A Coruña :)

Buenos días,

So we got back last night from A Coruña, about a 3 hour bus ride on the Northern coast of Spain!

A Coruña was known as "City at the End of the World" because it was the farthest west point of the Roman Empire and of Europa Antigua, or "Old Europe".

We left Saturday morning for A Coruña, and dropped our stuff off at the hostel. We found the beach, where there was a surfing competition going on. We took a bunch of pictures and then found somewhere to eat (and some sangria!)

It was in the mid-50s and sunny while we were there (no rain!), which was great. We spent a lot of time walking around the city and the beach (Playa de Orzan). 

We walked to the Torre de Hércules, which is the oldest functioning lighthouse in the world. It was built in the 2nd century by the Romans. We went at night, and it was a little eery. During the day, you can climb up to the top of the tower and see the whole city, and it's about 300 steps.

On our way to the Torre

Torre de Hercules

The city had a lot of Christmas lights up! We went to the Plaza de Maria Pita, the most important square of the city. It had an ice skating rink, a lot of Christmas lights, and a little house for Santa Claus. During the day, Papa Noel (Santa Claus) makes visits for the children. 

Casita de Papa Noel

Snowman/ Muñeco de nieve

Park decorated for Christmas

Palm trees with Christmas lights

Church

Found a Badger fan in Spain!

A Coruña: 2012 decembro 9

This was the first big trip Amanda and I took by ourselves! We met a lot of really nice people (the hostel owner, taxi drivers). We also met some really nice American girls in a bar. They walked in, and I commented to Amanda that one was a natural blonde (which is quite the rarity in Spain), and they were looking at us strangely. Amanda decided to approach them and say "hi" and it turns out they're Americans doing the same program as us. They were from Texas and Georgia, and live together in a small town about an hour north from O Barco. So we hung out with them, and we will probably meet up with them next time we travel.

We have been doing a lot of planning for our big London trip, booking hostels and researching. I am getting really excited about going :)

Ciao!

Cooking up a Storm!

Hola a todos!

So I have been attempting to cook more. I made baked macaroni and cheese for our Thanksgiving event, which was a lot more work than I anticipated. I had to convert the recipe to metric units to know how much of what ingredient to buy. I actually found all my ingredients are our small grocery store, which I was happy about! I had to make my own breadcrumbs, which I've never done before, but wasn't too hard. I put them in the oven for a bit, then buttered them a bit before topping my mac & cheese with them.

Making a big mess in our kitchen

I also finally found normal ground beef at the store yesterday, so cooked all of it yesterday, making a hamburger, meatballs, and taco meat. I've never made meatballs ( I had to make my own breadcrumbs again), but it wasn't too bad. I haven't found normal chicken yet, but that'll be my next adventure. I am going to cook something every day, we'll see how long that lasts.

THANKSGIVING

Thanksgiving day was definitely not a traditional one. I had to work at the school during the day, and tried to tell the kids the history of Thanksgiving. I made a sample hand turkey for the children, and they each made their own, then wrote what they were thankful for on each of the fingers. The older kids definitely understood better, but I think they all liked it. Two of my kids, Zaira and Jota, gave me theirs :) So I took a picture of theirs! 

Saturday we had Thanksgiving in Ponferrada with all the Americans, and a lot of our Brazilian friends came as well. Two Americans from a town over came too, and they made stuffing, and there was also ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, pumpkin and apple pie, and corn. It was all pretty delicious! 

The Thanksgiving poster and sample "hand turkey" I made

My mac & cheese (pre-baking)

Hand turkeys made by the children!

Couldn't get this to flip, but the kids all made my birthday cards then put it on a poster! :)

We are currently working on planning our Winter break adventures. We would really like to go to London or Paris, because they both have Chipotles there. Otherwise, we might go to Sevilla (Southern Spain) because one of my friends from my USC Spanish classes lives there, so we could stay with her (and it'd be warmer there!) I am hoping to go to the Chino later today to pick up some Christmas decorations! They have fake Christmas trees, so we'll see how much those cost. 

