Monastery Madness

I have travelled a lot in my days so far and slept in numerous less than comforting accommodations, but none of my experiences even begins to hold a candle to the 16th century monastery in Uclés, Spain.  Of course, as a self-labeled history nerd it took a couple of hours to get over the awe of living in a place older than almost any building in the Americas.  Not to mention, it is the second largest monastery in Spain other than El Escorial.  However, the best part of the monastery was that we (the workers and I) got pretty much full reign of the entire building (from the catacombs to the bell tower).  All was wonderful until the sun went down and the ghost stories came out.  Every creak heard, every late night bathroom break avoided.  Needless to say I was terrified almost the entire time, which resulted in a total of approximately 5 hours of sleep on average a night for 12 days.  I have never yearned for something so much than to get to sleep as soon as my head hit the pillow and not wake until the sun rose the next day.  I couldn't help thinking to myself that there were 5 year-old children sleeping in the very same monastery without even an ounce of terror in their thoughts and here I was, a 24 year-old, hiding under my sheet.  However, in my defense, our room was right next to the bathroom were a priest was supposedly drown by an unknown source no more than 3 decades ago.  Combine that thought with noises from a vicious wind that rattled the monastery and two roommates with unique snores and sleep talking and you would have been terrified too.  In spite of my traumatizing experiences I still managed to snap a few photos of my less compromising moments.  Enjoy.

Playing a bit with the shutter speed and aperture.

 Continued

End of our Lipdub project that can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jTq_QOsQlk

Cooking Classics in Spain

Most experiences teach life lessons, others just inspire.  Since having the privilege to eat healthy three-course lunches and dinners for the entire month of July I have been inspired to trying cooking and eating healthier and better.  That's right, no more frozen pizzas, paninis, or cans of pre-made cocido soup for me.  I'm going for freshly made meals with a more health conscious approach.  As I said, health conscious", but not necessarily healthy.  Consequently, there's no better place to cook with fresh, healthy food than in Spain with their numerous fresh food markets in addition to their bakeries and fruiterias on every street.  Most of my experiments can be separated into two categories; experiments and new classics.  My experiment category involves using classic Spanish food and the new classics involve creating classic dishes that we would eat in the United States with a twist.  Enjoy if you can.

Experiments

Curry pasta salad with vegetable noodles, tomatoes, garbanzos, and spicy chorizo.

Chicken with rice, fried onion and pepper with tomatoes on top.

Chicken, bacon, ranch, pepper, onion bocadillo.

Bacon, egg, mushroom, ranch and sweet pepper bocadillo.

Hamburger with egg, avocado, and onion topped with a curry paste.

New Classics

Not necessarily new, but I made chocolate banana bread from scratch.

Grilled mushroom and cheese and Grilled cheese with bacon.  Side salad of garbanzos and tomatoes.

French Onion soup with Emmental cheese bread.

Playing with Chelsea

All low paying jobs come with some sort of benefit to distract us from the lack of fiscal compensation.  The Auxiliar program in Spain makes you work only 12 hours a week, teaching in most schools in the United States gives you upwards of 3 months vacation, and Forenex Pirenees gives you the opportunity to play football with the Chelsea organization.  Now we're not talking club players, but highly qualified coaches that know what they're talking about and are good all around people.  They also proved to be great subjects.

Bellver de Cerdanya flag

Ian

Sory

 Until next time...