...:: Christmas is coming!! ::...

These days, our city is being decorated with ligh

ts, gifts, and typical food, songs and so on for preparing us to receive Christmas time! It is a tradition here to put a tree next to the cathedral and a nativity scene in Pigeon Square, near to the cathedral.

We also have a street market in which you can get whatever you want (since clothes from jewels). Shops and Supermarkets offer us their different decorations. The one I like most is “El Corte Inglés”, which has a beautiful and amazed decoration. When you pass along a street you can notice that balconies has Father Christmas and colourful lights (in fact, my mother has 

already hanged one today).

At home, tastes ar

e different and each other c

hooses his/her

favourite decoration and foo

d. In my house, we put an optical fiber tree. Few years ago we put the other tree b

ut that one is 

easier to put up and I think is very nice. We also have a “Nacimiento” and several candles, lights and so on.

Now, a bit Spanish.

El día de noche Buena, solemos cenar, como entrantes o primer plato, “Pastel de cabracho”, que a mi me encanta. Está hecho con pescado (cabracho), huevos, nata... batidos y mezclados, que se ponen a cocer al horno. Para comerlo, se unta mayonesa.

También son típicos los langostinos, la sopa de pescado, los pimientos rellenos, aguacates rellenos, chipirones, almejas, etc. Hay mucha variedad de comida especial que puedes hacer en estos días. 

Después viene la carne, unos años pavo, otros cordero, pollo, y otros una carne rellena de hojaldre que está muy buena.

Como postre típico, nosotros hacemos una macedonia de frutas, y luego comemos nueces e higos, junto con los tradicionales turrones y mazapanes. 

And this is all for the moment. 

We wish you a merry christmas!

-Irene-

...:: Interesting people in Leon ::...

Hi again guys! =)

How are you? I know that a lot of time has passed since the last time we write to you, really apologizes, but we haven't got enought time!

Now I'm going to talk about interesting people in León. In fact, there aren't most interesting people, I'm going to talk about some celebrities, like for instance:

• Café Quijano: Is a music group formed by three brothers. They begun their career in 1997 but they became popular with their song “La Lola”, which is now the name of their bar here in the center of León. They have published four discs but now they are separated and one of them have begin a new solo career.
  
  
• Another celebrity is Manuel Martínez: He is a Spanish athlete, from León, specializing in the test of throwing of weight, dominator in his test in Spain in the current decade. He is a very versatile person and in addition with a great aptitude to make compatible other activities with the athletics. He has taken part in many Olympic Games, between which they emphasize Beijin 2008, where unfortunately he was eliminated in the phase of selection.
  
  

• Another one who I imagine you have known is our prime minister José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero. He is also from León. He is a socialist Spanish politician, and the fifth prime minister of Spain from the Transition, after his victory in the general elections of 2004. He is the current prime minister, after confirming his position in the general elections of 2008.

• Another important team that I think you haven't knonw is ADEMAR. East is an team of handball and is really good. The people are in the habit of supporting them very much, are something brilliant. It has became into one of the top teams of Spain, to the same BM's level. Ciudad Real, FC Barcelona and Portland San Antonio of Pamplona, even relying on minor presupposed that these.
  

I don't remember anymore interesting people. I hope you like it.

Regards from Spain.

-Paula-

...:: Are you interested in politics? ::...

Hello guys! :)

Last day, in English class we listened to a song which is called “Yes we can” from the Black Eyed Peas’ singer. And we loved it so much, because we learnt more about your situation.
In Spain, we have been talking about the elections in your country and we think most people here wanted Obama to win.
For that reason, we have chosen talking about politics because we think now it’s an important topic for you. As students:

1. Are you interested in politics and the current economical situation? Why?
2. What do you think about your new president?
3. How do you think this change is going to affect your lives?
4. Who obtained more votes in your state?
   
   We hope this new situation will bring positive changes into your lives! :)
   

En España, las elecciones fueron en Marzo de este año. No se si conocereis a nuestro presidente actual, Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, que gano, como en USA, por pocos votos de diferencia. En nuestra clase no solemos hablar de política aunque pensamos que nuestra situación política no es buena, ya que la crisis económica ha afectado a mucha gente en nuestro pais( 7000 personas pierden su trabajo cada dia).Además ,el problema que tenemos es que los dos partidos politicos de España nunca se ponen de acuerdo para ayudar al pais, ya que estan siempre discutiendo, metiéndose unos con los otros. El mayor problema politico que nos afecta en educación es el "Plan Bolonia", que pretende igualar los estudios universitarios en toda Europa pero aumentando enormemente el precio de la carrera, con lo que mucha gente no podra pagar sus estudios.espermos que todo se solucione.

-Caña Cazurra-

...:: Festivities of León ::...

