LAST POST IN SPAIN :(

OK, Those of you who want pictures... I posted LOTS onto Facebook, so go check them out!  I still have some more to add.... I'll get around to it eventually ;).

Anyway, we leave to go to Scotland tomorrow, and then it's home to Canada.  It isn't very much fun to say good-bye to people.  I have a hard time not getting emotional, but I was able to keep it together, at least until I was alone... :/  The hardest people to say goodbye to were the Serranos.  We are going to miss them a tonne!  I wish we could bring them home with us.  I was surprised how hard it was to say goodbye to my aerobics class too!  I'm such a sap...

Anyway, our apartment is a mess as we try to figure out what we can bring home and what we have to leave behind.  We are trying to cut down what we brought by two suitcases... which is really hard, especially when lots of people who worked with Evan gave him presents in the form of books.  The weather got better for about four days and then it got rainy again, but today it was gorgeous!  It was as if mother nature was giving us a goodbye present too.  We spent a wonderful two hours at the beach to take a break from all of this cleaning and packing.  It was glorious.

I still can't believe its all over!  I am going to miss so many things, especially the ocean.  I have fallen in love with the ocean...  I don't even mind the smell of see weed anymore.  I could go on forever...

As for the next two weeks...  I will need all of your prayers as I endeavour to keep up with Evan on a 7 day hike on the Isle of Skye in Scottland.  It is my first backpacking trip so I'm kinda getting pushed into the deep end here.  Hopefully this means I will have lots of pitiful stories to relate to you all.  But until then, here are some pictures (that are not yet of Facebook) to tide you over

Our branch.... well, the regulars anyway :)

One of Blae's classes, he says he would never want to be a teacher but he is really going to miss the kids.  (They love him, some girls even offered to fight me for him lol)

These are from the farewell trip that the Serrano's took us on.  On the left is a picture of the old wall in Lugo, you can see it trailing off in the distance... We walked the whole way around the old town on that wall.  On the right is the oldest lighthouse in the world that is still in use.  It is in the beautiful city of "A Coruña" and it's name is "Hercules Tower".

Hope you enjoyed...  Stay tuned for Scotland survival tips.

Sky of Eternal Nebulae

I tried to make the title of my post is epic...  I feel like I succeeded.  If you disagree, please don't rain on my, already very soggy, parade.  Now to the point...  It won't stop raining!  I don't think a day has gone by since my last post when it hasn't rained.  This is what winter weather was supposed to be like...  It makes me so mad! all of the sunny days were waisted on cold months!  There are occasional bouts of sunshine but they are infrequent and they never last very long.  Yesterday I looked outside and thought to myself, "Oh what a beautiful day, the sky is blue and its sunny, I better wear sunglasses."  Then I left the apartment and by the time I had walked one block, my sunglasses were off and I was wishing I had remembered an umbrella.  The temperature is OK usually, it hovers between 13-15 degrees celsius, but when the sun comes out it feels five or ten degrees warmer.   Im getting anxious because we are leaving in a month and I really want to spend as much time as possible outside so the weather needs to get better soon!

Evan and I are planning a little backpacking trip to Scotland on our way home.  We were planning on going to Iceland but decided that coming home with absolutely no money wasn't the smartest idea, so we decided to scale things down a bit.  I must admit I am torn between being very excited and terrified.  I have never been backpacking before, and though I love a challenge, I am a creature of comfort.  I go to great lengths to avoid discomfort so this will be interesting...  I just hope I don't drive Evan crazy.

As my extended vacation nears its end, I look back at the past few months and have to admit that everything I had though this trip would be like a year ago was wrong.  It was way better than I could have imagined in almost every way, with living on the beach, surfing every week, people who took us to all different kinds of fantastic places, and an amazing Christmas to name a few.  One thing that disappoints me is my grasp of the Spanish language.  I must admit that I thought that by now I would be practically fluent but I still feel like I'm floundering every time I try to have a conversation.  The one thing that consoles me is at least I'm better then most of you!  ;)  ....I say that with the utmost love and respect to you all.

Anyway...  You may be able to tell I'm itching to get home...  I hope you are as excited to see me as I am to see all of you!  June 5th.  Mark it on the calendar!  (And then give us a couple of days to deal with the jet lag)

PS.  This kind of feels like a final post which it isn't (unless it is... and then I will have lied), but keep checking because at the very least I will post pictures and stuff from Scotland.

Spring Time!

I guess I have to appologize for not blogging in a really long time....  It isn't that I hve been too busy, it's the fact that I havn't really done much worth writing about.

