Last Weekend

I'll humor myself for a second and pretend that people are actually still reading this by apologizing for not posting anything last weekend. It was busy...

Last weekend my Dad came to Madrid to visit us, visit his family, and bring 2 suitcases full of goodies for our apartment. The goodies included such things as clothes hangers (which cost a small fortune in Spain - 3 euros for 4 hangers) and Ranch Dressing. With our Dad here, we spent the whole weekend with family doing family things. The big trip was an excursion to a vineyard owned by my aunt Marta and uncle Titin to a town called Penafiel, a small town well known for its vineyards. All of the grapes produced in this region, La Ribera del Duero, produce a wine with the same name. Almost the entire extended family met at the vineyard - my grandmother, her 8 children, their spouses, and their kids, along with some of my grandmothers sisters. All in all, we were missing my Mom and one cousin. We sat around and talked for quite a while before lunch. Included in this discussion was an argument about how American beer is way better than Spanish beer. Spanish beer pretty much sucks. No dark beers, no beers with flavors. Nothing too exciting, just good old fashioned family time. It was really interesting to have all 8 of my grandmother's children present because I dont think this has happened for many years. Good times all around.

This past week was also Jessica's birthday so we had oodles of fun with that. On Wednesday we went to an orchestra concert of the UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra. A good friend/townie from Princeton plays in the orchestra which was on an interational tour. The concert was absolutely amazing. While I am no musical conoseiur, the members of the orchestra (All under 30) were some of the most talented musicians I've ever had the pleasure of watching. Absolutely amazing.

Work last week was also pretty baller. We had a new assistant come to our school which meant that we had to change schedules to accomodate the new guy. This gave me the choice of which class I wanted to work with and I chose to work primarily with the 3rd years - a class full of really intelligent kids who can speak an impressive amount of English at the ripe age of 8. So now I have classes with the 3rd years and the infantiles (5 years old). Great stuff because both of the teachers for these classes are awesome, fun, young, and legit.