Lagunas del Parque Natural de Peñalara, Madrid
Primera caminata del otoño con nuestra pandilla meditativa. Enjoying the fall before snow.
Lagunas del Parque Natural de Peñalara, Madrid
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I was rollerblading
I was learning how to skate when on the darn hill I tackled last I encountered a slippery grate. I was rollerblading and I fell onto my face. So with a red puddle I painted the hill and with a black pen you’ll sign my brace. In hopes of discovering a new passion, or in the least a new hobby, I acquired myself some rollerblades. Day 1 was a success. I found my legs after a 15 year pause from the sport and broke in my new rides. My last time on skates was with a pair of white, pink and turquoise skates to match my floral print leggings and turtleneck when I was 10 years old. Day 2 was also a success, until my boyfriend and I decided to finish off the day with a hill that had seemed too steep when we started. I didn't quite make it down the hill. The professional skaters at the bottom were incredibly helpful; one provided me with a packet of tissues to soak up the blood while others pointed us to the closest bar to get some ice. The rest of the night was spent in the local ER and not, unfortunately, at the local bar celebrating a friend's new job. Ouch. Three clueless explorers
Romp through flowering cacti Collecting tics in their ears Three innocent adventurers Wade upriver in irrigation ditches Gathering mud on their feet Three naive blazers Trespass private trails Following the scent of sunset As did I, at first. Then with a few seconds to think, I remembered that one is for baby and the other is both the third-person present conjugation AND the second-person imperative of "beber" (to drink) (i.e. "He drinks tea every morning." and "Hey you, drink your beer!").
Guess the English language idioms!
While learning English with idioms is not for beginners, two of my enthusiastic students are up for anything. On a unit about personality traits, I brought in a few examples of idioms to describe people (on the list were down to earth, daydreamer, out of one's mind, teacher's pet, cry-baby and others.) What do you think these two are? 24 organic, hand-picked (by us!) oranges and a tired left arm later, we have 4 huge glasses of fresh-pressed OJ for breakfast. Thanks to a weekend at our friend's beautiful farm, Cañada Mochuelos, north of Almería, we came home with bags of these beauties and spent a week energized by their healthy sunny juice!
"Ooo, that one would be fun to watch burn!" In mid March, the city of Valencia turns into a huge block party. Streets in the old center become pedestrian-only as neighborhood-based groups of artists and fundraisers finally mount the Fallas structures they have been working on throughout the year, paellas are cooked in the middle of the street, fire crackers snap left and right and light-bulb-lined churros trucks dot every major plaza and street corner. This is the celebration of San José, patron saint of carpenters, and perhaps of pyromaniacs too. At 14:00 every afternoon from the 15th to the 19th, hundreds of people cram into the square before town hall and overflow into the side streets to watch and hear the mascletá fireworks show…an awesome display of fireworks, moreso because it's in the center of the city than anything else. And at midnight, more fireworks. And then on the 20th, all but one of the cardboard and polystyrene neighborhood Fallas structures are burned right where they stand in plazas, intersections, street corners, and in tiny little alleys, as firefighters constantly spray the surrounding area and buildings with water.
I don't have a rooster here. Instead, I have my seagulls. In our little port town of Puerto de Mazarrón the fishing boats go in and out twice a day. One shift leaves in the evening and returns with the catch around 7 am; the next shift leaves shortly thereafter and returns in the evening. On many morning as I clean up my breakfast and have my last drink of warm tea before heading downstairs to catch my ride to work, I have a minute to watch the morning catch enter the port. The entry to the small port is situated so that at this time of the year, the rising sun appears on the horizon behind the port it at just about the same time that the morning catch comes in. In the growing and silvery light, we watch hoards of seagulls clash with each other around the fishing boat. They dive for the smell of fish and to catch what they can of entrails dumped into the water by fishermen cleaning the catch. From up high in our apartment, the morning scene is quiet except for the squawks of seagulls, those ocean rats, battling for breakfast.
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yes blog is currently 'archived'yes blog started when I moved from the States to Spain in 2012 and documented the results of saying 'yes' - to the people and learning opportunities - that came my way. Archives
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