Sanxenxo (for those wondering, there are multiple ways of pronouncing this but the easiest is san-shane-sho) went through a heat wave where it felt like a hot Albertan summer.  I tried to spend as much time as possible.  I spent lots of time reading on the beach and I am almost halfway through my spanish Harry Potter book!  I am using the dictionary less and less but not necessarily because I know more of the words but because I hate looking up words in the dictionary.

Evan likes swimming in the ocean ocean and I will go halfway in but it takes a crazy hot day for me to go in farther than that.  We found out that the ocean is 14 degrees.  Brr!

The heat seems to make everything better!  Surfing is so much more fun when whiping out doesn't feel like an icy punishment but a refreshing escape from the hot sun.  I got attacked by my board a couple of weeks ago and got a little gash on my head.  I didn't even know it was bleading i just though i bumped my head but then when i paddled over to the guys they started freaking out because I had blood running down my face.  I guess head wounds blead a lot.  Getting diluted by water probably didn't help how it looked eather.

A few weeks ago we went to a pretty cool festival.  Do you guys remember me talking about the fort that we visited a long time ago?  There are a few pictures on an earlier post.  The town there is famous for being the first european town to hear about  the new world.  They have a festival every year comemorating that event.  Young and old people dress up in mideval costumes and the town puts on a big re-enactment of Christopher Columbous's story on the beach.  It is a huge deal with thousands of people who attend.  The streets of the town are filled with the type of stalls you would see at a rennasaunce fair.  And it all happens after dark.  It was very fun and way more people than I expected.

Unfortunately the weather has got a little colder and I couldn't wear shorts and a T-shirt on my birthday like I had hoped (it would have been the first time ever)  My birthday was really fun, we went to the Serrano's and had great food and went exploring some ruins by the river near their house.

At the moment it is 'Holy Week'.  I can't say I am a huge fan of holy week.  Grocery stores are closed so were are running out of food very quickly, plus there are throngs of people everywhere!  Oh well, it will be over soon... I hope....

Take care all!

Prepped and Pampered

The weather has been pretty great the past week, I even had a beach day! It's perfect in the sun but as soon as you go in the shade its too cold for shorts (unless your a Viking like Evan). We celebrated valentines day last Saturday instead of Tuesday. Evan had his connections get me a deal on a spa package. It was green tea themed, I got a body scrub, (I thought I wasn't going to have any skin left by the time they were done with me) a relaxing massage and a green tea-infused bath. I have never felt so pampered in my life! Then that night we had supper at the restaurant. It was the kind of fancy meal that you see in the movies but rarely get to experience. It was complete with a confusing number of forks and spoons, many courses but all of them small, and a new aquatic creature that I don't plan on eating again. On a more serious note, in was a really good meal, and they even brought Evan some French fries. He didn't ask for them and it didn't fit with the facy meal at all but they know he loves them :).

In other news, we finally made it to Portugal! One of the teachers that Blae works with took us and showed us some great sites.... including but not limited to a large market where you could buy anything from a carpet to pots and pans, to a puppy. I got a belt that they added holes to right there at the stall. It's still a bit big though... (a problem I would like to remedy with chocolate). A lot of things were similar to galicia, like the streets and an old walled town but the food was more like Canadian food. We had steak for lunch and it was glorious! (It's easy to get steak in Galicia but they use different spices). It was a really fun day, going to lots of different touristy places.

I am plowing through Harry Potter! I forgot how ridiculous the book is... Maybe that's why I love it so much...  Now on to more important things!.... Pictures!

I don't know if any of you have heard of 'Carnival' but its basically a week of holidays where there are parties all over the place (different towns  have things happening different days) and people dress up, kind of like Halloween... except Carnival is way more important than Halloween to these people.  One day we heard music coming from outside and this is what i found:  (a bunch of kids on a stage, in costumes, dancing around to music.  It was pretty cute!)

The rest of the pictures are from Portugal.  The next three are of the fort with a little (Portuguese version of modern) town inside.

The view here is looking across the river into Spain.  It was absolutely beautiful.

Fairly self-explanatory...

This was a really cool catholic (church/cathedral?) at the top of a big hill, you could see it from really far away.  We drove up and looked inside.  The inside was beautiful but we didn't take pictures because a mass was going on.