• "San Juan y San Pedro"

León's festivities, as almost whole Spain, are related to the catholic religion. The most important festivities of our city are San Juan and San Pedro, coincide with the summer equinoccio; being the shortest night of the year the people are in the street until high hours of the night but the young people are in the street until the Sun rise up.

• "Semana Santa"

Easter in Spain is very different than the USA. Here is another religious festivity: Easter commemorates the passion and death of Jesus Christ and is a celebration with centuries of history and tradition. The streets of the vast majority of Spain's cities, towns and villages become the stage for religious fervour and devotion, combining grief and meditation in memory of Christ's death. Music, art and colour come together in processions: solemn parades in which crowds of people accompany religious images on their route through the towns. Easter in León is one of the most beautiful of Spain.

http://www.spain.info/TourSpain/Eventos/Fiestas/H/LH/0/Semana%20Santa.htm?Language=en

-Alberto & Adrian-

...:: Life on Campus ::...

Hello again!!

Now, we're going to explain you some things about "life on campus". We think it’s a very interesting thing to tell you because we spend a lot of hours here not only studying; also we go to University parties.

Our campus' name is Vegazana and there are a lot of faculties on it. We are studying English Education, so we are in the ‘Education Faculty’. As many people are studying "magisterio" (that’s the name in Spanish referring to our degree), we have recently moved to a new building in which there are the seven specialties: Foreign Language (our speciality), Infantile, Primary, Physical Education, Hearing and Language, Special Education and Musical Education (before this, we were distributed in two different buildings and we had to move from one faculty to the other one). In our opinion, it is better to be all subjects in the same building because it is easier to meet people from the other specialties.

As you can notice, our new faculty is a big building. Inside the building, there are lots of classes and departments. A very peculiar thing inside, is the color of the toilets: they are extremely yellow as you can see!

In spite of, the walls are completely white and empty and there is a bad contrast with the baths; we mean that your eyes have to get used to the light of baths; the stairs haven’t got depth and you can see the floor when you are upstairs, so some people even get dizzy!; the classes are slightly big and our desks are quite uncomfortable. Sincerely, when you stay there for a long time you finally get used to this change and we have to admit all the disadvantages (buses don’t arrive there, they leave near the old faculty; we are a bit far from the other faculties… and so on).

Near our building, there are other faculties, like economics and engineering but what we visit more is the “Dani & Jose’s” café! We love going to this place when we have no classes; there, we talk and play cards, specially, one Spanish card game called ‘mus’. It’s so fun!! :)

Our festival is on the 23rd of November, and our patron is called "San José de Calasanz". This monk found the first Christian state school for poor children and he taught them warmly and patiently. These days, people organize games, quiz and sports activities like for instance soccer, volleyball, etc. which you can have a good time with your partners and friends.

Finally we want to tell you something about Universities’ parties. They're called "espichas" and are celebrated for all things you could invent: birthdays, going out with your friends… while you are drinking a typical drink from Asturias: "sidra". Between the sidra and the festive enviroment, the jokes, pranks, laughs and typical songs often appear quikly...

The name "espicha" comes from the widget formed by a thin stick with a kind of tap that is inserted into the barrel in order to test the contents of this.

Regards :)

-Irene, Clara & Paula-

...:: Introduction ::...

Hello everybody!
How are you? We are a group of Spanish students from León.
We are interested in exchanging information with people who come from a foreign country, like you. That’s because we think it could be a great experience and we want to know some things about you and your country, so we’re going to tell you things we know about ours. We hope you’ll enjoy it!!
We are all in the same class studying to become an English teacher, because we love this language! We want to practice English by talking to people who can help us to improve it.
The topics we are going to talk about are:

1. Life on campus. We think it’s important to talk about that because we spend lots hours in it: studying and going to University’s parties!!
2. Culture and typical activities: like sightseeing, going to concerts and so on.
3. Interesting people in Leon. People who are famous for different reasons, for example: a music band, sport-man and so on.
4. Important dates for us: festivals and typical meals.
5. Rural environment: agriculture, ranching and mining industry.

First of all, we want to introduce ourselves; we’ll show you a photo of us. Our names are: Clara, Paula, Irene, Patri, Alberto, Adrián(Nodo) and Adri.

Finally, in our opinion we think that the name of our blog "Caña Cazurra" can seem strange, and certainly you can´t understand what it means, for that reason, we have to explain it.

• "Caña"- Is a coloquial word in Spain. It means to do something strong, with energy.
• "Cazurro"- This word has two different meanings, it depends the part of Spain where you are. In León and the rest of the northwest part (Galicia, Asturias....) this word is use to describe people who have been born in León or are living here. But in the other regions of Spain is an offensive word that means to be stubborn.

We hope that this explanation help you to understand it a little better.

Greetings

-Caña Cazurra-