Keep it Real, CR

This post was supposed to go up yesterday, but for some reason the auto-post didn't work. Here you go: 

Today we left Ciudad Real. We took a train to Madrid with all our suitcases, and after two days in the big city, we head out on a month-long adventure through Italy and Germany. From Berlin we'll fly to Boston for a couple weeks, and then we'll be back in California by the end of July. I know, it seems nuts to me too. 

I think we'll miss a lot of things about living in Spain, but we're pretty excited to be getting home to see family and friends. Also, most of our friends from Ciudad Real have already left for their own travels, and every day here the temperatures have been above 90º Fahrenheit (and will keep climbing until they get to around 110º in August). So basically, it is time to get out of La Mancha.  

As we do so, here's a list of a few things I'm going to miss about Ciudad Real and Spain: 

Las abuelas - Dear little old ladies of Spain, please never change. Keep wearing your fur coats when it's 70 degrees out, yelling at each other for not eating ice cream, cutting in front of me in the grocery line, and befriending me at the bus stop.

Miami Gastro - Our favorite restaurant in CR, I'll miss our waiter friends and how they know my order even before I do. We'll miss their delicious patatas bravas, gourmet mini-burgers, pimientos de Padrón, and much more. Oh, and really good wine by the glass for €1.50. 

RENFE - Convenient and reliable high-speed rail. When will the U.S. catch up?  

Healthcare - Visits to the doctor with no co-pay. Thanks for that one, Spain! 

Cañas - I didn't think I'd get used to it, but I like how they serve beers in tiny glasses here. I don't know why I like it, I just do. 

Students - I'll miss my students. The little ones who ask me hilarious questions about England because they forget I'm American, draw me pictures, beg me to play "Go Fish", and give me detailed accounts of their weekends of football and videogame playing in the best Spanglish ever. I left my English kids' books with them (thanks Mama Dorn for the books!), so hopefully they'll keep reading.  Miguel Angel and Jesus, Alberto and Isabel, Alfonso Jr., Celia and Alonso, and Jose Maria, I hope I run into you someday and we speak English together! 

And with that, I leave you with photos of some of the things and places that have become so familiar to us. Hope you enjoy them, and hope you can catch some of our updates from the road! 

La Dolores is an awesome cafe; we went for cañas on our last day with my boss, Raquel: 

Here's Will and one of his students, Oscar. Will and I got to hold Oscar's 6-week old baby boy, Antonio! 

Campo de Criptana - More Windmills!

Way back in January we went on a fun little day trip with one of the Spanish teachers I work with at school. Fran (Francisca), her husband Miguel Angel, and their four-year old Claudia took us along to see the windmills in Campo de Criptana, a town a little over an hour drive from Ciudad Real.  Here's a photo of Fran and her family. Claudia was more interested in throwing rocks around than posing for a photo:

I help out for two hours a week in Fran's class, which is called F.O.L. and is basically a business skills class. Lately we've been teaching the students about writing cover letters in English, perfecting their resumes and doing mock interviews in English.  F.O.L. is my only class with second-year students in the International Business program. The rest of my classes are with first-years, who are pretty much still learning English basics. The second-years have pretty good English and since some of them are about to head out to internships in England and Ireland, they always have questions for me about what to expect, what kind of clothes to bring, etc. They are probably my favorite group to work with, so I'll be a little sad when I have to say goodbye in a few weeks when they go to their internships! Since they are leaving it also means I won't have a class with Fran anymore, but I'll still see her around at school.

Near the windmills there is a fancy (and touristy) restaurant called Las Musas (The Muses), and this is a painting of a couple of nice old ladies (muses? don't look like Greek goddesses, but whatever) on one of the outside walls of the restaurant:

Here we are enjoying the windmills and blue sky: 

As usual, there were lots of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza tourist attractions around for us to play with: 

I really liked the crisp white and blue paint jobs on most the buildings in town.  Seeing a town all painted white and blue makes me think of Greece or something, like we should be in an ocean side village, not landlocked 4 hours from the sea.  Fran and Miguel Angel told us that in the recent past (maybe 20 years ago or so) all the buildings in this part of Spain were painted blue and white, especially in the smaller towns in the country. During summer it gets well into triple digits in these parts and the white paint helps keep the inside of the houses cool. 

Fran and Miguel Angel took us out to a lovely lunch in town and on the way back to the car we had to stop to take a couple more photos. Notice how different the weather is - it started off a beautiful sunny day with bright blue skies and by the afternoon it was windy and bordering on rain. 

These are a couple photos taken from the top of the hill where the majority of windmills sit looking back at the town below: 

After a sleepy drive back to Ciudad Real, Fran and her family dropped us off at our apartment. It was a pretty fun day hanging out with some Spaniards and getting to see another part of La Mancha! Plus, Claudia was a pretty cute kid to hang out with; though even by the end of the day she was too shy to actually talk directly to us (this is why I have no photos of her facing me). I think she thought the windmills were cool for about 30 seconds, and then started busying herself with the rocks: