Blogs from Spain, Europe - page 1206

5 March To celebrate my one-year anniversary of leaving home a small group of people from the meditation center took the train to Barcelona for the day. The weather cooperated and we walked through the old parts of town, visiting markets and churches and sitting at sea-side cafes and walking on the beach. Later we went to lunch at a small restaurant that was run by a woman who had taken a course(s) and subsequently named her restaurant ¨Dhamma¨(dharma). It was a nice little warm place and the food was quite nice. Then some shopping and more food and coffee was in order before returning to the center in the late afternoon. It´s hard to believe that a year has passed already. Although there were definitely some hard days, some lonely days, even some boring ... read more

Well, finally another chance to put up an entry in my “travel” blog, as I managed to break away from the hum drum of work to chalk up another country; Spain. Actually I’ll start with the latest London news which most (if not all) of you will know which is that Michelle made the trip over and as of the 21st of Jan has joined me here. The last couple of weeks knowing that her arrival was only just around the corner was really tough and the days dragged out for an age, but finally the hour arrived. Michelle had booked a hotel for the first couple of nights and I devised a little plan to make her arrival all the more special. I used my natural charm to sweet talk my way into her room ... read more

So here it is. A quick summary of what the heck I’ve been doing for the last few months. Right now things are going really well at the elementary school that I’m working at. My mother sent me a book of various nursey rhymes in English paired with different interesting activities for kids. They’re all geared at native speakers but I changed them a little bit for my audience. For the last two weeks we worked on “Hickory, Dickory, Dock”. I know you’re thinking, “What the hell are you teaching them? Definitely not practical English. No one says Hickory, Dickory, Dock. In fact, you probably couldn’t even say it in classrooms of some conservative schools because of its similarity to certain explatives. What kind of teacher are you?”. Ok, well the nursery rhyme in itself isn’t ... read more

February 21-March 4 Well, I´m back in the kitchen again but with one little difference. That´s right, you´re now reading the travel blog of...the kitchen manager! We´re supposed to be here working to dissolve our egos, and now my head is big it can´t even fit in the kitchen to tell my slaves...er, coworkers...what to do and to do it faster and quieter. It´s a lot of work but familiarity with the kitchen and the menu saves it from being a total disaster. The kitchen crew was mostly Spanish this time, allowing me to speak more Spanish, and we all worked well together. We even got cocky, making our own desserts without following the menu book, substituting ingredients where necessary, and adding artistic flourishes whenever possible. In short, it was great fun. I continued to ... read more

The story - in a nutshell - goes that a local baker asked Sant Medir to cure him of an illness, and the saint did. Thus the baker started a tradition of going round handing out sweets to the locals - hence the "candy fiesta" nickname. Basically the parade consists of horsemen/horsewomen throwing out candy. It's like Halloween except kids don't go round to houses all dressed up, they just stand in the streets and catch sweets. Hehe. Man, can I just say that those sweets hurt when they're being thrown at you!! I call them little pieces of 'sugar coated hail' hahaha. Terribly fun, though, I couldn't stop laughing when we got pelted by sweets. It's kinda embarrasing saying this but spending an hour picking up candy from the floor really gave my legs a ... read more