We guish you a Merry Christmas...oh, and Mary had a son named Baby JayZOOUS!

Christmas in Rivas...what a wonderful time of year. Festivities at school are as follows: Thursday was Elegance Day/ Three Kings and Friday was the Christmas concert. Nothing I can say will ever completely capture the true essence of these events at little old Hans Christian Andersen, but I will try.

Elegance Day/ Three Kings
In Spain presents are exchanged on January 6th, El Dia de los Reyes Magos, the Day of the Three Kings or Wise Men. Some gifts are shared on Christmas but that is from American influence, the major holiday is in celebration of the Three Kings. Because of this my school has three of the teachers dress up as the kings and pass out little gifts all day to the children. They position themselves on the stage and the kids come up one by one, like sitting on Santa's lap, and tell them if they were good or bad. They get their gifts, pose for a picture, and then take off. The young children are great because they are stunned and behave really well. The older children feel the need to annouce to everyone that these people are not the real kings because they saw the real ones on the internet or because its too early. All in all its a funny thing to witness and most children are estatic. Now as many people may remember I don't feel very strongly that Spain is past racism, and my feelings were confimed by the fact that they still do BLACK FACE! Seriously, the person who is supposed to be the black king will paint his face pitch black so as not to confuse the children! I completely understand that is normal here, and that their history is not the same as ours, however, it still just blows my mind. They reason that the children expect it and would be confused if there was no black king...amazing.
But seriously Spain I have one thing to say: don't call my country racist and then do this.
Since the Three Kings were at school the children were supposed to wear their 'sunday's best'. The teachers also dressed up quite nice and the school looked fantastic. Since I'm a huge fan of the fact that we can dress down at work, I took the kids off guard showing up in a dress and makeup...the things I do for these little cherubs!

Christmas Concert
On Friday the kids hard work for the last couple of weeks was finally put to the test. In the morning the Infantil children performed their Christmas performance for their parents and it was spectacular. They were all dressed up as little kings, reindeer, angels, or farmers and looked amazing. They sang songs in Spanish and English, since we are a bilingual school, but clearly it was challenging. Later in the day the older kids put on their performace for a new set of parents. Each age group did something in English and Spanish as well. They all put a lot of effort in and were quite happy to show their parents. My only job for the day was to gawk and take pictures so I could totally enjoy every moment.

In summation everything about Christmas time at school was a hit and very impressive. I spent most of the day laughing at/with the children and teachers and couldn't have been happier. After, school ended early so the majority of the teachers went out for drinks and lunch in Rivas. Let's just say that we are a crazy group when we all get together outside of school and leave it at that. Although I will say I never thought I could experience that much fun in little of Rivas!

(I updated a ton of pictures in my link)

Negative: Leaving my children and not seeing them for three and a half weeks.

Positive: Leaving 752 children and not hearing them for three and a half weeks.