Looking Back at Winter

Descansos con compañeros de trabajo 

When I got back from my Christmas vacation in the Canary Islands, I was eager to share some of the recipes and food that I had discovered there. I often invite the other English teachers to lunch at my apartment because I live very near our school. On this day, I made barraquitos for the group. It is a special layered-coffee drink from the island of Tenerife, made with condensed milk, espresso, steamed milk, and cinnamon on top.

In this photo, my fellow auxiliares de conversacion y cultura and I are celebrating Laura's birthday. Can you guess the theme?

Celebrating Dia de Reyes (day of the three wise kings)

Dia de Reyes in Spain is waaaay bigger than Christmas. It's celebrated the 6th of January. In Spain, the three wise kings bring kids presents, not Santa Claus. Reindeer?! It's camels who help deliver gifts to children, silly! The interesting result of this tradition is that the holiday season lasts from December 24 to January 6, which makes for a looooong shopping season and what seems like an even longer period when Christmas songs are acceptably played in stores, restaurants, buses and boats.

Instead of going downtown to see the massive Dia de Reyes parade (similar to the Macy's Day parade on Thanksgiving), I decided to stay in my barrio and watch the neighbors put on a local parade. My friend Julio describes it as cutre, which means it's shabby/cheesy/grungy/dodgy.

cabalgata - parade

"Superheroes of the neighborhood"

I was hoping to see some of my students in the parade, but no luck. Check out these cuties on a Noah's Arc float.

After the parade, I went to Julio's house for a party with his sisters and friends. Below, we are eating a homemade roscon de reyes. His mother prepared this typical cake for the event.

The best part of the roscon is the hidden "surprises" inside. People eat the cake expecting to find little dolls, charms, or in this case, messages.

At the party, they also served hot chocolate, sugar cookies, and some typical appetizers para picar - potato chips, chorizo, cheese and little pieces of toast.

 My gift said: "Dear Molly, I couldn't find you in Seattle, sorry for the delay. Enjoy, Santa"

Visiting Spain's university town: Salamanca

On the last weekend of January I headed west to Salamanca, the site of Spain's oldest university. It's still a hoppin' college town, and the students keep the prices much lower than nearby cities. I couldn't get over how much cheaper the food, in particular, was compared to Madrid.

At a higher altitude than Madrid, Salamanca is even colder. Brrrrrr. In fact, the freezing weather convinced me to quit traveling until spring. It's difficult to enjoy sightseeing in a city when you can't feel your fingers or toes. Here is what we saw between thaw-out coffee breaks:

Plaza Mayor, Salamanca's "community living room"

Entrance to the new cathedral

Beside one entrance you can spot an astronaut added by a restorer in 1993

An original Roman bridge spanning the Rio Tormes into the city

Inside the church of San Esteban

A typical pincho of fried eggs, ham and potatoes. Plus bread and a drink - all for only 1.80 euros!

Friends and Food in Spain's Capital

My American friend Austin works at Madrid's coolest brewery, Fabrica Maravillas. Below he is sampling some of the product with Yanalte. The brewery is one of the few places that serves something other than Mahou or Amstel, which are the ubiquitous Bud Light equivalents in Spain. When I first arrived, I was incredulous when I discovered that every Spanish bar has only one beer on tap. What kind of beer would you like? THE beer, I presume. "Me pones una caña, por favor."

At an Italian restaurant in the suburbs, Julio wards off enemies with my earring "shield" and a crunchy bread-stick sword.

I have eaten more hamburgers in Spain than I ever did in the United States. It's the most popular "ethnic food" - the choice that madrilenyos make when they take a break from the usual Spanish fare. The best hamburger I've tried so far is at a Chilean restaurant called San Wich (my favorite saint) in the downtown neighborhood of Chueca. Below you can see their regular cheeseburger, and in the background, la pobre, a specialty burger featuring a fried egg and caramelized onions.

A sign found in los aseos (the restrooms) at San Wich. Love the message, forgive the typo.

