Tour de las Tierras de Campo

This past Sunday, the 14th, three of the Ferrari teachers, myself, and the female dutch teacher took a tour of the western part of the province of Valladolid. The Ferrari teachers wanted the Dutch teacher to see more of Spain and experience what rural life is like and to see typical Castilla castles. They invited me along because they know that I want to see more of Castilla. (Side note: Last Thursday we had a lunch with all the Ferrari teachers and the two Dutch teachers at Alicia's house. We ate "cocido" which is a typical Spanish dish. It was a lot of fun to just hang out and learn about some of the Dutch customs. Plus, I now know how to pronounce the name of the city in Holland where we will be staying. The city is called: Vlaardingen. Hehe....I know!)

So we made a circuit around " Las Tierras de Campo" which means "land of the fields". That is exactly what it looked like, hundreds and hundreds of fields. Since spring is near, some of the fields had a little green and yellow, but still everything was dormant and not growing. We visited 5 different villages, which were very beautiful. I will write a little about every village with the pictures I share with all of you. Enjoy!

Montealegre

El Castillo de Montealegre, which translates to the happy mountain. Valladolid is the only province in Castilla y Leon that doesn't have a mountain so it is funny that the village is called happy mountain, when really the castle is on a high hill. The castle was built during medieval times. Because of where the castle is located, it was extremely windy on the hill; we felt like we were going to be blown off of it!
Miryam, Teresa, Alicia and the Dutch teacher Jeanette sitting in front of the view from the castle.
View from the castle of the landscape around Montealegre and if you notice there is a chimney poking out from the hillside; that's a bodega (wine cellar)...I love that Spaniards still have the tradition of using the old style bodegas.
This is part of the village; it is on the hillside, which is wonderful because they have a beautiful view of the plains and I'm sure they get to see some great sunsets. You know I love my sunsets!

Villalba

In Villalba we didn't actually see the village, but we went to visit the ruins of the old castle. There is very little left as you will see, but the beautiful yellow, tan and brown colors of the stones can still be seen. I'm not sure I've shared this with you before, but I was told by Elisa's father (the father, of one of my students, who took me to see other pueblos of Valladolid) that when the castles were built they were used to protect the citizens of the village if any "intruders" arrived, but after several hundred years they didn't have any use for the castles, so people started taking stones from the castles to build homes, building and churches. That is why there are ruins now in some villages....kind of interesting, huh?
Ruins of the old castle of Villalba.
....more ruins.
Horse stables near the ruins. There is a monastery next to the ruins.
A palomera, which is a home where pigeons (palomas) are raised. These structures were used centuries ago to raise pigeons when there wasn't much food around.
Donkeys....These donkeys were really sweet and let me touch them!!!

Valoria de Alcor-Eco Museum

In the village of Valoria de Alcor there is a very interactive Eco Museum where schools come and have students practice using the farming equipment. They also talk about how to keep our environment clean and take care of it. It is a pretty cool thing they have there. The owners are Teresa's friends and so they let us in to see everything.
View of the Eco Museum.
Some of the horses that are used to work in the fields.
Bee hives...they make their own honey and they show the students how honey is made.
Miryam & Alicia acting as the donkeys...
An old watermill.
Teresa collecting water from the pond.
Even the rabbit was cold!!!

Ampudia

Castle in the town of Ampudia. This castle is a typical Castilla castle with medieval influence.
Ampudia's castle and some bodegas. If you look closely, you can see the entrance to the bodegas are in the hillside.
One of the main squares in Ampudia with a beautiful gazebo in the center.
One of the preserved medieval streets.
La colegiata in Ampudia.
A preserved sign from Franco's time; these were supporters of Franco. It is actually very odd that this is still up on the wall.
View of Ampudia from the castle.

Medina de Rioseco

This sign reads "the street of the bones"...hmmm, I didn't see any bones, but who knows.
This is the "street of the bones".
This is the Flour Making Museum next to the Castilla canal.
This is one of the machines that used to separate the grains by size before making it into flour.
This machine mixes the water and grain to make the flour.
The Castilla canal which runs from Cantabria (northern Spain, the province where I lived in Santander) to the end of the province of Castilla-Leon.
Plaza Mayor in the village Medina de Rioseco.
These are typical candy/pasteries for Semana Santa. If you notice, the brightly colored candies are typical Semana Santa outfits.
This is the old entrance to the village of Medina de Rioseco.
The three Spanish teachers looking at the map of the city.

