THE EPIPHANY

Note - Please be aware that below post is a summary from Facebook comments regarding The Epiphany (January 6) around the world.

MEXICO

Tomorrow is día de los reyes. It's a Mexican celebration stemming from the Christian faith. It celebrates the 3 kings who visit Jesus after he is born in the barn. They bring him gifts so children place a shoe at the door and receive presents, in the shoe, in the morning. Then we share a rosca (a large round bread with dried fruit and a baby toy inside) and the person who finds a baby in it hosts a party on Feb. 2nd.

AUSTRIA

Tradition in Austria: Around the 6th of January (The festival of the Twelfth Night, Epiphany), the "Sternsinger" ("star singers", Epiphany) walk from door to door in all villages and towns of Austria. They normally consist of four children (three kings and a star-person) and an adult to accompany them. They sing a little song about how they are really excited that Jesus was born, bless the house and its inhabitants for the new year and collect a bit of money for a charity, which changes every year. The custom is organised by the "Jungschar", a Catholic youth organisation.

The 6th of January is also one of the "Raunächte", in which Perchten are gathering for nightly rituals in Bavaria, Salzburg, Eastern Tyrol and the Salzkammergut. These traditions are all concerned with fertility rites and the winter Sonnenwende (21st of December). For details, see "December".

SWITZERLAND

Hello from Switzerland. We ate at the office a "galette des roi" this morning and my collegue became the queen smile emoticon A tradition here which I knew from France but not from my home country Germany.

SPAIN
In Spain the 5th of January kid watch the three kings paradise in the streets of your village or city and go to bed early, before go to bed they put the shoes in the living room, with a plate with biscuits and milk for the kings and carrots for the camels the 6th we open the presents eat a ROSCO (typical Christmas dessert) and at lunch time we visit our families and have lunch together.

Roscon de Reyes - History
Roscon de Reyes - Recipe

POLAND
We love Los Reyes parade, especially when they threw candies at the crowd! In Venezuela (hubby's country) they also throw coal at people.  We're celebrating Three Wise Men in Poznan, we even found the cake in Carrefour, but honestly it looks nothing like the original Spanish cake frown emoticon apparently there's a little figure inside.

Welcome in our World Adventure!

Welcome in our World Adventure!

The aim of our group is to virtually travel across the world and visit and explore as many countries in the world as possible.

We will start our mission on Monday, January 4^th, 2016 in Switzerland, Europe. We will stay in Europe for a while (approx 5 months) and then move on onto next continent. You can see our itinerary below.

We will stay in each country for a week and every day we’ll explore different aspects of local culture. Here is the rough outline for each day:

Music and Art Monday – talking about local music (for kids, folk, national anthem, musical instruments – could be accompanied with some craft, famous bands/singers etc.) and art in all of its forms

Tradition Tuesday – talking about popular traditions, holidays, folk tales, celebrations

Weather and Wildlife Wednesday – talking about actual weather, climate and local wildlife (typical fauna and flora) and sharing interesting and maybe not so commonly known facts about your country

Traveler’s Thursday – tips for travelling within each country, places and spots worth visiting, photos of landscapes

Food Friday – sharing the recipes of traditional food, pictures/talking about lunches at schools,

Social Saturday – here we would like to see some kind of “day in your life”,  a little bit about nurseries, schools (do you have a uniform, what age do kids start school, what time do they start, do they carry books to school, when do they have school holidays, how do you get about (walk / bus / tram / etc) ; what are your favorite toys ; what are the most popular children's TV shows ; where do you play? (swing park / beach / garden etc),  insights about languages (incl. common social phrases)

Sporty and Sneaky Sunday – talking about popular sports, Olympic Games, etc and we can sneak here some questions too (whatever you want to know about the country)

This is only rough guideline to have an idea what we are going to talk about, but we are not limited to them. I’d like to ask all the members to keep our discussion respectful and kind!

When you joined our adventure you chose the country you’d like to represent. These people are considered to be a primary host for the particular week (so are expected to share the most of info), but anybody can share their knowledge.

Here is our itinerary for Europe (I’ll update it, if we will have a new host country or with some other changes). Other continents will be added later, we still hope to have more countries from Asia and Africa – if you know somebody from there who would like to represent their country, please share our adventure (and FB group J)

04-Jan - 10-Jan	Switzerland
11-Jan - 17-Jan	Germany
18-Jan - 24-Jan	Sweden
25-Jan - 31-Jan	UK
01-Feb - 07-Feb	Netherlands
08-Feb - 14-Feb	Slovakia
15-Feb - 21-Feb	Norway
22-Feb - 28-Feb	Romania
29-Feb - 06-Mar	Finland
07-Mar - 13-Mar	Belgium
14-Mar - 20-Mar	Ireland
21-Mar - 27-Mar	Czech Republic
28-Mar - 03-Apr	France
04-Apr - 10-Apr	Slovenia
11-Apr - 17-Apr	Latvia
18-Apr - 24-Apr	Austria
25-Apr - 01-May	Estonia
02-May - 08-May	Italy
09-May - 15-May	Poland
16-May - 22-May	Spain
23-May - 29-May	Iceland
30-May - 05-Jun	Luxemburg

I will prepare the Pinterest board for every country we visit where all of us can share interesting resources and you can use them in your country studies.

I hope you will enjoy our World Adventure!

Vanda