Baked Zucchini Sticks & Sweet Onion Dip


I highly encourage all you readers who like cooking to try this recipe for Baked Zucchini Sticks & Sweet Onion Dip. I made it a while back and it was awesome...and healthy! The link above will take you to King Arthur Flour's step-by-step tutorial of how to make it. I followed the recipe to a T except for the fact that I used plain yogurt instead of mayo for the sauce and I didn't have any Panko bread crumbs, so I just used regular ones. If anybody tries it, lemme know how it turns out!

I'm a student again!








As I mentioned before in a previous post, this year I'm gonna be taking a Spanish class at the University of Almería to help me prepare for the DELE, the Spanish proficiency certification exam which is the equivalent of the Cambridge certification for English.











 I started classes on October 10th and have already finished up week 3 of class. So far, I absolutely LOVE IT. Before having started the class I was really feeling like I had plateaued as far as improvement on my Spanish went. I was learning new vocabulary but was still making the same grammar mistakes that I had always made. I knew that in order to continue improving and to perfect my Spanish I would have to go back and study all that complicated grammar that I learned several years ago.

The class started off with reviewing the 4 different past indicative tenses (pretérito perfecto, pretérito indefinido, pretérito imperfecto, and pretérito pluscuamperfecto...those names make it sound way harder than it actually is haha) and I thought, pfff easy schmeasy...piece of cake! Made it through week one of class and then in week 2 it started to get complicated. We started looking at an old exam and I was introduced to the part of the exam I had known was going to be the hardest for me...the questions where you have to figure out the meaning of an expression. Though I actually fared OK on this particular practice exam, I quickly realized that I've got a lot to learn in order to go into that exam confidently. Luckily for me, I've got until May to prepare.

As far as my schedule goes, I've got class every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday from either 4-6 or 5-7 depending on the day. The bad part is, the days that I have class from 4-6, I get home from Rioja at 3ish, eat lunch as fast as humanly possible, and run to the bus stop to catch the bus for the University at 3:30ish--hardly have time to breathe. And catching that bus is another story. It appears that nearly all afternoon classes start at 4, so the buses at 3:30 are packed to the absolute maximum. On more than one occasion I've been crammed in so tightly that I was pressed up against like 3 different people and I couldn't even have raised my arm to scratch my nose if I had wanted to. It's ridiculous. Not sure why they don't more often run extra buses at that hour, but that's Spain for ya.

I'm really enjoying not only the class, but being back on a college campus. The University of Almeria (or UAL) is apparently one of few universities in Spain that has what we as Americans consider to be a real "college campus feel." That is, most universities here have, for example, the college of humanities in one part of the city, the college of natural sciences in another, and the college of arts in another, etc. The UAL has all of the colleges (minus one, relaciones laborales, which happens to be what Juanmi is studying) all in one place, making it basically like any American college. The only thing it's lacking is on campus-housing, but that's basically unheard of here from what I understand. The UAL has about 12,000 students so it's quite a different feel from what I'm used to, but in a good way. Oh, and as you can see in the above photo, it happens to sit right on the shore of the Mediterranean. I suppose I can get used to this :)


A Texas X-mas it will be!

http://www.dakotaskabin.com/Christmas%20Ornaments/texas_star_christmas_ornament.jpg

I'm excited to share that I have officially bought my plane ticket to come back to Texas for Christmas! I'll be getting in to Houston the evening of Thursday, December 15th and staying until Sunday, January 8th! More than 3 weeks :) The trip to Texas is gonna suck because I'll get to Madrid from Almería at 11PM and my flight doesn't leave until 11:30AM, but oh well!

I'll definitely be hitting Austin a couple of days but the rest of the time I'll more than likely be spending in the Galveston/Houston area. Anyone who's gonna be free/in the area at that time, let me know because I wanna see as many of y'all as possible while I'm back! 

Now let's get to planning activities, friends! Who's got ideas??? 

A new Tuesday routine?


While I was originally bummed about my schedule for this year and having to work Fridays, I'm actually really liking it so far. Last week, I got Yolanda to change it so that I don't start til 10:30 on Thursday (I can take the bus if I want an extra hour of sleep or I can get there early and work on other stuff) and I finish at 11:30 on Tuesday.

Today being my first Tuesday to work this new modified schedule, I had to figure out how I was gonna get back to Almería so as to take advantage of the 2 and a half hours of free time I don't normally have. The bus schedule says that the bus passes through Rioja at 11:35, however I learned last year that what the schedule says is rarely true. Instead of sitting at the bus stop and waiting to see if it would actually come at that time, if it would come later, or if it had already passed me, I decided to kill two birds with one stone. I would run from Rioja to Almería...get in my exercise for the day and not waste my precious free time!

