Year Abroad: Burns, Booze and Birthdays

             I'm going back through my old posts and trying to complete my chronological year.  This stuff tends to be something I wrote about a specific day and then had too much other stuff to get done so they fell to the sidelines.  Also I feel like I may have published this before (please tell me if I have).

              January 25^th, Burns night, a day to celebrate the poet and all this Scottish.  Except I was in Spain, a long way away from the nearest Scot (I think).  There are some here in Jaen I just haven’t met them.  Instead of grey skies and rain, there was sunshine and heat.  The Sunday beforehand had been 23 degrees…in January!  Now that was a day when I loved Spain, give me sun and I’m a happy bunny.  But anyways, what I’m trying to say is that Burns night, one of my favourite celebrations at home, was just another day here, and an uneventful day at that.               

            On the Thursday we all went out for our normal tapas night and this was the first time I’d seen Jenna since she’d gotten engaged.  It had also recently been here birthday.  We got talking about the “gathering” and she volunteered her flat as it is much bigger than mine, and she said that she’d do some cooking as well.  I volunteered to get the birthday cake and some crisps and it was bring your own booze, so now we had a plan.  And we were all set to have a pretty unconventional Burns night…

            Friday night was a time to meet two new friends.  Candice from New Zealand, although her family recently moved to Adelaide…so when I finally go visit my Aussie family, I can visit her as well, she lives with Mat in La Puerta, and Todd from Washington State, who had actually just met every person in the room that day.  He is in a tiny tiny town called Siles.  If Baeza is Coatbridge, the Siles is Annithill (this only works for people who know the area where I’m from) – Siles is in the middle of nowhere and doesn’t have that many people living there, it’s just cruel to put someone out there so isolated.  Mat and Candice are the closest assistants and they are 20 km away.  Once again I count my blessings for being put in Baeza.

             The Friday night was fun, wine and whiskey at Dave and Anna’s, then to La Pena for some impromptu flamenco – I think this was Candice’s first experience of live flamenco in Spain, and she loved it.  They even played a sort-of Blues guitar mixed with flamenco song at one point, that was my favourite.  I spent the night chatting with Candice about the TV programmes that the UK and New Zealand share.  She told me that Coronation Street or Corro is huge over there and that just about everybody watches it.  Then we went to 11 del 11 and danced for a bit, but everyone was exhausted so we went home relatively early.

            Then it was Saturday and time to organise the party.  I went and bought the cake and candles, then went down to Jenna’s to “decorate”…I put up my two Scotland flags.  Meanwhile she had prepared so much food.  And it was all brilliant.  I stood chatting to her in the kitchen whilst she prepared quesadillas, and almost everyone else was sat around her dining table cracking on with the wine and beer.  Jenna and I lamented about the state of Spanish cheese…it’s too mild…and she was glad to hear that we have good strong cheese in the UK. 

Jenna preparing some food.

The wine table

            A traditional part of a Burns night is the “toast to the lassies”…there was only one person who we needed to toast, and that was Jenna.  She had allowed us to use her flat, and had spent ages making food for us.  Thanks Jenna!  Shortly after this we did the birthday cake.  The cake was a sort-of ice cream cake but very chocolaty…when Leah was handing me a piece it fell, and surprising all apart from myself, I caught it before it hit the cream couch…I’m on a lucky streak of catching things just before disaster…a beer glass in Torreon, a box of vodka bottles in ASDA and now the chocolate cake. 

            Then it was time to try and attempt to teach them how to Ceilidh dance.  Of course I picked the easiest one “The Gay Gordons” because it is simply just walking with a few spins thrown in…it should be perfectly simple to learn, right?  Not so much.