Sunday, February 27, 2011

What is this white stuff?

The last time I touched snow was December of 2009. It was two weeks before my departure to Honduras and Holland was pounded with a blanket of snow a few days after Christmas. With all the snow, my family and I decided to really enjoy it. Pictures from that December 2009 snowstorm:






After living in Honduras until June 2010, and then experiencing summer in Michigan until August when I left for Spain, I have avoided snow since December of 2009. However, I do miss it and was eager to experience it once again.
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In eighth grade I was “going steady” with a girl who had grown up downhill skiing. For Christmas, she decided that my present was going to be the two of us downhill skiing at the mountainous of a hill (read that sarcastically), Bittersweet, which is halfway between Holland and Kalamazoo in Otsego. From that day on I really enjoyed downhill skiing. I had grown up cross-country skiing with my mom and brother, and had always enjoyed going downhill on cross-country skis. But now I was on skis with the purpose of going downhill, and it was fantastic. I ended up doing ski club through high school and made it to both Caberfae and Boyne while in college (two of the better skiing hills in the lower peninsula of Michigan).
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When people think of Southern Spain most people think Mediterranean Sea and warm weather. Which is true. Along the Costa del Sol you rarely go longer than a few days without seeing the sun (since Costa del Sol literally translates to “Sun Coast”) or experiencing warmer weather. However, many don’t know that there are also 9,000 – 11,000 foot snow capped mountains in Southern Spain as well. One of the things I have always wanted to do was mountain ski—the hill(s) of Bittersweet, Caberfae, and Boyne, and their 7-minute lift rides for only a minute of downhill skiing, were getting old. Well, this is what I was looking at last weekend here in Spain:




That was the view we had as we were climbing higher and higher into the real Sierra Nevada towards our full day of skiing. Me and my roomies, along with our friend Javier, had decided that we were going to spend the day skiing, and left early last Friday morning to get in a full day.

We arrived at the base of the ski resort shortly after 9 and by 11 we were outfitted in rented equipment, had bought our day pass, and were on the gondola heading up the mountain. Out of the four of us I had the most skiing experience, although Emily had mountain skied in Utah and Michael Lynn skied at a young age while living in Colorado. Javier, who is from Los Angeles, had only snowboarded a couple of times (he also rented a snowboard, while the rest of us rented skis). We first took the bunny hill and then the greens to test our skills, and Emily and I quickly found the process coming back, while Javier and Michael Lynn were re-learning the process. Feeling confident, Emily and I embarked on 5 hours of skiing that would bring us up and down the entire mountain two times (about 40 minutes to go all the way down) and familiarizing ourselves with different lifts and runs. Pictures? I got those:







Michael Lynn and Javier both ended up taking some nasty falls and hung out getting a tan at one of the many slope-side restaurants much of the afternoon. But we all really enjoyed the day. We could have not asked for a better one—it had been snowing for the previous 48 hours and there was not a cloud in the sky much of the afternoon. In fact, my face got a little sun burnt and peeled.

If you want a more detailed look at the mountain check out Emily’s entry about the day. She went as far as to take a map of the mountain and outline our descent the two times we skied all the way down.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Caves and a Castle

Last Friday the roomies and I woke up early and were out the door by 10 am. We were heading towards Granada, where we were going to drop off Emily, and then Michael Lynn and I were going to continue towards the town of Guadix, which is about 30 minutes east of Granada. Guadix is a well-known town in Spain and has a very unique aspect that is unlike any other in the country—its’ cave houses. Many of these homes are modernly equipped with the likes of electricity and water, but are built into the hills of the town. Often, you can only see their chimneys sticking out on top of the hill. The inhabitants of Guadix have used this style for centuries because during the summer they stay cool and during the winter they are well insulated and keep in the heat. A couple of thousand people still live in these traditional homes. Not only that, but Guadix has a backdrop of the Sierra Nevada mountains, so the drive there was incredible and you could see the snow capped mountains in the distance.






After exploring the Cave House Museum and actually going into one of the homes (a few locals open up their homes to tourists, often selling water, cokes, or specialty items), we walked back towards town and checked out the cathedral. We then walked and found a tapa bar and grabbed some lunch.





Being content with our visit to Guadix, we hopped back in the car and made our way towards the town of La Calahorra, which is about 20 minutes further east. Here there is a 500-year-old castle that sits on a hill with an incredible backdrop of the Sierra Nevadas. I was extremely excited to see this and I was not disappointed. After driving into town we drove half way up towards the castle, parked the car, and hiked the rest of the way. It was one of the most incredible views I have ever had. Check it out:






The castle does not look anything like a traditional Spanish Christian castle of the 16th Century. This is because it was actually designed and constructed by an Italian, so it is very unique to Spain.

After sitting atop the hill and enjoying the view for over an hour, Michael Lynn and I returned to the car and headed back towards Motril. A successful day of exploring.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Teaser.

So, as mentioned at the end of yesterday's blog, Michael Lynn and I made our way over to Guadix to check out the famous cave dwellings and then made our way a little further down the highway to La Calahorra. Check out this video I filmed. More tomorrow or early this week!

