The answer to the title question is: My Birthday! Yes, this week has been a bit of an adventure, most of which had to do with my birthday and part of which was not so fun (such as the flu). But we'll get to that soon enough.
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| This is the mountain where Hoyo is situated. |
And now some cute pictures because why not. I mean, is he not just the cutest, especially when he discovers the crayons and markers :)
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| Hey look, there I am. |
Well, after we left off last Monday, Tuesday rolled around as usual. And as usual, it was a usual Tuesday. I slept in a bit and spent most of the morning (besides breakfast and my shower) working on the blog. After lunch with my host brother and host grandparents I went into Madrid to spend some time at the B.'s as usual. Later in the evening I finished the blog, posted it, and then had a normal evening and dinner with my host family.
Wednesday morning I spent some time preparing for our English Kids' Program in the afternoon. I also did some work of adding English subtitles to the video from the Easter dance my house group did (the dance that I've mentioned a couple of times that I choreographed and that we were practicing). I might be uploading that somewhere soon.
The kids in class were a little extra rowdy and hard to work, so I'm not sure how much they really caught of How to Tell Time, oh well.
Reneé and I left after class to head into Madrid for Team Meeting and I stayed there overnight.
Thursday afternoon I had lunch with a friend of my host mom who's son is a part of an exchange through school with a school in Austria. First, for one month, the Austrian students are here and then for one month the Spanish Students will go to Austria. But here's the catch. The exchange of Austrians and Spaniards is to learn English. Yep, that's right, it's because it's the only middle ground they have in reference to language, so they are forced to communicate in English. An interesting concept, with a couple of flaws, but I think a pretty good idea. So I joined them for an English-speaking lunch at my host mom's restaurant. And then I even got a surprise apple cake/pastry thing for my birthday since I wasn't going to be here on Saturday. Though I'm not really what was up with the numbers.
That night was the night for which we had our tickets (my birthday present from my host family (mentioned last week)) to El Rey León (The Lion King), the musical. Yes, this is what I meant when I mentioned Lions in the title, no I didn't have any interactions with real lions. But the musical was probably just as cool as real lions. It was absolutely incredible, I only wish I could have understood the Spanish just a bit better, but I knew the storyline and what was going on, so that helped. All the costumes and set pieces and lighting were so incredibly ingenuitive and creative and wonderful and beautiful and I-just-loved-it-so-much! Plus the incorporation of shadow puppets, and the whole African tribal theme added so much. It was a great birthday present!
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| Waiting for the show to start. Yes, I did bring my opera goggles to Spain, you never know when they might be needed. Always be prepared. |
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| People were taking pictures with the Lion logo, and they would just stand there looking all cute and smiling. Come on people, it's the Lion King, let's see some ferocity. So I posed the Lion pose that the lions did in the musical a lot. Got a couple laughs and looks, but so totally worth it :) |
In the afternoon I left Hoyo with Reneé and met up with M. in Madrid. We were flying Ryanair, a very cheep, quite sly British airline. They find the most absurd things to charge you on so that even with their low ticket prices they can still make some good money. One such way is that they charge you seventy euros to print your boarding pass if you forgot it. And guess what M. forgot? Yep, the boarding passes. Luckily we were able to find an internet/printing kiosk from which we could print our boarding passes for just two euros each and not seventy.
Another way they save money is by not having reclining seats and having a little less leg room per row. So the flight was a bit cramped and was mostly me uncomfortably not-sleeping sleeping.
We got picked up at the airport by one of the owners of the Riad (hostile) we'd be staying at. We were occupying three of the four rooms they had. They were very nice accommodations (pictures in a bit). We then when for a walk in town, to and around and through the main square were we had some dinner. Still wasn't feeling to well.
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| Sunset from the runway after we landed. |
By the time I went to bed I was a bit nauseous and quite bothered by my sore throat.
Well the transition from Friday to Sunday was not a very fun one. I couldn't get comfortable, my back started to ache, I was always either too hot or too cold, and I don't think I got any segment of sleep of a duration longer than thirty minutes. So, needless to say, my birthday did not start out quite as grand as I would have liked. And developed even less grandness when my stomach decided to emit it's nausea. My conclusion is that it was some sort of day flu (yes, thankfully it was only about a day of being sick sick) because of the combination of sore throat, achy back, feeling of slight fever (though I didn't have a thermometer to confirm it), nausea, and slight up-chucking. We ended up having to cancel our plans to go on our camel-riding, waterfall-hiking, and Moroccan-food-eating tour, which made me feel all the worse for holding back the others. Luckily they were good sports about it. And after a quick shower and moving around a bit I was finally able to get some sleep and ended up sleeping most of the morning while M. and Reneé did some walking around and eating and what-not.
In the afternoon I dutifully munched away at some crackers and played some cards with Reneé and M. In the evening we again did some walking in town (yes, I was feeling a bit better), but this time down a street market. We ended up having dinner at a roof-top restaurant. I just had some soup and bread, not wanting to overdo my stomach.
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| This is the terrace/roof of the place we were staying. |
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| Looking down from the roof into the main common room area that all four rooms are connected to. Mine was the downstairs one in this picture. |
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| Here's from the other side. M. was on the second floor and Reneé was on the ground floor. |
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| Looking out from our roof top. It was such nice weather. |
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| The roof over the common room area, as seen from the roof, and... |
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| ...as seen from inside (at night, I forgot to take a daylight picture). |
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| Some of the beautiful designs and workings in my room. |
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| Dinner |
Sunday morning rolled around with me feeling mostly better. A decent trip back home, but I still didn't enjoy the cramped flight.
I arrived back in Hoyo that evening to fine, gorgeous, actually-spring spring weather. I so love nice weather!
Monday was my day to recuperate. I slept in till around 12:30 and had some breakfast and took a nice long, warm shower with some nice music.
I got to Skype mom and dad a bit! :D
In the afternoon I went to badminton practice with my host brother, and let me tell you, I am way out of practice and his class is way in practice, so I pretty much got slaughtered ;)
My host mom picked us up from there to go to a little nature reserve pond to have a little snack and listen to the frogs sing. Such a beautiful evening. Have I mentioned how much I love warm, fresh, spring weather? Because I do!
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| This is to keep the frogs from getting away and crossing the road. |
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| And here are my sandals. (Yes, I'm was finally able to have some barefoot time!) |
Well, there you go, that brings you up to speed on another week of my life here in Spain. Have a great week until we meet again.
With many Loves and Misses,
~Asher Fickett~
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