8 January 2017
It’s 2017!
Christmas is
over and I’m back in Alicante and back at work. I went to Finland for Christmas,
which was really relaxing and nice. But going back home for a week of course
made me miss everything and everyone again much more than I had before going.
Now it’s been a week back in Spain and it’s getting better again and I’m
getting used to being here again.. ..especially as the weather is amazing at
the moment, every day totally sunny and more than 15 degrees, even 19 some days
and I think I got some freckles. Feels like spring!
But coming back
to Alicante still felt a bit strange, it’s funny how being away for only 10
days made me feel like I was coming to some entirely new city again. In Finland
Christmas was basically over by new year’s day but in Spain it looked like
people were still waiting for Christmas to arrive. It’s probably because here
it is in fact Epiphany, the 6thof January, that is the Christmas in
the sense of gift giving and festivities. Therefore, on the first week of the
new year, people were still busy shopping gifts and making preparations for
Christmas. The decorations were still everywhere and Christmas carols were
playing. That felt a bit corny as for me Christmas was basically already over.
But well, in a way it was nice to experience the Spanish Christmas too at least
to some extent.
 |
| Some Epiphany themed chocolates :) |
On the 6th
or actually on the 5th in the evening, we went to see the parade of
Epiphany. It is all about celebrating the “three kings”, the three wise men of magi
who arrive to the town to give gifts to the children in similar manner as Santa
Claus does in Finland. The parade was a fun experience. It was a lot of dancers,
silly Disney and other characters and carriages with people and kitschy things
and ultimately of course, also the three wise men. I hear our office is somehow
also included in the parade every year. I suppose the office is quite an
important factor of the economy of Alicante because one of our bosses gets to
be one of the “kings” every year. This year the executive director of the
entire office was playing one of them and apparently, that’s a great honour.
There was also another carriage with only the office employees so it was really
fun for us to watch and see familiar faces among the people on the carriages. They
were throwing sweets and toys to children and it seemed like adults were
children again trying to catch anything thrown from the carriages. That was
very interesting and reminded me of the Finnish graduation “parade” of penkkarit.
Last week at the
office was at first a bit sad as almost everyone was still on vacations. Also I
think about 80 percent of the trainees were still on holidays. But finally, I
got a bit used to the office being wonderfully quiet and calm with no ques to
the cafeteria and no constant noise on the corridors. In any case, I’m happy
the others will be back next week because then also all the trainees will be around
and organising things to do together and things will get back to normal J
Next week we are
also supposed to get a new roommate from Estonia! That’s exciting and I’m happy
to have more people around to never feel lonely at our place and to get new
international friends. Then the week after also the fourth girl, a French one,
will arrive, let’s hope both of these girls are nice (and also that they speak
Spanish so I can practice with them tooJ)
!
Happy New Year
everyone and let’s stay in touch!
With love,
Noora
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