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Published: September 21st 2009
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Palencia
view of the river from a large park in the city Dear family and friends,
I've included my pictures from Palencia here as promised. I was really glad I decided to spend the night there and take in more of the city before all of my roommates arrived. It was really charming. A guy in a store told me that Palencia is one of the top cities in Spain in terms of most green space within its city limits.
I'm including pictures of our apartment and more of Guardo here as well. Today all of my roommates left early in the morning for Palencia in order to apply for their residence cards at the police station there like I did when I went. They'll be back in the afternoon but for now I have the apartment to myself. We have no microwave in our apartment so they are planning on going to the Carrefour in Palencia (kind of like a French Wal-Mart) to see if they can buy us a cheaper one than what we could find in Guardo. We've been unable to use our gas oven because we just can't get it to light after we light the pilot light so we spoke with our casera (landlady) about this
Palencia
view of the river from a large park in the city last week and today a man is supposed to come in the afternoon to take a look at it and see if he can figure out what's wrong. We're hoping that we'll soon have a working oven!
So last week on Thursday Dan and I went to the high school to observe some classes and start to get a feel for the students and the teaching styles. It turns out I'll be assisting with a combined geography/history class and a music class aside from assisting with an English class or 2). I'm particularly excited about the music class! Tomorrow is my first real day on the job. On Friday, Dan and I went to the high school again to meet some more teachers and take some of the English teaching resources available in the English Dept. staffroom. On Fridays the teachers have a social gathering during their second break (starting at 12:30). They pay 5 euros a month and the wife of one of the teachers prepares a lot of Spanish tortilla (a potato and onion omelet which is absolutely delicious!) with wine, soda and cookies. We went to the gathering and got to meet some more teachers which
Palencia
I would definitely be running in this park all the time if I lived in Palencia! was nice.
On Friday afternoon the cable man came to our apartment. We are paying for cable and wi-fi internet in our apartment which is really quite reasonably priced when split 4 ways (less than 20 euros a month). We get a TON of channels with the cable and it's great to be able to watch popular Spanish series, gameshows and sports! I'm not really a fanatic futbol (soccer) fan but perhaps after living here awhile I will become one, haha. I was surprised by how many channels there are in English too (such as news channels from the USA and the UK). There is even a channel totally dedicated to teaching people English!
On Friday evening I went to the gym. A married couple owns the gym and they are really awesome people. Starting in October I'll be teaching English to the wife and one of her sons once a week. Dan will be working with the other son. The gym is somewhat small and some of the aerobic equipment could use an upgrade but it's the only one in town so we have no choice but to join. The owners are going to give us a
Palencia
inside the cathedral small monthly discount which is nice but I still think paying about 40 euros a month to join a gym in a pueblo is pretty expensive. I'm going to start taking a pilates class this week with Mariana though which I'm excited about. Because I've had a lot of free time in the last 2 weeks I've been running outside frequently in Guardo while I still can before it gets cold. It's been a great way to see more of the town and surrounding area and I already feel like I'm in better shape than when I got here :-)
Anyways, after I finished working out on Friday I went to the back room in the gym and there were a few men playing ping-pong so I joined in and got to play a few games! A few of the guys are apparently also good tennis players. I also talked to a man who was interested in having me give tennis lessons to his daughter! I didn't bring my tennis shoes or my racket to Spain because I never thought there'd be tennis courts in Guardo and frankly I didn't have room for them in my suitcases anyway, but
Palencia
inside the cathedral the man said they had a lot of rackets so if I do give his daughter lessons I can use one of theirs! I gave them my number so I guess I'll just have to wait and see if he ends up calling.
Friday night I ate dinner at a pizzeria in Guardo with my roommates which had delicious, really authentic Italian pizza. Afterwards we went out to bars which was quite an experience! The popular place to go in Guardo on Friday and Saturday nights is called "Los Bajos" (5-6 underground bars all connected by a single passageway). We first went to a bar owned by a girl named Kira who the auxiliares in Guardo last year had taught English to and who we had met earlier. It was fun to hang out with her for awhile and later on I went to a few more bars with Dan before getting back pretty early in the morning. I left around 3:30am but the bars in Guardo stay open until 6am!! Bars all over Spain used to be open that late but from what I learned when I studied abroad in Valencia they passed new laws a few years
Palencia
la Puerta del Obispo (Palencia's cathedral) ago so that now in most bigger cities at least, bars close around 2:30 but discotecas still stay open all night.
The rest of the weekend was fairly uneventful. We watched a movie in our piso on Sat. night and I took an afternoon walk around Guardo yesterday with Mariana and Sofia because it was such a nice day (and fairly warm!). This week the weather forecast actually looks pretty good with the temperature some days getting up to high 60s. Have to enjoy it while it lasts!!
Besos,
Dana
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Dad
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Nice blog Dana, you are going to a fair amount of trouble to keep us informed and we appreciate it!