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!

Cookie Girl

Today, at Lucia's school: I saw a 5 year old girl eating a sleeve of cookies, and as she raised one up to her mouth, a hoola hoop (whirling around a girl swaying her hips) smacked it outta her hands and it flew across the playground. Didn't even phase Cookie Girl. She just reached back into the sleeve for the next one, as if nothing even happened.

Maybe a fashion timeline would help?

Lucia has a Valentine's Day school dance coming up, and Cristina is supposed to dress her in 70s clothes.

She told me "I have no idea what to dress her in! They told us to watch the movie Grease for ideas!"

I paused. The movie was made in the 70s, but it sure doesn't take place then. It takes place in the 50s.

I explained this to Cristina and she was like "I don't know what to dress her in, either way!"

So do they want 50s clothes then? Why would they say 70s? I told her disco.style clothes or Brady Bunch clothes were 70s style.

I want to attribute the school's confusion about this to the fact that Spain was a bit behind in this time period due to their isolation and Franco's rule. When people here watch Mad Men, they are like "PEOPLE HAD WASHING MACHINES IN THE SIXTIES?!" as if you were saying the ancient Egyptians used iPhones. For them, home appliances like washers, dryers, dishwashers, refrigerators and freezers were definitely not household items until a couple decades later. Many homes didn't even have heat installed when they were built until the 80s.

I'd hate to have Lucia show up in a cashmere cardigan and poodle skirt while everyone else is wearing paisley and bell bottoms. But then again, I would have to ask those teachers, "What version of Grease were YOU watching!?"

Las caras que dicen mentiras

Today, while Cristina was driving us (Lucas and me) downtown, she told me that Lucas' teacher told her that Lucas was talking about "Las caras que dicen mentiras," or "The faces that tell lies."

He told his teacher today how there are faces in his bedroom that lie to him. His teacher was understandably freaked out enough to run to the next room and ask another teacher what she thought he meant. His teacher returned to find Lucas telling all the children in their class about these faces that talk to him and tell him lies (but he never mentioned what, exactly, those lies were).

I was kinda freaked out, but shared with Cristina my "pangbite" story, about how when I was little I would hear something and tell my parents that it was "pangbite" (which, of course, is not a real word or thing). To this day, they never really figured out to what I was referring, but my mom thinks it was the sound the swing made when it squeaked in the wind.

It's just one of those freaky children things, you know?

Cristina looked in the rearview mirror back at Lucas and told him that he would have to show her these "faces" in his room when they got home.

Later, she mentioned it again, and Lucas wanted to show Lucia the faces, so Cristina was quietly urging her to go upstairs because we were all really curious. Lucia came back downstairs five minutes later with a confused facial expression saying "It is nothing."

Cristina then went upstairs. She came back down and said he opened his closet and pointed to the ceiling and said "Do you see the faces? They lie to me!" And held his hands out wide, making peace signs (Nixon style). Cristina was really confused and was like "What faces? Where? How big? This big?" And she made a CD-sized circle with her hands. He was like "Yes, they are that big, but they get small," as he squeezed his hands from a big circle to a little one the size of a quarter.

Cristina thinks he had some kind of dream and thinks that whatever happened in that dream happened in real life, including whatever faces talked to him and lied.

All I know is that when I someday write a Spanish horror movie, I have a title. Because we all know this type of thing is exactly how horror movies begin...

Children are our future!

Today was World Peace Day, and Lucia's school had a special concert.

They began the event with a handful of kids from each grade (1 through 6) and had them recite some writings they did in class, related to peace.
Grades 1 and 2: A sentence of "What is peaceful to me" (in English)
Grades 3 and 4: A brief idea or suggestion to make the world more peaceful (in English)
Grades 5 and 6: A poem recited by memory about peace (in Spanish)

The first kid in the youngest group said, "I feel peecefool when I am weeth my pah-reents." *cue awwws from audience*
The second kid says "I feel peecefool when I am een my house weeth my fah-mee-lee ahnd my brah-there." *cue awws from audience*
The third kid goes up and takes the mic, "I feel peecefool when I am watching TV awn thee couch." *cue roaring laughter from all children and parents*
Then the parents calmed down, but of course the little children are laughing and laughing and laughing until the Australian teacher takes the mic and says "We are WAITING..." in a stern voice until they calmed down.

Then the kids in grades 3 and 4 go up and say things that would make the world more peaceful. "There should be no war." "Eet ees bad that there are poor pee-oh-pole. I weesh that there are no more poor pe-oh-pull."

Then the kids in grades 5 and 6 recited some acrostic and rhyming poems in Spanish.


Then, the whole group of students, grades 1 through 6 (about 200 kids) sang "We Are the World."

Yes, that Michael Jackson (and friends) one.

The kids put their hands on each others' shoulders and swayed, while some threw their hands up and waved them to the music, and towards the end, they all clapped to the beat.

It was super cute and I of course wish I had my video camera. It was great because they'd all be mumbling most of the lyrics until the chorus when they would all clearly shout "WEE ARE THEE WOHRLD! WEE ARE THEE CHEELDREN!"

After that rousing performance, five children stood up, each holding giant 3-foot-diameter white balloons by a string. Next to each of them was another child, with a highly decorated poster with one of the continents written on it.
The kids went outside, and after a big "ONE TWO THREE!" They let go of the balloons to be symbolic of peace (or maybe of war, since they were getting rid of them?).
Let's stop there. Notice how I said five children? I'll get to that in a minute.

That was pretty much the end. The teachers got on the mic and thanked the parents for coming, and the kids waited for the parents to go outside. The parents congregated while the kids went to their classes and got their bags.

One of the moms, Marta, who we know from Lucia's basketball class (her daughter also is in the class), saw my purple sunglasses I was wearing outside and got all excited and started complimenting me like "Y Melissa! Me encantan las gafas! Super fashion! Very fashion!" As she grinned and did this hand wave head bob thing. She is one of my favorite friends of Cristina's.

My impression of Marta's reaction, wearing the so-called "high fashion" glasses:


Gif maker

While outside with the parents, I asked Cristina, "So don't you think it's weird that they had only five continents? There are seven, right?"
I began to doubt myself because no one in the audience seemed to blink when the Australian said the five continents were represented by balloons. During that time, I was thinking "So, which five? Are we only picking favorites?" At that point I also noticed one of the posters (all were in English) that said "AUSTRALIASIA," and wondered if that was a typo or some invented combo of continents. But there was also an "ASIA" poster, which confused me even more.

So, as I was saying...Cristina thought for a moment, and was like "No, there are five." And Monica, her sister was there, as well as a couple other parents of kids in Lucia's class. We opened it up to discussion and they were like "Nope, there are only five. Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia, America." And I was like "Oh, in the US we learn that there's North America and South America." And one of the moms was like "Yeah, even though they are not attached, we still consider it one giant continent." (Which I find funny, since my whole life I've thought that Europe and Asia were too connected to be considered two different continents)

Then I was like, "Um, what about Antarctica?"

"We don't count that one."

"But why? It's a huge land mass!"

"I dunno." Then, jokingly, Monica was like "No one lives down there, so we might as well ignore it."

This was all news to me.

Then the moms called over Floren, Cloe (Lucia's friend)'s dad and Marta's husband, who is French (her mom is Spanish). He came over and they asked him what he learned in school back in France. And he also said five. I explained how we learned there were seven and he was just like "Oh you crazy Yankees (spelled, in Spanish, "Yanquis")!"

So that was that.