Advertisement
Published: October 1st 2010
Edit Blog Post
Ultimate
Playing ultimate frisbee with Fendisc in Santander on the BEACH! Hola a todos!!
I've now been in Santander for almost 4 weeks and things have been going absolutely great! Until about a week and a half ago when I moved into an apartment I didn't have much internet access so now I can finally take the time for blog updates. Living in Santander is such a HUGE change from Guardo last year and I'm taking full advantage of it. I'm already playing on an ultimate frisbee team here and I've enrolled in an Italian class at the Official Language School which begins next week. There are Official Language schools in cities all over Spain where it's possible to take courses in English, German, French, Italian, and Portuguese. I had to apply to take the course outside of the regular registration period and I had a really high number on the list so I really didn't think I had much of chance of being able to get in but I went ahead and took the placement exam for Italian anyway just to see. I placed into the second year of Italian and then got really lucky because it turned out there were spaces left. I'm going to have a native speaker
Ultimate
on the Segunda Playa de El Sardinero for a teacher in the course and the best part... the year long course only costs 73 euros! The Official Language Schools in Spain are run by the government so the prices are subsidized I'm guessing. You pay even less per course if you take more than one language at once, have taken a course at an Official Language School before or belong to a large family.
Anyway, in August before I arrived in Santander I was doing some searching online and found the websites of two ultimate frisbee teams that play here. Ultimate frisbee is not a commonly played sport in Spain. It is the most popular in the U.S. where it originated and most colleges and cities now have teams and leagues. So the fact that Santander has TWO whole teams is pretty amazing. At U.Va. I played ultimate on the competitive women's club team for my first 2 years and absolutely loved it until I got a knee injury and ended up having to stop for awhile. So needless to say I was SO excited to see that it would be possible for me to continue playing ultimate in Spain! I got in touch with the
Ultimate
during practice... Amador (one of the guys I stayed with) is on the right younger team in Santander called Fendisc and actually ended up staying with 2 of the players on the team while I was looking for an apartment here. They had an unoccupied bedroom in their apartment and told me that I could stay with them while I was looking no problem. It worked out so great because upon my arrival in the city one of the guys (Manu) picked me up after he got out of work and drove me to his place. I was already meeting people in Santander and making friends on my first day! I got along really well with Manu and his flatmate Amador right away and went to my first practice with the team my second day in Santander. Since then I've been going to every practice (Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 7-10 pm) on the beach! During the summer and through September Fendisc has their practices on the largest beach in Santander called El Sardinero which is divided into 2 parts by an outcropping of rocks. It's really a pretty amazing setting for playing frisbee. As the sun sets and the sky changes colors the view you get of the pink light against the rocky
Ultimate
during practice on the Primera Playa de El Sardinero coastline in the distance is just fabulous. I've really enjoyed playing frisbee barefoot in the sand too. The sand is so great for your body, providing lots of extra cushioning and also resistance so your body takes less impact but you have to work harder to move around.
It's been great getting to know all the members of Fendisc. Most of the team consists of people in their mid-to-late twenties but there are 3 nineteen year old guys that just started university and there's 1 sixteen year old boy as well. Everyone on the team is just SO nice and we have a lot of fun together. This Saturday we're playing in a tournament that is organized by the other ultimate team in Santander (Corocotta). Four teams are coming from other cities in Spain and our team and Corocotta are dividing into 2 teams so that everyone gets more play time. We're going to be playing all day on Saturday from 10 to 6 on the beach where we normally practice and it should be a blast. On Saturday night after the tourney the plan is to all eat dinner together in a restaurant as a team and then
Ultimate
once it gets dark we play under the lights of a restaurant by the beach go out. Looking forward to it!
So a little about who I live with and my apartment... Alissa is an auxiliar in my program from California that lived in Santander last year and renewed her position in a primary school in a town right outside of Santander. I met her when I came to Santander in April to visit the city and stayed with her. Alissa arrived in Santander 2 days after I did earlier this month and we decided to start looking to rent an apartment together. When I first arrived in the city I looked at a lot of rooms that people were trying to rent out in their apartments because I wanted to live with Spaniards but didn't see anything at all that I liked so it was a relief to have someone to search to rent a whole apartment with. Once we finally found the apartment we really liked that we ended up moving into we had to find a 3rd person for the 3rd bedroom to keep the rent at a reasonable price so we posted some blurbs/flyers online and at the university and Mathilde, a French Erasmus student from Normandy attending the University
Ultimate
out on a Sat. night with some frisbee players: Juan, Hugo, Quique, María Diez and María Rosa of Cantabria for the year got in touch with us right away. We met her for a drink to see if she would be compatible and we all got along great right from the start so she ended up signing the contract for the apartment with us and moving in. Mathilde speaks English really well (better than Spanish) because she spent a year living in Vancouver, Canada and going to high school when she was 15 but Alissa and I mostly always speak with her in Spanish so that we can all practice which has been working out well so far. Like me, Alissa and Mathilde both like to cook (especially quiche) and I'm already feeling much more creative with my meals here than I was while living in Guardo. We've prepared some dinners together and I can tell we're going to have a great year living together. Mathilde is also a tennis player that played competitively as a junior so we're going to go out and play at some point soon hopefully. She just has to get her parents to send her tennis stuff to her from France, hehe.
So playing on a frisbee team and moving into
the piso
My building located on Calle Tantín. We live on the 2nd floor. a nice apartment with 2 great girls, plus enjoying the beautiful weather in Santander this month has made me extremely happy. I start teaching English next week in my school and I'm really looking forward to finding out my schedule. I went by my school one day 2 weeks ago and all the English teachers who I will be working with seem really nice so I'm excited for a great year ahead! Also really looking forward to improving my Italian with the course starting next week. Wishing you all well!
Besos y abrazos,
Dana
Advertisement
Tot: 0.122s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 9; qc: 61; dbt: 0.0599s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Stacey Dula
non-member comment
Wow!
It looks absolutely beautiful! I am so jealous that you live near the beach. I'm dying to go to the beach now. You apartment looks great too. I can't wait for more updates! xo Stacey