Once again, it seems like years have passed since I last posted.
Since Carnaval, I’ve been busy with work and finally got to travel a little, so
I actually have things to write about. Hooray!
Since I didn’t know that I would have a week off of work for
Semana Santa until about 3 weeks before (thanks for that...), I wasn’t able to
plan any grand trips. I ended up
catching the bus to Madrid on Saturday and bummed around the city for about 5
days. It was actually really nice to just do nothing. Juan had to study for his
last exam, so I entertained myself a bit by watching TV, playing a delightful
videogame called “Ratchet & Clank”, and going shopping. It felt I was back
in college and on my traditional “Wear Your PJs All Day” Spring Break (whoops,
I guess I forgot to do that whole Cancun thing). We did eat some delicious food, including
awesome Thai food (oh, how I missed it!) and some authentic American
hamburgers. They were better than the soft, purple stuff that the Spanish call
hamburger meat. For the second half of Spring break, we came back to Navalmoral
and hung around. We took a Saturday day trip to a nearby city called Trujillo,
which turned out to be a lovely day.
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| I guess the view made the climb up the hill worth it... |
Since the end of Spring Break, I’ve been working, chasing
around 4-year-olds and having beers at the bar during my adult conversation
class. So I can’t really complain.
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| Spring= picnics, tinto de verano, and sun. |
Last weekend Whitney and I went to Cagliari, Sardinia
(Italy) to catch some rays. We had some
serious bad luck with transportation (the bus to Madrid decided to make about
108 unscheduled stops and we had to book it to the airport in a taxi; a
marathon caused a city bus ride from the beach to Cagliari center to take an
hour and a half, instead of the 15 minutes it should have taken...), but all in
all it was a great trip. Saturday was by
far the best. We signed up for a
mini-bus beach tour and our guide, Tanned-So-Much-He-Was-Almost-Black
Alessandro, took us and a few other twenty-somethings to three of the most
beautiful beaches I have ever seen. The
first two we went to were completely private (though officially public beaches)
and there wasn’t another soul in sight.
The waters were so clear and even though the day began with some clouds
and a breeze, the sun ended up shining brilliantly (even giving me a pretty
solid tan/sunburn). We also ate arguably the best meal of my life on Saturday
night. Whitney and I splurged for this one, but it was totally worth it. We had
cauliflower puree, eggplant with tomatoes, some type of delicious meat,
ravioli, and a typical Sardinian pasta. We also had a bottle of wine, which we
weren’t even able to finish because we were so full...yeah, we ate that much.
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| See my tansunburn? |
Sunday was spent, for the most part, on the city bus,
navigating the stupid marathon. In the afternoon, after a heated argument with
a screaming Italian man about cutting in line at the airport gate (a great
story), we headed back home.
Other news: This whole year Whitney and I have been pretty
unhappy with our apartment. While a wonderful location on the main street, the
apartment is super old, the beds bow in the middle and are super uncomfortable,
the pipes smell, etc... One of our friends, a relator (who knew we were
unhappy), told us she had the perfect apartment for us (this was about a month
ago). The second we saw the other apartment, we said YESSSS!!! It was so much
better- bigger, memory foam bed, new appliances, no weird smells from the
pipes... So, the week after we got back from Cagliari was spent moving our
stuff in, little by little. After making
several trips between the two apartments (maybe 4 minutes walking), loaded down
with suitcases and boxes, we were so surprised that in 5 days, not a single
person on the street passing by offered to help either of us. Way to go, Spain.
No chivalry points for you.
After an exhausting week of running back and forth between
the two buildings, yesterday I spent my first night in the new place. There’s
still some stuff in the old one and cleaning to be done, but the new apartment
already feels like home. I can’t even express how much better it is than what
we were living in.
More other news: For the first time since study abroad, I
won’t be making the trip over the Atlantic alone this year...Juan is coming to
America with me! I guess I should take this opportunity to apologize to my
students...trip planning is WAY more exciting than teaching...one word:
worksheets.