Besitos! 

La Buena, La Mala & La Loca

Hola!

Just thought I'd take a bit to list the things I love and don't so much love about Spain! I'm sure this list will grow/ evolve as I spend more time here but here's a basic start to it:)

La Buena:

1. Tortilla Española: seriously delicious. made of egg, onion, and potatoes, it's a basic tapa at just about all bars, and makes an awesome breakfast/ brunch!

2. Calimocho & Tinto de Verano: Red wine & Coca-cola and Red wine & lemonade/ lemon soda. Both are relatively cheap yet delicious!

3. Tapas with drinks: After ordering most drinks at a bar, most bars will give you a free tapa (little appetizer), usually tortilla española or bread with ham/ chorizo or olives

4. Learning Spanish: although it's a lot of work, having immersed in Spanish is definitely the quickest/ most enjoyable way to learn the language

5. Alioli sauce: delicious white sauce served generally served with potatoes or rice

6. Being so close to other countries: Portugal is only a few hours away, and France and a lot of other European countries are fairly easily accessible

7. Chinos: Like a massive junk store, owned by Chinese immigrants, everything is sold really cheap, and if you have the time and energy to navigate through everything, you can find a bunch of random, great things

8. White bread with meals: Spanish people appreciate their loaves of white bread and haven't caught on to America's obsession with putting whole wheat in everything

9. Clothes: people dress well here, the woman wear scarves, jean jackets, nice shoes/ boots and the men dress nice in collared shirts and nicer shoes

10. Beautiful scenery: I have actually really gotten to like taking the train places because you can see outside to the rivers and mountains and all the greenery

La Mala

1. Lack of food variety/ American food: I have been missing Chipotle since Day 1, and it is very difficult (especially in our region) to find foods from different regions. I could also use an awesome authentic American hamburger.

2. Siesta: This, in theory, is good, but this means most businesses are closed for up to 2 hours for siesta in the early afternoon. This is very annoying when you have things you need to get done and have to wait until siesta ends

3. Sunday closings: It's like Chick Fil-A times 200. Nearly everything is closed on Sunday, even grocery stores. Sunday is a "family day", but for us means finding food is that much harder.

4. Fish & Pig legs: At the grocery store, there is not much room between the ham leg section and the normal food sections. Also, the refrigerated section usually smells of fish, and upon looking for ice cream the other day, I stumbled upon frozen octopus. Not enjoyable.

5. Lack of appreciation of heating: A lot of Spanish places believe in saving energy, so I am going to have to get used to being cold inside as well. My school is freezing, and I generally wear my winter jacket all day there.

6. Lack of dryers: Spanish people generally don't own dryers either, opting to hang dry their clothes outside, or use a drying rack (like we have). This means our clothes take at least 2 days to dry completely, which isn't very pleasant especially when it's not warm inside or outside.

7. Poor sense of time: I have never been a super punctual person, but Spanish people take forever to do everything! Working at a school where the schedule gets changed frequently, and classes frequently end and begin late is very new/ irritating for me. Also, a lot of time, people get caught up in their conversation, and will stop walking to make a point about something. They can be running late, aware they are running late, and still take an extra 10 minutes to meander somewhere that only takes a few.

La loca:

1. Repeated vocabulary:

a. Venga
b. Vale
c. No pasa nada
d. Da igual.
e. Pues, nada.
f. Hasta luego.

A "good-bye" looks like this:
"Vale, venga, ciao. Vale, venga. Hasta luego. Ciao!"

2. Galician: This language follows me everywhere. It's supposed to be really close to Portugese, so I generally don't have a clue what people are saying when they are speaking it. A lot of the teachers at my school speak this, and I have been forced to listen to 30 minute long presentations given to the teachers in Galician ( Galego), which was awkward and confusing!

To be continued!

