When you walk into room 214, most expect the sound of “Hola!” or students grunting while conjugating verbs. But on Friday, the Spanish III classes, taught by Julie Bibiloni, celebrated the end of their recent chapter with a fiesta like no other.
“The chapter deals with vocab of celebrations including birthdays, weddings, Christmas, Three Kings Day, Hanukkah and New Year’s,” said Bibiloni, “The grammar’s hard in this chapter. It’s a great relaxing way to end the chapter.”
And the students from the class were quick to grab at the chance to relax.
“Bibiloni’s made the course tough so we deserve one party a year,” said student James Servansky.
The party started with a simulation of the celebration of New Years Eve in Spain in a new way.
“In Spain, as a tradition, they eat 12 grapes, one for every second after New Year’s at midnight,” said student Kelly Lenahan.
Students gathered around with cups of grapes, attempting to chew one every second, but had more difficulty than most would think.
“I only got to cinco (five) [after 12 seconds],” said Lenahan.
A traditional Spanish wedding was then performed with students portraying brides, grooms, flower girls and the priest.
During this fiesta however, the wedding featured live music by Tosh Chambers on bass and Selena Hasircoglu on keyboard who serenaded the “newlyweds” Claire Collison and Brandon Stone.
“[I liked] playing the wedding march.We gave up our lunch to come in and practice,” said Hasircoglu.
“It had a good turn out,” said Chambers.
The rest of the party was filled with food, drinks, a birthday cake and the loud singing of Feliz Cumpleaños (Happy Birthday).
“The food was really fun. The music was really good too,” said Stone.
“The wedding and the ‘orchestra’ [were my favorites],” said Bibiloni.
While most days Señora Bibiloni can be found concentrating on new verb tenses and weekly vocabulary quizzes, on this day she made every student want to run to the counselor and sign up for a Spanish course.
By Mike Nitroy
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