So the last week has been all about storms here. Lots of wind, waves and rain. The UK press even reported a bit of it (thanks to the tragic collapse of a sports centre which killed 4 children near Barcelona). Despite all that, and despite a forecast which said rain, almost a full coachload of walkers assembled on Sunday with resigned smiles and shrugs and 'we must be mad' comments. The walk was close to Oviedo, and amazingly, as we left the city on the coach, the rain stopped, the clouds fled and the sun came out.

The walk was a horseshoe, so once we were up we had fantastic views of the snow covered cordillera cantabrica. The clouds built to the west but kept slipping past us to the South. It was a bit breezy (Lakeland breezy, like a cool spring day on the fells) and we walked and chatted (one guy told me all about buying LPs from England in the Franco years... his first album was Bob Dylan, which I didn't understand because he pronounced it Vov-dye-lan). In a hamlet we stopped for a coffee de pote (brewed in a pot, old style) fortified with orujo and the owner of the bar opened up his 'museum' for us. It was his old bar, unchanged from the fifties (except for the addition of dust, pigeon droppings and mould). It was very rustic, both bar and grocers, with broken old radios, dusty empty bottles and stacks of folded old newspapers. On the wall was the then-obligatory photo of Franco.

Two kilometres from the end the route went past a restaurant. The group had booked places for those who wanted to eat. I had been told about this restaurant before, it's got a limited menu but it's famous for what it does cook. We arrived at 4:30 and the place was packed. We slotted into the limited space and set to eating the bread and sipping the cold red wine. What they do in this place is Pote or Fabada to start... but really good pote and really good fabada. Then chicken (pitu in Asturian) or lamb, then flan or rice pudding (the cold stuff they do here which is rather good). I should say and rather than or because they just bring everything and you eat what you want... if you run out, you ask for more. Ignacio, the president of the group said afterwards that he'd just had two plates of pote and two of fabada and a tiny amount of rice pudding. He's very fond of his Asturian food and always asks us if we've tried something and whether we enjoyed it. The noise level was pretty high too... a roomful of Spaniards eating is like a pub full of English folk drinking...

Sometime while we were eating, the rain caught up with us and we did the last 2k in a torrent of rain. That's okay though, we all had umbrellas, it wasn't too windy, and the coach ride back was 15 minutes.  ¶ 10:05 AM 1 comments

  All this week the wind has been a bit gusty, and the coast has been battered by waves which were averaging 5 to 8 metres... averaging!

We haven't been to the coast to see, thanks to work and stuff, it's apparently a bit dangerous, a photographer was washed away from the beach in Gijon last Sunday, they still haven't found him.
  ¶ 8:06 PM 1 comments

  Since we got back from skiing it's been relatively busy. Liz has loads of students preparing for TOEFL exams and is doing 22 hours of classes a week at the moment. I've just started doing three hours a week with some rheumatologists at the hospital as part of a national scheme to improve doctors' English. On top of that I've got some exam preparation too so I'm varying between 23 and 26 hours a week which is full time (they reckon that 25 hours of teching is a full time level, because of the preparation you need to do). One of my students is doing both TOEFL and SAT exams. The SAT is the US college entrance exam and, while it has none of the listening or speaking parts like TOEFL, it's got three maths sections. So I've been teaching maths too. Which was unexpected.

The poor student is being 'encouraged' by her parents, she's doing the TOEFL exam today and then getting on a train and going to Madrid to do the SAT exam at 7:45 tomorrow.

I haven't looked at maths like this for ages. It's GCSE level, simple geometry, algebra and the like. I've actually enjoyed doing the exam questions, they remind me of the puzzles in the guardian. This of course, doesn't help the student at all. Teaching someone how to recognise and solve these questions is a bit more than just solving them, I hope we've done enough. In the nicest possible sense, I don't want to see her again...
  ¶ 4:31 PM 0 comments

  Liz got a text message just before the weekend. 'Do you want to go to Gijon for dinner on Saturday?' It was from Maria Jesus, one of the walking group members who's about our age. Of course we said yes, so at 8:30 we were standing outside the Calatrava (the Ovetense name for the spaceship style building that doubles as a shopping centre and the Palacio del Congresso). Covadonga (Maria Jesus' friend who we've met a few times) met us there and we walked along to where MJ picked us up.

Maria Jesus is not the world's most confident driver but we managed to reach Gijon unscathed and then drove around a bit looking for a big enough parking space so that my parking skills wouldn't be needed. That done it was time to stroll along the seafront (there's something like 5kM of seafront) chatting away until we reached the restaurant. Both Liz and I like the relaxed approach to evening eating we've seen, we decided to pick a small plate each and share, rather than choose a main dish. So we troughed down on mini squid, ham, octopus, grilled fish and sea urchins (which Maria Jesus hadn't had before).

After coffee we wandered. According to Covadonga it was a difficult hour, because it was a bit late for cafes and too early for the late night bars (it was 1am). We had a drink in a quiet wine bar and then the girls suggested we go to another place (where a friend of there's had texted from). After asking directions a few times we got there and in we went. It was not really our cup of tea, I haven't been in an English nightclub in quite a few years and even then Europop wouldn't have been high on my list of destinations. Still, it was interesting watching the people (and there was no entrance fee). There was no dance floor, it seemed you just found a space and, well, danced... at the bar there were a couple of youngish blokes waiting for their whisky and red bulls and they were grinning and excitedly bouncing along to the music (part of me wanted to ask them if they really enjoyed it or if they had taken some recreational pharmaceuticals). It may be that in the UK it's the same these days but I'm not sure, I felt like there was no air of self conciousness, no studied cool on display, people were just out, just having a good time. It felt foreign.
  ¶ 6:30 PM 0 comments

  We arrived back in Spain on Sunday afternoon, flying in to Madrid over an extensive snow cover (which closed the airport for five hours on Friday leading to English levels of approbation for the airport). Then the metro to catch the train to Asturias. We had tourist class seats (rather than first class) but the legroom is UK first so there's a good argument for doing the train thing here rather than in the UK. The train gets up to 200kph as it goes north until it hits the mountains between Leon and Asturias where it has to be a bit slower.

Skiing was a hoot, thanks to everyone who went, and especially to Anne for organising it. I was a wuss and stuck to easy pistes to avoid giving my knee too many problems. It was fine, largely due to the excellent snow, soft but not heavy. Liz did ski school and by the end of the week was bombing down the blues (having been led down a few reds and a black by the instructor).  ¶ 10:12 AM 1 comments