Vida

My school CEIP Virxe do Camino 

(If you look in the corner, you can see Joao, one of the littlest cutest kids in Infantil)

Our Gas Butano (We have to turn this on and off every time we want hot water or to use our stove)

Calimocho- Wine in a box and Coca-cola (Surprisingly good)

Found a McDonald's in Ponferrada!

Villa Franca where we stopped for some wine & tapas

Ana, the English teacher and her daughter Barbara, who we hung out with last weekend

Noviembre

Hola!

Can't believe we've been here for over a month already! We spent the weekend in Ponferrada again. We stayed with Amanda's English teacher, Ana, and she lives with her husband and kids, Gonzalo (4), Barbara (16) and Javi (20). I got to practice my Spanish a ton, because only Ana speaks good English. We watched some movies in Spanish, and had some delicious meals. On Saturday we had paella, a traditional Spanish rice dish with chicken in it, which was awesome! On Friday we had tortilla, another delicious Spanish dish with egg, potato, onion, and peppers. The family also has land in the country, and they make their own red wine, which we tried as well. We met some of the kids' friends, and everyone was very friendly and wanted to practice their English with us.

We had a short week last week, because Thursday was All Saints Day (Dia de todos los Santos), so there was no class, and also no class on Friday. So I just worked on Wednesday, which was very relaxing. I gave my presentation about Halloween in the United States to the kids on Wednesday, which went pretty well. The kids dressed up on Friday, and the teachers made part of the school into a haunted house, and a lot of the parents came and they served hot chocolate and cookies. Apparently in Spain, the majority of people dress up scary, instead of the United States dress up as whatever (animals, celebrities, etc). So there were a lot of zombies, witches, etc! There's an event in February called Carnaval, where people in Spain dress up as anything, will definitely have to look up more information about that.

 Ana and her husband and the daughter Barbara took us to the town Ana grew up in (a really small town) and later we toured a colegiata (bigger than a church but smaller than a cathedral) in Villafranca del Bierzo. Then we stopped at a bar and got some tapas (small snacks) and a glass of wine. One of the tapas was pulpo (octopus.. pictures to come!) and I tried it! It was quite scary, especially because you eat it by the tendril, and you can see its like suction cups on its tendrils. They literally just boil it and add salt and pepper. The whole family really likes it and highly recommended it, but I didn't like it very much. It tasted like fish. Amanda didn't try it, but we'll see if people can convince her to try it later on.

I am still adjusting to the school I'm at. The kids are in general very friendly and excited to learn. The teachers speak a lot to each other in Galician (the language of the region that's very similar to Portugese), which is frustrating for me because I can't join a conversation if I don't understand their language. They also complain a lot because their school has suffered from budget cuts this year, so they generally aren't very positive to be around. I really do enjoy being the in classroom though when we get to do lessons in English. I saw one of the kids at the train station and she ran up to me and gave me a big hug, and I met her mom and she said said her daughter talked about me and how she really enjoyed English. Amanda and I both see a lot of the children out and about here in El Barco de Valdeorras, and Ponferrada as well, because a lot of people head there for the weekends as well. I also know almost all of the children because there are only 40 of them!

I am currently working on learning how to cook/ bake here. I made oreo balls here last week (it only requires oreos, cream cheese, and melting chocolate), so that was delicious. Cake mix/ premade anything is really expensive here, so I am going to have to work on cooking from scratch. The hardet part is finding ingredients. I discovered alioli sauce, which is really good with potatos or rice; its made out of garlic, olive oil, lemon juice and eggs, and it's really delicious!

I don't have real plans for my birthday yet, but there is a Chinese restaurant in Ponferrada that looks really good, that we might go to on Saturday night. We made friends with two American boys (Florida and California) in Ponferrada, two girls from Turkey, and a bunch of people from Brazil. There is an English conversation practice on Friday in Ponferrada that we usually go to, so that's where we meet a lot of people. Everyone meets at a bar/cafe to practice/ use their English! Everyone's really friendly and we usually end up talking to people in a combination of English and Spanish.

That's all for now, I will try to include pictures soon!

Besos!

