Semana Santa

Semana Santa officially started last Sunday (Palm Sunday), but the processions here in La Roda don't begin until tonight at midnight. Tonight is the first procession of the week: Jesus el Cautivo. The statue of Jesus comes out tonight alone, not like the other processions where he's accompanied by the Virgin.

Tonight the Romans come to the church, knock on the door and ask for the Nazarene. The city cuts the power in the neighborhood of the church, and the only light is that of the full moon and a small spotlight on the front of the paso that illuminates the statue of Jesus standing with hands tied on a bed of rosemary. This is a silent procession, except for the drums of the Romans (people actually dressed as Romans with armour, etc.) and as Jesus makes his way out of the church doors, his shadow creeping up the church facade puts your hair on end. It really is a powerful scene; and I'm not religious.

Once he's out you can hear the whispers of the people and the snaps of digital pictures. The flashes from cameras always annoys me, but it really is an image you want to catch with the camera. Angelines has asked me to please film the salida for her, since it's been years since she was able to see it herself. She'll be working. Semana Santa is one of the busiest times of year for the bar; closing at midnight wouldn't be a good business move. I'll see if I can post the video here for you all to see.

The week is flying by. I really can't believe it's already Wednesday! Monday was fantastic because Angelines and I went to Malaga and I bought a new mountain bike. :) I can't wait to get out and about on the paths that wind through the olives here. I've been dying for a bike, but with the bad weather we had I was able to put off getting one: I wouldn't be able to ride anyway! Now that the weather's cleared up some, and we've set our clocks forward, I think I'll be able to get in some good rides before summer.

Tuesday was a blur of preparations for today: cleaning the bar and shopping and restocking. And then our daily cervecita before lunch turned into an all afternoon affair because various friends kept coming in and ordering more rounds. We ended up having "lunch" at 5pm...then napping until 8. Ahhh...that's what vacation's for, though, right?

Really it's just wonderful to have had these few days with Angelines. Our schedules are so conflicting that we never have a FULL day together when neither of us has to work. We see each other a lot, but it's not the same when it's between jobs or at the end of the day when I'm tired or at 2 or 3 am when she gets off work. Monday and Tuesday were great just because we got to hang out together.

Bueno, I've got to get my cooking for the week out of the way and get dressed for the procession tonight. ;) More later.

love from Andalucia

My filling surprise!

Doesn't this look good? I can't tell you the name of it because I don't know. I didn't cook it. This was Angelines's first cooking adventure--it was delicious! So, she's made meals before but never really cooked, you know? It's always been something frozen or something like gourmet sandwiches (which are great, but don't require cooking).

This was a recipe we'd seen Tuesday on our favorite cooking show. She surprised me yesterday with her very own interpretation on the table when I got home from Casariche. Mmmmm.

(See the salad in the background of the picture? She made a huge salad in case the main course turned out bad. Hahaha)

It's onion, leek, mushroom and bacon in a white wine/broth sauce. You put the eggs on top and then stick it in the oven. She was quite pleased with herself. And although she protested when I took out the camera, I found out later that she'd already taken a picture with her cell phone! :) She's very proud. It's too cute.

Needless to say I went to work in Anterquera yesterday afternoon happy as a clam with a belly full of good food.

Today's my last day of work!

Hooray!!!

Almost Easter...

This year I'm particularly looking forward to Easter ... mostly because it means a week-long vacation! :) Tomorrow's my last day of work and then I'm free until April. Yay!

It's been more than a week since last I posted. I've been running around, preparing classes, cleaning, cooking and all that good stuff. The minute I sit down and have time to write something, my mind goes blank: nada. Excuse the silence.

My Morse Code lesson went really well. I even found the kid's page of the NSA (National Security Agency) website that's got some really fun code-breaking games and activities. One of them was to listen to words in Morse Code and see if you could translate them! That was a little difficult for the kids, but I LOVED it. ;) Maybe I missed my calling...I should have been a code breaker for NSA or the CIA! Remember the aptitude tests in high school? They really wanted me in the army for nuclear something or other.

