Hello all. It's been a while, so I thought I'd write an update about what kinds of things we've been up to lately. First of all, we have a long weekend coming up in December (specifically the 6th through the 10th--five days). So, late last week, we booked a flight to go to Milan, Italy <-- Click on the link to check it out. It's one of the largest cities in Italy. It's got great cathedrals, churches, monuments, museums, restaurants, and shopping. It's also home to Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece The Last Supper. We are excited. We're going to stay there from Dec. 7th through the 10th--which means we get to take off one day of school. The students will miss us a lot, I'm sure; and we'll be thinking of them while we're chillin in chilly Italy for the weekend. A friend from our program is coming with us also--Kara from California. She's already expressed dismay at how cold it's been in Logrono these past weeks; but, we try to assure her that it will only get colder in the coming months of winter here in Spain, it will undoubtedly be cold in Italy as well, and both are nothing compared to the cold in Minnesota and North Dakota. I don't know if we comfort her much, but it's entertaining.
We have also been preparing for Abby's family to come visit us for Christmas. Her mom, dad, brother Rob, brother Tony and his wife April are all coming to Spain from December 20th through the 31st. We're going to meet them in Madrid (where they fly into), and we've already got a place booked there for the first three days of the trip. We've rented an apartment with a couple bedrooms, bathrooms, pull-out couches, and a kitchen. It sounds and looks very very nice to me--as it is fully furnished and decorated in Spanish-Madrileno style. We are going to explore our little city our Logrono in the northern wine region of La Rioja after that... and we're going to try to make some day-trips to different cities around the area also. I'm personally excited that we'll have the opportunity to host her family here at our apartment for Christmas.
Yes, the streets of Logrono are already decorated with hanging lights. They haven't been turned on as of yet, but we think that after December 1st the city will be shining. I'm not quite sure how we'll decorate our apartment yet. We found that X-mas lights are very expensive here (probably since very few people actually own 'house' homes to hang them up on). Maybe we'll find some fake snow to dust the whole place with. It's likely to be a snowless Christmas here, since they usually only have snow a couple times a year here, and usually only in January or February. Oh well. At least it's sunny and cold.
We've been experiencing record days for dryness here so far this month. It hasn't really rained much at all since we've been here... an unfortunate trend that has kept up these past several years, I guess. But, rain is in the forecast for next week, so that should keep the meteorologists, farmers, and others alike happy, I hope.
Last night (Saturday) Abby and I went to a concert at the Forum / Congress Palace in town. We saw Bela Fleck (a world reknowned banjo player from New York) and Chick Corea (famous jazz pianist--also from the U.S.) perform. They played duet, and they were outstanding, as was the magnificient new Forum building. There were probably about 300 - 500 people there, I'm not really sure, but among them I suppose that about half or less actually 'got' the jokes that Fleck and Corea told in English (they were pretty cheesy anyways). But boooy could they play. My favorite I think was when Bela Fleck went into a bluegrass tune and Chick Corea dueled him with some twangy piano bits of his own. Very cool.
Let's see. I started a couple private lessons with some students from my schools these last couple weeks. I'm tutoring one boy who is twelve years old and I have another lesson with two nine-year-old boys the same day in another part of town. The twelve-year-old is very interested in trying to speak English, and though he has a very limited vocabulary, he'll try to speak English for the entire hour we have together. The nine-year-olds know less English, and they are happy to speak Spanish the entire time. They are interested enough to listen to me in English and a mix of Spanish, but it's clear that I'll have to have more things planned for them to do during our sessions. I need to get more private lessons set up. They are a great way to earn a little extra spending cash. Abby already has four lessons. If I find just a few more a week I should be in good shape. I've put some notices up at my school, and hopefully I'll get some more calls soon; otherwise I'll just keep lookin. We have to be careful not to pack our schedules too full though... we still want to keep time open to do some other fun things while we're here.
For shame, I haven't been taking a lot of pictures lately. I guess we've been busy doing some of these other things. I will be sure to load some good shots of Logrono getting ready for Christmas sometime soon.
Until later. And have a fantastic Thanksgiving everyone!
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