Travellatte: So many things, so little time

1. The vegetarian went hunting.

2. My old roommate got engaged?!

3. I used peaches to teach about the Earth.

4. I spent a day being a tourist in Priego.

5. I had my first Spanish cold.

6. I went to church

7. The Police Station in Cordoba is still worse than the DMV

8. First visitors

9. Priego is coldddddd

That is a brief summary of what has been happening in my life recently. I will start with last, last Friday where as always, I had the day off from work. I decided to be a tourist on this particular day because there are certain landmarks and sites in Priego I had not visited. I started by walking along the mountain's edge overlooking the other nearby mountains.

I wish this picture did the view justice. The walk along the cliffs always manages to take my breath away along with it being so peaceful. After that, I headed towards Priego's castillo (castle). The castillo has been around for forever and is currently still in its original state. (We're talking legit ruins.) This aspect is cool because nothing has been redone or touched. So you are walking within the same space as the people back in the day. I managed to get into the castillo for free. I think this can be attributed to my lengthy, friendly conversation with the ticket vendor. I walked throughout the parts of the castle that were accessible. My favorite part was the walk to the very top. It overlooked all of Pirego and the surrounding mountains.

After touring the castle, I headed to the Carniceria Real because my entrance ticket allowed me free entrance to this famous landmark too. This building used to be an old meat market more or less. The animals would come here to be bought and sold for meat.

I personally did not enjoy the Carniceria Real. Mostly because they were playing rap music as I was walking around which took away from the historical aspect.

At the end of the day, I headed to my Spanish friend's house (Sara). I was spending the night because we had to wake up super early the next day. Myself, her, and another friend booked our winter vacation to France (yay!) and then enjoyed a movie and wine night.

SATURDAY: This is the day that the vegetarian went hunting. No, not skeet shooting like I am used to; but real life, in the flesh, hunting. To start, camo doesn't exist. (Not that I had any camo clothing here with me in Spain.) But none the less, I brought with me to Sara's house some raggidy green colored clothing. All of which was quickly ruled out my Sara's mother. My fashion show ended with me wearing a mens button down shirt, green pants, a gray vest, a tan jacket, and of course, a hat....

I may or may not look like a scarecrow...

Anyway, hunting was definitely... interesting. Instead of being in the woods, we walked around an open field. This "field" was HUGE. We probably walked 5-6 miles. We weren't hunting deer either. In Spain, they hunt partridges. And no, the partridges were not sitting in a pear tree. There were some, however, sitting in olive trees. There were also two dogs with us who were in charge of scaring the birds into the air for us to shoot. So really, our job was pretty easy. In total, we shot five partridges and a rabbit. For all of the readers out there wondering why in the world a vegetarian would go hunting...

My belief is as follows: I do not not eat meat because it is killing animals. Instead, I choose not eat meat because of all of the chemicals the United States puts in the meat (which are absolutely terrible for our bodies.) If I watched you raise, kill, and prepare a cow, I would eat the beef because I know that it has no unnecessary chemicals in it. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case, so I choose to just not eat meat.

As for hunting, I am an animal lover. So if we were shooting deer, I might cry. But I don't like birds, so this particular hunting situation was ideal.

After hunting for five hours, we ended our day with a hearty meal of Spanish tapas and paella.

SUNDAY: Had a lovely day. Got my first Spanish cold. (It was rough.) Went to church.

MONDAY: Normal

TUESDAY: Normal

WEDNESDAY: The day of the peach. This day, I was given the freedom to do whatever I wanted in my 5th grade class more or less. AKA the teacher asked me to prepare a simple activity. What I did next was rather shocking to both the students and the teacher. I took this opportunity to choose an activity that would be forever engrained in my students' brains. You see, within two days, the students were expected to learn the layers of the Earth, layers of the Earth's atmosphere, and the different types of water found on Earth. In the United States, each of these is typically taught in 6th grade and takes about a week to teach and learn. Because this was a lot of information to learn (in both english and spanish), I wanted to do something that was going to help them remember. Therefore, I brought in peaches. I had students pair up in partners and without any help, figure out how a peach was comparable to the layers of the Earth.
1. I don't think these students have ever done a science experiment before.
2. You should have seen their faces when they saw that we were using food. (Food is for eating; not science class duh.)
Anyway, after explaining multiple times that they had to be scientists and figure out how the two were similar, they finally understood and were successful in discovering that each layer of a peach (skin, pulp, pit, inner pit) is very similar to each layer of the earth. (Since then, the teacher has not asked me to do another activity.)

