Extremadura

Extremadura isn't exactly a top tourist destination. It's probably one of the most forgotten about corners of Spain. Even the name screams "Don't come here!" as Extremadura more or less translates to extremely hard. It's known mostly for its poverty and its jamón (but more on that later). So how did two Americans find ourselves here? Well, partly because Meg was getting cabin fever in Sevilla, had a long weekend, and was excited to travel anywhere. Partly because Extremadura is just north of Sevilla and is one of few regions of Spain I hadn´t visited yet. And mostly because despite the bad rap it gets sometimes, Extremadura is actally pretty awesome, with incredibly well preserved history, good food, and an escape from the hustle and bustle of the modern world. Most of Extremadura looks like it hasn't changed in about 100 years (and some for longer than that!). 

Our trip started with lunch in Cáceres. While Extremadura isn't really a tourist hot spot, it's still a relatively popular weekend getaway for Spaniards, and since the Día de la Constitución is a nation-wide holiday weekend, the Plaza Mayor was already packed with lunching Spaniards when we arrived at 2:30. We snagged the last open table in the whole plaza and enjoyed a lunch of traditional Extremaduran foods, including a plate of embutidos (chorizo, salchichón, and jamón), migas (basically bread crumbs with an egg), fish with a salad, and flan that pretty much redefined what flan is (unfortunately Meg ordered this and not me, so I had to settle for one divine bite).   

View from our lunch table

Migas

Cáceres is a Unesco heritage site because of its amazingly well preserved medieval neighborhood. Most of the day was just spent exploring and getting lost in the maze of old stone streets. More than once we had to ask ourselves if it was 2013 or 1513. I don´t think it´s changed at all in those 500 years!

Sevilla

Sevilla. One of the most iconic and recognized cities in Spain and somehow I'd never been. It was one of my only regrets about Granada, that somehow I'd lived only three hours away and never went. This time around though there's no missing Sevilla, since my sister now lives there! So after Granada, I continued on to the next stop on my week-long tour of Southern Spain: Sevilla. Finally. In four days, Meg took me to see all of the "must-sees" in her city:

Las Setas, the mushroom-shaped observation deck with views over the entire city.

The Torre de Oro, on the banks of the Guadalquivir River, with a beautiful sunset behind the Triana neighborhood.

The Museo de Bellas Artes, where Meg studied for her upcoming Art History exam by teaching me everything she knows about Renaissance and Baroque art. The building was as beautiful as the art work, with a series of beautiful Sevillan patios which the museum was centered around.

The Alcazar, the Moorish palace.

The cathedral and Giralda, worth the climb up to the top of the tower for the amazing views out over the city. Fun fact: There are no stairs in the tower, it is one long ramp because it was originally built for horses!

Exploring the Triana neighborhood, full of quirky, fun houses.

Plaza de España, my favorite part of the city mostly because the geography nerd in me was obsessed with the beautiful tiles along the edge of the plaza depicting each of Spain´s provinces.  

December is the perfect time to visit Sevilla, and I really can't imagine going any other time of year. No tourists and no heat! December was perfect weather (24ºC one day!) and the tourists were almost entirely gone. There was no line at the Alcazar or the cathedral (places where you usually need to reserve tickets in advance or wait in line all day). Plus, all of Christmas lights are hung up in the streets, making the city more beautiful than usual.

Seeing Sevilla from a local's perspective was definitely the best part of the trip- staying in a residential barrio on the outskirts of the city, getting coffee in a neighborhood cafe while waiting for my sister to get out of school, and visiting what must be Sevilla's best undiscovered ice cream store- Helarte (for non-Spanish speakers, a fun play on words since helarte can means "to freeze yourself" but is also a combination of helado and arte, ice cream and art). The ice cream was amazing, they were playing Christmas music, and their pastry case was decorated like a first aid case.  

"This isn´t a cooler, it´s a first aid kit full of rich homemade cakes that are a cure for: sadness, heartbreak, tiredness, apathy... and a celebration of love, friendship, encounters, affection, the sweetness of being alive. Becuase of this, this isn´t a cooler. It´s a first-aid kit."

I might have to go bck to Sevilla just for the ice cream!

