Driving

We have been driving here in Spain now for 8 months, we have made several observations about how they drive here.

1-They are very defensive drivers. With all of the traffic circles around the city they have to be. Merging is happening all around.

2-They are excellent parallel parkers. They can fit into the most amazingly small space in a matter of seconds. Of course they don't care if they hit the car in front and the car in back.

3-They hit and run all the time. Hit a car? No problem! Just keep driving. Brent was leaving seminary one morning and he witnessed a delivery truck side swipe a car and just keep on driving. This also applies if you are parked close to a car, you will have your door dented when they open their door.

4-When you park you can double park. Just make sure you leave your car in neutral so that when the driver you have blocked wants to leave he just has to push your car out of his way.

My weekend

On Wednesday I went with my friend Arlena to Germany. She is a military wife and our plan was to go do some shopping for Polish pottery in Poland and then do some shopping at the Air Force base in Germany. We flew into Frankfurt/Hahn and drove 6 hours to Dresden, Germany. It was fun we talked the whole time and that helps time pass. Thursday morning we woke early and drove another 1 1/2 hours to Boleslawiec Poland. This is a town famous for their pottery. You can find polish pottery all over the internet with many different patterns to choose from. We had a great time shopping, but it was hard to decide which pattern I liked the best. I decided to go with the traditional peacock design. We ate a polish lunch of pierogis, a potato filled dumpling.

We left Poland and drove another 7 hours to the Air Force base on the other side of Germany. We got there at 11 pm. The office to register visitors was closed and the guards were not going to let Arlena on with me. Finally one nice guard said that he would sign me on and thankfully we were able to get to our hotel. In the morning we woke up and shopped in the px which is the mall for all the military people. It was like going to the US in the middle of Germany. We did some grocery shopping and bought many items that I can't find in Spain. We had to finish our shopping pack it up and mail it to ourselves in Spain by 5 pm. It was very close. We mailed about 15 boxes full of groceries, and pottery.

At this point we were able to relax friday night and the rest of our trip. We saw a couple of movies, ate at Macaroni Grill and Taco Bell. Saturday we drove to a fun German town named Trier.

Sunday morning we got up at 4 in order to drive an hour to the airport. Our car was low on gas and the base wouldn't let us fill up so we were driving on the dark snowy roads looking for a gas station. They were all closed that early in the morning. It was snowing hard and we slipped a few times while driving on fumes. We made it but we were sweating it. We had a great weekend and it's good to come home and see my family.

MTV Winter Concert

MTV put on a free concert with the Arctic Monkeys.

Late night but alot of fun!

Americas Cup

Oracle/BMW won the cup the best out of 2 races. We watched the first one on Wednesday and the final race was today while we were at church. Now we will have to see if the battle continues for the cup in the courts which will probably happen. I'm sure it will be contested. We will wait and see.

On Wednesday I went to the port early in the morning to see the boats leave the port. I waited for an hour and they didn't leave. Come to find out the race was postponed so they didn't leave as early as they normally would have. I did have a native spaniard approach me and start to talk to me. I couldn't shake him the entire time I was there but that was ok, he was a nice older gentleman. I only understood a small portion of what he was talking to me about. Something about running marathons and then he said something about formula one racing. He was a very nice man and he really didn't mind that I couldn't talk a whole lot with him. I think he was enjoying his conversation with himself. He even ran with me halfway home. He was a very nice man.

Race update

The second race was cancelled because of rough seas. They didn't look to rough to me, it was a beautiful day. I went to the port at 6:30 in the morning to see the boats go out to sea but they didn't even leave the port.


If your interested here is a montage of what Oracles boat looks like.

America's Cup

We were there at 9:45 to see the start of the race. Come to find out the boats were already long gone. They left before sunrise to get to the course. At 10 the race was delayed for lack of any wind. I stuck around for almost an hour hoping it would start and decided it wasn't worth the wait. The wind never did pick up today so around 2 pm the website said the boats were headed into the pier. Next race is Wednesday.

It may be Superbowl Sunday but.....

Tomorrow starts the 33rd Americas cup right here in Valencia. You maybe asking what is the Americas Cup? Thanks to wikipedia I can fill you in. It is a sailing regatta between two teams, the challenger and the defender. It is the oldest international trophy sport. The cup was made in 1848 and in 1997 some lunatic took a sledgehammer to it. It was feared to be irrepairable but the silversmith that first made the cup was able to repair it. In order to challenge the defender the challenger has to race other teams and win the Louis Vuitton racing series. In 2007 the Americas cup was between New Zealand and the Swiss team Alinghi. Alinghi won by a second.

This year the Americans (Oracle/BMW) are racing Alinghi. It is lucky that the race is even going to happen. The two teams have been bickering in court for the past 3 years. Back and forth about the construction of the boat, where the components for the boats came from, where they were going to race. At last it looks like it's going to happen tomorrow at 10 am two miles from our house.

They will have jumbo tv's displayed and we will be there to send them off in the morning.

Naranjas

We are winding down the season of the wonderful juicy oranges of Valencia. Here is a run down of how we enjoyed the season.

Schneeball

Growing up my mom used to like taking extra pie crust from the pies being made and bake it adding cinnamon sugar on top. I loved eating it. Well in Rothenburg Germany they sell Schneeball which is basically pie crust formed into a ball and sprinkled with many toppings, chocolate, vanilla, powdered sugar, cinnamon sugar. The kids loved them, we had several while we were there.

Germany

We found some really cheap tickets on Ryan air and flew to Frankfurt Germany for the weekend. We immediately drove to a small medieval village named Rothenburg ob der Tauber. This is your quintessential "Christmas village" village. This village is a walled village with most of the buildings predating the 1400's. It was so quaint, and even better we virtually had the whole place to ourselves. January is very quiet with no tourists. Half of the shops were even closed. We stayed in one of these cute bed and breakfasts with our own house across the street from the hotel. The hotel as described by Rick Steve's guidebook calls it a place for hobbits. It really fit the description. The dark wood paneling and lots of Germany trinkets. We spend our first and final day walking around the town and doing some shopping. Our second day we drove 300 kilometers south to see Neuschwanstein (the Disney castle). It was a beautiful drive with a little sun and snow. We had a great day even though we were all freezing. We all fell in love with this small glimpse of Germany. I think it all made us a little homesick as well. Germany felt more American than anything here in Spain.