Yes, I know, December was a bust as far as blogging. But before starting fresh in the New Year (complete with a resolution to blog more consistently), allow me to share some winter highlights from the past 6 weeks;
Thanksgiving
As the only person I know with a hostel-sized kitchen, I hosted a Thanksgiving dinner attended by 13 Americans and half of my flatmates. It turned out to be one of the best Thanksgivings ever. Everyone one brought a dish with a serving size of about 15, so we had a ridiculous amount of food that was ridiculously tasty. We managed to have every traditional dish except cranberry sauce (which I didn't lose sleep over because I'm not a fan:-)). Stuffing, roasted veggies, risotto, gourmet macaroni and cheese, three types of mashed potatoes (plain, spicy, sweet potato), baked apples, brownies, and more. And of course, turkey (see below for the turkey saga).
My non-American flatmates a) were impressed that Americans can actually cook and bake and produce delicious homemade food, as they generally only see me eat salads and cereal and b) had their stereotypes about how much Americans eat reinforced:-). But it was awesome, by far one of the best experiences I´ve had here. It was such a great feeling to be surrounded by people you truly like and realize how lucky you are to have found them in a foreign country.
The only tricky part was getting the turkey. There is turkey in Spain, of course, but they don´t have ´pavo entero´´(whole turkeys) available until closer to Christmas. Since I was hosting, it was up to me to find the turkey, and I´ll just say the lesson is never send a vegetarian to do a carnivore´s job. I couldn´t find a whole turkey for the life of me, and ended up enlisting the help of one of my (meat-eating) friends. We finally realized that there just wasn´t whole turkey available in Madrid at that time of year, so we settled on a mass of turkey breast that had somehow been shaped into the form of a turkey. It was basically a meat sculpture. Sounds kind of gross, and it kind of was :-). My Greek flatmate had volunteered to cook the turkey, because none of us had a clue, and when we brought back the turkey-shaped turkey that wasn´t actually the whole bird, she was insulted that we would stoop so low. Nevertheless, she cooked and basted that turkey breast monstrosity, god bless her, and by all accounts it tasted great.
Cinderella
My friend Nicole and I were both involved in theater in college. We both were craving the experience again, and we found an English-language theater company, The Madrid Players, that stages a Christmas pantomime every December for the children of Madrid. This year the pantomime was Cinderella, and Nicole and I volunteered to help out backstage (we were both stage managers and are more comfortable behind the curtain than in front of it:-)).
A quick note about the concept of the pantomime. It's a British phenomemon, a specific kind of play that I was unfamiliar with until I got involved with The Madrid Players (which was founded by Brits). It does not, as I first thought, have anything to do with mimes. Rather, it is an extremely campy, colorful, over-the-top rendition of a classic children's story, and one of the hallmarks of a pantomime is the casting of men in at least one of the lead female roles, usually the antagonist (in our case, the ugly stepsisters). A pantomime, while performed for children, also has alot of bawdy, punny humor that only the parents will understand and groan at. At first I was skeptical as to how this thing works, but the actors were great, the scenery and costumes were wonderful, and we had an audience of at least 400 for each of our 5 performances. The audience was mainly ex-pat families but there were also a decent number of Spanish kids as well. The play was mainly in English, but there were plenty of jokes in Spanish (or about Madrid) and even one song that Nicole and I only found out after was a parody of a famous Spanish "Factor X" (an "American Idol" type show) audition.
The 'mice' were all played by children (age 5-12), and one of my responsibilities was to be the kid-wrangler during the shows, making sure they were there for their entrances and keeping them quiet backstage. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it, they were sweet kids and there's something about getting kids involved with theater (when it's not in an intense stage-mom way) that you can see is so amazing as a creative outlet and they just have so much fun. Plus, almost all of the kids were flawlessly bilingual, I was so impressed and jealous:-). Most of them seemed to either have one Spanish and one English-speaking parent, or came from two English-speaking parents but had grown up in Madrid and so had picked up the language easily. I couldn't help thinking about the bilingual program where I work and how there have to be lessons it could learn from these families in how to inculcate a second language more successfully.
Overall, fun is the word I would use to describe the experience. It felt so good to be back in theater again, and to do something completely outside of the school/Fulbright world.
Go here to see pictures and 3 short videos from the play!
Holiday Cheer
December was rounded off by Hanukkah and Christmas mini-celebrations. Latke making took place at the Glorieta (my place) and Christmas cookies & cider took place at Caitlin's (my 'cookies' turned out more as one giant, square shaped cookie-thing, but it still tasted good). Two nights of buttery interfaith goodness:-).
After becoming blob-like at Caitlin's, we went for a walk around the city to see the lights. Here are my favorites, taken in the central area around Plaza de Castellano, Serrano, and Paseo del Prado;
Finally, there was an all apartment "Cena de la Navidad" (Christmas dinner) that miraculously managed to get 8 of the 9 flatmates around the table. My contribution was scrambled eggs (cop out you say? I beg to differ!), which joined lasagna, salad, a Greek ham and something dish where I ate alot of the something, fried plantains, and an amazing chocolate cake. Afterwards, we had a secret santa and amazingly, even though we all shopped at the same three places, no one bought the same thing for their secret santa. It was a great mood to leave the apartment in right before we all left for our respective winter holiday destinations.
(In the interest of journalistic integrity, this picture was not actually taken at the cena de la navidad, but rather at a party some weeks before. I just wanted to finally show proof of these 8 other girls I insist I live with, yet which you have never seen:-)).Happy New Year everybody!