Granada, tierra soñada por mí

Warning: If you studied abroad in Granada and miss it like crazy, proceed at your own risk.

I studied abroad once upon a time and fell in love. No, not with some beautiful Spaniard, but with the city of Granada. I spent 5 perfect months there and when they finally made me leave I dreamed of the day I would finally return to what had become my home.

It was surreal to be back, to see that nothing had changed while I felt so different from the innocent, scared 19-year-old who stepped off a plane there three years ago. Waking up in my old bed the first morning I had a momentary panic attack worrying I´d slept through my 8 am historia class until I figured out what year it was.

My return was everything I dreamed it would be (although two days was not nearly enough time). I saw my host family again, slept in my bed, walked the dog, ate so much delicious food, drank pomegrante juice and ate pomegranate seeds (hoping that maybe Persephone-style, I´d be "forced" to spend a month in Granada for every pomegranate seed I ate), watched TV with my family while enjoying the warmth of the brasero (most wonderful invention in the world, a table covered by a blanket with a space heater underneath, sit down on the couch and lift the blanket onto your lap and you enter a cocoon of warmth), saw En llamas, and took one wonderful paseo into the city center to "remember", as my host dad put it. Granada was even more beautiful than I remembered. Its hard to believe this was actually my home for five months.

My favorite spot in Granada, Avenida de la Constitución,
 with the Albaicin and Sierra Nevada in the background

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Winter has officially arrived! And before anyone yells at me for complaining about the weather cause it's warm in Spain... well, it's not! It's been colder here than in Boston a couple times in the past week. We also have this wonderful cierzo (local name for the wind that blows through the Ebro Valley) that everyone kept warning us about all fall. I was like yeah, yeah, what's a little wind. Until I woke up in the middle of the night last night and thought our balcony was actually going to blow off. I could have jumped out my window this morning and flown to school. 

While I was busy battling the obligatory winter-is-here cold (I work with about 500 germ-infested little kids every week, so there was no escaping it), Christmas arrived in Tudela. 

The furniture store I live above redid their display to include this beautiful Christmas tree. I might be obsessed. 

I want one.

The streets are full of Christmas lights (instead of individual houses putting up decorations as is customary in the US, here the town hangs lights along the streets). Unfortunately, estamos en crisis so it appears that actually lighting the lights isn't in the budget for this year. Maybe when Christmas gets closer?

Beautiful even if they're not lit!

The most snow I'll be seeing this year!

The stores are filled with traditional Spanish Christmas goodies: turrón, marzapán, polvorones, and many many more. It takes all the self-restraint I have to walk through the grocery store without buying one of each to sample (next blog post: a comparative analysis of every single brand of turrón sold in the country...)

So many options!

And I´m teaching all my classes Christmas carols for the Christmas concert we´re putting on for their parents in December. Jingle Bells with my 4-year-olds, Deck the Halls with the 3rd-graders (It´s ridiculous how quickly the fa-la-la-la-la gets stuck in your head!). Spain might have its own foods, music and traditions that are foreign to me, but there's still a familiar feeling in the air. I'm ready for December! 

Jamón jamón jamón (and other highlights of my weekend in Madrid)

Spaniards may love jamón more than anything else in the world (except maybe futbol). So when I heard there was a feria of jamón in Plaza Mayor the same weekend I was going to be in Madrid, you can bet I was excited. And it did not disappoint! There was a huge tent in the middle of the plaza, packed with people and vendors from eight of the best jamón ibérico companies in the world. These are legs of jamón that sell for 200-500 euros.

There was also a presentation on how to eat and cut jamón ibérico, led by the most Spanish man I´ve ever seen. This man would have fought you to the death if you dared suggest that there is any food on the planet that can even compete with jamón ibérico. Pictured below, he describes the four great delicacies of the world (truffles, caviar, and foie), and why jamón ibérico stands alone at the top of the list. He even got an Italian man to admit that jamón ibérico is better than prosciutto.

How the Red Sox made me wicked homesick

Most of my little twinges of homesickness so far have been completely expected and predictable:

I went to a Scottish pub here in Tudela my first night that felt just like any New England bar. Obviously I missed home. It felt like the universe was going to spin off its axis if I ordered a glass of red wine or jamón iberico in what looked like Boston. I needed some Sam Adams and guac AND THEY DIDNT HAVE IT OBVIOUSLY.