THURSDAY: My old college roommate got engaged! This is the closest one to hit home so far. Congrats Allison!!!!!

FRIDAY: Trip to Cordoba. This day I had to go to Cordoba to retrieve my Spanish Identification Card. If you remember a month back, I spoke about being in Cordoba and waiting at the Police Headquarters for five hours just to submit my paperwork for this card. Now it was time for me to head back, and I was not looking forward to it. It was advised to go at 10:00am and pick up the ticket you need when waiting for your number to be called. I then had to return at 12:00pm because that was the only time they would allow you to get your card. I did all of this and even enjoyed a nice breakfast with some friends before 12:00. Twelve o'clock rolls around. I waited about 30 minutes this time before being called (not too bad.) I approached the lady, gave her the information she needed, and was quickly informed that my card got messed up in the factory... And I had to return in a month...NOOOOOOO.

This is my card-- very similar to a diver's license. If you notice, I circled the numbers under my face. These numbers are extremely important. In front of the number three, if you look really really close, you can see a faint black line. That line is supposed to be the letter Y. THEY JUST DIDN'T PRINT THE LETTER Y ALL OF THE WAY. So technically my card is invalid. Which is why I need to go back to this place AGAIN. Definitely worse than the DMV.

I would like to add that everything that I have needed thus far for Spain has been impossibly difficult:

1. Getting my apostille in the U.S. The office in Trenton misspelled my notary's name, and I had to redo the entire process five days before my VISA appointment.

2. My cellphone here in Spain. I had to switch providers because Vodafone was incompetent and could not explain why my phone wasn't working or fix it.

3. Our wifi didn't work for the first two weeks, and no one could explain why. Eventually the company just gave us a new one.

4. I waited five hours at this Police building the first time around because they forgot about us.

There are many more things that have gone wrong, but these are the top four thus far. Luckily, Cordoba has this AMAZING frozen yogurt place called SMOOY. That definitely helped ease the pain.

SATURDAY: My friends Maggie and Ben came and visited on this day. I gave them the grand tour of Priego. It took us only an hour to walk the entire town and see everything. This day was the first official cold day in Priego. So far it has been in the 60's or 70's here. The weather on this day dropped to the upper 30's and 40's. This was the first time so far I needed to wear a heavy duty winter jacket. (Thank goodness I bought one in Cordoba the day before.) After eating lunch and siesta-ing, we went out for drinks with my friend Sara and her friends Luisa and Mery. After drinks, we visited the Flamenco Bar here in Priego. Priego's flamenco bar is different than anything I have ever seen. Here Men sit around tables and play guitar and sing. Anyone can sing if they want and basically every man in the bar did. It was the most authentic flamenco I have ever seen.

SUNDAY: I said my goodbyes to Maggie who had to catch an early bus. My bilingual coordinator along with some of the students invited me to come watch them sing at the mass held on this day. So around 12:00pm I headed to church. Again, being an American teacher here makes me the coolest thing ever to the students, let alone watch them perform in church, my coolness has reached outer space. I was also the biggest distraction ever because throughout mass students would see me and wave. The cutest thing was when they all came to where I was sitting to give me a besito during the "peace be with you" or "paz contigo." After mass, I went with Sara to drop Ben off at the bus station at a nearby town (Alcadete). We arrived early and drove around for a little seeing the sights. After dropping Ben off, I headed back to Sara's for a DELICIOUS lunch. Post lunch, I returned to my house where I spent the rest of the day huddled under the greatest invention ever-- a table with a blanket and a heater. Very common in Spain and very warm during this cold weather. The United States should start having these.