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.

"I always thought the white stuff was cheese!"

So here was my menu for American night, and a rundown of the reactions to the various foods.


Appetizers
Chili Dip
Cocktail meatballs
Guacamole

Drinks
Punch
Arnold Palmer

Sides
Mashed potatoes & gravy
Green beans
Baked beans

Main Courses
Chicago-Style hot dogs
Meatloaf & gravy
Pulled pork sandwiches
Baked mac and cheese
Chicken pot pie turnovers

Desserts
Smores
Ice Cream pie with Oreo crust
Chocolate chip cookies
Brownies
Peanut Butter balls

I know it sounds like a lot. There were 14 people including myself, and I wanted to make some food I know they probably haven´t had before, so I got a random sampling of stuff that I thought was very "American," and therefore went a little overboard. Yes, there were leftovers.

Let´s start at the beginning. I felt very much like my dad on Thanksgiving, with food already in the oven before people came over, and a list planned out for the "schedule of events" aka "when to put stuff in the oven and take it out." I also felt very much like my dad, shooing people out of the kitchen while trying to be a friendly host at the same time.

Fallas Video!!!

Just a few random moments/memories I wanted to share about Las Fallas:

Almost everyone in the group lost their voices, starting on day one. The second morning of Fallas, Marina, Cristina(not my host mom, but her friend), Maria and Josep slept over at the apartment we stayed at (it was an extra empty apartment owned by Cristina's parents). When I woke up, Marina was on the mattress across the room in her sleeping bag. She whispered loudly in a gruff voice (like I said, she lost her voice), "MELISSA. MELISSA. DO YOU HAVE A KLEENEX?" Maria was laughing because I didn't hear her, and Marina said "Guys, will you please help me over here?" referring to how they needed to gang up and shout to me because Marina couldn't do it alone. Then, about 15 minutes later (we were all still laying down), she said "I'm really hot." Cristina told her to take off her sleeping bag, and Marina replied, "I can't. I am not wearing any pants."

One of the nights over dinner, the conversation turned to the USA and cultural differences. Laura and her husband got married last fall and took their honeymoon on a road trip to the southwestern US. She was telling me about things she encountered, such as:

• "They had ice machines in hotels! They have these little tubs with lids in your room, specifically for ice! You go to the machine (there is one on every floor), and you fill it up with ice to keep in your room! We had one of our hotel rooms near one of those machines, but we didn't know how noisy it would be in the middle of the night! It was a learning experience!"
• "They like ice...almost every restaurant gave you ice in your water. I always had to ask for an extra cup because I like my water room temperature, so I always took out the ice."
• "What are those bags called for extra food from restaurants? Doggy bags? I love that phrase!"

Everyone at the table was as amused as she was by these American wonders. I asked her what the weirdest thing she ate was, and she said Beef Tartar. I have heard of it, but I didn't know what it is. She told me there was raw meat in it, so that is probably why I've never had it.

Then the conversation drifted to my American experience aka: my life, and more specifically, high school. Some of the questions asked:

• "Did you have cheerleaders at your school!?"
• "Did you have Prom? Who'd you go with? Did you get one of those wrist flower things? (corsage) Did they have PUNCH to drink at the prom?! Did people really pour alcohol in the punch bowl!?"
• "Did you have LOCKERS!?"
• "Do people really get rejection letters from universities when they apply? Is it really that big of a deal?"

They were so amused by these things and the responses. Everything they were referring to, of course, was something they had seen in a movie. So some were accurate, and some were not (like spiking the punch...since our school just had pop cans). 

One of the nights was costume night, and Marina left right after dinner to meet with a friend, then came back for the dance part (after dinner, the casal turned into a private night club--fallas people only!). So she had to take off her costume, which she was wearing over street clothes. However, she decided to "change" right next to the table, so one of her friends made a comment that she was doing a strip tease (again, she was fully clothed underneath) next to us. In response, Marina took off her costume's belt and started swinging it around her head in this jokingly-sexy way, and almost hit three people at the table behind her. It was hilarious.

That night, during costume night, all of the men at one of the tables dressed up as the Village People. Then, later during dance time, the DJ played "YMCA" and "In The Navy." I thought it was great that people gestured the wrong letters during the YMCA, just waving their hands in a general upwards direction if they weren't sure (the letters are obviously said in English, which many don't know). 

Mayte had a fairly new boyfriend, who wasn't in the casal, so she was constantly calling him on her cell, then sneaking off to chat for an hour. One of those times, she came back downstairs where we were eating after being gone for nearly an hour, and our whole table (my host family's friends) start singing the Spanish equivalent of "K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Mayte with the baby carriage..." She was a little embarrassed. 

Anyways, the moment you've all been waiting for: The video for Las Fallas.