Some street band during the Fiestas de la Juventud here in Tudela starting playing the Sieve chant from hockey games. I obviously screamed “Seive, you suck!” and then burst into tears.

Anything hockey actually- getting nonstop season tickets emails from UNH (like STOP already, unless you want to throw in round-trip flights each weekend I´m not interested), watching highlights of their games and hearing the sound of their skates in the ice, the puck hitting their sticks, and of course the cowbell. I miss hockey. I knew I would miss hockey.

Of all the things I expected to miss while I was in Spain, the Red Sox were definitely not on the list. I hate baseball. I´ve never set foot in Fenway Park. And I haven´t watched an entire baseball game (or even an entire inning) since they won the World Series in ´03 or ´04 or whenever it was. And that doesn´t even really count. That was history. That was 86 years. That was just morbid curiosity, I had to see what it was that had the entire city of Boston so worked up about.

I used to get annoyed and scroll past all of the Red Sox posts on Twitter. But for the past few weeks, I found myself (accidentally) stopping to read some of the Sox related tweets. And then, checking for Red Sox updates somehow worked its way into my morning routine, reading through the Twitter recap of the game every morning while I eat my cereal.

It's not that I care about baseball. I care about Boston. And the Red Sox are Boston. There's no way I would care right now if I was home, I probably wouldn't watch a single game. But being what feels like a million miles away from Boston, I miss it. (The NH girl in me is cringing that I'm about to say any of the rest of this paragraph but...) I miss Boston accents. All I've heard for weeks now is these perfectly polished ridiculous sounding British recordings (like who says jumper and trousers anyway). I just want some cahs and Hahvahds and wickeds. I miss Massholes. Everyone's so nice here (like New Hampshire, but it was nice to know there were some arrogant, loudmouth, terrible drivers just a few miles away if you ever needed them). And I even miss the Red Sox. I can't help it. They're just so Boston!

I didn't watch a single second of a single Red Sox game this season. But I did jump out of bed this morning and race to the kitchen to relive the game on Twitter while I ate breakfast. Baseball and Halloween were two things I was glad to leave behind, my least favorite sport and my least favorite holiday. And yet somehow I spent the whole day wishing I was home. Wishing the halls were full of Halloween parties and jack-o-lanterns and kids in costume. Wishing anyone knew who the Red Sox were and why Boston is AMAZING. I guess being 3000 miles from home does weird things to you.

Keep doing you Boston. I'm having fun watching from a distance.  

(This is twice as funny when you have a 2 minute walk to work every day and don´t even own a car). 

Levantarse con el pie derecho

I met the mother of one of my 4-year-old students today. Her reaction? "Oh, you're Hilary! Lucía won't stop talking about you. Eating, sleeping, it's always Hilary this, Hilary that. When we play school, I always have to be Hilary." To say it made my day is kind of an understatement.

Not that my day needed to be made. It's been one of those where you're just in an effortless good mood (although that might just be the endorphins from finally dragging my lazy butt to the gym yesterday). Today my 6th-graders did a reading comprehension exercise on sleep, and in the process I learned how to say "I woke up on the wrong side of the bed" in Spanish (levantarse con el pie izquierdo, or getting up with your left foot) and realized that regardless of what foot I got up on, today was a great day.

My third graders were speaking in complete (and grammatically correct!) sentences, ALL OF THEM! Even the ones who NEVER participate and failed the last exam.

I got to teach my kindergartners about Halloween and show them pictures from home (your jack-o-lanterns were a hit Dad!). They're starting to form sentences, and every time I get an unprompted complete sentence (That's a skeleton! or I like your pumpkin!) I just about die of pride. They also learned the Skeleton Dance. I've included it for your listening pleasure (if it gets stuck in your head all day, welcome to my life).