Keepin' On

So, the biggest thing that has happened since my last post is that two weeks ago I strained my shoulder surfing.  It was an overall bad day of surfing for me, a combination of very cold weather, a different and much smaller board, and large waves.  (well, large for us, but small for our teacher).  It was all worth it though, because afterwards, we went to a local board maker's shop!  Gerardo was getting a couple of new boards made for him and he wanted to stop by.  The board maker was super nice and showed us the different steps of making a surf board.  First, he starts with a really big piece of rough material (a very light wood usually) that is board-shaped. (he buys them like that)  Then he has a huge variety of planes and sanders to make it the exact shape he wants.  After that, he covers it in a cloth coated in resin to make it stronger.  Next, he adds the decals or designs that he wants (using special paper or cloth) then he coats it in more of the resin, lets it dry and then adds the fins!  I'm sure I am missing steps but that is the gist of it.  His shop was really cool, with half finished boards everywhere.  Some of the boards were so pretty!!  It's probably a good thing I didn't have 800 euros lying around!  I really wish we had a camera to take pictures so I could show you guys.

So anyway... I took some time off of sports and added all of it (and then some) to video games.  I think I'm getting addicted...  but, we went back surfing yesterday!  My shoulder isn't perfect yet, but its fine if I'm careful and it feels so good to be exercising again!  There were no waves so we practiced some technique and did some surfing related cardio.  It was actually really challenging and quite fun!

In other news, I bought Harry Potter in spanish!  I haven't even finished the first chapter yet because it takes me forever to read one page.  My goal is to finish it before we come home, but I might have bitten off more than I can chew... (five pages down, two hundred forty-four more to go).  Spanish is coming along slowly, my vocab is getting OK, but I need more confidence while talking.  Its strange... I can listen to a conversation and catch most of what is going on, but as soon as someone directs a question to me, my brain tuns off immediately. Even if I would normally know what they said and how to answer, I just freeze.  Its very frustrating!

Time is going by so fast, we are more then half done our stay!  It makes me sad but at the same time I am looking forward to coming back.  I don't ever want to leave the paradise that we have settled into, but I miss my family and friends and I kinda feel like my life is on hold right now.  Plus, I have a long list of restaurants that I can't wait to go to.... oh, Red Robin....

Anyway guys, keep me posted, don't make me beg!

Evan's Valentines Day Present to me!  It was sooo yummy...

The fountain show at Barcelona:

Back in the Saddle

I know I have complained about laundry before, and although I have come to terms with my situation I must make my displeasure of new developments known!  For almost four months I have done the laundry and hung it up to dry outside.  For four months I have not had any incidents, unless you count occasionally dropping something and having to run down three flights of stairs to get it.  Apparently, I was lulled into a false sense of security, for lately seagulls have felt the need to soil my clean laundry.  Not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES in the past two weeks!  As we all know, bad things come in threes, so I hope and pray that this is the end because I just put a fresh load out to dry a few minutes ago.

In other news, Evan has been very busy since we got back teaching private english lessons.  He know has 7 students (I'm pretty sure) and teaches 11 extra hours per week.  This has reduced our stress over money a bit and given us hope that we actually might be able to backpacking northern Europe before we come home in the summer.  Teaching also has its perks!  (for Evan at least) one of his students who sees him four times a week manages a four star hotel here in Sanxenxo.  Evan had a complimentary hour long massage today!  (don't worry, I'm jealous too) plus the other night he was offered food, he asked for fries and was brought a large plate of steak.  (seriously!)   So, yeah...

The other night, the Music teacher at the school Evan works at took us up north sight-seeing.  We saw a bunch of ruins and more beautiful scenery.  He showed us the remains of a series of towers that were used as warning beacons when the Vikings would attack.  For those of you who have seen the Lord of the Rings movies, it is just like when Gondor needs help from Rohan and they light the beacons!  The Vikings wanted to pillage Santiago de Compostela because the Catholic church had a lot of wealth there.  We also saw more castros (the little circular huts that celtic people lived in).  The scenery at the castros was amazing because it was right on the edge of a rocky out-crop over the ocean.  Unfortunately, we didn't get very good pictures because it was dusk when we got there and pitch black when we left.

It looks strangely tropical for winter... this is a little chapel.

Evan wanted to know how I got up there... 

We have been surfing a couple of times since we got back.  I can actually follow a wave sideways now! (if it breaks slowly)  Last time, when I thought I was surfing alone, Gerardo followed me and tried to push me over!  You can imagine my surprise!  He says he does that to everyone but that most people loose there balance and whip out.  I told him it was because I live with Evan who forces me to stay on my toes.

So, life has pretty much gotten back to normal... some days are chilly, some are warm.  Evan wears shorts through it all.  Representing Canada I suppose...

Italian Exploits Part 2

For those of you who are not up to date, this is the forth post about my Christmas Vacation so check out previous posts if you are interested.

