Halloween and other things

Halloween is not important in Spain. Monday was the saddest Halloween I've ever been apart of. I did not dress up because I had just gotten back from a weekend in Burgos (which consisted of drinking nice, cheap beers and nursing hangovers) and none of my friends were dressing up. Halloween is a Celtic Holiday so you'd think the Irish would have kind of spread the tradition throughout Europe by now...but nope. Everyone laughs at it in Spain (and France too, I hear) and the people who do dress up all look the same: zombie makeup, which is just a really white face with maybe some blood and black raccoon eyes. Lame!

Adding to the sadness of my Monday also was the fact that I was at a bar and during the DJ's "dance music set" (heavy air quotes), they played Grease.......I'm talking Grease Lightning. And it was in no way sarcastic, lemme tell you. Now just let that realization sink in....

I have taken a few interesting pictures since the last time I posted.

 Here is the cathedral in Burgos. Once you've seen one cathedral, you've kind of seen them all! It's a massive, amazing, churchly structure.

 This is a sign in my school's gymnasium. My favorite is the title, slightly cut off in the top left: English ZONE. Maybe I should enter class every day while cracking my knuckles and telling the kids its time to GET INTO THE ENGLISH ZONE.

 Today I had two gym classes and I basically played Ping Pong the entire day with the kids. I think this is going to happen a lot because I mentioned to the gym teacher Eloy that Ping Pong is my favorite sport. He had me teach kids how to hold a paddle and hit the ball, hahah really tough day for me. If its possible to click on the picture to enlarge it, one will notice that these tables are just colored pieces of that ply wood that you might for example find at a new construction site or  decide to burn in a bonfire. The paddles we use are plastic and have felt cloth where you hit the ball. My Ping Pong Elitism left me without words the first time I saw this setup but Eloy says that the kids will ruin a net after a day (yeah I haven't even mentioned the 'net', it's also as you can see a piece of wood) and that the paddles pretty much have to be the strongest material possible because they'll be broken easily as well.

I tried to make a sound recording of the kids in Angel's class today because they were insane as always but my ipod wasn't working :(. Another time.

AND FINALLY: Nothing like walking through Cuellar seeing a guy carrying a couple of dead baby pigs on his shoulder.

*insert joke about Greased pigs*