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Published: March 27th 2010
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My Birthday Week
Sofia and Mariana put this up on our apartment door
:-) Hola a todos!
I turned 23 on Wednesday last week and it ended up being a great week. On Monday, I went skiing in León with my friend Pablo at a small ski station called San Isidro. It's about an hour and 15 minute drive from Guardo. The weather ended up being perfect--really sunny and not too windy or cold. It was also great to go there on a Monday because there were hardly any people there and especially towards the end of the day we had some of the slopes practically to ourselves! I had gone skiing here once before in February on a Saturday with Iris, the P.E. teacher who works at my school, and one of his friends, Jesús. That day had also been a lot of fun but the difference in the amount of people between a Saturday and Monday was pretty huge. After skiing twice this year I feel like my skills have improved greatly. With Iris I practiced my turns and got the feel for being on skis again because it had been 2 years since I last skied and that was only for about 1/2 a day when I went in Granada, Spain
Skiing in León
skiing at San Isidro with Pablo with a group of students from my study abroad program. He guided me through how to approach some more difficult areas of the slopes so I improved a lot. With Pablo I began working on doing faster and narrower turns with his instruction and by the end of the day was successfully going down some red slopes without falling very much at all! I think the biggest difference I feel in my skiing is that I'm not as afraid to approach more of the difficult slopes or areas. More confidence really helps!
On Wednesday, I made a dinner reservation at a restaurant in Guardo to celebrate my birthday (the "Piter Dan"...presumably named after the owners but who knows) This place serves the best pizza in Guardo and there were 12 of us at dinner. My 3 roommates came (yep, that's right we have a new girl living in our apartment)! Her name is Eva and she's from a pueblo in Ourense, Galicia. She moved into our apartment at the beginning of March to fill in for a Math teacher at my school who is currently recovering from an illness. It looks like she may be with us for awhile--perhaps
all of April or maybe even the rest of the school year depending on how the teacher is recovering. The rest of my dinner guests were also teachers that work at my school and Sofia and Mariana's school in Guardo. Most of them were in the P.E. class that I took for a few months on Tuesday afternoons for fun which is how I got to meet them. Fernando wasn't in the P.E class but he is a teacher that has become my friend through our afternoon talks in his apartment over coffee. When he was younger he was an Erasmus student in Austria and he speaks German fluently. His English is also pretty good so we meet once a week to speak in English and Spanish and correct each others grammar or suggest better ways to say things. It's really fun and I've gotten to meet his wife and his 4 children which are really adorable.
Erasmo, Juan, José Ramón and Javier gave me a "porrón" as a gift for my birthday (pretty much a Spanish style wine decanter with a spout for holding it up and drinking out of it). Everyone at dinner signed it for me
Skiing in León
taking a lunch break and I thought it was a great gift! At dinner we poured beer into it and had fun playing around with it. I had never tried to drink from a porrón before and I definitely need more practice...haha. Erasmo was the real pro at drinking from it and could hold it really far from his mouth without sloshing the beer onto himself. Overall it was a really enjoyable evening... good company and good food!
Friday last week was Father's Day in Spain and in Castilla y León schools were closed. My friend Brooke usually works Fridays so she took the opportunity to travel from Valladolid on Friday to visit me in Guardo for the weekend. She is my first friend in my English assistant teaching program here in Spain to visit me in Guardo and I enjoyed showing her around the town. On Friday night we went to dinner at a restaurant called "La Chuleta" (The Pork Chop) that has good raciones and is smoke free (yep, the only bar/restaurant in Guardo I know of that prohibits smoking!) The ban on smoking at this restaurant isn't always strictly enforced but pretty much every time I go in there it's
Skiing in León
Pablo on the lift a smoke free environment which is nice. After dinner on Friday night we met up with my friend Dani (with whom I play tennis) and some of his other friends. After going to 2 bars we went down to the underground bar network in Guardo ("Los Bajos") for awhile before heading back to my apartment. We left around 4 am, a time that can be considered calling it an early night here in Spain, hehe.
On Saturday Brooke and I got up late and made crepes for breakfast with strawberries, nutella and whipped cream which were delicious. When the rain let up in the afternoon we took a walk around Guardo and I was able to show her a lot. At 5 pm we went to Guardo's indoor sports complex ("el pabellón") to watch my friend Dani's team play indoor soccer in the local league here. They ended up losing their game after starting out strong but it was fun to watch because I had never entered the sports hall before even though it is right next to the tennis courts.
On Saturday night Brooke and I watched a movie and then left the apartment at 2 am
My Birthday
with Paz, the history teacher that I work with at my school and the rose plant she gave me for my birthday :-) to go out for a little while with Ana and her friends. On Sunday, we took another walk around Guardo by the river in the afternoon before Brooke caught her bus back to Valladolid at 5 pm. After she left I went to play paddle (a racket sport very popular in Spain that is played on a smaller version of a tennis court and on a softer felt-like surface). I played with some people I've recently met that work at the power plant immediately north of Guardo in the pueblo called Velilla del Río Carrión. You have to be an employee of the power plant to play paddle at this court (or be a guest) and I've only just gotten into playing paddle. I've now played twice but I really enjoy it. You pretty much always play doubles and it's a really fast paced form of tennis doubles because the court isn't as long as a tennis court and you can hit the ball off the back wall as well as after the first bounce. As a result the points tend to last longer than in tennis because there are more shot possibilities. It's been really good practice for my
My Birthday
with 2 of my English students who are also friends (Brezo, an architect in Guardo and Fernando, a literature teacher at my school) volleys in tennis and I hope to start playing paddle more regularly!
So a great week last week! Hoping this new year will bring great things!
Un besote,
Dana
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Tio Buck
non-member comment
Feliz Bday!
Hola, Dana, Happy Birthday, again, and glad to see you are having fun. Please convince your cousins that they need to take a break and enjoy themselves. Your very positive experience should inspire them. Tio Buck