At the moment I'm making up grades for my students in Antequera. It's pretty low stress since it's mostly based on my opinion of the students' abilities and progress. We do give tests, but in all the other areas we evaluate them it's pretty subjective.

Oh! I have some happy news: my basil and tomatoes are sprouting! I planted basil, parsley and tomatoes in some pots here at home. I'm planning to transplant the tomatoes when they're bigger to my "garden"...which I hope to have in better shape than last year. One of my resolutions over Easter break is to get my garden in shape. I've got to add soil and really dig it up. It's just such hard earth! Anyway, the parsley hasn't shown any signs of life yet, but I haven't given up hope yet. Ooooh, I can almost taste the fresh pesto now!

Love to all you NWesterners who are up to your eyeballs every spring with all kinds of garden goodness! I'm so envious.

Random Thoughts:

Did you know that Alfred Vail is the true inventor of Morse Code? Samuel Morse had the idea and the patent, but created a clunky machine and a cumbersome code (number per word! Can you imagine??). It was actually his assistant, Vail, who invented the telegraph and the code (using the alphabet and "dit" "dahs") that we think of as Morse Code. Interesting, huh?

So these are the kinds of things I learn as I struggle to make English interesting. ;) The truth is, I love it. I love learning random things that might some day help me to win a round of trivial pursuit, or impress someone at a cocktail party.

Can you imagine how revolutionary the telegraph was in its day? I mean, it's as world-changing as internet, at least. Really, messages that took days to send, suddenly took minutes! I can't even imagine being present in Congress in 1844 when the first telegraph was sent: "What God hath wrought". How mind blowing must that have been?

And speaking of technology, can I just say what a miracle the internet is! I am so dependent on the internet for everything, from communication to a resource for work to an answer to my most trivial questions--I can't imagine life without it; yet there was a time, in my lifetime, that it didn't exist! It's one of those things that has so quickly become part of my daily life that I can't imagine functioning without it. In fact, the threat of NOT having internet lead me (the cheapskate) to cough up 70 euros a month for the service when our hacking went haywire.

Something like the telephone is different. It's difficult to imagine life without a telephone, but because legitimately I have never existed as person without the telephone. That's not true with internet. There was a time, even if I was only five, that the internet didn't exist. That's crazy to me.

Can you believe technology? Wow. That's all I can say, when I really sit and think about it--wow!

On another subject completely, I thought I should announce to you all that I'm making a power point on "Easter" for the school and I've decided that in the face of so much one-sided Christianity I should represent the other major holiday this time of year: Passover.

Did you know that Pesach (the Hebrew name for the holiday) is the root for the word Pascua, which is the Spanish word for Easter? I'll bet most of the kids at school don't know that. So when Spaniards talk about Passover, they say: Pascua judia. Really that's about like saying "Snowy Sierra Nevada mountains"-- it's repetitive (sierra nevada means snowy mountains in Spanish). So along with the Easter bunny, not Christian either, I'll be saying a bit about matzo.

That's all I've got for today.

besos from Spain

T.G.I.F.

You probably know I don't usually work on Fridays (except for two hours in the afternoon), but since my trip to MA, I've had to do some make up at the school in Casariche, thus a Friday morning post.

Oatmeal sweetened with maple syrup and accompanied by red tea is on the menu this morning.

Last night I made lentils for today's lunch and the house smells like lentils and bay leaves (used to season them).

The sun is shining beautifully today, although it rained all night. I think we're nearing 1,000 liters per square meter now since the beginning of December. Normal rainfall here is on average 500... so we've literally got two years of rain in three and a half months.

People are desperate for the sun. This isn't Portland, after all, and Andalusians are completely solar powered. Everyone's getting crabby from the cold, wet, cloudy (Portland) weather. Antonio's little niece (3 1/2 years old) was asking the other day, "Donde esta el sol??". That's what everyone's asking themselves around here: Where is the sun?!