Friday, February 11, 2011

Brother y Brother and School

So my blog has been a major fail on my part. I have not only not written in this blog for two weeks, but I just realized that I completely forgot about my La Zafra blog where I was supposed to be writing down what I did at school everyday; my last entry in that blog was before holiday vacation! Oops. Is it to late for a New Years resolution of consistently writing a blog entry? I don’t think so. Consider it done.

There really are no excuses for not posting for two weeks. Yet, I have been surprisingly busy. Most of it actually centers around one thing: the “real” world. That’s right, it is officially February and that means I have started browsing the net for teaching jobs back in the States for next school year. In the last two weeks I have completed several applications as well as cover letters for open positions scanning the East coast, south and Midwest. Oh, Colorado too. So, we will see how this process goes and I am hoping for the best!


Jay’s Arrival


As mentioned in my earlier entry, my brother Jay is officially in Spain and has now been here for a month. I picked him up in Malaga on January 11 and we hung out in Motril for a couple of days before we headed to Algeciras to visit with my family there. We went out for tapas and drinks one night…


*Thanks to Emily for providing these pictures.


and also went down to Playa Granada, the Motril beach for a sunset…





On Thursday Jay and I, along with Emily, Michael Lynn and our friend Bern went down toSalobreña, the nearby pueblo blanco (white village). We hung around the beach there all afternoon as well and enjoyed the view from a large rock that sticks out into the sea. This included seeing a very large jelly fish hanging out below us. We also saw another sunset.





That following Friday morning we hopped in the Beamer and drove over to Algeciras to spend the weekend with my aunt, uncle and cousin. We relaxed Friday afternoon and on Saturday afternoon all 5 of us hopped in my uncles new Mazda and took off to show Jay the drive along the coast towards Tarifa. We then took him up to the Roman ruins my uncle had showed me back in August when I first arrive in Spain. After walking around the ruins we grabbed some lunch near the beach. We enjoyed some typical Spanish salad with several servings of different types of fish and seafood. I’ll be honest, some of that seafood is starting to grow on me and I can easily order fried calamari now and enjoy it.


After lunch, and with a stuffed belly, we went down to the beach. We ended up running around playing Frisbee and soccer, and enjoyed the beautiful afternoon and sun on the Atlantic. Some pictures:







We eventually made our way back to Algeciras. Sunday morning I took off back for Motril and Jay hung around another day until Monday, when my uncle brought him up to Sevilla where he was starting his orientation for his study abroad program. Two VandenBrinks in Spain now, not too bad. I am working on getting up there to see him in the next couple of weeks.

Work? Yeah, I guess you can call it that…

I’ve been back to work for a month now and things are continuing to go well. I am continuing to work with all of the content area teachers at La Zafra, helping them with their English and proof reading worksheets and other handouts they’ve written in English. My time in the classroom with the students has also been awesome, and is obvious the highlight of my time working at the school. I am seeing such large improvements in the kids’ English skills, especially the first eso (sixth graders). This is their first year in the bilingual program and many of the students have grown by leaps and bounds in their English skills over the last 4 months.

Last week I had science class with this first eso and they were working on the pronunciation of vocabulary words for plant life and biology. My teacher had created a chart that had a column for the English vocabulary words, a column for how those words could be written using Spanish pronunciation, and a third column for what the word was in Spanish. I was really intrigued by the second column, how the students heard the English pronunciation of the word but written using Spanish pronunciation. I thought I’d share that chart with you.

WORD

PRONUNTIATION

MEANING

WORD

PRONUNTIATION

MEANING

Water

guater

agua

Feed

fiiid

alimentarse

Mineral salts

Mineral salts

Sales minerales

Collect

colect

captar

Carbon dioxide

Carbon diaxaid

Dióxido de carbono

Absorb

absorb

absorber

Sun

san

sol

Expel

expel

expulsar

Oxygen

axyllen

oxígeno

Breath

briiiz

respirar

Photosynthesis

foutosíntesis

fotosíntesis

Useful

iusful

Útil




Worthless

worzles

inutil

Chlorophyll

clorofil

clorofila

Harmful

jarmful

Perjudicial (dañino)

I thought it was pretty entertaining and the students have done it with a few other sets of vocabulary words.

My academy classes have also been going well. Although I am still have issues with my 12 and 13 year olds speaking too much Spanish in class, I feel like I have been able to vary the content more so that they aren’t so bored. Before break I was doing a lot of work out of the textbook, which is the Cambridge University EFL curriculum that we use at the academy. It was boring the students to death. So, over break I thought about different things I could do and I have begun to break the 90-minute class into 3 thirty-minute sections. I spend 30 minutes doing a vocabulary review/writing assignment or in-class project, I then spend 30 minutes working out of the textbook, and I then spend 30 minutes playing some sort of game or doing another type of activity to help the students apply the content from the first 60 minutes. It has been going much better and I feel like I have been able to keep the students more engaged. But, the whole Spanish-speaking thing has been difficult with the students; I am still working on the best way to fight that problem.

Anyway, hopefully this month I can get back to some sort of routine in terms of posting once or twice a week. Tomorrow Michael Lynn and I are heading up to Guadix to explore its’ famous caves and then down the road to La Calahorra to see one of the more famous castles in all of Spain. Look for an entry in couple of days about that day trip!