I hope you enjoyed my pucela adventures.
Lots of Love to all!
Celeste <3

Words of Wisdom

A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.
Albert Einstein

I enjoyed this one very much...hehe. :D

Kids in Love

There is a website I love to look at when I'm bored or trying to pass the time. It is called FOUND and people send in pictures, notes, letters, etc. to this website to have them posted. It is interesting to see what some people find on the floor of a school or stuck between a booth at a diner. Well, I saw this one today and since I'm around young teenagers who seem to have started feeling the "spring fever", I felt it was appropriate to share this note with everyone. It is so sweet...

More pictures from Valladolid

Hi everyone!!!

I recently received some more pictures from when I traveled around the pueblos in Valladolid with one of my student's families. I'm actually in these along with one of my wonderful students from 1ESO, Elisa.
One of the beautiful cathedrals with Romanic and Arabic architecture.
Me taking a picture of the tower of the castle in Torrelobaton.
Me with Elisa on top of Torrelobaton. It has such a beautiful view, even when it is foggy.

Update:
I'm still enjoying being in Spain, although these past few weeks have been a little rough, but it is getting better. I'm still enjoying teaching very much. Actually, I think more so because all my students have been behaving so well for me. I've developed relationships with more of my students and have received more respect from them which is easier when teaching them. :D

Today (Wednesday) a group of Dutch students came from Holland to spend a week with the 4ESO students to practice their Spanish. The Dutch students will attend classes and go on different excursions with the Spanish students.

Then in April (14th-21st) the 4ESO students with Alicia (the 4ESO teacher I work with), Miryam (the History teacher) and I will be joining the 4ESO students in Holland for the entire week!!! They invited me to go with them (I have to pay only for my hotel, everything else is paid for). We will be in a small town south of Rotterdam and I'm very excited to be able to go back to Holland and see a new part of it.

This weekend, Sun. the 14th, I am going to go to a football game in Valladolid with the two Wisconsin girls that are living with us. Real Valladolid is playing against Real Madrid....can you guess who I'm rooting for?

Enjoy your week!
Un beso, Celeste

Happy Valentine's Day!

I'm not a big fan of this day, but nor do I hate it. I just thought I would send you all lots of love from Spain since today is the day of love.

I hope you all enjoy your weekend and I hope you have a beautiful week as well.

Here is a picture of valentines that were made by my youngest students. The lesson was for students to make a valentine for someone in the class and needed to write a "roses are red" poem, but making up the last two lines of the poem. I felt that they did a pretty good job, most of them are very clever.



Wish you all the best!

Love, Celeste

Pueblos Vallesoletanos

So my first trip of the new year was to visit villages around the province of Valladolid. A family of one of my students (Elisa, who I also tutor) offered to take me around Valladolid so that I could learn more about the province. This offer was made in November and I have been excited ever since to go on this trip. The family decided to take me, well, today (Sunday, February 7th).

We left early, around 10am, so that we could have the whole day to visit various villages. Lola (the mom), Maguil (the father), Toby (the dog), Elisa and I went on the trip. It was nice because Maguil knows a lot about Spanish history and architecture so he taught me a great deal about the different villages and churches we visited.

