CHRISTMAS

Christmas in Boston and in Murcia are very much the same:

- In both cities, people who own stores decorate them with the Christmas spirit; some people decorate their houses and, in both cities, the streets are lighted.

Murcia

- Families get together to celebrate this Holiday and also the new year.

Boston

However, there are some differences:

- In Boston, instead of the Three Wise Kings, they celebrate Santa Claus' visit, who delivers presents the night before Christmas (kids prepair their stockings for Santa Claus to put their gifts inside them). 

Santa Claus

- Here, during the night of the 5^th of January (when the Three Wise Kings come to every house to put the presents under the Christmas tree), people organize a parade to see them. And it’s very common to eat the “Roscón de Reyes”, that night or the next morning.

Three Wise Kings during the parade

The Hannukah Menorah

- In Boston, nowadays, people on the street say: ”Happy holidays!” instead of: “Happy Christmas!” because in Boston there are many cultures and they respect all of them: some people celebrate Christmas but others celebrate, for example, Hannukah (it’s a  eight-day Jewish holiday that is celebrated because the Maccabees successfully rebelled against  Antiochus IV Epiphanes; according to the Talmud -a late text- the Temple was purified and the wicks of the menorah miraculously burned for eight days, even though there was only enough sacred oil for one day's lighting).

Snow in Boston

Snow in Boston

- In American schools, after Christmas holidays, classes start the 2^nd of January and, in Spain, because of the Three Wise Kings’ visit, we start the 7^th of January.

- In Boston, during these days, it usually snows a lot and Christmas is really a "white Christmas".

But the most important thing is that Jesus was born 2014 years ago and lots of people around the world celebrate this.

THANKSGIVING DAY

In USA, people celebrate Thanksgiving Day, to remember the day, long time ago, when the Pilgrims arrived at Massachusetts and gave thanks to God for the goods they had.

Mayflower Ship

Plimoth Plantation

Plimoth Plantation

It all started in the year 1620. A ship named Mayflower sailed, from Plymouth (England) to “the New World” (America), with 102 passengers: some of them who didn´t agree with the church in England and others who were hoping to find jobs in the other land; but all of them wanted to begin new lives.

The Mayflower reached the coast of what is now Massachusetts and the village was called Plimoth. 

Pilgrim in Plimoth Plantation

Pilgrim in Plimoth Plantation

When they arrived, they were in really bad conditions, some of them had died, some were ill and couldn´t find food. One day, a native called Squanto appeared and, because he had been a slave for some time with an English sea captain, he could speak English and communicate with the English people. He showed them to hunt, fish and plant in those conditions. During the time they were living there, they were working hard and the fall of 1621 they had a great harvest: there was plenty of corn, salted fish and meat and lots of vegetables, like pumpkins, cranberries,…They felt grateful to God and offered him a thanksgiving feast with the natives.

William Lockhart Made The First Thanksgiving 1621,
by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris(1863–1930).

Pilgrims in Plimoth Plantation

In 1863, Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday of November a holiday. But it was not an official holiday. Finally in 1941, American Congress voted to make the fourth Thursday of November the annual day. And ever since, they all give thanks every year at the same time.

Nowadays, people celebrate Thanksgiving with great feasts with roast turkey, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, etc…

When I was living in Boston, we also celebrated Thanksgiving Day with my parent’s friends and their kids. It’s a day, in USA, in which everybody, American or not, join together to celebrate it.

References: 

- Mary Pope Osborne and Natalie Pope Boyce. Pilgrims. Magic Tree House Research Guide. Ed. Random House. ISBN 0-375-83219-X.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving_(United_States). Reviewed: 11/30/2013

SCHOOLS

Schools here (in Murcia) and there (in Boston) are different in many ways. Here are some differences that I have noticed in both schools:

Monteagudo School (Murcia)

J. D. Runkle School (Brookline-Boston)

     - Monteagudo is a private school and John D. Runkle (the school I went to when I was in Boston) is a public one.

     - In Runkle, classes started at 8:00 AM and they finished at 2:20 PM and, in Monteagudo, they start at 9:00 AM and they finish at 5:00 PM.

     - We have some different subjects: In Monteagudo, we have R.D.C. and mass and there, in Runkle, we learnt to play instruments and worked with computers.

     - In Monteagudo, we have a private playground and, in Runkle, we played at a public playground very close to the school and, in winter, if there was snow there and you didn´t wear snow-pants and boots, you couldn´t go out to play.

     - In Monteagudo, during the summer time, at PE (Physical Education) class, we can swim in the outdoor pool; however, in Runkle, at PE we do some exercises and games, and that was all.

