Update

I haven’t posted in a while, so I will have missed some things. Carlos and I worked in the garden the second day and got it ready for planting. I made Mexican Chicken Soup, which turned out to be a big hit. The third day Cloti made lentils (lentajes) for lunch, and there was so much food that we told Stef the cooking was done until we had eaten down what we had. But last night Cloti showed me how to make tortilla de patata for us to take on our excursion today.

Antonio told me you had to dice the potatoes and soak them overnight, but Cloti just diced and fried them with onions right away. Then she mixed the potato/onion mixture with six beaten eggs and a little milk. She didn’t have a tortilla pan either. She flipped the tortilla onto a plate then slid it into the pan to cook on the other side. She did this twice.

On Friday I bought some chalk and started fixing the large black tree in the mural a volunteer started a few months ago. The tree was knobby and kind of…threatening. Yesterday I finished the drawing and painted over the black bits I don’t want with white. Tomorrow I will do another coat and possibly cover the white with the red and yellow of the sunset.

I should have taken a picture of what it looked like before I started.

Today we went on an excursion. Stef asked if I would contribute to the gas, and I said of course I would. We went all around the mountains, to a village where the newest house was over 200 years old. In a different village we saw a church that was established in 608 and reconstructed in 1997. I told Stef it was hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that that church was over 1,000 years older than my country.

So many of the villages here are dying. The 200 years or more place has a total of ten people living in it. Pola de Allande, one of the larger villages, is full of the elderly. Our house is one of the few where younger, more open-minded people live, according to Stef. I believe it. In the first village we toured, Montse said the house where it said, “Se Vende,” (For Sale) was 50,000 euros. The thing is, it would probably cost that much again to make it livable.

And I could only live here from April to October. I arrived in the middle of March, in Madrid which is south and not in the mountains, and I was cold practically the entire time. I still get cold here, especially at night.

That is actually one of the reasons I haven’t been posting. During the day I’m busy, and at night I’m too cold.

As long as I am updating, I will tell you guys about the Market of San Miguel. My guide to the Royal Palace referred to it as the “temple of gastronomy.” I was so sorry I wasn’t very hungry when I was there. I did get myself a fruit skewer.

They had almost every kind of food, from all over Spain, that you can imagine. I plan on going back early, just so I can go there and eat.

Here are pictures from our excursion today.

Stef says at this time of year the road I am standing on should be underwater. The water is supposed to be up to the trees in spring. Asturias, here in the mountains, will be okay, but he says he doesn’t know what the south will do.