"If you've got drugs on you, at customs they'll do the wave for you and the dogs will let you pet them."

If you'll recall my first favorite purchase of the year was the box fan that I bought in August when I, the Galveston, Texas native, thought I was gonna have a heat stroke. When it started getting cold, my new favorite purchase was my down comforter. Well, it's gotten colder still and I'm ready for a new favorite purchase...a space heater!

I really shouldn't complain because relatively speaking it's not cold at all. I even went running today in shorts and a tank top...I'd just like to clarify it's December 13th! The problem is there's no AC/heat in my house (or in most houses here) and I've got a huge window in my room that doesn't seal very well. Couple that with the lack of carpet and that makes for some cold feet (despite that I'm currently wearing 2 pairs of socks and slippers) and thus a cold rest of the body. Sometimes I consider going outside because I honestly think it might be warmer there.






As I have been freezing lately, when I stumbled across this recipe for The Best Tomato Basil Soup I thought it would be the perfect way to thaw myself from the inside out. Good choice. It is legit. I even eliminated the only unhealthy element by substituting the heavy cream with none other than my favorite, unsweetened Greek yogurt. Also, considering that Almería is one of the most important producers and exporters of tomatoes in all of Europe, I took advantage of those fresh tomatoes (they're seriously the best tomatoes ever...I didn't like tomatoes before coming to Spain and now I eat them almost every day) instead of using canned as the recipe suggests. Cold weather getting to ya? Try this! It won't disappoint!

The Best Tomato Basil Soup
My picture wasn't as pretty as this one so I "borrowed" it from the blog where the recipe came from

Cabo de Gata is truly unique. Every time I go there, I find myself even more impressed than the time before. This Monday, since we had a holiday, Jenny, Brenna, Brenna's roommate, 3 French girls that are also auxiliares de conversación, and I decided to hacer senderismo (go hiking) in Cabo de Gata. We met up at 10:15 that morning and drove out to where we were going to leave the cars. The road up the mountain was windy and EXTREMELY narrow. Jenny had to honk going around all the curves just in case another car was coming so we wouldn't have collision. 

We got up to the top and started the hike down the mountain along a dirt road. Once we got to the bottom where the beaches started, we decided to take a more difficult route with views of the water. Since I had hiked the area once before with Endika and his sister, I told everyone it wasn't that hard and that we should do it. They all agreed and we started along the trail.

 View from the beginning of the hike                                

Group shot near the beginning of the hike
Photo by Jenny

Photo by Jenny

This picture was taken from the same beach pictured above but facing away from the sea. The contrast is incredible. Gotta be one of my favorite things about this place. It's got a little bit of everything.
Photo by Jenny

The agave plants I wrote about in my last post about Cabo de Gata
Photo by Jenny

La playa de monsul
David Bisbal, a famous Almerían pop singer filmed part of one of his music videos here, so everyone knows it as "the beach where Bisbal shot his video" instead of Monsul

Once we had passed Monsul, I knew that we would have to cross at least one more mountain before getting to Genoveses, the place where we had decided we'd eat. However, I didn't remember the route as well as I thought because as it turned out we had to cross like 3 more haha. I kept saying, "Yeah, it's just on the other side of this next one!" And I kept being wrong haha. I'm pretty sure at one point Brenna and some of the others were about ready to kill me. Every time we got to the top of the mountain and I was wrong, Jenny and I just laughed--as discreetly as possible so as not to piss off the others. 

Note the cool volcanic rock in front of us

This picture and all those that follow (minus the last one) are stolen from Jenny

This was the part where Brenna freaked out because there wasn't a "path" anymore haha
According to her, at this point we weren't hiking, we were scaling a mountain hahah
Also, the very last mountain in the background with a tiny little dot on top is where we started!

A cool-looking dune with volcanic rock in the background

Finally, at mountain number 4, I reached the top, looked out across the field of green and saw THIS! This is Genoveses, the same beach I went to and wrote about in the old blog post I linked above. Everyone was pumped we had finally found it and with a view like this, any possible resentment that anyone was harboring against me melted away haha. We hiked down to the beach and camped out to eat before heading back towards the cars.

Lunch! The total hike time to get here was 3 hours and the total number of mountains climbed was 4! Go us!

After we finished lunch, we rested for about 20 or 30 minutes and then headed back. Instead of reclimbing all the mountains, we took the dirt road on which we had initially started. The total hike time to get back to the cars was only about an hour and a half and the path was like 80 times easier. When we got to the cars, we decided we'd make one last stop at the lighthouse which was at the bottom at the windy road we had driven up earlier. Jenny said we couldn't miss seeing El arrecife de las sirenas. I was super glad we stopped there because this is what we saw...

 
Arrecife de las sirenas, view from the lighthouse

Literally "The Mermaid's Reef," this place was named for the seals that used to perch themselves on the rocks and make noise (what do seals do? bark? howl?) which the fishermen believed sounded like the singing of mermaids. Another interesting tidbit is that this is the absolute southernmost point of Europe. Pretty cool huh? I had seen pictures of this many-a-time because it's the first thing that pops up when you Google "Cabo de Gata," but I had never actually seen it in person. It is SO cool and this picture doesn't do it justice. The same can be said for the entire natural park. You really can't understand how beautiful it is just from looking at pictures. I wish every single one of y'all could experience how amazing it is in person. So, let me know when you're coming to visit ;)

This past weekend I went to Málaga to hang out with Jose and to visit my old host parents Paco and Maricruz who I hadn't seen since last May when Hana and I went to visit them. I hadn't been in Málaga since the feria in August, so it was a nice change of scenery.











