I was stunned to look at my calendar today and learn it is the 1st of December, and even more stunned to realize this week will mark the end of my second month in Spain, meaning the NALCAP program is about 1/4 done. Wowza.
Picking up where I left off in the last post, after my evening with Ernesto at the famous Güemes hostel, I welcomed the cool morning and began walking to Santander. A quick aside here, since I’ve told some people about my weekend I’ve learned that Ernesto is a legend within the region. One guy told me he is one of the top three best people in Cantabria. Apparently he is basically a leftist Jesuit activist (with the activism side of things waning due to his old age), who does and organizes a plethora of charity work around Cantabria. His life story is pretty incredible. Here is a link to an interview done with him if you are interested. It is in Spanish, so you have to translate it: https://www.desnivel.com/excursionismo/ernesto-bustio-peregrino-de-la-vida/. Would have absolutely loved to have been able to talk to him without a language barrier.
The weather has been very good and unseasonably warm (#climatechange) this winter, and last weekend was no exception. It was a great day of walking on Friday, and so too on Saturday. And though only two days, it gave me a taste of the type of trail to Camino del Norte is; some days, like Friday, you walk on streets and roads, through small towns and farmsteads, and other days, like Saturday, you find yourself walking on a bluff’s narrow sand path, with the Cantabrian Sea crashing down on the rocks below. It is a neat diversity of scenery, and seems to keep things interesting, quite different than a trail like the AT, where you may have the same looking forest and trail for days and weeks. But I’d probably make a distinction and say the AT is a true trail; the Camino is more of a path. Alas, a semantics lesson for another time.
My plan was to get into Santander on Saturday and go to one of the climbing gyms nearby there, as I brought my climbing shoes the whole way. Across the bay from Santander is Sardinero, a really popular surfing spot and pleasant conglomeration of beach stores and restaurants, so before taking the ferry to Santander (how the main route of the Camino directs you; I could have walked around the bay to Santander but it adds a couple extra hours) I got a beer and hung out there for a little.
Waiting for the ferry, I came across an Irish couple and we got to chatting. They were extremely amiable (and maybe high? Both had bloodshot eyes and the lady was continuously puffing what looked like a vape but may well have been weed. They looked to be in their 70s) and good to talk English. I got to Santander late afternoon, and after texting in the Auxiliar climbing group chat (I was planning to go with some of the other NALCAP participants), I learned the gym was closed for a competition. Bummer.
I couldn’t get a bus back to Santoña until 8 P.M., so I found somewhere to eat my remaining hiking rations and read a little. It being a Saturday in the big city, I was hopeful some of the other auxes were doing something and I could meet them (one of the issues of living in Santoña is I can’t meet the people in my program easily, and I have’t been the best about trying to, so I was hoping to rectify this). Thankfully, some people in the climbing chat said they were getting a beer and I walked over to meet them.
They were a couple who had moved from Colorado Springs, both a year or two older than me, and we got along capitally. We chatted for an hour or two before I told them I regretfully had to leave to catch my bus. As it happened, they had an extra room in their flat and invited me to stay, which I gladly accepted. I had a great night in the city with them, going to a few different bars the highlight of which was a speakeasy bar themed as American Prohibition, which you had to go behind a revolving bookcase to enter (I ordered some sort of whisky sour and it was legitimately served in a small bathtub. It was a disgustingly sweet drink and I felt pretty ridiculous drinking it, but was nonetheless memorable).
Sunday, I returned to Santoña and worked on some Spanish. On Monday, my teacher friend Cris came over because she wanted to teach me how to cook the merluza (hake) that I had bought and frozen. I dried the fillets, seasoned a little, and then breaded them with flour before soaking in some egg. Cooked over hot oil in a skillet. They turned out delicious, white, moist and flaky, similar to cod but better. The next day I just seasoned and grilled the remaining fillets to put in a pasta dish, and they were just as good that way too. Will be buying some more hake in the future.
My school week was nearly entirely Thanksgiving presentations. I made two different ones for the different levels of English, and had the kids write things they were thankful for and why at the end. If we had time we did an activity with naming different Thanksgiving foods too. Everyone especially liked the Black Friday compilation videos I included in the slides, which showed the singularly American lunacy regarding sales and shopping (a lunacy that, as some of the clips showed, bordered on violence). The teachers were equally in awe/disturbance after watching.
It was fun to do the Thanksgiving stuff because I had it planned out and could present it well, but it definitely got repetitive for me by the end. And just generally it seems clear to me that lectures/presentations are not a very effective way of teaching. Kids are going to zone out no matter how engaging you try to make it. The reverse classroom method/discussion-based teaching is so much better; I thought so as I student and I doubly think so as a teacher. They do it some with the older kids at the school, and it allows me and the teacher to help smaller groups and individuals with their English (and they can help each other too), as opposed to lecturing information.
Cris and some of the other English teachers wanted me to have a proper Thanksgiving, so they organized a lunch on Thursday after class. It ended up only being three of us total, but it was a superb meal. Because turkey isn’t really a Spanish cuisine item, Cris managed to get the chef to cook some duck paired with a cranberry sauce, with a potato dish to start. We had an apple pie tart + ice cream, and a sort of bread pudding for dessert. About as Thanksgiving as Spanish cuisine can get. Everything was delicious, and I told them how thankful I was for their thoughtfulness and generosity. I’m lucky to have good teachers at my school, not only as co-workers but as friends too. This is certainly not always a given for the auxes.
This weekend, I have caught up on a few things and been laying low. I finished Anna Karenina yesterday which was satisfying (9.1/10 as I see it now. Phenomenal book, and Tolstoy is certainly a master at the craft of storytelling. Something about the ending seemed abrupt and left me unsatisfied, but I need to think some more to put my finger on it). I am going to the Canary Islands this Thursday with an Apogee co-worker who is working in Granada and a W&L buddy who is working in Galicia (world collision), which should be a big and eventful weekend.
I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and is in good spirits as we enter the thick of the holiday season. My seasonal recommendations are as follows:
Book: Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol. I read for the first time last year and it really moved me. Have pledged to try and make it a personal Christmas tradition to read it every year.
Music: Vince Guaraldi’s Christmas music (“Christmas Time is Here”), Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, Handel’s Messiah. “In the Bleak Midwinter” is my favorite Christmas hymn.
Movie: Home Alone, It’s a Wonderful Life. I’ll throw Elf in there too.
Clothes: Sweaters, sweaters. Have discovered the beanie as an essential winter necessity too, something I never realized the functionality of after living in Florida my whole life.
Au revoir my friends. May your yoke be easy and your burden light.
-Will