollars each) just to burn them in various locations around the city. Why? Because. They like spending months making things to burn them, I guess. I don't ask why the Spanish do some of the things they do, like hang cured ham legs in stores. They just do things to be special!

But Las Fallas takes a lot of preparation, and there are a bunch of other things associated with this festival that don't include burning stuff.

If you followed my other study abroad blog, you would know that I visited Valencia during Las Fallas in 2010. It was a frenzy.

But I didn't get to experience what I am experiencing right now, from the POV of a family that is part of a Casal Faller, which is much like a rotary club that you pay membership fees to participate in things throughout the year.

Anywho, today our Casal Faller went to the warehouse where the Falla is being constructed. Marina, Cristina's friend, is constructing a falla infantil that is a carousel, painted with cute little animals that totally resemble the jewelry she makes. Each Casal Faller has a different Falla. There are big ones and small ones (infantiles). And because there are so many Casal Falleres, there are about 300 or MORE of these paper mache structures throughout the city.

We went to the warehouse storing our Falla and Marina's falla.

And you are thinking "paper mache" and "big structures" and most likely thinking of ruffly little parade floats.

No, these are smooth and beautiful and perfect and look like they are made out of clay and sanded down to shiny perfection. NOT what you'd expect people would make just to set on fire.

Anyways, on to the pictures!!! (Click pictures to view full size)



Marina's small falla is a carousel with cute little kids and animals...

A view of some parts of our Falla, including a giant head that is temporarily covered in a tarp.



The theme of our falla is "makeup" and you will see a few women primping in outlines of mirrors, with empty hands (the lipstick and small props will be added later).

I took a pic of the inside/underside of that giant head. Inside you will see stacks and stacks of styrofoam, with a wooden frame and Great Stuff. As you can imagine, I was thinking about the impact on the ozone from burning 300 of these over the course of a week. I don't think anyone else was thinking about that, though.

A lot of Fallas have political jests or vulgar jokes. Our Falla has a naked woman with her butt cheeks being spread by a man standing behind her. What "props" will be inserted in that man's hands? Only time will tell.

Oh, look, a naked nurse (with accurate upper body anatomy!).

Homer Simpson? Now I am really confused about this so-called "theme."

Marionettes and schoolchildren?

I got a close-up shot of this Falla face of a soldier (or American revolution era man?) so you can see that it is way more than paper mache and foam.

After we visited the warehouse, we went to the ayuntamiento, or city hall/main plaza, where it was jam-packed with people. There was the mascleta (If you haven't looked this up on wikipedia yet, get on it! All the info you need is there!). The pretty, colorful background on my blog here isn't for nothing. It is the mascleta, in all its glory. It looks like flags and whatnot, but what it really is is little firecrackers that are set on fire from one end, setting the whole string on fire and coordinating a wonderful, noisy, fiery show to kick off Las Fallas. You can really only see the prettiness from high above if you are in a balcony of the post office or other buildings in the plaza. If you are on the ground, like us, you get to see the smoke and hear the noise that accompanies it. The whole town it seemed gathered on foot to the plaza, for this 5-minute procession. It was a sunny gorgeous day, so much so that it was hard for me to film since there was a glare. I filmed it nonetheless, but I will upload the video sometime this week. We were lucky that the heavy smoke from the firecrackers wafted over to the sun and shaded the city momentarily. No joke, the sunglasses came off after the first minute.

Then, tonight Cristina had her friends from the Casal Faller over (just a group of 10 or 12 of us), including some of the people I met earlier when we went to dinner one night. Laura, Marina, Maria Carmen, Maite, etc were all there. We had pizza bagels (or something very similar) and a bunch of other tapas. I wasn't too hungry from the McDonalds we had at lunch (can I just make a side note about how expensive it is here? I don't eat it ever in the US, but it seems like 4 happy meals, 3 chicken sandwiches and 2 big macs with 4 pops and 4 fries should not cost FIFTY EUROS). Although I saved room for Marina's homemade strawberry ice cream. Oh my, so good.

While eating, the TV was on the Valencian channel (that speaks in Valenciano, not Castellano or Spanish), showing live footage of the big event downtown. They had the main Fallera (seriously, Fallas, Fallera and Casal Faller? We need to find new words to make this less confusing) announcing to the city some stuff in Valencian about Las Fallas, including "Hey guess what chicos, WE'RE GONNA BURN THIS CITY DOWN!" Except not really. But kind of.
Then there was a song, in Valencian. Cristina and all her friends stood up to sing it, like it was some kind of national anthem minus the hand on the heart. Dani danced. He dances to anything that has a tune.


