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Published: November 21st 2010
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Manzanares el Real
view of the city, it's so beautiful This week has been really nice. I went through the normal routine of work and tutoring for the week. School itself was uneventful but tutoring was another story. Most of my lessons went great, except for one. The two sisters that I tutor (the one’s whose parents were fighting last week) were absolutely terrible. They are sisters and so they bicker a lot, which is fine, but it was horrible on Thursday. They kept yelling at each other and kicking one another. I tried sitting in between them so they would stop, but that didn’t help. They continued to try and hit each other, and began throwing stuff at one another, with me sitting right in the middle. I don’t know how many times I got hit. It was absolutely horrible. I almost walked out of the house, it was just too much to handle. I don’t understand how a family can constantly fight like this and let their daughters act this way. The father sat there and did nothing as I was a punching bag for the hour. I don’t know if I can handle them for the whole year, but I really don’t want to give them up, I
Manzanares el Real
the first 5km,Me, Kyla, Laura and Marisa am making 40 euro a week just from this one family. It’s really nice to have the extra money but I don’t know if this is worth it. I am going to try a couple more sessions before I decide what to do about the family.
Besides this one session of tutoring my week was really good. Friday, on my day off, I ran some errands and walked around the city. I went to the grocery store in hopes of getting supplies for cookies. (Dennis, my roommate’s boyfriend, had his birthday this weekend and I wanted to make something for the surprise party). Well it sounded like it would be a good idea and super easy unfortunately I could not find half the things I needed. There was no brown sugar, no vanilla extract and definitely no instant pudding mix. So my baking didn’t happen. I may have to find an American store here if I want to try and bake for my roommates. I spent the evening at home with my roommates and rearranging the furniture in my room. It was a pretty relaxing day.
Saturday was an unbelievable day. I woke up bright and early to
meet a group of American at the bus depot. Laura (who I work with), Marisa (from North Carolina) and Kyla (from Eugene, Oregon 😊). We took the hour long bus ride out to Manzanares el Real, a small city about 40 km Northwest of Madrid. We decided to hike up into the mountains that were in the city. We thought it would be a nice short hike, the trails were supposed to be anywhere from 5k to 8km. Not too bad for the day. But we didn’t realize we had to hike 5km just to get to the beginning of the trail from the bus stop. Those 5 Km weren’t just a quick and easy stroll through the streets; half of it was in the city while the other half was hiking over rocks and boulders next to the river. After the 5km walk to the trail we decided to do the 5km loop instead of the 8km. We began our walk around, stopping tons of times to take pictures. It was absolutely beautiful and green. There were pine trees and I felt so at home. Kyla and I were flying through the trails and reminiscing about Oregon. It was
really nice. Unfortunately the trails were not marked great. We ended up taking a couple Km detour when we missed the fork on the trail. We started hiking up the mountain, literally scaling rocks. We finally realized we needed to turn around, because we were not on the right trail at all. The good thing to come from our detour was an amazing view with the sky so clear that we could see the towers in downtown Madrid. It was stunning. Finally we made it back to the fork and stopped for a quick lunch. By this time it was starting to get chilly, so we decided to head down the rest of the way. Again the trail markers were horrible and when we got to three separate paths we had no clue which way to go. We decided to head down, we figured it would be better than up. Once we started running into people on the path we felt a little better. After many loops and turns we finally made it to the end of the trail. We were pretty exhausted by this point, but we still had another 5km to go before we made it back to
the bus. We hiked through the rocks and made it into town just as the sun was starting to go down. We couldn’t have planned that better if we tried. We had to wait about a half an hour for the bus and then we were heading back to Madrid. On the way in we got to see an amazing sunset. It was bright blue at the bottom, faded into purple, then to pink and finally orange at the top. It was so beautiful. The day could not have been better for hiking it was amazing, but super long. 15 -20 km was a little much 😊.
By the time I made it home I was exhausted and my body ached, but my day was just getting started. It was Dennis’ birthday, so I had to get all cleaned up for the night. We made dinner together and stayed at the house until midnight. Then we all climbed into the car and headed to a bar where all Dennis’ friends were their waiting to surprise him. I spent about two hours there, visiting with all his friends and practicing Spanish. But I was exhausted. I was so ready to
Dennis's Birthday
Itzbel (my Roommate) Dennis and Me climb in bed and sleep for a day 😊. So I head home early, took some Advil and passed out.
This weekend has been really fun! It was nice to do something outdoors and get out of the bustling city. I didn’t realize how much I have missed seeing green trees. Today I have no big plans, just going to stay in and work on Thanksgiving ideas. This week at school we are presenting Thanksgiving to the students and I need to get that all finalized. I’m sure the second graders will love handprint turkeys 😉.
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Janet Simpson
non-member comment
You make me so tired
Thank you for the wonderful adventure, it is so great to be young...I would have backed out if I had to start out over rocks and boulders....Hope you have a great Thanksgiving and hope you can figure out a way to work with the twins...sad isn't it, makes you thanksful for your family .... Janet Simpson