     - In Runkle, to keep our belongings, we had lockers.

My locker in J. D. Runkle School (Brookline-Boston)

    - Here, we are 30 kids per classroom and one teacher. There, we were 20 kids per classroom and three teachers. One of them, during the last twenty minutes of the class, read to us.

     - Here we wear uniforms and, there, we didn´t wear them.

     - In Monteagudo, we have lots of homework and in Runkle we only had one sheet of maths (front and back) and during the weekends and holidays teachers didn’t want us to do homework, instead, they preferred us to play, rest and read. However, this happened while I was in third and fourth grade and probably this might have changed in sixth grade.

But there are also some similarities between Monteagudo and Runkle:

  - During the lunch time, we can choose to eat: the meals that are cooked at school or the ones cooked at home (and we carry them in lunch boxes).

  - Some subjects are the same, for example: maths; art and sciences.

  - We also have time to read in both schools every day.

Finally, I can say that I was so happy there as I am here!

DÍA DE LA HISPANIDAD

Every October 12^th, in Spain, we celebrate the “Día de la Hispanidad” to remember the date in which Christopher Columbus arrived in America, in 1492.

That day, there are many large-scale military parades in lots of Spanish cities but the most popular is the one that is shown in Madrid.

This date is an official holiday and schools are not open in any city or village in Spain.

For Spanish people, the year 1992 was important because:

-         It was the 500^th anniversary of the day Columbus discovered America

-         The Olympic Games were celebrated in Barcelona (Spain).

-         The Universal Exhibition was in Seville.

American people also celebrate the moment in which Columbus discovered America but the date is not always the same: it is the second Monday of October and it is called “Columbus Day”. But some States don´t celebrate “Columbus Day” in America: Hawaii, Alaska, Oregon and South Dakota don’t recognize that day.

In Boston, there were parades too, but not as big and famous as in Spain. I remember one day that my mom and I were coming out of the grocery store and we saw a small parade. And, there, in Boston, the schools were closed too.

But I could see that in U.S.A. they celebrate more “Thanksgiving Day” (learn more about it in next post!) than “Columbus Day”.

Images: www.elpais.com / www.abc.es / www.bostonglobe.com / www.washingtonpost.com

HALLOWEEN IN BOSTON

          Hello! My name is Enrique. I am 11 years old and I attend Monteagudo-Nelva school since 2005.

During two years, I was living in Boston (USA) because my father had to work there. It was such a good experience because I met lots of people from many countries and with a different culture than mine.

I decided to write this blog so all of you could know how was my experience in  Boston (U.S.A.) and also to compare my life there with my life here, in Murcia.

        

This first post is about Halloween in the U.S.A. and how I lived it:

Halloween or Hallowe’en (a contraction of “All Hallows’ Evening), also known as All Hallows’ Eve, is a yearly celebration observed in a number of countries on October 31, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows (or All Saints)(1).

Typical festive Halloween activities include trick-or-treating (also known as “guising”), attending costume parties, decorating, carving pumpkins into jack-o’-lanterns, visiting haunted attractions, playing pranks, telling scary stories and watching horror films (1).

Though trick-or-treating as we know it is a relatively new phenomenon, its history is thought to date back over 2000 years. The ancient Celts (as well as other cultures such as the Chinese and Egyptians) believed that spirits required food and drink just like the living. On October 31^st, the end of summer, the souls of dead travelled to visit the living. Food and drink was left out for the spirits to consume on their journey. It was believed that people who did not make an offering left themselves open to mischief (or tricks) from the spirits (2).

In USA, it exists a fundraising program to support UNICEF (“Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF) that involves the distribution of small boxes by schools to trick-or-treaters, in which they can solicit small-change donations from the houses they visit (1).

The first year in Boston everything surprised me a lot because here we don´t celebrate Halloween. Here are the things that surprised me the most:

-People decorated their houses with really cool stuff like : fake spider-webs, spiders, jack-o´-lanterns and really cool skeleton boats.

-People started preparating Halloween at the end of September or at the beginning of October.

-The generosity of people to buy lots of candies and collect money for UNICEF.

-Everybody dressed up (teachers, parents, librarians… etc.).

-In the buildings and schools they made parties and games.

But, in the end, Halloween here is nothing compared to there. In Spain, we dedicate the 1st of November to remember our dead relatives and some people go to the graveyards to visit them and put flowers in their graves.

(1)         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween .Reviewed: 10/05/2013.

(2)        AnnMarie Mackinnon. Fun with pranks, gags and jokes. Ed. SpiceBox. ISBN 10: 1-926567-15-3.