So now, my friends and family, begins the madness of Fallas. And seriously, if you haven't read up on my previous experience at Las Fallas, get on that. If hosing down buildings is a typical behavior to prevent giant burning sculptures from catching nearby apartments on fire doesn't seem like motivation to keep reading, I don't know what does.

All of my dreams!

Last weekend we also had the chance to go to Jose Enrique's parents' house, where the Fallas dresses are stored.

We went so Lucia and Maria could try on their dresses to be sure they fit before Las Fallas (only 5 weeks away!) and make any changes if necessary. 

I have seen pictures of the dresses and know what they look like but OH MY GOD I was so jealous of the little ones. I mean, when I was little and I played with my American Girl doll, I always wanted to wear a dress like Felicity or Samantha. Those pretty old-fashioned gowns. I mean, it is my dream to get dressed up in all that old fashioned stuff. 

When we went to Williamsburg, I wanted to buy my prom dress there. I didn't. 

Then I saw these Fallas dresses, in person. I was like "Oh my...all of my dreams!"

The dresses are two parts. A skirt with a lightweight cotton tank attached to the top, then a woven bodice that ties in the front. 

The dresses weigh a LOT, probably 15 lbs or so. I don't actually have any idea and I am really bad at guessing, but that seems right (?). 

The white tank that's attached to the skirt even has padding in the shoulders just so the straps don't dig in from the weight. 

Here is Maria in the background, cutting the foam on the straps to adjust it, and the back of Lucia's dress.

If you were one of those girls who liked dress up, please tell me you are so jealous right now. THEY GET TO WEAR THESE ALL DAY LONG.

As you can see, Lucia's has a blue bow in the back, and since you can't see Maria's, I will tell you hers is purple.

Another thing you can't see is that the dress doesn't drag on the ground but instead is about four or five inches from the ground. Revealing the feet. What do they wear on the feet?

GORGEOUS MATCHING BROCADE SLIPPERS, THAT IS WHAT.

So. Jealous.

Once Maria put on her slippers, she was trotting around the room with such excitement. I later asked Cristina how the girls deal with wearing those shoes all day long (imagine 9am to midnight walking around downtown!). She was like "Oh, they are SO happy to just be wearing heels and being pretty that they completely ignore any pain, if they have any."

I don't know. Those look pretty blister-inducing.

What do the boys where on this occasion? They were pretty simple clothes compared to the girls. It kind of reminds me of a gypsy costume, actually. They wear white socks (or tights?) and baggy black shorts, and a black vest over a puffy pirate-y shirt. Dani is getting ready to try on his espadrilles (you know those women's shoes that have a platform and tie up the ankle? Those are Spanish, and they are called espadrilles). You can even see a bit of Monica's baby bump.

There was a point where Cristina and Monica said I could dress up with them for Fallas. But lately I haven't heard much about it. They have loads of extra dresses, but they say I am too tall so that too much of my feet will be showing, noticeably so. I don't think so, since they hang high off the ground. But the next worry is shoes. As you could tell, they are pretty matchy, and I have size ten feet. Monica has size 5 or something, and Cristina has size 7. None of their extra shoes would fit me. But again, when this was talked about as an actual this-really-might-happen idea way back a couple months ago, they said I could try extra dresses/shoes of their friend Maria Carmen, who is tall like me. But they haven't mentioned it since.


All I know is that all of my dreams would come true if I could dress up like that for a day. Well, at least one.

Grillin' in the park

This past Saturday was the "Valentine's Day" dance for the kids at their Falla. The theme was 50s dress up, like the movie Grease. They also had an American-style lunch/snack, with cheeseburgers and shoestring potato chips. There were extras on the table and I was practically drooling I wanted one so badly. But I resisted.

Here is a group photo of all the kids in the falla. Lucia, Dani, Maria and Lucas are front and center.

The kids didn't have very "50s"-ish clothes, but we tried our best to dress them up.

Then, on Sunday, in the plaza near Pichon's parent's house, there was some kind of festival where we brought a grill and made a fire on the ground and cooked food. There were a bunch of other people around making little fires and grilling sausages and snacks. It was more of an "almuerzo" since it was around 10am that we were nibbling on chorizo and fried tomato bocadillos.

There were a bunch of little tents selling stuff, like the previous weekend with the paella. Of course, being a plaza in Spain, there was a giant clocktower that would chime a LOT. The kids were especially mesmerized.

Staring at the clock...