One of the girls asked me to go to the bathroom (in English!), instead of my co-teacher who was sitting right next to me. My co-teacher got really excited and says this is a great sign because it means the kids see me as the teacher now, and not her. So yay me :)

I also found out I get to go on a field trip in a couple weeks, to the Planetarium in Pamplona with my 4th-graders!!! There was a little glitch in the communication process and my roommate found out about it before I did, so I was really bummed that I had to stay at school and teach while she got to go on an awesome field trip. Everyone was talking about it during recess today and I was all woe is me until someone finally let me know that I'm going too. Yippee! I don't think I've ever been more excited for a field trip in my entire life. (I mean it's a science field trip in Spain.)

Plus, it's a 4-day week this week (we get Friday off because it's All Saint's Day). Two more days of school, and then I'm off to Madrid for the long weekend to finally visit my cousin!

All in all, not a bad Tuesday :)

Zaragoza

The amazing thing about Zaragoza is that it has a little bit of EVERYTHING. Some cities (like Segovia or Mérida) have Roman ruins, some (like Granada) have Moorish palaces or mosques, some have beautiful Gothic or Baroque or Renaissance buildings (like Toledo) and some are famous for their modern architecture and culture (like Barcelona). But Zaragoza somehow has all of them. Zaragoza was founded by Caesar Augustus more than 2000 years ago and was a major Roman colony. It was later the capital of the Moorish kingdom until it was conquered in 1118 and became the capital of the kingdom of Aragón. It´s now the fifth largest city in Spain (after Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, and Sevilla). Roman ruins, a Moorish palace, a million Mudéjar churches, and two cathedrals: Zaragoza is packed full of 2000 years of history. And best of all, it´s only an hour train ride from Tudela so I can visit as often as needed until I´ve seen it all! One day was not nearly enough. 

Now in chronological order, my day in Zaragoza, beginning with the Romans!

The theatre, built in the first century. 

Roman walls, built between the first and third centuries.

The gigantes took my pacifier!

I got an unexpected lesson on Spanish culture today when I showed up to class a few minutes early! There´s no Tooth Fairy or Easter Bunny or Santa Claus in Spain. Instead they have their own legends and traditions: Ratoncito Perez, los Reyes Magos... And today I learned a new one. Los gigantes de Tudela. 

"Do we still wear diapers?" my coteacher asked the kids (but in Spanish of course, they were finishing their Spanish lesson while I waited). "¡No, ya somos mayores!"

"Do we still drink from bottles? ¡No, somos mayores!"

"Do we still use pacifiers? ¡No, no somos bebés!"

"And what happened to your pacifiers?" she asked them.

"The gigantes took them!" one kid responded (to my confusion), and the rest quickly agreed.

These aren´t any old giants, though, my coteacher explained to me, after realizing I had no idea what they were talking about. These are Tudela's giants, and every year they take to the streets of Tudela to celebrate the Fiestas of Santa Ana, the patron saint of the city. 

Dancing gigantes in the Plaza de Fueros in Tudela
(Credit: Diario de Navarra)

A tradition dating back 400 years, the gigantes are enormous twelve-feet-tall figures of famous historical or literary personalities. There's former kings and queens of Navarra, Marc Anthony and Cleopatra, the Gigantes of the Three Cultures representing the Arabs, Jews, and Christians who coexisted in the city for years, and even one of Pocahontas.

Tudela´s gigantes
Source: Centro Cultural "Miguel Sánchez Montes"

And every year, on the last day of the Fiestas of Santa Ana (which last for a week), the kids of Tudela give their pacifiers to the gigantes and promise they'll be "big kids" and stop using them. 
Now I have one more reason to stay in Tudela through July for the Fiestas: to meet the infamous pacifier-stealing gigantes of Tudela!

Lost in translation

Learning expressions and idioms is probably the most interesting part about learning a second language. Anyone can pick up a Spanish-English dictionary and translate a word from one language to another- the tricky part is learning the sayings and expressions. Once in a blue moon, a piece of cake, raining cats and dogs, counting your chickens before they hatch, green thumb, hit the hay, translate any of these word for word to Spanish and no one will have any idea what you´re talking about!

Here´s some new Spanish idioms I´ve learned this month:

UN BUEN PARTIDO- a catch, literally translates as "a good game". It´s used the same way as we would in English: someone rich, handsome, smart es un buen partido.

ME SACAN DE MIS CASILLAS- They´re driving me crazy! or They´re driving me up a wall. Literally translates more or less as "They´re taking me out of my boxes" and is used quite frequently when you work with 6-year-olds all day long. 

