Weekend update: by Amy

This past weekend:

-I went out for tapas Friday night. This week and the week to come is the feria of the tapa here in Valdepeñas. 19 bars are participating and they offer an special tapa with your choice of drink for $2.50. Yum. Some of them are pretty fancy.

-I went to Decathlon for the first time. This is a big sporting goods store here in Spain. I had heard a lot about it and upon visiting it was not impressed and think that a lot of what they offer is of poor quality.

-I participated in my second climbing competition. I placed 2nd out of 4 girls. I was once again reminded how I do not enjoy competing, I´d rather just climb. I had fun though and enjoyed hanging out with everyone I went with. Here are some pics:

The guys planning out their moves.

Fofo on the roof. He won the men´s competition.
Gabriel and Carlitos waiting for their turns.

To Everyone´s Dismay. . .

Yes, Amy is still alive and well in Spain. After much procrastination and many people´s requests, I decided I should write on the blog. To catch everyone up I went home for three weeks in September and had a wonderful time visiting with my family and also with some of my friends that I was able to see. I came back to Spain in time to start my job up again at the Ludoteca Arca de Noe but this time with a little change in my job description. I now only teach/tutor english. Before I would help out with the birthday parties we would host and monitor kids that came in to play and do activities with us. Now I start at 4pm and technically work until 10pm but usually am able to get off early since I don´t have 6 hours of classes. I have a large group of 3-6 year olds that I teach (actually I more play games with them, but who said learning can´t be fun:) and then I have a handful of older students that come in for tutoring help or just a reinforcement of what they are learning in school.
Hannah´s wedding

Besides my work at the Ludoteca I am giving a few private classes. I have an interesting one with a 1 1/2 year old who I meet with 2 hours 5 days a week and basically babysit her but speaking only in english. Interesting huh? we´ll see what kind of results will come of it.

I definitely keep pretty busy and am now turning down people who want private tutoring. Apart from work I´ve been doing some climbing, but not as much due to the cold weather and rain. I was sick this past week but am now pretty much better.
Recent trip to the Sierra de Segura (I didn´t bike)Gallardo, Antonio, Blas and Quiros about to take off at the top of mountian in wind, rain, and the cold.

Well, That´s the short update and I´m going to write more frequently, staying in touch is important and sometimes I´m not the best at it but I´m going to be more diligent in the effort! Love you all and hope that you truly are doing well,

Amy

Phillip visits Amy in Valdepeñas

Last weekend I made the trip down to Valdepeñas to visit Amy. She is doing well, and maybe she will post on the blog someday. I met Gonzalo in Zaragoza Thursday and it took us 5 hours to drive down to Valdepeñas. I stayed with Amy, her roomate was out of town (she went home to Argentina). We made a chocolate marble cake that was delicious. It was good to see everyone in Valdepeñas again, unfortunately it rained all weekend so the only climbing we did was in the climbing gym. Next week I will try to post some more pictures...