La noche buena - Brian
Christmas Eve is known as “La noche buena” (the good night) here and like in the US it is traditional to have a nice dinner with your family and perhaps go to midnight mass afterwards if you are catholic.
This year Shannon and I were invited to have dinner with our friend Adela and her family. We were delighted to be invited and excited to go, as foreigners its not often we get invited to family events let alone holiday events.
We went to Adela’s apartment with our friends Yumiko and Yoko and met Adela’s sister Irma, her mother and her uncle Jose. It turns out Jose is the visiting priest for the convent at the end of our street, hopefully he’ll take us up on our offer to stop in for coffee or a drink one afternoon. Granada really is a small world.
We were treated to a wonderful meal and yummy flan and local sweets in addition to great conversation throughout the meal (as well as great tolerance for our Spanish!).
A nice Christmas time tradition here is to see and create Belen’s (nativity scenes of Bethlehem), Adela had a beautiful hand made ceramic one on her terrace that has been in her family for some time, it was nice to see.
There is a lot of Spanish life that is hidden from us as foreigners, as we make friends and are allowed glimpses into the traditional life here we fall in love with this place even more.