Marta's Christmas Cominghome

Hello from Spain! I’m Marta, the Spanish volunteer of Intervia that has been spending Christmas with her family and friends. I was so happy to have the opportunity of coming back home, as I was really missing it and its weather (which is warmer than the czech one hehe).

I have been celebrating all the special days with my family, eating and spending a lot of time together. On the Christmas Eve🎄 we usually prepare a fancy dinner and we expect Santa 🎅to come. It is true that in Spain is less common to have presents on the 24th of December, as Santa Claus is only coming to some houses: we receive all of the big presents on the 6th of January morning, because the Three Kings 🤴🤴🤴 come during the night from the 5th to the 6th of January. During the morning of the 6th we eat a special breakfast with our family, which includes “roscón”, a sweet food that is only prepared during the Christmas time. In addition, the night of the 5th to the 6th the kids all around the country leave some food and water for the kings and their three camels🐫🐫🐫, and also send a letter ✉️ days before they arrive including the presents they would like to receive. It is said that they will only get the presents they want if they have been good during the past year, because if not, the Three Kings won’t bring them nothing but coal.

On the Christmas day, the 25th of December, we usually have lunch together, eating a lot of starters (that go from cheese to ham, shrimp or pate), elvers or fish soup as the first plate, meat or fish as the main dish and a lot of traditional spanish candy as a dessert (like “polvorones”, “turrón” or “mazapán”). We also eat this type of food on the last day of the year, in which we have this special dinner with our family and wait until midnight, when we put on the television to follow what’s going on in the main square of Madrid: a lot of people go there to celebrate the coming of the new year, paying attention to the big clock we have there. It’s a tradition in Spain to eat one grape every time the clock sounds at midnight, so we eat 12 grapes🍇 and make a wish✨ for the new year with each one. After that, we hug our loved ones❤️, spend some time together and then leave the house to celebrate with our friends. We usually spend all the night out and, at the breakfast time, we eat “churros” or bring them to our houses. We try to sleep during the morning and wake up for the lunch we have on the 1st of January, but we are usually very tired at that time hehe.And that’s basically what we tend to do during these special days :) I hope you find it interesting and also had a really great time with your friends and family.

After all of that, I came back to Czech Republic and to my workplace, where all the workers gave me a warm welcome. I started helping again at Lydie, preparing at the same time my future mini project, which consists in a presentation about my country and what represents it. We plan to have a day in which I explain what I prepared and we eat some food that has to be typically Spainish, prepared by myself. I was also happy about reuniting with Rika, my flatmate, and I can‘t wait to see and spend time with the rest of volunteers!

Best wishes, Marta ;)