An Erasmus Christmas Dinner

For weeks we had been planning a large Christmas dinner for our group of Erasmus friends, we were going all out, Kath had picked up Yorkshire Pudding and gravy mix from Gibraltar along with some Christmas Crackers and Christmas plates and napkins. We had decided to do the rest of the food shopping in the Hipercor in Corte Ingles the day before the event and everyone was sharing the job of cooking, as preparing dinner for 12 in one flat wasn’t really possible. So Kath and I took some shopping trollies and headed off on the bus to Hipercor with our list. We managed to purchase pretty much everything we wanted including extra things such as Christmas table cloths and chocolate santas. In total the bill came to around €50, so between 12 of us it was really good value, the vegetarians were preparing themselves a nut roast, so they had gone shopping separately for their ingredients as I haven’t got the foggiest what goes into a nut roast! Once we had finished the shopping it was time to lug it all back to my flat as I would be cooking the chicken that we had bought instead of turkey, as most people said they weren’t fussed about turkey and it was more expensive.

The following day was spent preparing for the meal, which was to be hosted in the Plaza Mina flat where I live as there was enough space for us all to sit around some tables and eat. Everyone had pitched in to prepare something, whether it was the vegetables, roast potatoes, puddings, nut roast or starters. Most people had santa hats or reindeer antlers with them to be in the festive spirit as well as their secret santa presents to put under the tree. We sat down for starters and all pulled crackers, which apparently aren’t widely known in Germany as Kira and Jana didn’t really know what they were or the Christmas hats that were found inside them. Now that everyone was suitably festively dressed we each opened our secret santa presents. We had decided to do a Secret santa with a budget of €10 per person so that everyone had a little gift from Cádiz without everyone having to buy presents for everyone else.

Main course was a little bit difficult to get out all together but it eventually made it out and everyone seemed to enjoy it, or they were too polite to say otherwise. We had chicken, roast potatoes, carrots, green beans, sweet potato, Yorkshire puddings and gravy, with nut roast for the vegetarians. Following dinner there was pudding of chocolate cake, jelly and ice cream and turron that Jana had purchased. After dinner we tidied away all of the tables were moved to the sides of the rooms and chocolates were dished out to see us through charades, in retrospect we should have done Spanish charades, but we did them in English. It was very funny especially as some of us slowly slipped into a more and more drunken state – just like Christmas back at home. It was generally a very jovial evening and I would definitely recommend it as we shared lots of stories about the difference in Christmas festivities in different countries. ESN did organise a similar event in a club, also incorporating a New Years celebration, however we didn’t manage to attend this, but the concept was a good one.

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