A couple of teachers told me I was crazy and I just avoided telling the rest of them to avoid the same reaction. I snuck out at around 11:45 and took off. Seemed like a great idea at first and I was proud of myself for having thought of such an efficient way to use my time. However, about 2 minutes into the run when I got off of Rioja's main road, I realized, oh yeah, this whole entire road is really narrow, hilly, and curvy. Maybe I should've thought of that before? Oh well, too late now!

And I went on.



The map of my route, but in reverse
Feels a hell of a lot shorter in the morning by car

Basically, I spent the following hour and a half playing a real life version of Frogger (sorry to steal your comparison Chris!) which, luckily for me, had much fewer cars. Every time the miniscule shoulder narrowed to an almost non-existent one, I would wait for the cars to pass and quickly jet to the other side of the road or I would get as close to the edge as I could without running into the wall or guard rail. Every time the road curved a different way, I would get on the outside of the curve so the oncoming cars had a better chance of seeing me. On several occasions the drivers coming at me felt the need to honk like right as they were passing me. I'm still unsure as to whether the majority were "hey good-lookin'" honks or "hey idiot, get out of the road" honks. Either way, they were so loud that every time I just about fell off the road and into one of the many greenhouses that lines the route.

Aside from a few scratches from running through brush, I made it to Almería unscathed. I completed what Google told me was a 16.2 km route, the equivalente of 10 miles, in an hour and 25 minutes. Not too shabby considering that the route was totally unfamiliar and very clearly not intended for running.

From this experience, I have drawn one conclusion and I'm just gonna go ahead and call this one ahead of time. The first injury that I sustain in Spain will be from getting hit by a car. Let's face it, me getting hit bit a moving vehicle has been a long time coming. Since Italy, right Lumphead? ;) Haha totally kidding (Mom...haha). I'm actually really careful and safe when I run. I promise!

Now that I've done it once and I've got an idea of what it's like, we'll see if I make it a permanent part of the Tuesday routine. I'm thinking that next week I'll take the much less stressful option of waiting it out at the bus stop to see what time the bus actually comes so that I have 2 choices the following week.

Halloween's just around the corner!


With Halloween being just under 2 weeks away, we've already started prepping for the festivities that are to ensue at CEIP Antonio Devalque! Since November 1 is a holiday in Spain (día de todos los santos aka All Saints' Day) and it is a Tuesday, naturally, it's only logical for us to have that Monday, Halloween, off from work too (typical Spain)! As such, we will be celebrating at school on Friday the 28th.

Since the commercialized Halloween as we Americans know it hasn't fully arrived in Spain yet, pumpkins are not mass-grown here and are, thus, a lot harder to find. Yolanda came across one in her sister-in-law's garden in Granada and decided she would bring it to school for the kiddos to carve. Wait, I take that back. For me to carve. Since hardly anyone here has ever carved a pumpkin (what sad childhoods they must've had, right?), I was deemed the designated pumpkin carver. Since we only had one pumpkin for the whole school, I carved it one step at a time with each class either watching me or helping me with that part. With the 5th graders, I cut the hole in the top. The 4th graders got the best part...they got to help me de-seed the pumpkin! Yolanda got some good pictures of the funny faces they were making as they reached into a pumpkin for, what was for most of them, the first time ever at age 10! Next with my little ones, the 2nd graders, I drew the face on the front and cut out a single eye...had to save the rest of the cutting for other classes! That was as far as we got the first day but I'm assuming we'll finish carving it tomorrow or Thursday.

As for the rest of the preparation, I'm making a Powerpoint about Halloween history, traditions, and customs in the US (super-dumbed down haha), trying to come up with some Halloween games for the party next Friday, and preparing a Halloween story to read to the kids.

Any of you Trinity people remember any games from the Halloween Carnival that I might easily be able to put together by next Friday? Also does anyone remember any Halloween stories/short books from when they were little that might be conducive to a short 30 min-1 hour activity? The floor is now open to suggestions so comment them here! Thanks in advance :)

Sunday daytrip: Las Rozas


 
Instead of spending last Sunday lazing around the house as usual, I actually did something fun! A group of 11 of us went to a beautiful, peaceful little place up in the mountains called Las Rozas. It's about an hour away from Almería just outside of a little town called Abrucena.