Maria and Lucia also enjoyed sticking their hands in these giant head masks (yes, people plop those on their heads...and see through the mouths). I took a picture, and Lucia made a silly face.

It was fun. And my coat didn't reek as much as it did from the paella festival, where it smelled like I sat inside of a barbecue overnight or something.

The difference is pretty simple.

If I haven't mentioned it before, there are some major differences between Lucas and his cousin Dani.

Mainly, Lucas is very crabby and always has "una cara de mala leche," whereas Dani is bubbly and giggly and, well, enjoyable to be around.

Don't get me wrong, Lucas has his cute moments. He just isn't the kind of kid who laughs very much. Or hugs. Or smiles.

The two videos below pretty much demonstrate the key differences between the two.

These videos were taken during the boys' Christmas concerts at school. As you can see, they were suuuuper adorable. Lucas' class dressed up as presents, and Dani's class dressed in jeans and "rock and roll(?)" clothes. Which explains the random leather jacket kid with the super cool attitude in Dani's class.

I think you'll figure out who is the focus of each video, but if not, Lucas is the sourpuss, and Dani is the bubbly one in a blue tie.

Lucas:








Dani

Get ready for the Reyes!

Tomorrow is Reyes Magos, or Three Kings Day. We have the day off of work, and it's a day of presents!

Like I've said before, this is the big day for the kids, and officially the final big holiday of the season. You can tell because rebajas (sales) starts the next day, and it is insanity in the stores around town.

This is kind of like our Santa Claus tradition with leaving presents under the tree. The reyes are the guys who the kids tell what they want for presents, who they visit in the mall, and who in the end come during the night to drop off gifts.

Tonight the kids were as anxious as an American child on Christmas Eve...both wanting to go to sleep and not being able to do so due to the anticipation of the nighttime visitors.

Lucia burst into my room before bedtime to tell me that I needed to put a shoe (yes a shoe) under the tree so the reyes will leave me something. I left one of my brand new suede boatshoes, because I think they leave candy and I didn't want to eat food out of a dirty gym shoe. At least, I hope they leave candy. Actually...I think I hear the "reyes" putting candy under the tree right now...

And Cristina used the whole reyes thing to her advantage, getting the kids to pick up their toys downstairs by the tree. "You better pick up your toy trucks so that the reyes won't trip on them! If they do, they might not bother to come next year because this is the house in which they broke their ankles!"

Tonight we ate dinner with Monica and her kids while Jose Enrique went to the Valencia soccer game with friends for his birthday (and also just because they like going to the soccer games). Monica forgot to give Cristina a shoe each from Maria and Dani to put under the tree so that the presents will come for them (so maybe there isn't candy to fill the shoes, and this is just an indicator like "This house belongs to this many pairs of feet. Bring that many people's worth of gifts, please.") Because of this, Lucas put two of his shoes under the tree, and Lucia did as well. And Cristina said (in the presence of Lucas and Lucia) "We have to put two of their shoes under the tree for Dani and Maria. When we were upstairs we told (prayed? shouted?) the reyes to remember that the gym shoe is for Maria, and the brown tiny shoe is for Dani." I'm not really sure if they prey to these kings or what, since they are biblical figures after all. Not deities. But Lucia already mentioned once how Cristina needed to tell the kings she wanted an iPad when Pixon wasn't around so she'd get it despite him saying it was too expensive.

And Lucia and Lucas had already put the bowl of water outside for the camels (that is what the kings ride on, not reindeer, of course). "Outside is better," said Cristina, "since we don't want those big camels trotting all through the house." "I see," I replied.

And the kids left a plate of cookies and some cups of milk for the kings as well. They can get pretty hungry.

The kids were too excited to go to bed, and of course shared with Cristina that they wanted to stay up late to see the kings. Cristina told them they had to go to sleep, and stay in bed, since she was putting the alarm and if they snuck downstairs, the alarm would go off and the cops would come (PS, did I mention that we had an alarm? We do, and it's only downstairs. So the kids can go to their hall bathroom but if they go down a floor to the kitchen or the basement where I am, it will go off. And yes, the security people call immediately. But the cops don't come. That's just a scare tactic.)

