Some Places I Went

1. The City of Ourense

A Roman(ish) bridge

Ourense is one of the four Galician Provincial Capitals (along with Lugo, A Coruña, and Pontevedra) located in the southwest corner of the Comunidad Autonoma. It was the last of the Galician capitals that I've visited, and pretty similar in style and architecture to the other three. Ourense's distinctive features are: a gigantic Roman bridge (remodeled in the 1500's), a very gloomy cathedral, and the termas, or hot springs scattered around the town.

The picture to the right is kind of misleading of my experience in Ourense--it absolutely poured down rain the entire time. By the end of the first day, even my knee-high rain boots proved incapable of keeping out the wet. 

Besides the rain, the trip was fairly uneventful. We ate a lot, walked a lot, saw a lot. We also got yelled at by the lifeguard at the termas for not having chancletas (flip-flops). The whole "you're going to spread foot diseases!" argument doesn't really hold water for me, since you have to take them off before you get in the pool. If foot diseases are going to spread, they'll do it in lukewarm non-cholirnated water, not the disinfected floor of the changing room. 

But this is just part of Spain's overall anti-foot fetish.


2. O Carbaliño

inside the casa

O Carbaliño is a little village in the province of Ourense where I went to visit a casa rural with some other Auxiliars and some friends-of-friends who happened to be teachers. 

A casa rural is more than just a "rural house." A casa rural is like a hotel/vacation home that you can rent out for the weekend. Well worth it if you want to have a big weekend get-together when everyone lives in tiny little apartments. There was a lot of eating, a lot of talking, a lot of games and walks and general merriment. I don't like to put on my bragging hat (okay, that's not true) but I will to share these fun facts.

• We visited another castro, one of the biggest ones that has been discovered. 
• Team Anglophile held its own in a Spanish-only scattergories-type game.
• I tried my first queimada.
• And made a cat friend (see the last post for pictures of cats)

Quick digression. What is a queimada? Literally, it means, a "burning" and while there is fire involved (LUME!!) it's a little more than that. The queimada is part ritual, part cocktail. The beverage is a mix of aguardiente, sugar, coffee beans and lemon rind, which is then lit on fire and stirred, while someone reads the traditional conxuro (incantation), which is meant to drive away evil spirits. It's pretty long, but here are a few of my favorite lines:

Farts of the asses of Doom

Bellow of the enraged sea

Useless belly of the unmarried woman

Speech of cats in heat

...

Stop the burning firewater

Becoming so purified

...

Goes down our throats

And we will come free of the evil

You can click this link to read the full thing.


3. Combarro

to give you how small the town is, this streetsign says only, 'street'

This past weekend I went on a little day trip to a village on the Atlantic coast with a couple Auxiliar friends. 

There wasn't a whole lot there besides adorable houses and tourist shops that were suspiciously similar to the ones back in Port Townsend. Lots of cheap shell-type nick-knacks and vaguely celtic stuff.

We walked around for a bit, poked in some of the shops and spent a lot of time waiting for various busses. All in all, not a bad way to spend a Saturday.

cute little houses

Overdue update

Wow, it's been like a whole month since I've posted anything. More than a month. Oops. I could blame it on not doing anything special, but that's not true--I went to the city of Ourense to soak in the hotsprings, visited a casa rural and had my first queimada, had my second Thanksgiving abroad... I could say that I've been doing too much writing, what with November being NaNoWriMo, but I started that late and didn't even "win." I could say that I've just been super busy preparing classes and teaching English, but that's a downright lie. 

No, the real answer is I've been lazy. Ya está. We'll see if I get my act together and actually write something interesting later this month. Hopefully before I leave--

WAIT, WHAT? 

Yes! Before I leave! It's true--I'm going home for Christmas this year! Hooray! I am super looking forward to seeing all my friends and family, my cat, my piano, my wide selection in different sizes of bags... (seriously. I can't justify buying new bags because I have like five different sized bags at home, but it's so inconvenient not having a bag that is just the right size for all the objects I want to take with me to locations X Y and Z)

But yeah. Especially the friends and family part. I'll be flying in on the 18th of December, and flying out the 11th of January. I plan on making a trip to B'ham, probably to Seattle as well, but nothing's really planned yet. Really planning isn't exactly my thing.

Now a couple obligatory pictures:

Ourense in the rain

casa rural in the sun

A cat friend