A relaxing spring weekend

I would say that sums up pretty well this past weekend. Fun. Relaxing. Tranquil. And other positive descriptive words.

As per usual, the weekend started on Thursday afternoon. After giving a private English lesson, I met up with Manuel to play "Padel" with him and two other friends from our soccer team (Sergio and Ruben). I had never played and had never even seen it played. I was just told it was similar to tennis, which I haven't played in about 17 years. Needless to say, there was a learning curve and it took me a while to pick up the rules and the strategies. A quick youtube search brought up this video which gives you a feeling for how the game should be played. It was not played quite so well. It's a lot like ping pong with a really big table that you stand on. Sort of. Either way, it was fun.

Over the course of the last week, Jessica and I watched the movie Happy Go Lucky. I had never heard of it over here but im sure some of you stateside folks have seen it. It was nominated for an Oscar and won a bunch of random ass international awards. Either way, I thought it was pretty funny and definitely worth seeing. As a movie it's really not much but there are some pretty hilarious parts and is somewhat true-to-life.

Friday was occupied by searching for a place to cut my hair (unseuccessful), a trip to the park, and a trip to the library to return my well overdue books. It's worth mentioning the system of penalties for overdue books in Spain because I find it to be very Spanish. Instead of making you pay a fee and then regain your library priviledges, they suspend your library card for an inordinate amount of time. For books just a month overdue, my card has been suspended until August...nearly 6 months. I find this quirckily Spanish because it makes less work for the library workers and is a much softer punisment than a fine. I guess it's better than Princeton's Public Library policy where they fine you and dont actually make you pay the fine before renting a new book or DVD.

Chris was gone at a frisbee tournament all weekend so Jessica and I prowled the the streets looking for things to do. We found two new bars that were really awesome with a good atmosphere and cheap drinks.

However, the highlight of the weekend was a picnic that Jessica and I organized for my uncle Jorge on Sunday. My aunt Maria Jose and my uncle Jorge both live with my Grandmother. My Grandmother and my aunt went on a cruise with my parents this past weekend so Jorge was left alone to live the life of ease. We hadn't seen him in a while so we siezed the moment and organized a stellar picnic with Spanish tortilla, wine, cheese, strawberries, and more. It was a perfect day and super relaxing.


I appologize for the lack of photos but I am still waiting for my new digital camera to arrive. It's coming over with my aunt and Grandmother tomorrow. In the meantime, we have been using a sketchy disposable camera so get excited for those pics to get developed.

Ya soy casi español

Finally, after 6 trips to the Registro Civil in Madrid, Chris and I have successfully turned in the paperwork to solicit our Spanish nationality. Now we just have to wait about two months for them to process everything. Hopefully, if everything goes as planned, I'll be Spanish in no time.

Por fin, después de la sexta vez que estuvimos en el Registro Civil, ya Chris y yo hemos entregado los solicitudes para coger la nacionalidad española. A ver si en dos meses han arreglado todo y ya somos españoles de verdad. Era un coñazo pero te digo que merece la pena.

Another Day in Paradise

Phil Collins style. Sort of. Except way less depressing than Phil Collins style. This past weekend Chris, Jessica, and I spent 3 days in the beautiful, sunny, warm, precious, Canary Islands. A quick glance at a map makes you think, "huh, the Canary Islands really aren't anywhere near Spain. Weird..." Well, no, they aren't. But they are amazing.


The reason for the vacation was the 10th annual Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Hat Tournament. 3 days playing frisbee on the beach in perfect weather with people from all over Europe, drinking "Tropical" one of the beers made in the Canary Islands. Life is tough eh? The tournament was outstanding. Really well organized and very well run. For those of you that dont understand the concept of a "Hat tournament", it's as if they draw names out of a hat to form teams. So you play with randos.

To top off all of these good things about the tournament, it also took place during Carnaval, a festival similar to Mardi Gras minus the boobs and the beads and plus a lot of this.


The Canary Islands are one of the premier destinations for Carnaval, second only to Rio de Janeiro. Everyone dresses up in costume and heads out to a big park and drinks and has a good time. The Canary Islands (Gran Canaria in particular) are really famous for being gay friendly and Carnaval has morphed into a bit of a drag ball.


Needless to say, Jessica and I partook heavily in the festivities. I dressed up as Peter Pan while Jessica walked the streets as TinkerBell. It was a bit of burning the candle at both ends, staying out until 4ish and then playing frisbee all day. But it was totally worth it.