Ok... So I left us in Florence... well, we took the train to Rome, and after finding the way to our flat we... actually i don't remember exactly when we did things anymore... I suppose I waited too long for all of this writing.  Oh well, our flat was in an interesting part of town.  It was kind of sketchy to say the least.  We were on the 5th (or 6th if your canadian) floor and right in the centre of the staircase was a tiny little elevator.  It fit two people comfortably.  Needless to say we all got well acquainted with stairs in Rome.  Our place was nice and roomy and finally a place with 2 queen sized beads instead of one queen and 3 single beds.  (I feel that it should be noted that Mom and Dad were very nice and let us have the queen in Florence)  We were really close to the metro and we used it a lot.  They said that they kept trying to get more metro lines going but every time they would start digging new tunnels they would find more ruins.  Which kind of 'ruined' things (haha!).  

One of the first things we did in Rome was go to the Colosseum.  While we were looking for the end of the line a guy came up and asked us if we wanted to join their tour.  It included the Colosseum and some other ruins (I apologize, i can't remember their names, just that it was the centre of rome back in the day).  We took it and the tour turned out to be very good!  Both of the guides were very interesting and fun to listen to.  The Colosseum is a really cool place and we were sad that we couldn't see it in all of its glory.  I don't think Evan will ever forgive the Catholic church for stealing all of the marble from the Colosseum!  I learned (and saw) that there were tunnels below where the games would take place and there were trap doors to let live things out (and dead things in...)  the floor was covered with sand which is where we get the term 'arena' (because arena means sand).

At the end of our Colosseum tour we were given the option to join another tour the day after.  It was of the Vatican, which was one thing we were planning on seeing anyway.  We joined the tour and are kind of sad that we did because it was much more boring than our first one.  It was a three hour tour and more than half of it was spent outside of the interesting places, looking at pictures and models of the interesting places.  I understand that talking is forbidden in the Sistine Chapel but that is only one place!  We skipped come cool rooms because we 'didn't have time' (duh!).  Anyway, the Vatican was really cool and the Sistine Chapel was way different than I though it would be.  It's just a huge rectangular room.  I though it would be more like the churches and cathedrals I have seen.  Michelangelo's Paintings of the creation on the ceiling are fantastic!  Saint Peter's Basilica is supposedly the largest christian church in the world.  It is amazing!  You know all that missing Marble from the Colosseum?  Its there!  There are beautiful sculptures everywhere, lots of memorial tomes, and even the remains of a dead pope under some glass so you can see him.  (Kinda creepy if you ask me...).  When all is said and done, the tour had its good points but I think we would have preferred to see the vatican on our own time.  Maybe its good we didn't see everything, because it gives us a reason to come back!

Other places that we went to in Rome are the Spanish Steps (and the really expensive designer shops in front of the steps), Trevi Fountain (and nearby we bought a water-colour from an artist of the Colosseum), the Pantheon, Plaza Navona, and i probably missed a couple of places but those are the important ones.

One day in Rome, Dad rented us a car, and us 'kids' drove it down to Pompei.  We spent the day exploring the ancient city.  It was fascinating being able to see how the volcano destroyed everything, yet preserved it much better then if it hadn't happened.  You could easily imagine people walking down the streets, eating at the little cafeterias and sitting at the out-door theatres.  They found people shaped holes in the volcanic rock where people curled up and died.  I wonder if the people were blissfully ignorant of what was happening until the last few moments, or if they knew that they were doomed and also knew they couldn't do anything...

... Anyway... on to less depressing matters.  We returned to Rome late-ish that night and Mom, Dad and Dave left really early the nest morning.  Evan and I didn't leave until that night so we left our bags at the train station and did some more exploring.  We know that we would like to go Back to Rome some day because it is such a huge city with a rich culture and history.  I don't think it is possible to see all there is to see!

On our way back home to Sanxenxo we stopped at Barcelona and Spent a couple of nights at the sketchiest hostel I have ever been in.  To be fair it is the first hostel I have ever stayed in, at least it was cheep and we had our own room.  I can, however, say that the bed was the worst I have ever slept in (or didn't sleep in) and Evan says there were cockroaches in the bathroom in the morning.  We really enjoyed Barcelona, but were disappointed to discover that we arrived on '3 Kings Day'  which meant that everything was closed.  We explored though and have decided that the public transportation in Barcelona kicks butt.  We managed to catch a water fountain light and music show which was very impressive.

By the time Evan and I made it home to Galicia, we really missed the friendly people and familiar language.  I never thought I would say that I missed Spanish, but Italian was like starting from scratch all over again.  We are so grateful that we had the opportunity to go to Italy and we are already looking forward to a return trip... (in the far distant future)