The water is much needed. We've been in a drought for a long time. Now I think all of the reservoirs are at 90% capacity at least. Many of them are having to release water because they're just brimming full. There have been numerous floods all over the state. For a while the city of Jerez was an island... there was no way of getting in or out of the city because all the roads and even major freeways were flooded; they looked like aqueducts on the news.

This is the house in front of mine. I woke up the other morning to find the rain had collapsed the roof! Can you believe it? Frankly, it made me nervous, but I think our own roof is in pretty good condition... I guess I shouldn't complain about the humidity seeping through the walls so long as there aren't any total cave ins, right?

A sunny Friday is just what I need to feel good about going to work today. That's not sarcasm, actually. Waking up to the early morning sun is a joy. I love the way my kitchen looks when the sun slants in through the windows. It just seems to glow. Somehow that cold semi-winter, dawn light softens in my orange kitchen and I feel cozy and quite at home.

Love from sopping Spain

Buracracy at it's best

Good morning all!

Here I sit, wrapped in a blanket, with the table heater on and eating my breakfast: toast with cream cheese and turkey. That's about as close as I can get to a bagel sandwich here. ;) Anyway, I realize it's been a while since last I posted. I guess I've been caught up in the back-from-vacation bustle of things.

Aside from the normally rough transition back to work, I received a letter the other day from the Ministry of Education here in Spain. Some of you know that I applied for the equivalent Spanish degree of my BA from the US. Well, the letter was a notice that after having considered my application for 14 months (the woman originally said it would be between 12-18! so this is fast.) they've decided that my studies are insufficient in just about everything except one requirement: Latin American literature.

I was supposed to notify them in writing within 15 days if I would like to present alegaciones against their ruling and the subsequent missing documents that supported my case. I have appealed to them in writing as of yesterday and am in the process of collecting the "missing" documents; something that just really bothers me since they're not MISSING at all--no one ever asked for them to begin with!

Said documents are apparently a cross between catalog course descriptions and the class syllabus. This is apparently something totally normal for a Spanish University to have, but as I knew would happen, when I spoke to the Registrar's Office at Pacific, they were confused, bewildered and hadn't a clue what exactly it was that I needed. The best they said they could do for me was print off the catalog pages, but the man from the Ministry specifically said that wouldn't do.

The only good thing about all this is that Pacific is small and I have a lot of people there willing to help me. This is a similar situation to the hell of paperwork I had to wade through for my marriage licence (yes, unfortunately this is fast becoming a trend in my new life), except that people on one end of things are willing to work with me this time.

I was blown away when, after explaining the situation to an ex-professor from Pacific now living in Spain (she's Spanish), she suggested I simply make up the documents. When I pointed out they needed to be "official", she just recommended cutting and pasting the seal from the webpage to a word doc. and printing it off myself (!). Somehow that just doesn't seem right, fair, or honest to my little American self; but I can see where she, in her Spanish mentality is coming from. There's so much bullshit paperwork here that people resort to all kinds of shenanigans to get through it. The idea is, "They're complicating my life for nothing. None of this really matters, so why stress or take it seriously?"

An interesting and somewhat disturbing cultural difference when you think that that's the way pretty much EVERYTHING works in this country. And then they wonder why corruption is rampant!

Okay, got to run to school.

Besos.

p.s. cross your fingers for my paperwork mess!

Invictus or The Human Factor

"The great thing about everything good that has happened is that it can happen again. Simple as that."

-Archbishop Desmond Tutu: Invictus

This will just be a quick note to say please read this book: Invictus: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation. I promise you won't be disappointed.

This is an absolutely true fairy tale about how South Africa overcame apartheid. It's especially a good read for anyone who enjoys sports, but also a lesson for those of us who struggle to be better people. It's a story about overcoming the darkest sides of ourselves and the importance and overwhelming power of faith in and love of humanity.

The movie's good, but the book (as always) gives the whole picture.

Invictus Trailer

--Enjoy!