A photo montage of these days and times...

I hope you enjoy this little photo walk through some of the great moments I have experienced in these last Spanish months...



These pictures were taken in Granada on our way up the hill to the Alhambra...we had great weather and amazing adventures during this trip to Andalusia.



















These are from a vacation Jackie and took for Puente del Mayo to Andalusia. Here in Spain, schools often have holidays on a Thursday and then take the rest of the week off for vacation as well. They use the word for bridge, "puente", to refer to these nice travel holidays:) I have to say...I have grown fond of such Spanish traditions! For this trip, we went to the beaches of Malága and toured the cathedrals and flamenco halls of Seville...We ate mountains of tuna in olive oil, tasted red wines, paid way too much for hotels and saw such marvel as the tomb of Cristobal Colón, which besides the whole genocide thing was a really cool experience. One of my favorite moments on this trip was probably eating tuna and tomatoes on the floor of our posh hotel in downtown Seville because we could not get a room at any hostels in the area and had overspent our budget tremendously....when we were out at the flamenco show at night, ants invaded our room, and we tried to shove them out before the cleaning ladies came in the next day...I am sure that they realized a couple young travelers had been in the room the night before eating a cold dinner on the floor to save money. Such is life, eh.

Seville was a sight to see, and I wish that we would have had more time in the city to explore. Malága was nice for the beaches, but the city was nothing to write home about...I got my first sunburn of the season this weekend, although the tan is all gone by now as we have seen interminable rain and 40 degree weather in Ávila for the last two weeks....my friends around the Residencia told me that the Americans and English have brought the rain to Spain. I am not sure that I should believe them;)







And, I cannot forget to mention some of the wonderful people that have flavored my days and nights in Ávila...I have had the chance to make friends with a wonderful girl named Noeila, who is here with Jackie and in this photo...She is Catalan and speaks four languages fluently. Noeila tells beautiful stories of Catalan culture, her parents who are bread bakers in her village, and her hopes to return home next year to teach music in her own region of Spain. Catalan is this beautiful blend of French and Spanish spoken in the north-east regions of the country. I could listen to her speak Catalan for hours on end...
Then, there is Wiz...the wonderful English girl that moved onto our floor a few weeks into our stay here. Wiz is from Liverpool and speaks a very particular version of English--which she says is the real deal; I am still not sure about this;) I have learned a ton of new "English" words from this girl:
Meanger: bad person.
I won't be arsed: I can't be bothered.
Boss: something really really really cool.
And the list could go on:) She is on the far left of the picture below. Also in this photo is Kim, who Jackie and I met on the beach in Malága on vacation. Strangely enough, Kim is from Fort Wayne, graduated from the School of Education at Indiana-Bloomington, and went through the Cultural Immersion Program in 2006! She worked on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona through IU and had an equally great experience in our program. Kim now lives in Madrid and teaches English at a private academy, and she has offered to get me work here in Spain teaching English if ever I want to come back for a longer time to live. A tempting offer, eh? Kim came to visit us for a weekend in May, and we had a great time together. I feel lucky to have met some really special people during my stay in Spain--El mundo es un pañuelo (what a small world) to meet an Indiana girl on the beaches of southern Spain.

Here are some photos from a trip I took with a fellow teacher and good friend, Belén, and her son
Javier. Javi is one of the brightest most empathetic young boys I have met in long time. I got along wonderfully with him during our trip to Salamanca, and as we walked the streets, he taught me about all the different buildings in the city, the different periods of architecture, how to tell a Gothic cathedral from a neo-Gothic cathedral....he is 10 years old and already planning his solo adventure to the USA to visit me:)

This represents just a fraction of what I have had to the opportunity to see and experience these past months, and can do no real justice to any of it. I look forward to the moment that I get to sit across from family and friends and let conversation reveal all that these digital forms of communication just cannot express.
Love, Kate