American in Spain

Last weekend we went to the annual festival in Ampuero, a neighboring town of 4,000 residents. Every year, they hold a miniature version of the San Fermin festival in Pamplona, complete with all night partying in white clothes and red scarfs, a running of the bulls, and bullfighting. Of the six years we’ve lived here, we’ve gone several times. We knew from past experience that it’s nearly impossible to park in a small town that’s hosting three times its inhabitants in a festival, so we parked on the outskirts of town to save the time and stress of finding a closer spot.
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On the last Friday of August every year, the nearby tourist town of Laredo hosts their annual Batalla de Flores (Flower Battle). It consists of a parade of floats, decorated entirely with real flowers. The floats range from fairly simple – but more complex than I could construct – numbers with a cartoon character or two, to huge elaborate contraptions with various animals or other themes. Each float is decorated with some sort of Homo sapiens specimens deemed to be cute, usually small children or young maidens in elaborate costumes. The floats are judged on a variety of categories:

• Presentation: relative to the size of the float, the combination of diverse pieces and parts, and complexity of the float
• Art: the general beauty, composition, design, originality and “wow factor”
• Flowers: how well the flowers are nailed to the float, and the general quality of the floral craftsmanship
• Quantity of flowers: the percentage of the float covered in flowers

There is also a separate prize for the best dressed human ornaments. During the video you’re about to see, the announcer mentions that this year, there were floats that had more than 100,000 flowers on them. Wow!
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This past weekend my town, Colindres, celebrated its Second Annual Beer Festival. We went only one day last year, but this year we went all four days. I had a total of 3.5 liters of beer in seven half-liter (±1 pint) mugs. They also had liter steins, but I couldn’t bring myself to buy one. Plus, I subscribe to the “smaller servings is better” beer philosophy of my adopted country.
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On July 3, 2011, we attended the wedding of my childhood friend, Charley Coffey, to his beautiful bride, Christanne. Due to the separate courses our lives have taken, I had never actually met Christanne until the wedding. Both of them are incredibly photogenic and every photograph of them looks like it should be on an orthodontist’s wall. They are both medical doctors at the end of their schooling, primed to stop living like students and start living like kings in San Diego, the city said to have one of the best climates on the planet. I couldn’t be happier for them. Everyone at the wedding was very nice, the North Carolinians from the groom’s side as well as the South Carolinians from the bride’s side.
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On Sunday we were visited by my lovely blogrollmate, Mother Theresa, and her beautiful family. They were visiting Santander for the weekend, and asked if they could stop by for a visit. I’m very glad they did. The last time we saw them was almost three years ago in Pamplona, their hometown, during the festival for which you have heard of their town, San Fermín. Incidentally, at that time, Nora was about a dozen cells big, considerably smaller than her fetal sibling is now. It seems an odd coincidence that we’ve only ever seen Theresa et. al. when Marga was pregnant.
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Today is Kings Day, the traditional gift giving day in Catholic Spain. For people who prefer Christmas to be more about Baby Jesus than the North Pole, it makes more sense to give gifts on Epiphany, when tradition says that the Wise Men allegedly gave gifts to Jesus.

This morning, my mother-in-law articulated a concern I’ve been feeling but had yet to put into words:
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On Thanksgiving morning, as is tradition in my family, we piled in the minivan and headed over the proverbial river and through the proverbial woods to Grandmother’s house. Nora was relatively well behaved during the 3.5 hour car journey, which included a stop at Bojangles for a “bo berry biscuit”, which was priced at $0.89 for one or $1.00 for two…and Europeans ask why Americans overeat so much. Before leaving Bojangles, Nora managed to dump her entire cup of water down the front of her dress, which was immediately removed, thus clearing the way for getting chocolate all over her onesie later in the car ride.
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In Spain, the primary holiday for children to wear costumes is Carnival, not Halloween. However little by little, the virus of American culture is taking hold. Several of my expat friends in Spain have reported some trick-or-treaters, and some of the local shops say they got some too.
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It’s that time of year again, time for wool sweaters and pumpkin carving. Like the previous two years, my friend Andrés hooked us up with a lovely gourd specimen to carve. Nora had a lot of fun with the pumpkin this year. We invited over our four-year-old neighbor, Oscar (who happens to be Andrés’ nephew), to participate in the autumnal festivities. I did get Oscar to put his hand into the pumpkin and feel the slimy innards once, but after that he preferred to play with Nora’s toys, which were all new to him, and watch from afar. He brought over his own little pumpkin to carve too, so Marga got her first carving experience, which she thoroughly enjoyed.
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When you live abroad, most customs that don’t match your own seem odd at first. Some traditions are pretty clearly worse, but the people practicing them don’t know any better; most are just different, neither better nor worse; and some are hands down superior to the customs in your own country, and it’s your compatriots back home that don’t know any better. Today I’m going to talk about a Spanish custom that falls into the latter category, being pretty clearly preferable to the tradition in my home country. It’s about who buys lunch or drinks or dinner on your birthday.
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