To begin with, what a lovely family I´ve been fortunate to be a part of here in Spain.

We decided to celebrate Christmas this year in Spain with my better half´s family, instead of travelling to Finland. We´ve been travelling a lot this year so the decision to stay as close to home seemed like the best option for both of us. Although I of course miss my family and friends a lot when living abroad, I had an awesome Christmas this year with a lot of funny and weird Spanish /Catalan traditions such as:

• Extremely loud discussions that seems like fights between the family but for Spanish people this is just casual discussions about random things
• If someone in a Spanish family have gained or lost a few extra kilos, be sure that everyone has had a minute to point this out in an (for me at least) pretty direct and aggressive way, like saying “Hey fatty, when are you starting to go to the gym”
• El Caga Tió, which is literally a wooden figure that will shit presents if you punch him with a stick
• El Caganer , a statue of a guy taking a shit, that is also very important in the Christmas decoration for Spanish / Catalan people

All in all, Christmas 2016 was a really nice experience for me, and thanks god I at least learned this year to speak Spanish so I understood that the loud discussions weren’t actually real family fights, since they definitely sounded like that.
Next up is New Years Eve, that I think we will be celebrating in Andorra by going to ski and enjoying good food with our friends.
– Nina