Sleeping duck, spring trees, post-rain jog, and student note

1. Walking home through Campo Grande, equipped with my smallish and now bent umbrella that successfully keeps half the rain off, I noticed two ducks standing near a puddle, incidentally without umbrellas. They stood there looking as if they had never been cozier (maybe perhaps if they had been sitting down). The rain lightly pelted their backs, but this seemed to soothe them. One closed its eyes in drowsiness.

2. The bony hand trees (part of the banana tree family? I think?) of Valladolid have now, after 6 months of no leaves nor foliage, begun to sprout green. It makes the city look like an entirely different place.

3. After my Friday classes and sporadic morning downpours, a dry sunny patch of weather sailed into town approximately when my week ended and my weekend began. Since I've finally shaken my cold, I decided to go for a jog on the river trail. I ran into 2 other people, but other than that, it was a solitary journey. I like the feeling of taking advantage of the city when everyone else is home for siesta.

4. I can see 9 year old Celia writing a note over the span of a week. She's been drawing a picture and today I saw that my name was on it. It's not really unusual for young children to draw pictures for their foreign teachers, but this is the first one I've seen this year. Then in the middle of the lesson, she told me to close my eyes. Needing to keep some type of authority, I told her that I'd close my eyes at the end of class when we were finished with the activity. I knew what she was getting at the whole time, but when I finally did close my eyes, she slipped the picture into my bag. When I looked at it, I was surprised by how nice it felt to receive a portrait of myself from my student. I didn't have devil horns coming out of my head or a sneering expression like some past students have drawn. I looked happy and nice.

Bus ride, mountain grass, and making it before the rain

Above: Lauriane, Don Quixote, and me.

1. My favorite part of the bus ride to a mountain trail near Zamora is after the coffee break at a cafe that boasts, "Hay Pulpo Gallego" or Galician style octopus. After everyone powers up on coffee, Coke, tortilla, chocolate or perhaps even pulpo, the bus takes us up through winding mountain roads to the start point for our hike. The mountains come into plain, unobscured view and as we swing around a corner, a massive lake flashes before our eyes. My body starts to relax and calm after seeing such spectacles of nature.

2. The terrain of today's hike resembles tufts of straw like hair, blonde and disguising the past week's rainfall in cunning spirals. At one point, I feel like a character out of Super Mario Bros. hopping from one grassy toadstool to the next, attempting to save my dry feet from "mucho frio." Yellow cups of flowers dot the landscape, while cows and bulls from nowhere munch happily in the distance.

3. Lauriane and I chose the Option A hike which was only four hours as opposed to the seven hour hike that the hard core walking stick equipped group trekked out on. We figured this was the best option as Lauriane was wearing new boots that came with a fear of blisters, whereas I had no boots, just my airy trainers that are starting to develop holes. With the possibility of rain, we thought four hours might just be enough. Just as we came into the village for a museum and cafe break, the rain started to come down. Que suerte!