The first place we visited was Wamba. It is a village named after a Visigoth king. The church has Romanic architecture and it also has a crypt of people who died in wars from around the IX century (I'm not hundred percent positive of the century). Unfortunately, there was a lot of fog so we couldn't see much of the valley. It was nice though.
This is the location of the crypt, also known as "El osario".
La iglesia de Wamba
The second village was Torrelobaton. It is placed on a small hill and is very beautiful. All the homes had adobe roofs. In Torrelobaton there was a very tall castle which is called "El Castillo de los Enriquez" which is from the XIII century. We first walked around the castle and then we went inside. There are 3 levels. The first one gave you some basic information about the time period the castle existed. The second level talked about a war that went on and how the castle was used; if invaders came into the village, everyone in the town would go into the castle to stay protected. The third level was the top/wall of the castle, where you can walk around the whole thing. It was really nice. The castle was also built during the Romanic time.
Lola and Elisa at the top of the castle with the tower behind them.
The tower of the castle.
The castle itself.
Elisa climbing the stairs of the castle.
The third village we visited was San Cebrian de Mazote. We didn't enter this village, but we saw it's church, which was beautiful, and by the time we arrived some of the fog had lifted. The church has Romanic and Moorish influence which was very neat to see. The capilla is shaped as an octagon and the church has different angles which made it fun to take pictures of. Running near the church was a very small "river" and a small cascade that led the water to the "river". It was really nice. It was fun to see the dog Toby because he had so much fun running around and being free....hehe.
The church of San Cebrian.
Here you can see a mixture of the two architectural influences. I love this angle.
A view of the village, with Toby in front.
Toby again playing in the "river".
The fourth village we visited was Uruena, which was my favorite. It is a city built within a fortress. Most of the building and homes in Uruena are of Romanic architecture. We walked around it and also on top of the fortress wall. We browsed around the "street of bookstores" and I went into a calligraphy store, which was very cool. In this city we also had a very good meal; I even had a little wine on the side. :)
The rooftops of the homes of Uruena.
The towers of the fortress wall.
A view of the valley of Uruena.
The last place we visited was the village of La Espina (the thorn). Once again, we didn't visit the village, but instead visited a monastery there. La monasterio de Santa Espina is no longer a monastery, but is now used as a school of agriculture. It is very beautiful and the cloister was really nice, too.
The monastery was finished being built in the XVIII century.
One of the cloisters of the monastery with a well in the center.
A small pond behind the monastery where Toby chased a large flock of geese back into the water. It was pretty humorous to see. :D
This was a beautiful wall mural painting of Jesus. What I loved was that when you viewed the painting from a distance, it looked like a mosaic.

We returned back to Valladolid around 5pm. All in all it was a great trip and I loved learning more about the history and province of Valladolid. Plus, it was fun hanging out with Elisa outside of the "school realm". :)

Miss you and lots of love!
Celeste

Ballet + Flamenco = Fun, fun, fun!

First, I want to apologize for not updating my blog in quite some time now. It is just that not a whole lot has been going on and I didn't want to bore anyone about school stories and such, but I'll update more and maybe share what things I have been doing with my students.

During the last weekend of January, a famous ballet/flamenco company came to Valladolid to perform. It sounded interesting so I decided to go and invited Amy (the other American at the school with me) to join me. We went to the first performance, on Thursday, because it was the only day the theater was not sold out and we purchased seats in one of the side, private booths. I had never sat in a booth before and Amy and I thought maybe it would be fun. We sat 4 levels up from the stage so we had to lean over the side of our booth a little to see the stage, but otherwise it was very enjoyable.

The dance company was Balet Nacional de Espana and they performed at Teatro Calderon, which is a beautiful theater. The theater (as I have mentioned it before in another blog post) is absolutely beautiful and has images from famous Spanish plays and playwrights along the ceiling.

The show was very interesting and I really enjoyed it, being someone who isn't found of ballet, but it wasn't classical ballet rather a modern Spanish version of ballet with some influences of flamenco. It was very beautiful and the costumes were great because the dancers dressed up in clothes from different centuries and not in leotards.
This is the view from across our booth. We sat 4 levels up from the main floor.
This dance was more flamenco than ballet, but it wasn't true flamenco.
The chandelier in the theater.
This dance was a mixture of ballet and flamenco. You can tell which dancers danced which part just by looking at their shoes.
I loved the costumes!
Amy and I in our private booth. It seats 5 people, but we were the only ones in it. :)

Amy and I received a wonderful surprise when we were waiting at the entrance of the theater to go in. A student of ours from 2B was there with his mother. It was really nice to see a student outside of class and we talked for a little bit (in English of course). All in all it was a nice evening. :)

Besos, Celeste