"Did you bring chocolate with you?"

Is this where you go to read a book in between errands and house church?

 This polideportivo (outdoor public sports center) has a golf course in the middle.

Okay, not all of my life is that good. On Tuesday, I had to go to more orientation. Which means I heard the obscure story about the girl waking up with her finger cut off and the drunk guy who walked into the river and drowned himself twice each. Awesome.

 Aka, more doodles.

Wednesday afternoon I went to get my empadronamiento form filled out. This is basically like registering in a census and it's required to get your NIE (Número de Identificación Extranjeros) card. I made my appointment according to my class schedule, which of course got changed again. So I ended up with an awkward 3 hour gap between my last class and the appointment. After doing my devotions at our school café, I decided I would go find the building and go to another café and read my book until the appointment.

Is the coffee addiction finally coming to claim me? 
Gotta love that my school has their own sugar packets.

On my walk there, I thought about using my Spanish as a second language to pretend like I thought the appointment was at doce (12) instead of dos (2). But instead I figured I would just be honest, check-in, and see if they could get me in sooner. When I arrived, I clearly explained (in Spanish) to the receptionist that "Yes, I have an appointment but it isn't until 2:40. But I was already in the neighborhood and it doesn't make sense to go home and come back so I will just wait." To which he responded, "Do you (e)speak English?" To which I responded, "Sí...." This continued into a banter of him telling me multiple times in English that it wasn't time for my appointment and me explaining multiple times in Spanish that I knew and I would just wait, no pasa nada. Buuuuuut, I ended up being seen 15 minutes later. I think he felt like he did his good service of the day by helping the girl who messed up doce and dos. Little does he know...

On Wednesday night, I transferred by stein night tradition to a tapas tradition and went out to a fabulous tapas restaurant with Napala and Erica. Everyone there already knows Erica... Napala and I are determined to join the regular list.

 Papas bravas and ali oli, wild mushrooms with jamón, and calamari. Mmmmmmmm. (Excuse the quality... in an effort to blend in I use my phone camera instead of my SLR.)

That is the extent of my non-school related activities, but I do have a bit to tell you about what it is like to give a lesson about yourself (approximately) 16 different times. Mind you, each introduction includes about 35 minutes of questioning. I've never had so many people so interested (or at least pretending to be interested) in my life before. (Why would I? Life in Hershey or Holland doesn't exactly scream attention.) But it seems that once the teachers decide to diverge from their lesson plan, they have no plans of returning to it. Instead they walk around and single kids out to ask yet another question. Here are some of my favorite exchanges...

• Does everyone in the United States have a gun? Noooooo. In the United States we have what's called "the right to bear arms," which has nothing to do with wearing a short sleeve t-shirt, but does allow people in the U.S. to have a gun. However, there are a lot of people who don't like this and wish that people weren't allowed to have guns. As with anything, there are multiple perspectives. And there are plenty of people who do not have guns.
• How did you get a job in (e)Spain? Because it's REALLY hard to get a job here right now. Well I was very blessed to get a job here. But actually, part of the reason I got a job here is because of the economic crisis that you are in. The government realized that it can be hard for people to get a job so they want to make people better prepared. Thus, they decided to hire people like me so that you guys can develop really good English skills and get good jobs when you enter the work force.
• What's your favorite number? Well, I don't think I have one but when I did it was 16. I think that's because I thought 16 was cool because I could drive when I am 16.
• Do you like Justin Bieber? Only if I'm with other people who like Justin Bieber.
• What is your favorite NBA team? I can't say that I have one; I don't really watch basketball (cough cough I NEVER watch basketball cough cough).
• Who's your favorite Spanish football (soccer) team? I didn't have an allegiance before but now that I am in Madrid don't I have to say Real Madrid? (Smiles come across every student's face... right answer, Amber.)
• How old are you? I don't know if I should tell you that!    
• Okay, when were you born? Fine, I was born in 1990. (They all freak out: What?!? You are too young!) I am not too young. I graduated from college and have been living independently (kind of) from my parents for about four years. It's different from Spain, where people live with their parents until they are in their late 20s and don't graduate until they are 24-25. One way is not better than the other; there is a strong sense of family that is developed from spending so much time together. But since I lived 10.5 hours a way from my parents, I had to take care of my laundry, cook for myself, take care of myself when I got sick, etc. So now I think I'm old enough to be here!
• What would you do if you were rich? I would travel all around South and Central America. I have been to Spain 3 times now and if I had the money I would use it to see some other Spanish-speaking cultures first hand. 
• Did you bring any chocolate with you? Not this time... after Christmas I will!

This is only a small sampling of the questions that I got asked. I guess when you have the characteristic of being from another country, everything and anything becomes interesting. But at this point I'm ready for people to stop asking me what my favorite __________ is!

And there you have it. I am still getting over a cold, but I am pushing through to head up to Santander this weekend. A bunch of other Fulbrighters are working up there so Napala and I are going to visit a few and see the city before it gets too cold! I'll update with pictures when I come back!

Much love,
Amber

El Camino: The Way

“But the beauty is in the walking; we are betrayed by destinations.” - Gwyn Thomas

I did something exciting!

This weekend I took a bus to Logroño to hike two days of El Camino with Annette, Mark, and Lisa (friends I met at church). The Camino is something I wanted to do ever since seeing the movie The Way and reading about it online.

The Camino is organized in 30 etapas, or stages. We did two of the etapas and the details of each one are included for your reference. I hope you enjoy this brief photographic walk (no pun intended! except I did intend it...) through my short journey :)

Etapa 8

 

The first day we went from Logroño to Nájera, which is a total of 29.6 km, or 18.4 miles. We left Madrid at 8 AM (the 1 AM bus was full), which means I left my apartment at 7:15 AM. It doesn't normally take me that long to get there but I had to account for the strikes... again.

