New Year, New Term, New Post

One would hope that after a lovely Christmas at home, I would be full of vim, vigour and vitality and want to hit the streets of Barcelona on this beautiful, warm January Saturday morning. If I wasn't doing that, one would think I would be studying for my impending university exams. what one would not presume is that I would still be in my bed, in my pyjamas, having watched four episodes of How I Met Your Mother. I would have to be struck down by the flu in my first week back on Erasmus, wouldn't I?

But enough of the melancholy, and to the important things: Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, and homes away from homes.

As I had an American roommate, and as I have been imbued with my mother's appreciation and enthusiasm for holidays Irish people don't celebrate, I was all on to throw a Thanksgiving party this year. It wasn't big, just a few of my friends and a few of her friends, but around the table we represented Ireland, England, America and Germany. Now, I am a relatively alright cook, in that I rarely burn things or undercook things, and while my cooking isn't extravagant or elaborate or even very good, I felt confident enough to roast a bird for the celebration. Just not a turkey. I have no idea how to cook a turkey, and besides, I'm not sure my oven here could fit a turkey, and furthermore, we really didn't have enough people there to eat an entire turkey. So I bought a chicken, and we Christened it Turkey.

What I did know about Turkey was that he was free-range, and a good size, and corn-fed. What I didn't know about Turkey was that he still had a head. Yes, that's right, he still had a head. He not only had a head, but he was perfectly anatomically correct on the inside as well, which I only discovered after cutting off his head, telling my roommate somewhat squeamishly that I could see down its windpipe, and then taking a good look inside him. Said roommate deigned to stop laughing at me and taking pictures of the decapitated Turkey for enough time to cut him open and try to take out the guts. We got so close, we really did, but there's only so much chicken guts two girls can take, so off we went to the supermarket butcher, who cleaned him out within seconds, and looked quite amused while she did it.

That grisly ordeal out of the way, the chicken got put in the oven, and became part of a truly lovely Thanksgiving feast, which included roast potatoes and mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, carrots, pecan pie, lemon pie, banoffee pie and would have included a cheesecake if it hadn't been dropped on the floor moments before serving. We gave our thanks, and then we watched a few Christmas movies, and went our separate ways and went to bed. So I must say, my first Spanish-American-English-Irish-German Thanksgiving chicken dinner really was a huge success.

It took a while to get into the Christmas spirit after that because unlike Ireland, Barcelona doesn't go into Christmas hyper mode the second Hallowe'en is over. It wasn't until early December that the lights were turned on in the city, and that was when things really got crazy. The Feria de Santa Llucia is set up in front of the cathedral for the month of December, and is essentially a huge Christmas market specialising solely in figures to put in cribs. Big figures, little figures, crib shrubbery, all the animals you could imagine (I bought a tiny black and white cat for one of our cribs at home), and most bizarre of all, the caganers and the Caga Tiós. The former are figures, mostly of famous people (the entire Barcelona football team, the British royal family and Barack Obama featuring heavily), squatting down and taking a poop. The latter are logs that you draw smiley faces on and hit with sticks until they poop little gifts like turrón. I don't know why Catalán culture has such an obsession with poop, but to each their own!

I went home for Christmas on the morning of Friday the 17th of December. By the evening of Friday the 17th of December the entire country was covered in a thick layer of snow, so I really think I made the right decision as to when to get my flights. After spending the day in Dublin, I arrived at my house around 8pm, completely covered in snow, and my mum said it was the most typical cinematic clichè, but trust me, it actually happened! The next few days the rest of my family wasn't so lucky. With two siblings, three cousins and an uncle trying to descend on Cork from Edinburgh, Dublin, Lisbon, Geneva, New York and Malaga, and airports shutting down across Europe, it was a tad up in the air who would be home for Christmas at all. Fortunately everyone got home with delays here and there, with the exception of the cousin from Lisbon, who was sorely missed! Christmas itself was lovely, and involved much cheer of the Flynn persuasion - chocolate mousse, pyjamas, movies, penguins bearing Hershey's kisses, Christmas tree biscuits, and let's not forget the cat bringing in a live bird on Christmas morning, only to cover the entire hall with feathers and bird poop.

(Maybe poop is just inherent to Christmas everywhere, I just hadn't noticed it before)

I'm not usually a fan of New Year's Eve, but my friends and I made the very bright decision to count down the last seconds of 2010 in Galway. One friend who studies in NUIG very kindly put us up in his house, and despite being the only girl at a party of boys who all inexplicably decided to wear suits, it was a really great night. I had never got the chance to really explore Galway city before, having only ever been there once when I was but a 12 year old Girl Guide, and I was really glad I was able to - Galway is a seriously cool city, and one I hope to go back to.

My return to Barcelona was difficult after three weeks of being loved and looked after and surrounded by family. Thankfully, the boyfriend came with me to settle me back in. It was great to have him here, because I could stall my efforts of studying for a while and instead do fun things, like go for tapas, watch the Godfather Part II, sit in the Parque de la Ciudadela while the sun sets, and drink beer in the square of eternal flame. A good highlight was also getting to see the World Cup, for which we got a photo in the paper La Razón (according to Wikipedia, Spain's fifth-highest circulation general-interest daily newspaper based in Madrid), which can be seen in the third picture here. Now he's gone back to Dublin, and I've been hit with the flu, I have to face the gruelling task of studying for exams in contemporary Spanish theatre and political theory. Or at least, I have to sit in my bed and watch tv with a small guilty part of my brain telling me to do so.

My exams end on the 21st of January, and I have about two weeks free before I start classes again. The current plan is to work more on the Spanish language that I learned in the first term, and to go to Madrid for a few days to visit a friend who is on Erasmus just outside, in Alcalá de Henares. After that, I start a new semester and new classes. Being home gave me good perspective for the year, and time to reflect on what I wanted out of this experience. According to my first post to this blog, I wanted "a better understanding of the Spanish language and culture, some interesting and fun friends, and the opportunity to travel around Europe to visit other Erasmus friends". By and large, I'm halfway through the year, and by and large I'm halfway to those goals. Let's hope Madrid will be my first stop, followed by Lyon and Strasbourg, and maybe elsewhere. A belated happy new year to all, and I'll catch you up again when my life involves fewer tissues and study timetables.