ESTAR EN TU SALSA- To be in your element, this one literally translates as "to be in your sauce." 

PAN DE MOLDE (pronounced mol-day)- sliced bread, literally "bread from a mold" because the bread comes perfectly shaped from a mold. Not an idiom technically, but I had to share since I get a laugh out of this one whenever I hear it. As an English speaker it´s impossible to break the association with the other kind of mold. Moldy bread, yum!

EDAD DEL PAVO- teenage years or adolescence, translates as "age of the turkey" or "age of the peacock" (peacock in Spanish is pavo real). The explanation I got was that teenagers are like peacocks,  parading around and showing off their feathers. 

VA A PEDALES- to go really slowly, I don´t think we don´t have a fun way of saying this in English. Translates to "go at pedals" basically meaning its going so slowly that it´s like you have to manually pedal to get it move (think when your internet takes 10 minutes to load a page, it´s like riding a bike up a hill). 

And now a few that are identical to English!

MATAR DOS PAJAROS CON UN TIRO- Literally translates to "to kill two birds with one shot." Close enough!

LE DIJO LA SARTÉN AL CAZO, "APARTA, QUE ME TIZNAS"- Translates to "the frying pan said to the pot: get away, you´re staining me black." Or as we say in English, the pot calling the kettle black. 

Spain is Different: Colegio Edition

Welcome to my beautiful little colegio

There are obviously many things about my school here in Spain that are different from what I'm used to (especially since I work at a private, Catholic preK-10 school after 16 years of public education). I could probably write an entire book about the differences: classroom management and discipline, special education, even recess, everything is obviously different. But here's a list of a few of the differences I've noticed for all of you back in the States wondering what my life's like every day at la Anunciata:

"I've never been so happy in my entire life!"

(If anyone gets that reference, I love you.)

There are few things I love more than the ocean, and when you mix the ocean with beautiful architecture, a thousand years of history, good food, sailboats, and lots of rocky cliffs and mountains, I am one happy camper.

Two years ago, I planned a trip to Santander, the capital of Cantabria, for my last weekend in Spain. The flight was maybe 5 euros, and I picked Santander solely because it was the cheapest flight I could find. I never made it to Santander though, after sleeping through about three alarms (in what was the biggest travel-fiasco filled weekend of my life, and resulted in me stuck in Galicia and almost missing my flight back to the States). But long story short, Cantabria was on my must-visit list after years spent wondering what I missed when I slept through that flight.

Cantabria was beautiful. So beautiful that I couldn't believe it was real. So beautiful that a picture is worth so much more than a thousand words (and still doesn´t do it justice).

Walks along the harbor and beaches, exploring the Magdalena park and palace, beers and paella at a beach bar, a boat tour of the Santander harbor, drinks and pinchos in Cañadio Plaza, a trip to Castro Urdiales, a little beach town with a breathtaking medieval church, bridge, and castle turned light house, so much seafood, and a surprise afternoon in Bilbao while we waited for our train home: here are some of the highlights of my trip to the Cantabria Coast.

Santander, seen from the Magdalena peninsula

Lighthouse and sailboat from the tip of the Magdalena peninsula

Magdalena Palace, former vacation home of the royal family

Santander's two lighthouse, seen from a boat on my tour of the bay

Cañas and (free) paella

Sailboats in Castro Urdiales

Castro Urdiales

Iglesia de Santa Maria de la Asuncion, built in the 13th century

Ruins of the Iglesia de San Pedro, built in the 11th century

Panoramic view of Castro Urdiales

Plaza outside the Catedral de Santiago in Bilbao

School Daze

Afternoon classes started last week, and I don't remember much since then. Six hours a day with little kids and I think I'm actually losing my mind. 

My beautiful colegio!

Tomorrow will be one month here in Tudela, and I'm starting to lose track of time (I had to do the date in English with the kids this morning and I actually had no idea what day it was. Oops).

So in no real order, a few anecdotes from my life as an auxiliar de conversación:

My roommate and I realized the other day that so far we've taught the other teachers to say “they're driving me up a wall,” “little shits,” and “TGIF.” I think that pretty much sums up life as a teacher.