We arrived in Logroño at 12:30, which is the time that most peregrinos (pilgrims) are finishing. Nobody wants to walk in the afternoon heat. Except for us...

The tile arrow pointing the way through the city in Logroño. These are more trustworthy than the spray painted yellow arrows. Anyone could buy a can of spray paint and take the peregrinos 5 km out of the way...

 Nevertheless, we followed the spray painted arrows through the city.

The area we walked through was La Rioja, which is a region known for its red wine. We walked through vineyards both days.

 

You can always find an arrow leading the way... 

 

 

Sometimes the journey would take us along the road; luckily the cars know to avoid peregrinos. 

We walked alongside these crosses for about 30 minutes. Most consisted of sticks or flowers which were woven into the fence.

Then the camino would take you through tiny cities (like really tiny... one of the towns we wanted to stay in had a population of 220 people) where the locals would try to convince you to check out their historical land marks. I loved looking at the quaint buildings and if we had had more time, I would have loved to check out a church or two during the journey. Unfortunately, when you have so many hours of walking ahead of you, you're not too keen or reading every historical plaque.

 The cobbled streets of Navarette

After about 11 km, we arrived in Navarette. This took about 2 and a half hours and since we had to get our peregrino booklets to legitimize ourselves (many albergues will only allow peregrinos to stay there), we didn't leave Logroño until about 1:30 PM. During lunch, we tried to decide what to do with the rest of the day. 

 My first plate from lunch, a typical salad.

The etapa called for us to walk another 18 km, but since it was so late in the day, we thought we would stay in a smaller town and walk a little extra the next day. Unfortunately, when we called the albergues in Sotés and Ventosa, we found out that there was no room in the inn. Thus a little before 6 PM (we were delayed by some rain), we set out again on the Camino to walk another 4 hours. We played a lot of "Zap", a word game that I learned at Jackie's grad party and played on family vacation to kill downtime. I didn't know it was possible to play for 3 straight hours....

On a positive note, since we were walking at such an abnormal time, we saw the sun set over Nájera. It made walking with the sun in our eyes for hours on end worth it.

 Sunset over Nájera

When we finally got to our albergue, the girl sighed, "Finally! You guys took it nice and slow!" She totally thought it took us 16 hours to walk the 29 km. When we told her that we started at 1:30, she could hardly believe us. It seems they all thought the sun would melt us.

Etapa 9

On Saturday, we got up at 7:15 AM and left with a bunch of other peregrinos. 7:15 is actually kind of late though; the earlier the better since it is more comfortable to walk in the cool mornings. This walk was pretty flat and only consisted of 21 km, or 13 miles.

It was more fun to walk with the other peregrinos since we would run into the same groups multiple times throughout the day. We saw them in Azofra (where we stopped for breakfast) and then again at the watering hole at the top of a rather steep hill. (The hill wasn't too bad, except for the fact that it kept winding so that every time you thought you had reached the top you were sorely disappointed.) Then, lastly we saw them when we were sitting outside, eating our menú del peregrinos. The menú de peregrinos is the pilgrim's menu; it is a typical 3 course Spanish lunch but it has earlier hours to account for the early hours of the pilgrims. Needless to say, everyone had bigger smiles when they were out of their backpacks and eating, than when they were trekking up the hill.

 Hearty breakfast for a peregrino

We made friends with two Canadian ladies who were doing the entire Camino over about 40 days. There are 30 etapas (so normally it takes 30 days), but they were planning on breaking up the larger etapas (some etapas are 38 km!) into smaller chunks. Since they are retired and the one woman is 70 (awesome!!!), we approve of their methods.

They had discovered in their first 7 days that they had different walking paces, so we ended up splitting up and walking with them. Lisa was happy to have someone to walk with at a slower pace and gloated at breakfast about how she had found "her match". The fact that her match was 70 years old didn't bother her if she could claim that it was the wisdom of her elder that let her try the grapes, which we had discouraged her from doing the day before :)

Another great part of Saturday was the sheep! Right after we passed them, the shepherd brought them onto the Camino and they completely filled it. Although Lisa was convinced it would be fun to walk among them, I was happy to have avoided the excess of flies that accompanied them.

That would have been a lot of sheep to walk through!

Up closer and even more personal than the PA farm show.

Wahoo! Another awkward photo of me :) But here's some proof that I didn't just download all of these pictures from the internet. Also Jackie, please note that I am repping my t-shirt with Dutch on the back. Too bad he was covered up by my backpack.

Second plate of my lunch. The reward for arriving!

We finished in Santo Domingo, which is a city known for the legend about "El gallo y la gallina." In this story, a peregrino is wrongly accused of making advances on a local girl, and is hung. But wait! He is saved by Santo Domingo! His parents hear his voice and then go to the town to tell the judge that their son is as as alive as the chicken that he was about to eat. And obviously, the chicken on the judge's plate then began to sing. There you have it.

If you know Spanish (or want to pretend you do) here's a YouTube video recounting the story with a bit more detail:

Or if you could care less about the milagro, just know that it gave me reason to eat this cute little chocolate chicken.

Each chicken was a different kind of chocolate (milk, white, dark), filled with a truffle-ish chocolate inside of a different variety.

Well, that's all folks! I hope you enjoyed my brief experience with the Camino as much as I did! I can't wait to do more :)

Until next time,

Amber

Disclaimer: This blog records my personal thoughts and reflections; it is not reflective of the positions held by the Fulbright U.S. Student Program.