We loaded up the cars and left Almería around noon to get there at about 1. The guys immediately started gathering sticks and such for the BBQ pit while we girls went down to check out the "river," which like all the other rivers that I've seen here in Andalucía, was essentially dried up. We hiked around a bit and managed to get some really good pictures. I didn't have my camera or my phone with me so I had to steal pictures from María Jesús, the picture queen! 


While we were exploring the guys had been grilling, and shortly after coming back, we enjoyed a nice little lunch of ribs, pork loin, burgers, and chorizo. Mmmmm so healthy!





                                            The girls awaiting the BBQ
                     (L to R), Me María Jesús, Trini, Ana (I think? haha), and Stefi




After lunch and little down time to let our food digest, we headed over to a small basketball court to play 21 (of course with a soccer ball...ughhh). Despite the fact that I was in a little sun dress and flip-flops, I got second place! The guys were impressed with the fact that I actually knew how to shoot and it was, of course, because I come from the land of the NBA haha.


During the game of 21, somebody got the ball stuck in the tree. In the process of trying to knock it out by throwing big rocks at it and shaking the tree, a rock a little bigger than the size of a softball fell from the tree and hit Vicente in the face! It was scary at first because we all thought he was gonna be like bleeding profusely, but he just had 2 cuts, one on his forehead and one on his nose. Reminded me of the time I ate it on 6th street and had enormous scrapes on my face the day before starting my new job as a waitress at a restaurant in Georgetown hahaha!




The guys getting ready to cook                                        
(L to R): Vicente, Javi, JuanFra, Alberto, Manolo, and Endika in front             


Much to the guys' liking and my disliking, once all the little kids got off the pista de fútbol sala (a concrete "soccer field" that's about the size of a basketball court or maybe a little smaller), we moved up there to play some soccer. I would've much rather kept playing basketball as I actually know how to play, but of course, as I was with 10 Spaniards, there was no chance of me NOT getting outvoted.

We played soccer for about an hour or so and I sucked more than usual thanks largely in part to my attire and footwear. No one mentioned to me that there was a basketball court or soccer field before we left...in fact, all I knew was that there was a river, so I came in bathing suit and all! haha oops. When we finished playing soccer around 6PM, we cleaned up, packed up, and headed out so all the guys could get back in time to shower and head to the stadium to watch the Almería game.


While I had woken up that morning without much desire to go to Las Rozas, I was definitely glad that I did. The weather was perfect, it was relaxing, and the change of scenery from the beach to the mountains was nice. I hope that we continue to plan little outings like this so I can see more of Almería province. And next time, I'll be more appropriately dressed!




Cooking! yummm

 

Stefi and I at one of the few places where there was actually water in the river


Say Patataaas! (in Spain it's "patatas" instead of "cheese")

Wanna help me decorate my room?


Cool new "clothesline" photo-hanging decoration in my room :)

Did you make the cut?? Send me pictures/letters/whatever you want and I'll hang 'em.

My address is...

C/Santiago 26, Portal 2, 3º4
04006 Almería (Almería)
Spain

Felicidades Mom!



HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the best Mom in the world!

Love and miss you so much!

A case of the Mondays


Today was a
spilled coffee 



&
broken mirror 


 
 

kinda day


Back to school!

This past Tuesday was the first day for me to be back at CEIP Antonio Devalque in Rioja! Upon arrival, everything looked the exact same...most of the teachers remained in their same classrooms with their same students and simply changed the label on the door to reflect the students' new classification. While physically, the place looked almost identical to last year, I quickly realized that things were actually quite a bit different.

First, there are lots of new teachers. In ESO (7th and 8th grade), the French teacher, Ana, is new as well as the English teacher, África. The religion teacher whose name I can't currently remember is new as well. And in PRIMARIA (elementary school), Jose Luis is the new teacher for the first graders (the kindergarteners from last year). Also, Yolanda is no longer just the English teacher and bilingual coordinator, she is also the homeroom teacher for the 6th graders.

As a fairly new bilingual school, last year we had only one officially "bilingual" class, the first grade. From what I understand of how the system works, each year we add one more bilingual teacher until eventually, all grades are receiving not only English classes but also science, art, and other lessons in  English as well as Spanish.

This year, the new bilingual class is the new first grade (the old first graders are still bilingual with their same teacher but now as second graders) and their teacher, Jose Luis, speaks English really well! He's been in a bilingual school for like the last 6 years, so I'm really excited to work with him. In only the first week, I've already seen that he's full of great ideas and has built up a store of great resources! Additionally, he's really funny and good with the kids. The difference in their understanding of and ability to pronounce English from last year to this year is already very noticeable. They're going to learn a TON.