Me being me, I wonder how much of this is really that believable. As a child, I was very critical of the whole magical holiday thing. I analyzed the handwriting from Santa letters so much so that my dad went to the neighbor's house to have them write it instead. Although Lucia is a mere 5 years old, she's very smart. Like Cristina said when she made the Santa videos, Lucia probably would figure out that hers and Lucas' would be very similar in wording. Because of that, Cristina showed Lucas his video a day after, when Lucia wasn't around, so Lucia wouldn't be like "Hey, this looks like mine...could it be pre-recorded?"
So I have found four things that clearly Lucia hasn't caught on to, but I find pretty strange.
1. The alarm system. If she can't come downstairs due to the alarm system, how can three giant kings come inside to leave presents? Do they have their own alarm remote? I guess, though, if they supposedly drive flying camels, they could probably figure something out.
2. If we can communicate to the kings by just sitting in our room and talking aloud much like people pray to God, why do the kids write letters to the kings? Why do they need to visit them, in person, at the mall, to tell them what they want for a gift? Couldn't they save the hassle and just sit in their room and talk to their wall to do it?
3. If the night before Reyes Magos there is a parade in which all three kings show up to give out gifts and candy, but the parade exists in many places at once, who is it that we see in our local parade? Clearly they can't have out-of-body experiences, those kings. Although, again, with the flying camels theory. But I think that the kids would be attuned to the fact that the kings in their local parade look WAY different than the kings in the parades shown on TV, from Madrid or other places in Spain. Or maybe not.
4. In American movies and culture, we often talk about how Santa goes around the world leaving presents in every child's home. Obviously, looking back at that, that was not the case. There are religions that don't celebrate Christmas and therefore households that won't get a Santa visit, but also the people who do celebrate Christmas don't always believe in Santa. I haven't traveled everywhere in the world, but it'd be silly to assume that everywhere in the world that celebrates Christmas celebrates it the same way, with a visit from Santa being the most exciting part. Lucas and Lucia both have heard me say how I don't celebrate Reyes Magos in the USA, and if they haven't, they've clearly seen my confusion with how the holiday is celebrated. Like when I question putting a shoe under a plastic fir tree overnight to yield candy (think about that one for a minute). Even still, Lucia says "The three kings will be visiting all the children in the world tonight..." Clearly that's not the case. Not the case in the USA, at least. I think it's only in Spain. Maybe France too, but I am not sure. So these magical kings will be visiting all the children who live in a country that's the size of Texas? I guess that's a little more plausible than the myth of Santa going around the world. Maybe that leaves this magical tradition a little more sane than ours.

While you were away...

Things that happened when I was gone:

 Lucia asked Cristina when they would get a chance to go visit Chicago. Lucia wanted to go to Chicago because she said “That is where Mickey Mouse lives, in Disneyworld.”

 Dani was drawing a picture one of the days I was gone, and it was an oval (face) with two wavy lines, one on each side (hair). When his mom, Monica, asked what he was drawing, he was like “Marissa!” Monica was like, “Ah, Marissa? Quién es Marissa?” (Oh, Marissa? Who is Marissa?”) And Dani replied “Marissa! La chica que vive en la casa de tía!” (“Duh, Marissa! The girl who lives in auntie´s house!”)

Happy New Year!

I arrived earlier today, because I wanted to be able to celebrate New Year's with my host family. It was a great decision.

First the kids ate, then played/caused trouble while we ate dinner.

After eating a massive meal of tapas (way too much for the 9 of us adults) AND a huge hake/ham/pastry crust thing the size of my thigh AND chocolate cakes and apple tarts and flan AND lemon/sugar/champagne cocktails AND chocolate truffles, we watched the kids get prepped (an hour before countdown) with their party kits, which included streamers, blow horns, masks, hats and leis.  

(as with all pictures on this blog, click to enlarge.)

Dani, Lucas, and Bruno

Maria, Lucia, and Paula

It's a Spanish tradition to eat 12 grapes on the clock chimes after the clock strikes 12. So popular, that they sell pre-packaged cans of peeled, seeded grapes specifically for this purpose. And they sell grape-flavored gummy candies for kids, in packs of 12.

My little can of grapes, ready to be opened.

The kids get amped up for the countdown by dancing to "Waka Waka"

The kids get really into it.

And after the clock strikes 12, and we all ate our grapes on the chimes, the couples kissed and then everyone did the two-cheek-kiss to everyone else saying "Happy new year!"

Cristina and me wearing our party kits

The kids staring in awe out the window at various fireworks shows in the distance after midnight.

Then we danced/listened to a soundtrack of ABBA, Shakira, Pitbull, and Prince until at least 3am. 

EDIT: Maria was wearing new watch, and when they went to bed around 3am, Maria whispered to Lucia "LOOK! It's almost 3!" as if they were keeping a secret from their parents that the grownups forgot to put the kids to bed on time and the kids were getting away with it. It was super cute. Also, when they said good night, they said "Buenas noches dias!" (Good night morning) since it was a bit of both at the same time.