Ponferrada

The poster I made for the kids of Halloween vocabulary

Río Síl

Castillo de los Templarios

Plaza de Ayuntamiento

Fotos!

On the bridge in O Barco de Valdeorras

In Ourense

Ourense

Ourense near the hot springs! 

                                                                Ángel  y Conchita

Aventuras

We've had our first long weekend of traveling! Friday night we went to Ponferrada, a nearby city of about 80,000 people. It was nice to get out of our small town for a little bit. Ponferrada is about 40 minutes away by train. The other American Stephen lives there, so we went out with him and met up with some of the teachers in his school (he works at a high school in O Barco). The teachers were all really nice, and a lot of them are studying English because of a lot of classes like gym and art are being taught in English now.

Saturday, we went to Valladolid, which was about 3 hours by bus. It's where Amanda studied last summer, and it was really nice. It's a very traditional Spanish town, which was cool to see. We hung out with some of Amanda's friends from last summer and went shopping! I bought a jean jacket and red pants. I'm trying to look as Spanish as possible! haha Everyone wears boots and a lot of scarves too.

On Sunday in Valladolid, we had lunch with Amanda's host family! Her name is Conchita and her husband's name is Angel. It was Angel's 88th birthday, so a ton of their relatives came over for lunch. We had a delicious meal of caldo (Galician soup), chorizo, bread, chicken, potatoes, cake, and ice cream! All of the family was really nice, and some of the grandkids are studying English, so they were practicing their English with us.

On Tuesday, the director from Amanda's school brought us to Ourense to finish our paperwork (about an hour and a half away). It's the final part of our visa process to verify our legal status. We can now officially open up bank accounts, which we did this morning! I'll receive my debit card in the mail within the week, so that'll be great because I won't have to pay to withdraw money from my American account anymore. We should get paid at the beginning of November!

School has been going well. I made a poster for the kids in English about Halloween, and I am making a Powerpoint about Halloween in the United States, and my mom sent me a bunch of pictures from when Dylan and I were kids and dressed up. Next Friday, the whole school is having a Halloween party, and the kids are singing a song about Halloween in English. Amanda and I are currently on the hunt for Halloween costumes, and if I find one, I'm going to wear one next Friday. I also have a big bag of candy corn that I'm going to have the kids try. I'm hoping Amanda and I can get a pumpkin (calabaza) for our apartment, but I'm not sure where to get one.

Some of the kids are genuinely interested in learning English, which is cool to see. I'm definitely getting better at Spanish because the kids always talk to me in Spanish and I respond in English. So far we've worked on numbers, colors, time, and animals. The school is really tiny, so I know most of the kids and I'm sure I'll get to them quite well. I really like that I work with kids of all the levels, because I get to work with 3 years to 11 year olds.

No big plans for this upcoming weekend. Enjoy the pictures :)

First Weekend!

It's been a good and relaxing first weekend in O Barco! Once we got back from Santiago de Compostela, I finally got a chance to catch up on sleep. Saturday, we explored O Barco, which is a very beautiful area. We are only a few blocks from the Río Sil, so there are walking paths and bridges in that area. There are also a lot of little Taperías, bars that also sell tapas. We went to a place called Guirerri , where we order Calimocho, which is red wine and Coca-Cola. I had heard of it before, but was surprised that I really liked it.  Drinks come with a free tapa, so we both received little pieces of bread with ham on them that were pretty good. We sat outside with a view of the river, which was really nice. Between the times of 3 and 5 (around), there are a lot less people out and about, because they are taking their siestas, but after that time people usually come out and go for tapas and drinks with their friends and family.

Today, we did more exploring and found another tapas bar. We had ham on bread again, and tortilla, which is similiar to an egg and potato omlette. It was delicious! It was around 80 degrees today, unseasonably warm and really nice outside. We tried to go to the grocery store, and they were closed because it was Sunday. I'm not sure if there are other grocery stores that are open on Sundays, but we didn't see any. It's interesting because many businesses are not open on Sundays.