While I always talk about how the level of English is really low in Rioja and Almería in general, watching this program evolve gives me lots of hope for the future of these kids and for the spread of the English language throughout Spain. Provided that the LA CRISIS, or economic crisis, does not interfere with the funding of this project (it seems that this is increasingly becoming the excuse for everything, from rationalizing cuts in spending and decreased wages throughout the country to satisfying customer complaints..."I'm sorry that you've had to wait in line so long sir, but because of the crisis, we just can't afford another worker"), I see these kids becoming not only wildly successful in understanding and speaking English, but also motivated to continue studying the language as it will almost definitely come easily to them after so much time in a bilingual classroom. 

Now, the unfortunate part of this post. Since the two bilingual classes cover a lot of the same material, Valeria and Jose Luis are joining forces and combining their classes twice a week for both art and science. As the bilingual classes are my primary responsibility I've got to be there for those lessons, and it just so happens that they fall on Wednesdays and Fridays. Sooo, that means that this year I'll be working Tuesday-Friday instead of Monday-Thursday like last year. It's a bummer, but I'm sure I'll get used to it quickly. Right now I'm actually not hating it that much because Friday's I have really good classes ANDDD just by coincidence, my first weekend will be a 5-day-weekend. I don't work Monday, then Tuesday I have to go to the Oficina de extranjería to get my fingerprints done for my new residence card, and then Wednesday is a national holiday. Sooo, no work til next Thursday...I'll take it!

Overall, I actually really enjoyed my first week back at work! I'm really excited for this year as I'm getting to spend a ton of time with the two bilingual classes. Also, having an hour a week to coordinate with Valeria and Jose Luis is going to make our lessons even more productive and I can already tell that we're going to come up with some really fun activities and projects for the kids. Next week, I'll post pictures of the first project we've been working on this week because it's looking like it's gonna turn out really well!

                 "In Andalucía, educational centers open their doors"

Graffiti Almeriense: Beetlejuice!


Recipe of the day: Healthy Banana Bread


What to do with that banana that's turned all brown and mushy? Don't throw it away like Endika almost did with mine. Instead, make banana bread! Those "bad" brown bananas are the perfect candidates for banana bread because they're sweeter than their fresher, yellow-green counterparts. Plus, to make it, you've gotta mash the bananas up anyway, so the mushy texture actually lends itself quite well to that.

In searching for a healthier way to make banana bread, I came across this recipe for Eileen's Best Banana Bread on the Cooking Light website. Much to my surprise, I was able to find both whole wheat flower and fIaxseed at CARREFOUR, so I followed the recipe nearly exactly with a couple of tiny changes.

To cut the amount of oil used from 1/4 cup to about a tablespoon, I added an extra half to quarter cup of mashed bananas and a few extra teaspoons of plain yogurt (also, I used Greek yogurt instead of regular...don't know how using regular yogurt might have affected it). Depending upon how ripe your bananas are (the riper they are the sweeter they are), you can also cut down on the amount of sugar used. Using one super-ripe, completely brown banana and the rest still a little green a the top, I was able to use a half cup instead of the recommended 3/4 cup, and my final product was plenty sweet. Also, I added about a teaspoon of vanilla, a teaspoon of cinnamon, and a half teaspoon of nutmeg.

Before 2 days ago, I had never made banana bread, so I can't say whether or not this is the best recipe but it is certainly healthier. And the results were LEGIT. It turned out really moist and the consistency was perfect. Even Endika, who swore he wouldn't as much as try it since I had added the banana that was SUPER-PODRIDO (super-rotten), ended up liking it. Give this recipe a shot the next time you let your bananas sit for too long!

Recipe of the day: Homemade Tzatziki

I had some leftover ground turkey the other day and so I decided to make turkey burgers. When I came across a recipe for Spinach and Feta Turkey Burgers, someone had commented that they were especially good served with tzatziki sauce. Since I had plenty of spare time, I decided I'd try my hand at some homemade tzatziki to go along with my burgers.

What is tzatziki you ask? If you've ever had a gyro or some other Greek food, you've probably tried it. It's the cucumber-yogurt sauce that is spread on the pita bread of a gyro. The recipe I used was based on THIS ONE, but I made a few changes to make it faster and simpler. Here's what I used...