I caught the bus on Friday right after work and that night we just stayed in, cooked dinner, and then walked around a bit to look at the Christmas lights before it started raining on us. The Christmas lights downtown are seriously impressive. Even the narrowest of streets have some sort of design of lights strung up between the buildings. Calle Larios, the main drag pictured right, was, to me, bar far the most impressive. At the end of Calle Larios when you get to La plaza de la constitución there's a huge Christmas tree made of lights and a couple of elephant-sized ornaments with which everyone takes pictures. Paseo de la Alameda, the other main road which runs perpendicular to Calle Larios, reminded me a lot of America as it had all the big trees wrapped in lights as well as hanging lights. Jose told me that the City of Málaga spends a million euros every Christmas installing and maintaining all the Christmas lights in the downtown area!

The next day, we went and ate a typical Spanish breakfast, chocolate con churros at the famous Malagueñan establishment Casa de Aranda. That's right, CHURROS. Those delicious fried sticks of dough that you can only ever remember eating at Disney World or Astroworld. They may or may not have on one occasion made your mouth bleed? HAHAHAH Ashley! Afterwards we walked around some more and Jose did a little shopping. Then we went to the mercado and bought some fresh fruit and vegetables for later on that day.

After lunch we walked around again. This time we went down by the port (pictured left) where a jeque, or sheikh (AKA a super wealthy Arabic guy), has recently financed the building of a really cool park and a strip-center-like building with a ton of new shops and restaurants that face directly out to the water. He's also building a mall between the park and the strip center. I can't even begin to imagine how loaded this guy is.

After this I went directly to meet up with Paco and Maricruz who were already downtown. They asked me where I wanted to go and I told them that they should decide since I didn't really know of too many places. I sure am glad I said that because they  took me to the most incredible place. There's a hotel called Hotel AC that's right in the heart of downtown along Paseo del Parque with a restaurant/terrace on the 15th floor. They took me up there and we sat outside for 3 hours having a drink, catching up, and enjoying the beautiful scenery and sunset. The only thing missing was a little bit of Hana Morton. We missed you, Hana!

The Alcazaba or old Moorish fortress can be seen on the first hill

Downtown
I love how the city isn't just a giant grid but a maze of winding streets and different colored rooftops

Sunset over the city. Stunning.

After spending the afternoon with Paco and Maricruz I went back to Jose's and got ready to go out. Jose, his roommate Juane, Juane's two friends, Jose's cousin Kristina, and I all went out to dinner then went back to his apartment for a bit before hitting the town. I had a really good time chatting with Kristina and just being out in Málaga as I hadn't been there in a super long time. Overall it was a GREAT weekend and when I get back to Spain in January, I'll have to start planning another visit! Below are a couple more pictures I took that I thought were cool. See you soon Málaga!

The outline of the cathedral against the blue sky

A cool old tree that Jose found tucked away in a random little nook of the city

Like in the states, November is election month in Spain. Earlier this month, the reigning socialist president, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (of the political party PSOE = Partido Socialista Obrero Español = Spanish Socialist Worker's Party) was replaced by the candidate of the Partido Popular (the People's Party), Mariano Rajoy. Rajoy will be only the country's SIXTH president as Spain was under the control of dictator Fransisco Franco until the mid 1970's. 

In order to teach the kids at school a little something about voting and democracy, we had a little election of our own. Our mini-election was a contest to see who could design the best logo for the school. The logo would be placed atop the letterhead on all the school's official newsletters. 

Everyone drew a picture and then two finalists from each class were chosen. The finalist's illustrations were numbered and placed in the hallway for everyone to observe. Then on Friday, a few kids from 2º de ESO (8th grade) set up the mesa electoral, or voter's table, in the entryway of the school and the kids went out class by class, presented their "Antonio Devalque Voter's Registration Cards," had their names checked off the list, and placed their ballots in the ballot box. Later, the last hour of the day, we had a short presentation and a counting of the ballots to see whose logo would be judged the winner. The winning logo is the one pictured at left, by a student from 2º de ESO.

The poster with all the potential logos.
Title: "Let's choose our logo"

2nd place...Rioja's famous bridge, books, and the nearby mountain in the background

3rd place...two McDonald's arches and a Christmas star on top? haha just kidding
The bridge, an orange tree, and still no idea why there's a star

The winner with his logo.

This is the one I voted for...super creative! Designed by a 5th grader

Two Fridays ago, the club de vehículos antiguos de Almería (The Old Vehicle Club of Almería) stopped in Rioja as part of its 22nd annual ruta de automóviles antiguos. We got about an hour and a half break from classes to walk down to the park and see all the old cars. I took a bunch of pictures but I don't really know what make any of the cars are. The only thing I really remember was that the oldest car was a restored Ford from 1926. Enjoy the pics!   

 

One guy even let the kids sit in his car. Brave guy. I wouldn't let them near anything of value. They were super excited though and surprisingly managed to not any damage.