We saw some very interesting people. Including an older woman dancing at the concert with a water bottle balancing on her head. And an Arab man who got in our face asking us (his words not mine!) why the United States was allowed to take people to Guantanamo and analy violate them. Hand and full-body motions were included.

In terms of frisbee, it was a lot of fun. My team ended up getting third out of nine but thats not really important. I made a bunch of new friends and the tournament was (miraculously) able to bring back my love for ultimate after so many moths of playing sub-par/boring frisbee in Madrid.


After 3 days of ultimate and a weekend in paradise, we arrived in Madrid at 6:30 AM Monday morning, in no way prepared to work through the week. But so it goes.

English Day / El Dia de Inglés

Esto también voy a escribir en inglés y español. Primero en inglés.

So this past week in school was stressful but also sooooo much fun. The bilingual department (with the help of a few other teachers - Marta (4 years old), Gema (grade 6) and others - put together an "English Day". This meant a day to learn about all the different countries that speak English. Each English teacher picked a country and made a "workshop" about that country. Then each class went around to each workshop and learned a few things about them and had fun. We had a workshop for the UK, Australia, and the USA (the other countries got the shaft since we only have so many bilingual teachers). At the end of the day on Friday, we had a parade where each class dressed up like something related to an English speaking country which was awesome.


I was in the workshop of the United Kingdom. It consisted of two parts - "London" and "Nottingham" aka Robin Hood. Needless to say, I took over Sherwood forest and donned the Robin Hood outfit and manned the dart throwing station. Pretty fun.

(Me and the 4 year olds in Sherwood Forest / Yo y los niños de 4 años)

The London part was manned by Carlos and Mercedes. We had made a big double-decker bus that we made and painted and plasticized so that the kids could sit in it and have their picture taken. We also made replicas of a red telephone booth and the big ben. It was a pretty complicated endeavor and we all worked really hard and it turned out really well.


One of the best parts was being able to play with the little kids and meet some of the older kids. The oldest are like 12 so they are, by all means, still kids and its fun to see them come out of their "too-cool-for-school" shell and be dorks like 12 year olds are supposed to be.


Of major mention is one 4 year old named Denisa. She is absolutely adorable and is apparently totally in love with me. She gets really shy when she sees me but she also doesnt stop smiling. Its to the point where her parents asked me if I would take a picture with Denisa. Which was probably the highlight of my day.

(Me and Denisa / Yo con Denisa)

The parade was great and some of the classes looked really good. You can see all of the photos in the facebook album. I walked with my 3rd graders and was dressed as Peter Pan for the parade. The costume was made primarily by Jessica with my help but she was kind of the mastermind.

(Me and my third grade class / Yo con el clase de tercero)

The last note of mention is that, at the end of the day, a 4 year old that I had just met that day came up from behind me while I was taking down the speakers and stuff and cleaning up and she says "adios" in this tiny adorable voice. I turned around to see her all alone just standing there saying goodbye. I gave her a really big hug and sent her off to her mom. Basically, working with kids is making me a total sucker for little girls and insuring me that I need to have a daughter in my future.

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Puedes ver las fotos aqui arriba en la parte del inglés.

Con esta semana pasada en el colegio venía un poco de estres pero lo que salió fue muy divertido. El departament bilingue (con la ayuda de otras profesoras, en particular Gema (sexto) y Marta (4 años)) hizo un "Dia de Inglés" para que los niños pudiero disfrutarse un poco y aprender un poco de la cultura de paises donde hablan inglés. Cada profesor del equipo bilingue seleccionó un país para hacer un taller de las cosas tipicas de allí. Luego, cada clase del colegio entraba en el taller para aprendery participar en las actividades. Había cuatro talleres en total - el Reino Unido, los Estado Unidos, Australia, y uno para deportes. Al final del dia el viernes, hicíamos un desfile por los padres donde los niños estuvieron disfrazados de personajes tipicas de los paises que hablan inglés. Habia vaqueros y vaqueras, indios, la policia britanica, Robin Hood y su mujer (como se llama aquí?), la familia real de inglatera, y mucho mas. Todos los niños desde 3 años hasta 12 han disfrazado por el desfile.

Yo estuvó en el taller del Reino Unido. Consistió de dos partes, una de "Londres" y otra del "Bosque de Sherwood" donde vive Robin Hood. No hay que decirlo, pero ya tengaís que saber que yo me he disfrazado de Robin Hood para controlar el bosque y el juego con los dardos y las dianas. Nuestro taller era "chulisimo" como lo que dicen aquí.

