Burn, burn, burn.

Tonight marks the night for these giant minarets (or in Spanish, fallas) to burn to the ground. All, that is, except one. The best is saved from the jumping flames and placed in a museum to be admired for the rest of the year. 

I found most of the fallas to be highly entertaining, for example due to the deep crisis, the much talked about politicians of Europe were having their own crisis, but as you can see above, some were just admirations of past heros. 

Your regularly scheduled programming will continue in just a bit.

Until then, a photo of why I've been delayed.

A falla at Las Fallas this weekend in Valencia. 

To be a polygot...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17107435

Cultural Differences.

With the advent of my marathon training, I started adding lemons to my water bottle. I needed to hydrate. Thus my theory was to add chunks of lemon to my bottle and the 8 recommended glasses of water would just vaporize, more or less.

However, the bobbing lemon wedges aroused an odd amount of curiosity. Dare I say an equivalent that I experienced far too often in China, a place where I always felt someone's suspicious eyes on me. To the extent that it wasn't odd to have someone walk over and peak inside my basket. "That's what you're buying?" I only assume they said in Chinese.

But in Spain? Did Spaniards not enjoy el sabor de limón?

Actually, as it turns out, they "enjoy" it, more or less, when they are suffering from diarrhea. Apparently it helps stop the flow. ¡Toma!

This I found out when my boss, Inma, leaned over and whispered, "Are you okay? The other teacher just asked me if you had the runs."

(How I feel/felt--a continuous state)

Great. That explains quite a lot.

On another note, I'm heading to Lisbon, Portugal in three days.

a;lksdjf;alksdjfa!

Running 10 miles today ain't no thing.


(Photo from 2008 visit to the Great Wall, a graphic that led to the real thing, I promise.)

Running with Olives.

I knew marathon training would be tough in a town that is compact like an armario. Training could be mindlessly repetitive, and aptly I'd probably feel akin to a control subject in a rat race.

The problem being my natural tendency to sprawl. A tornado, as my sister phrases it, is my greatest by-product. To those unknown to this phenomenon, it's a pile of shit deposited wherever I have been. And this same spirit applies to running, excepting the deposit of shit. I love to sprawl wherever my legs will take me. Which in Baeza meant past a cathedral or two, up and down the curving brick streets, out to olive oil factory row, past the football field and back home. One hour could easily be burned, but sprawling like this isn't captivating after the first several months. I was like the rat who had already found the cheese, the chase lost its appeal, quickly.

Until, that is, I found another route. Running uphill, once again, I kept running even when the pavement ceased. It turned out to be Baeza's best trail, one that cuts through the olive trees and loops back into Baeza after 5k. An old memorial is among the sights along the way, but more interesting are the occasional workers shaking down the olives (who have since disappeared, the olive oil season is over). It's the essence of Baeza, especially with the old couples strolling through hand in hand.

Fun fact: 10% of the world's olive oil production comes from Jaén province (the smaller province within Andalucía, where I live). If you look at a map, it's quite impressive.

One Week Experiment.

Only Spanish.

¡Adiós inglés!

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