The most wonderful time of the year!

It's been a fair few weeks since I last updated my life in blog world. This isn't because I've been too busy, more because nothing amazingly spectacular has happened. I think the 'honeymoon period' of my year abroad has well and truly ended in that life here is just normal and I go about my daily doings quite happily. However, I don't see this as a bad thing, far from it in fact, but it does mean I have well and truly settled into my life out here in Vic.

This is the market as seen from Jade's balcony

Having said that, these last few weeks have been a delight as ever. The highlight of which has to be the annual Medieval Market that comes to Vic each year, bringing THOUSANDS of people from all over Spain with it. I definitely think this is the best market I have ever been to, and I live a minute away from it! The food was to die for (I didn't cook for 3 days!) and the atmosphere was super and very cultural. Therefore, all my indulgences in food and mulled wine counts as being culturally educated as part of my year abroad. This market took over the city for 4 days and, although going anywhere was a bit of a pain, it was a great to see everyone walking around in medieval attire and hearing some traditional Catalan music. We also caught a mini show-thing one night which was...umm...interesting but entertaining nonetheless. I would like to mention that the highlight of this market was the vessel in which the mulled wine was sold...a horn, which made the wine drinking an experience in itself!

Being only an hour and a half from the beautiful city of Barcelona, I've visited a couple of times to do various things. The Christmasness in Barcelona is fabulous, just like any city in the UK, there are lights everywhere, an ice rink in the centre, and a gorgeous Christmas market complete with Christmas songs in English! It's safe to say that I really love the city as it's great to get lost in tourism as opposed to being one of the few foreigners here in Vic and also the fact that the city is just immense. Recently, I went for the weekend to celebrate a friends birthday and to let our hair down which was a truly fabulous getaway. 

This is me, Maria and Josep enjoying our traditional roast dinner.

Having been invited to dinner a few times to my mentor's house to experience some traditional Catalan stuff, I decided that I would attempt to cook a roast dinner for Maria and her husband Josep with the help of my friend Jade. This masterpiece was complete with proper gravy, stuffing, roast potatoes and an apple pie for pudding (yum). It was, I am pleased to say, a great success and I think (and hope) it went down a treat, even though it did take us 4 hours to cook from start to finish!

I took this picture from my balcony, the clouds are pretty impressive

So Christmas has finally arrived in Vic. The lights have only just been turned even though they've been up for about a month, but they were well worth the wait. The main square has a great big tree and all the streets are lined with lights, one even has a very festive red carpet running down it. However, it's just not the same here and I'm super excited about coming back to the land of tacky Christmas decorations and songs, but more importantly, stuffing my face for 2 weeks with Britain's finest Christmas nosh.