La parte que era Londres, la controlaban Carlos y Mercedes. Hicíamos uno de estos autobuses rojos de Londres y unas réplicas del "Big Ben" (el reloj de Londres) y de una cabina de telefono roja. Era un esfuerzo muy duro para completar todo pero todos nosotros hemos trabajado mucho y todo salío muy bien.

Una de las cosas que me gustó mucho era que pudía jugar con todos los niños pequeños y tambien conocer todos los niños mayores durante dos días.

Algo mas importante era mi abilidad de jugar y conocer mejor una niña de 4 años que se llama Denisa. Ella es absolutamente encancantadora y, aparantamente, completament enamorada conmigo. Se pone muy timida cuando esta conmigo pero no para de reir. Me da mucha gracia por que todos los niños son muy cariñosos pero no muestran los emociones tanto. Durante el desfile, los padres de Denisa me preguntaron si puedo sacar una foto con Denisa y esto era el momento cumbre del dia (aquí puedes decir "la almendra del día"?).

Pase mucho del tiempo con mi clase de tercero. Me encantan estes niños y como siempre, me pasaba muy bien con ellos. Ya me canso de escribir en español. Pues, hasta la proxima, cuidate.

El Dia De Amor

San Valentin was busy this weekend, making everyone in love more in love and everyone not in love... well...more bitter. It was a relatively normal weekend. My aunt Mavi came down to visit from Gijon for the weekend so I spent a fair bit of time with family. On Friday, we ate lunch at my grandmother's house as usual and I ended up staying there and talking for a long time. OH. Speaking of Friday. Here is a little bitter tale...

Chris and I have been attempting to jump through the hoops of securing out Spanish nationality aka birth right. I have personally been to the governemtn office 5 times, each time leaving and thinking "ok at least NOW I know what I need to get in order to get the nationality". Well needless to say, we went again on Friday and came back empty-handed after waiting in line for two hours. Not only do our birth certificates have to be authorized with the Appostille of the Hague from a consulate in the states (already jumped through that hoop), they need to be translated by a sworn and official translator into Spanish. They assured me that, after this, we are done. So let us all wait with baited breath to find out if the next time we waste the entirety of Friday morning we come back feeling just a little more Spanish.

Ok on to San Valentin and his day of love. To start things off, my soccer team got destroyed again, something like 7-2. Oh well..Jessica and I started the night off by cooking some tapas - in particular cherry tomatoes stuffed with a crab meat dip and "buñuelos" which are basically fried balls of cheesy dough and are delicious. After a few glasses of wine, we headed out to a nearby mexican restaurant which has amazing food and pretty damn good drinks. We split a thing of mole enchilidas which arrived impressively quickly for having been cooked in heaven somewhere.

After the mexican restaurant, we went out to a salsa club in the center of the city. The club was packed and the music was really good. For valentine's day the club was playing a game where everyone got a name tag with either the masculine or feminine form of a word and if they found their counterpart they got a free drink. I was "australiano" and, unfortunately I never found the lucky australiana. Jessica and I danced for quite a while and watched some really good people dance for almost as long. It definitely made us feel like we have to start taking dancing lessons. So we will see if we get the motivation to actually do that.

So that was Valentine's Day in a nutshell. (No pictures because we didnt have a camera...woops)

Young Love

No, this isn't about my girlfriend and I, but it is in honor of Valentines day.

Recently, we did an arts and crafts project in 3rd grade where the kids had to use pens instead of pencils. Apparently none of them use pen so the teacher and I lent out our pens. At the end of class, one of the girls who always likes to talk to me and ask me questions asks "Can I have your pen as a present?". Needless to say, I'm a sucker and I am one pen short these days. How cute are little kids? Really cute.

A N D A L U C I A

La segunda parte de esto es en español y la primera en inglés. En realidad es para que puedo practicar escribiendo en español y para que mi familia aquí puede leerlo.

The first part of this post is in English and the second part is in Spanish. Its mainly to practice writing in Spanish and so that my family can read my blog a bit. My written Spanish is pretty piss-poor (just ask the Spanish teacher from SPA207 at Princeton who refused to let me in the class), so it'll be a learning process.

Anyways, last weekend Jessica and I went on a trip with two of my coworkers, Laura and Manuel, to go skiing in Sierra Nevada, a mountain range outside of Granada. Not to be confused with the crap in California. The name literally means "snowy range" and that it was.