Ingredients:
1 cup plain Greek Yogurt
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper
2 Tbsp fresh mint leaves, chopped
1 medium cucumber, peeled, seeded, and shredded
Lemon juice, to taste

The original recipe calls for regular plain yogurt and tells you to let it sit for a few hours over a "cheese cloth" (so fancy I don't even know what that is) so that the liquid drains off of it. But come one now, nobody has time for all that. Instead just use plain Greek yogurt as it's considerably thicker and you won't have to strain it at all. Next, peel the cucumber, cut it in half, length-wise, and de-seed it with a spoon. Shred the cucumber with a cheese grater and squeeze it to remove excess liquid. Don't skip this step or the sauce will turn out too watery. Chop up the remaining ingredients and mix all together. Last, add lemon juice to taste. To me, the lemon juice was the most important ingredient as the sauce seemed a little too sweet/minty without it.

When you're done mixing, you have to let it sit at least a couple hours before it really starts to taste like the real thing. I tried it immediately after adding the lemon juice and thought it was just ok. The next day when I tried it again it was WAYY better and tasted almost exactly like restaurant made tzatziki.

The sauce was a surprisingly good combo with the turkey burgers, but the next time I make it I'm definitely gonna try to make my own gyro meat too. Stay tuned for more recipes...next one I'll post is a healthier version of banana bread! Yummmm

Graffiti almeriense


I came across this graffiti today on my way back from the grocery store and thought it was funny. Mini-Barack Obama's falling down the stairs? Haven't quite figured out the political statement somebody's trying to make here haha. I thought they liked Obama here in socialist Spain...

Beach day...or was it a desert day?


Dunes at la playa de los genoveses, San Jose
Looks more like a desert than a beach from this angle

http://www.guiadeviaje.net/espana/playa-genoveses.htmlYesterday, as I was hoping, was a beach day! And I was lucky enough not to just go to el Zapillo, the beach here in Almería, but to one of the beautiful, secluded, virgin beaches in the nearby Parque Natural de Cabo de Gata. This beach is called Playa de los genoveses, meaning "Beach of the Genoese" (that's what you call people from Genoa, Italy), and is located just outside the quiet little summer-vacationing town of San Jose, Almería. In the aerial photo to the right, you can see the town of San Jose in the bottom right and the crescent-shaped beach of Genoveses to its left.

To me, one of the coolest things about this beach and the natural park in general is how diverse the landscape is. Standing on the shore and looking out at the water, it looks like a normal beach, almost Carribean except for the surrounding mountains.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4062/4484330881_62f8f337a5.jpgThen you turn around to look at the dunes and suddenly you feel like you're in the middle of the desert. The sand is windblown and rippled and there are agave plants every 5-10 feet or so (visible in the photo at left and faintly in the background of my photo of the dunes above). Fun fact about these plants: they're also known as century plants because they have to grow for many years before they flower, which they do only once in their lifetime and then they die. Also, Endika's sister, a science teacher in a nearby town, told me a long while back that they are not AT ALL native to Spain. They were, in fact, brought back by Columbus and early conquistadors and in this region of Spain have come to be considered INVASORES or "invaders" because of their abundance and ease of propagation in this climate.

Anyway, then, on your way out, a few hundred yards from the shore, you turn around and it's totally green...which, by the way, is something VERY rare to see especially in this region which is the sunniest and driest in all of Spain. It's incredible to me that you can see such variation in such a small space.

Almería is one of the few places in Spain where you'll find such a well preserved, sparsely urbanized natural park such as this one. Aside from government restrictions on construction, probably the main reason this park remains so unscathed by the ever-increasing presence of technology and people is its difficulty of access. Many of the little coves along this coast are accessed only by footpaths that climb up and over the small coastal mountains. In rare cases, there are little dirt roads that are only wide enough for one car at a time or even ones that close to traffic after a certain hour. As people become lazier and lazier, fewer people are willing to make the trek out to these coves. However, to the adventurous and those looking for tranquility, this only adds to the allure.

From what I've been told, these secluded virgin beaches are not even very well known throughout Spain, and as such, they remain almost a secret. For that reason, little towns like San Jose and Las Negras which dot the coastline of the park, are considered perfect quiet summer hideaways for Madrileños and other big city folk. For me, it's always a treat to get out of the city and honestly, I can't think of a better daytrip destination than the region of Cabo de Gata/San Jose. To anyone who's planning a visit outside of the "winter" months of Nov-Mar, we will be hitting this destination, so get excited! As for me, I'm off to try and get the sand out of my ears for like the third time.

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