A Non-Boring Weekend in Quintanar

After my trip to Basque Country, I needed a few days to recover (and to let my shoes dry all the way through). Thankfully, it was a pretty slow week at school. I went to two classes on Monday and three on Tuesday at the high school. I administered oral exams in an English class (which meant that I listened to two students talk to each other and graded them on their pronunciation and grammar) and then went to technologies where my students laughed at my incompetence some more. This week I was in charge of doling out blocking nuts and regular nuts. Meanwhile, I wasn't even entirely sure that I knew what a nut actually was, but I managed to get through it. Furthermore, no one came back complaining that I gave them the wrong ones, so I considered it a successful class.

In another English class, they were working on comparisons and superlatives, so I made up a game on the spot. I asked them for an adjective and then I would write two nouns on the board for them to make a comparison or a superlative. For example, one of them said "happy" and I wrote "Spongebob and Squidward" on the board. So then they said, "Spongebob is happier than Squidward" and "Spongebob is the happiest person in Bikini Bottom." It was suprisingly popular, so we kept it up for almost half an hour.

In another English class, I had sort of a dilemma. Every now and then, I go to an English class where the teacher is teaching something that, as a native speaker, I don't really agree with---or worse, is wrong altogether. (Side note: I went to a preschool class a few weeks ago and discovered their teacher had been teaching them to pronounce "boat" as "bo-at." I had to teach all of them, including the teacher, that we don't pronounce the "a.") In this class, they were talking about containers. Like how in English we say, "Can I have a glass of orange juice?" rather than "Can I have orange juice?" They use containers in Spanish, so it wasn't a foreign concept or anything, but I was tempted to tell the teacher that we do say that. Like saying, "Can I have butter?" or "I had cake" is just as valid as "Can I have some/a stick of butter?" and "I had a slice/piece of cake." But I didn't say anything because she was insistent that they use the container word. I realize the merit of learning these kinds of words but on another level, I know some students in that class who don't understand me when I ask, "What is your favorite subject in school?" Sometimes I wonder if, in learning a foreign language, we stress the wrong things. I still remember learning how to say animal noises in one of my Spanish classes. Not that it wasn't a funny lesson, but should animal noises or containers really be a priority?

In the primary school, I played a version of Balderdash with fifth and sixth grade in which they had to write definitions of English words that they didn't know before I told them the real definition. I had a lot of fun choosing which words to use. Some of my choices included "flabbergasted," "serendipity," and "fabricate." Honestly, I think I had more fun in the class than they did.

In my after school classes, we talked about pets/animals and then played a game where a person said something about themselves and the other people guessed if it was true or a lie. If they succeeded in fooling their classmates, they got a point. Another simple game but my students really enjoyed it.

On Friday morning, Morgan messaged me to ask if I felt like visiting Alcázar de San Juan. More commonly known around here as just Alcázar, it is the largest town in our area and about a half-hour drive through the plain of La Mancha from Quintanar. Morgan and I have been meaning to visit for awhile, simply because there's more to do. With more than 30,000 inhabitants, Alcázar is nearly three times the size of Quintanar, so they have many restaurants and shops and even a movie theater (which unfortunately only plays movies in Spanish, no subtitles). Furthermore, the real reason I'm jealous of Alcázar is because they have a train station. But I digress. Morgan told me there was a bus there at 1:45 and one coming back at 5:05, so we'd have less than three hours to explore, but hey, it was something to do! So of course I said yes. We agreed to meet at the bus station at 1:30.

However, we had an unfortunate surprise when we got to the bus station. Morgan made a mistake in reading the timetables and the 1:45 bus didn't go to Alcázar; Quintanar was actually its last stop. The next bus to Alcázar wasn't until 3:45. Considering the last bus back was actually at 4:30, not at 5:05, that would give us about 15 minutes in Alcázar before we had to come back. Excited at the prospect of actually doing something on a weekend that we weren't traveling, we were both disappointed, to say the least, particularly because the weather was incredible and we had been looking forward to wandering around outside. But then we discovered that Morgan's coworker/friend was going to Alcázar anyway, so she offered to drive us. We didn't get there until 2:45 and we still had to take the bus at 4:30, but we were so happy that it worked out that we didn't care. We explored the town a little and had a nice lunch before heading back to Quintanar on the bus. It was a short trip but it was so nice to get out of Quintanar that we couldn't care less. We also agreed that we would go sometime in the future on the 10:00 bus and take the 4:30 back, so we'll have a decent amount of time to explore and shop and visit a pastry shop that Morgan says is delicious.