It was my first time to ever go skiing so I was naturally stoked about the prospect of spending the weekend on my ass. All of my coworkers were telling me that I was going to have to go skiing for at least a few days before being able to pick it up well and not fall constantly. Well, we drove down to the apartment we had rented out from some boyfriend of Manuel's sister's friend on Thursday night and hit the slopes on Friday morning. Manuel and Laura spent a couple of hours teaching me the basics and then a friend of Manuel's who is a ski-instructor came and gave me some pointers. Long story short, I'm obviously a fantastic skier and picked it up very quickly (or so they all told me). I fell a couple times when i got going way to fast but I skied some blues on the first day and had me a good time.


The big bummer of the weekend was that the weather turned miserable (snowy and high winds) so they closed almost all of the ski slopes on day two. So I only got one day of skiing in but it was fun and I'm definitely going to do it again. After we managed to dig the car out of the snow on Saturday morning, we headed to Manuel's home town, Cabra, which is outside of Cordoba.


We made a stop in Granada to take a peep at The Alhambra and grab some food and got into Cabra at like 5 pm. To understand our experience in Cabra you have to understand that the people of Andalucia speak with a very thick accent where they don't pronounce words fully, thus making it very difficult to understand.


We met Manuel's family which was an experience in its own. His dad was absolutely crazy and spoke with one of the thickest accents of anyone I've ever heard speak Spanish. But they were really great to us and pretty fun to be around. Manuel's friends were also a horse of a different color. We passed the night doing what is called a "Botellón" which means "Big Bottle" which involves a small group of people drinking and finishing a bottle of alcohol in a public place like a plaza. This is really the popular thing to do in Spain. So popular that some of the bars in Cabra offer a service where you can by a bottle of alcohol, a mixer, cups, and ice, all for 20 Euros. Manuel, Laura, Jessica, and I split a bottle of rum and hung out with Manuel's friends talking about so many random things. I remember being shown a cell phone video of one of his friends doing an amateur bullfighting thing and getting totally owned by the young hornless bull. Needless to say, we had a good time.


All in all a fantastic weekend.

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El fin de semana pasado, Jessica y yo fuimos a la región de Andalucia para esquiar en la Sierra Nevada y aprovechar del puente que tuvimos. Fuimos allí con algunos de mis compañeros de trabajo, Manuel y Laura. Manuel es de Cabra, un pueblo de Córdoba, y estudiaba en una universidad de Granada. Por eso, Manuel conoce muy bien la región y pasábamos muy bien con el Andaluz en Andalucia.

Era mi primera vez para esquiar y tenía un poco de nervios porque toda la gente me dijeron que pasas los primeros tres dias cayendo por el culo. Sin embargo, con unas horas de enseñanza de Laura y Manuel y un poco de consejo de un Monitor que era amigo de Manuel, lo cogi muy bien y estuve esquiando de puta madre entre unas horas. Jessica y yo bajábamos unas pistas azules y divertíamos muchisimo.

Era una pena que las pistas se ceraron el dia siguiente y no pudíamos esquiar por causa de viento y nieve pero pasabamos muy bien el primer dia y quero volver a esquiar otra vez durante el invierno.

Después de quitando la nieve del coche y saliendo del apartamento en la sierra, pasábamos por Granada para comer y para ver La Alhambra desde Sacramonte. Una cosa que me parecio muy impresionante era que, en Granada, puedes pedir una caña en un bar y te dan la tapa que quieras totalmente gratis. De una perspectiva madrileña, para pagar 4 euros para dos cañas y comida es imposible.

Desde Granada fuimos a Cabra, el pueblo donde nació Manuel y donde vive su familia. Allí encontrabamos un montón de "personajes". Para empezar, era muy dificil para entender los andaluzes cuando hablaban con un acento muy fuerte. Su padre habla completamente en andaluz y me costó mucho para entenderle. Tenía que concentrar muchismo cuando estaba hablando.

Mas que eso, pasábamos la noche con los amigos de Manuel charlando y escuchando historias. En Cabra, hay un bar donde puedes comprar todas las cosas necesarias para hacer un Botellón.Pues hicimos esto y pasábamos el tiempo allí en la calle, hablando por mucho tiempo sobre no se que.

Asi que nada. Disfrutábamos en Andalucia. Me gustaría pasar mas tiempo con españoles durante los fines de semana porque era muy buena practica y que ellos son muy divertidos, los andaluzes en particular.