Thursday, February 14, 2008

Travel activities

Moral de la Calatrava

Cuenca




Jaen


Hanging houses, Cuenca

Monday, February 11, 2008

Valdepeñas warms up

January brought the end of my morning class. Now I (Phillip) only have to go to the school in the evening (instead of twice a day) and I have a lot more free time. Our last day of class we went out to eat. I ordered migas which is a typical dish here made with bread crumbs. Lately I have been a little bored in the mornings with nothing to do but I am looking for other work and reading more...

Jodi and Michelle came down from Madrid one weekend to visit us. That Saturday we explored Valdepeñas a little more with them. After a breakfast of french toast, we walked up to the old windmills on one end of Valdepeñas where I hadn´t been yet.










When our friend Gabriel got off work we all went to Moral de la Calatrava to rockclimb a little bit. Back in Valdepeñas, the bar we wanted to go to for sandwiches was not serving food yet so Gabriel took us up to the Angel monument on the other side of Valdepeñas. It is two block towers with a figure of an angel in between the towers. We climbed the ladder in the center of one of the towers and reached the top where there was just room to sit with our feet hanging into the access hole we had just climbed up. After this we went back to the bar for our sandwiches. The sandwiches are a whole loaf of bread heated in the oven with you choice of tortilla española, tuna, salmon, ham, or cheese for only 3.50 euros. They have a special of the week for 2.50 euro. Needless to say we were stuffed.

The first weekend of February was Carnaval. I only had class on Thursday of that week. The celebrations here were unimpressive and I only stuck around because I didn´t know where to go and there were plans in the works to rockclimb. In the end we rockclimbed Saturday in Moral, Sunday in Jaen, and Wednesday in Ayna. I went to Ayna with Gonzalo. They call it the swiss manchego because it is a beautiful mountain town in the province of Albecete, surrounded by huge cliffs. We didn´t do anything besides rockclimb, I could easily spend more time there. This past Saturday Amy and I went to Cuenca with Fofo to rockclimb. At the end of the day, we briefly walked through the city and saw the famous hanging houses. Cuenca is another place we could spend a lot more time exploring. Traveling by car really beats public transport but our friends are usually on a tighter schedule and don´t have as much time or interest in seeing the sights.

Sunday evening we accompanied the pastor and his wife to La Solana to a mission outreach of the Valdepeñas church. This is a small church made up of mostly immigrant families.