Alcázar ayuntamiento

Alcázar main square (with statues of the local heroes, Don Quijote and Sancho Panza)

St. Francis of Assisi church

I just thought this fountain was pretty

Alcázar even has a plaza de toros (bull ring)

We discovered a pretty park (with actual green grass!) during our travels

We spent the rest of the afternoon together at my apartment, watching Roger's and Hammerstein's Cinderella with Brandy and loudly singing along. I taught a private class that had been rescheduled for Friday evening before we met up again to go to a St. Patrick's Day party, or el festival de San Patricio, at a bar. Morgan had been invited by one of the guys who worked in the bar, and they even had two types of Irish beer for the occasion: Guinness and Murphy's Irish Red. But we called it an early night because neither of us is much of a party animal and Morgan was teaching a private lesson early in the morning.

On Saturday, I spent most of the day reading in my pajamas before venturing out to meet Morgan at the grocery store. We both wanted to pick something up for Vicki's bachelorette party that night. Once we made our selections, we headed over to Vicki's apartment. Most of the other guests were quite a bit older than us because they were the wives of Luis Felipe's friends, so I wasn't sure what to expect, particularly with the language barrier. But of course it was a great time, particularly because Vicki, Morgan and I understood each other even when the Spanish ladies didn't. Vicki had several fun games planned, including "pin the kiss on the photo of Luis Felipe" and one where we made wedding dresses out of toilet paper. Combined with good food and lots of laughs, it was a really fun night.

The bachelorette and hostess!

Vicki insisted we wear party hats

Pinning the kiss on Luis Felipe (I won, for the record)

Mine is the pink one in the middle

We made Morgan a lovely one-sleved number

Las Quintanareñas!

The last photo is from when the party migrated to a bar to meet up with the bachelor party, but in our typical Morgan/Clare fashion, we only lasted an hour before we decided to go home. The other attendees, many of whom are 20 years older than I am or more, stayed out until four in the morning. The stamina of Spanish people never ceases to amaze me.

On Sunday, Morgan and I went to Vicki's house to help clean up and also to help eat leftovers. We ended up staying for several hours (and Morgan was exponentially more helpful than I was in cleaning, but who's surprised by that?). Later that evening, Morgan and I got together yet again to meet up with a new friend I've made who is actually Spanish, as shocking as that may seem. Her name is Piedad, and she studied languages at university so she's basically fluent in English (which is cheating for me, I know. Side note, she also speaks German, French, Italian, and some Chinese. Meanwhile, I'm struggling to learn Spanish.). But she's 24 and she actually lives in Quintanar, which is a shock in itself. I'd be willing to bet that 95% of Quintanar's population is under 18 or over 35. Anyway, she invited me to a percussion concert in which her boyfriend was performing, and when we ran into her at the St. Patrick's Day party, she invited Morgan, as well. So we drove to Villafranca de los Caballeros, a nearby town that I visited back in November to have lunch near its lagoon, for the concert. I was very curious to see what a percussion concert would be like, because when I hear percussion I automatically think of drums. However, in addition to drums, there were also marimbas and a vibraphone and bongos and congas. It was a really cool performance, and unlike anything else I've seen.

Sneaky photo during the percussion concert

Funnily enough, we were very close to Alcázar so we went there for dinner after the concert. I'd been meaning to visit Alcázar for months and suddenly I went twice in one weekend! By the time we finished eating and drove back to Quintanar, it was almost 11:00, so I went to bed shortly after I got home.

It was a low-key weekend but not a boring one, despite largely taking place in Quintanar, which was such a pleasant surprise. Hopefully my future weekends spent here and not traveling will be equally nice!