After admiring her hair color from afar, I asked one of the 3rd-grade teachers at school how she dyes it red. She revealed that she uses henna, and gave me detailed instructions on where to buy it and how to use it. So I bought the shade caoba oscuro from a florist shop in my neighborhood and threw a henna party with Michelle from Texas. The cumbersome part of henna is that you must let it set for 4-6 hours, depending on how dark you want the results. So we slathered the goop on each other's hair, covered it with plastic sacks, topped it with our ski caps and hit the town for a night out.

A night out with the hair-dye cap

The henna results: fiery/flame red

Exploring the Mountains Northwest of Madrid

All winter long, I went hiking with the couchsurfing-group Hiking in Madrid. This is a pic from the most recent trek to El Pico de Miel. Instead of our usual easy pace and smooth terrain, this time our fearless leaders led us scrambling up the mountain and back down again without a trail. We were bushwhacking to the extreme, sliding down boulders, getting caught on thorny bushes, and landing in puddles of freezing water. My Australian friend Ash would have definitely called it a "cracker walk."

I visited the nearby historic site of El Escorial twice in January and February. The first time I went hiking to la Silla de Felipe, the stone chair where Philip II is said to have sat to watch the progress on his palace/monastery, which took 22 years to construct (1562-1584).

View near la Silla de Felipe

Rick Steves provided a lively, interesting guided tour of the monastery. Thank you, Rick!
Highlights included the Hall of Battles and the royal tomb where four centuries' worth of the monarchs are buried and labeled. In the Hall of Battles, the walls are painted with scenes celebrating Spain's great military victories. The guide says that the massive room was painted in 1590 in order to teach the new king about warfare. My friend quipped that if today's king, Juan Carlos I, wanted to teach his children about battle strategy, he would simply go to YouTube.

Outside El Escorial

The impressive Hall of Battles

The many horses depicted in battle, El Escorial

The imposing Valley of the Fallen up close

First Week of Spring!

Last week, spring finally arrived in Madrid. It has been consistently sunny and between 60-70 degrees. I have recently been trying to take up jogging (again), and I ran my first official race on March 9. It was only 4 kilometers, but you gotta start somewhere. For this race, Spain demonstrated high-tech prowess for this first time! Our numbers had a built-in chip that measured our progress and gave us an exact ranking online. I came in number 112 out of thousands! Not bad. And if I don't do the conversion to minutes-per-mile, I have no way of knowing how slow I am. ;)

Jose, Molly, Julio, Irene

Since November, I have been teaching private English classes every day during the two-hour lunch break. My students are a young couple who recently graduated from university with degrees in marketing and economics. They are applying for work in Madrid, and they need to improve because a portion of every interview is conducted in English. A couple weeks ago, the guy found out that he got a job! So we have moved our lessons to after his workday, from 7:45-9:15 p.m., twice a week.

This means that my lunch break is free again to run errands, go home for lunch or sit in the nearby park and enjoy the sunshine.

Laura and I take a pedal break in the park near our school

On Monday, March 10 when I walked home from work, I rounded the corner to my apartment building and saw a geyser of water shooting out of the sidewalk directly in front of the entrance. The street had become a raging river. I walked as far down the street from the plumbing explosion as possible to cross it, but still got my feet wet in my cheap boots.

Up in my apartment, I turned on the faucet and found a weak drizzle...then dry coughs and spits. The water was off - four buildings with thousands of people, no flushing the toilet, no showering, no doing the dishes or laundry, not to mention no drinking water. My friend told me the same thing happened to half of his barrio last summer and it lasted for days! His building provided big jugs of drinking water. Mine did not. They seemed unequipped to handle the emergency. Workers soon came and ripped open the street; every time I left or returned home again my heart sunk when I saw they were still working.

Luckily, just 24-hours later, my doorman Pedro told me they turned the water on! One week later, we still have a gaping sinkhole instead of a sidewalk. Wonder how long it will take to be fixed...I'm happy as long as I have water.This incident underscored the feeling of isolation I sometimes have as a foreigner in the big city. I don't have any relatives or friends who live in a nearby building who could have brought me water to flush the toilet, for example. I thought about how I would have fared in a similar situation in Washingon.

Plumbing disaster

It's never good to see a sign posted by the elevators.

Answer key: weird hats