UEA International Student Ambassadors

Hi everybody!   I'm here today to talk about quite a strange custom we have in Spain.   On New Year's Eve, when the clock strikes twelve, most of Spain is glued to the television, where the beautiful clock from Madrid's Puerta del Sol is broadcast. Picture: ailmadrid.blogspot.com   With every strike of the clock, we eat a grape! They are called 'the twelve grapes of good luck', and it is believed that eating them will provide you good luck and happiness for the year.   This tradition is not too old, though. It is likely to have started when Alicantese vine growers had a grape surplus at the end of the 19th or the beginning of the 20th century.   So, to cut a long story short, in Spain we start every year by eating grapes. It is a quite exciting thing to do, and somehow we never end up eating them all in time! And of course, once the new year has been welcomed like this, we have a toast with champagne or cava.   Merry Christmas ...

Just got back from a UEA-Sheffield University excursion for art historians and archaeologists to southern Spain! It was amazing - so much to see, so much to do, so much to learn in a very short period of time. One day it was 35 degrees and the next day, it was wind and torrential rain. We learnt about al-Andalus and looked at ongoing excavations as well as Roman mausoleums and various musuems, went to the Alhambra in Granada and the Great Mosque in Cordoba. I want to go back to Guadix to volunteer! Anyone wanna sponsor me? ;p About a dozen of us lived in a house as guests of Atarfe and were very warmly received. Four horses lived in a stable next to our garden - my breakfast companions. The front garden wall of the house was covered in honeysuckle, the sweet strong scent of which mingled with horse dung and was inhaled deeply by each of us at the end of the day when we returned after walking miles and miles under the blistering sun. Made lots of new friends and ate various tapas with e...