It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Winter has officially arrived! And before anyone yells at me for complaining about the weather cause it's warm in Spain... well, it's not! It's been colder here than in Boston a couple times in the past week. We also have this wonderful cierzo (local name for the wind that blows through the Ebro Valley) that everyone kept warning us about all fall. I was like yeah, yeah, what's a little wind. Until I woke up in the middle of the night last night and thought our balcony was actually going to blow off. I could have jumped out my window this morning and flown to school. 

While I was busy battling the obligatory winter-is-here cold (I work with about 500 germ-infested little kids every week, so there was no escaping it), Christmas arrived in Tudela. 

The furniture store I live above redid their display to include this beautiful Christmas tree. I might be obsessed. 

I want one.

The streets are full of Christmas lights (instead of individual houses putting up decorations as is customary in the US, here the town hangs lights along the streets). Unfortunately, estamos en crisis so it appears that actually lighting the lights isn't in the budget for this year. Maybe when Christmas gets closer?

Beautiful even if they're not lit!

The most snow I'll be seeing this year!

The stores are filled with traditional Spanish Christmas goodies: turrón, marzapán, polvorones, and many many more. It takes all the self-restraint I have to walk through the grocery store without buying one of each to sample (next blog post: a comparative analysis of every single brand of turrón sold in the country...)

So many options!

And I´m teaching all my classes Christmas carols for the Christmas concert we´re putting on for their parents in December. Jingle Bells with my 4-year-olds, Deck the Halls with the 3rd-graders (It´s ridiculous how quickly the fa-la-la-la-la gets stuck in your head!). Spain might have its own foods, music and traditions that are foreign to me, but there's still a familiar feeling in the air. I'm ready for December! 

Jamón jamón jamón (and other highlights of my weekend in Madrid)

Spaniards may love jamón more than anything else in the world (except maybe futbol). So when I heard there was a feria of jamón in Plaza Mayor the same weekend I was going to be in Madrid, you can bet I was excited. And it did not disappoint! There was a huge tent in the middle of the plaza, packed with people and vendors from eight of the best jamón ibérico companies in the world. These are legs of jamón that sell for 200-500 euros.

There was also a presentation on how to eat and cut jamón ibérico, led by the most Spanish man I´ve ever seen. This man would have fought you to the death if you dared suggest that there is any food on the planet that can even compete with jamón ibérico. Pictured below, he describes the four great delicacies of the world (truffles, caviar, and foie), and why jamón ibérico stands alone at the top of the list. He even got an Italian man to admit that jamón ibérico is better than prosciutto.