Some explanations of on-screen stuff...
0:00-0:31 La Mascleta--The noisy firecracker show they did every day at 2pm March 1st until the end of Las Fallas. Marina, Maria Carmen, Maria, Lucia and Pichon are all there with me.
0:31-0:37 Fallas monuments and lights throughout the
0:38-0:43 Nachete (Maria's nephew), Lucas, and Dani running around the casal when they were bored.
0:43-0:45 Dani, Maria and Lucia staring at our giant falla monument.
0:46-0:56 The DaVinci fall monument. It was huge.
0:57-1:02 Hospital-themed falla (the large falla of the casal that Marina made her falla for)
1:02-1:19 Various fallas monuments from throughout the city, including the AWESOME lights for the France-themed falla.
1:20-1:33 Photos. See my other post for descriptions.
1:34-1:41 Pasacalles with our casal faller.
1:42-1:48 Marina's carousel falla monument that she designed, painted and constructed. You can see the awards it won, also (3rd place in special section, 2nd place for cleverness and humor).
1:49-1:50 More pasacalles of our casal faller, this time in the morning.
1:51-2:00 Lucia, Lucas and Maria throwing firecrackers and poppers.
2:01-2:17 Various fallas monuments
2:18-2:21 Pichon made paella one night, and that's Jose Enrique trying it out.
2:22-2:27 A casal faller heading to the ofrenda in the morning, view from our apartment's balcony. Notice the bobbing dresses dancing to the music...
2:28-2:51 Laura, Maria Carmen, Mayte, Marina, Jose Enrique and Pichon, everyone dancing. Jose Enrique and Pichon reenacted the dance scene from Dirty Dancing when the DJ played "I've Had the Time of My Life." To be honest, they knew more about the dance than I did (I only remembered the jump-into-his-arms part)
2:51-2:58 Some other costumes in the casal on costume night. Yes, that is a man dressed as Snow White.
2:59-3:00 You can see some of the "Village People" dancing in the background...
3:01-3:02 Every night, before dinner, the fallera mayor descended down the stairs as everyone stood up and applauded. Then we all took our seats when she took hers.
3:03-3:14 The kids' costume night: Sherlock Holmes, cute kitty cats, Dani as a fireman, Maria as Minnie Mouse, and Nachete as a pirate. It was really cutely organized: The kids got to the stairs, were asked their name and costume on the microphone, then they walked down the "runway" to the front, where they got a pair of spring-loaded googly eye glasses.
3:15-3:17 Marina getting her prize with the little falleras from the casal that she designed her falla monument for. They go up on a stage in the town square, pose for a picture, and pic up a flag/banner to carry around town in pride.
3:18-3:19 Dani with Lucas's and his school mascots, Peca y Lino. Lucas had them over the weekend to take pictures of to put in Peca and Lino's journal, like the traveling gnome.
3:20-3:25 More pasacalles with our casal faller. Like our very own marching band that followed us.
3:26-3:33 Monday night there was a random Christians and Moors parade.
3:33-3:37 The giant virgin Mary statue, whose dress is made of flowers from the Ofrenda. It is huge, as you can see.
3:38-3:42 More of our pasacalle
3:42-3:49 Skirt fluffing, bandana tying, dancing, flower grabbing, veil arranging...all steps for the big Ofrenda! Marina is the one getting her veil arranged by Cristina's mom. To be honest, her dress was my favorite of the whole group.
3:50-4:02 The Ofrenda.
4:03-4:39 Monica lighting the wick (for the kids to go off and light firecrackers), Lucia's school's falla monument, kids from the casal setting off fire fountains, fireworks from the falla monument burning, our fallera prepping to set our falla monument on fire, Dani looking on in his fireman's costume, our mini falla monument burning all the way to the ground, as the music from our marching band plays on.

The falla from Lucia's school took three minutes to burn. The kids made it, and it was mostly paper and cardboard. The professional falla infantil from our casal took over 15 minutes to burn (it was the same size). The latter was made with styrofoam and wood.

Yes, it smelled bad.
Yes, I probably took 3 years off my life from being in attendance.
Yes, ash flew into my hair.

Yes, it was amazing to watch.

Fallas Photos!

Remember when I said I'd post Fallas pictures? Well, that time has come, finally. 

As with my previous photo post, please click the photos to enlarge them. I made them super small to load faster. 

First, we start a few days before Las Fallas weekend, when Lucas and Lucia each had their own fallas monuments at school. Lucas' school didn't burn them (the kids are too little) but they did put them out on display. Lucas' class's theme was spiders. Each kid made a spider in class, and if they wanted to, they could make one at home. His is the giant one on top (the one he made at home) with the purple Play-Dough eyes...

The other classes' monuments.

You'll notice from now on a lot of these artist-looking shirts. These are typical fallas shirts, and basically what I wore all weekend long (the kids did, too, along with all of Cristina's friends). They have a few buttons on top, then just flow down. Obviously you need to wear a shirt underneath. Sometimes people wear it with a handkerchief around the neck.

Dani and Lucas, playing with the little cars after school in the play area.

Lucia's class's falla monument. The theme was a garden. You may remember she goes to an English school, hence the obvious signage.

Lucia, after the falla burned. It kind of looks like it's her fault.

Our falla monument was just a block away from the casal. On Thursday night we "moved in" to the apartment in the city to be close to all of the activities downtown and with the casal. That is the best night to go out and see the other falla monuments throughout the city, since there are very few tourists. We went out from 1am-4am to check out the monuments. And surprisingly, there were many people doing the same (although not nearly as many as I would imagine on Fri or Sat night).

Some of the makeup setups from the falla. Gothic, warpaint and cubist paintings/makeup.

The main "doll."

See more photos after the page break!

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.