Antequera

This past weekend my grandpa took me to the town of his birth, Antequera, a small town about 45 minutes from where we live, Rincón de la Victoria. He picked me up at about 9 AM, and he drove me to a cafe where we had churros with hot chocolate. After that, we drove for another 30 minutes to Antequera. What I realized was that in Antequera, about 60% of the buildings were convents for nuns. It's actually pretty cool, during Christmas season they sell these pastries called polvorenes and mantecados for money, they're really good, but kind of expensive. So we visited a couple of really pretty churches and convents, bought some polvorones and mantecados, and we went to the downtown area. There, we saw the hospital that my grandpa was born in, the house that my grandpa lived in, and a lot of really nice houses with huge indoor patios. Then we went to a seminary, but not any old seminary, the seminary of the Capuccinos, the men that went out to colonize America. But unfortunately, we only got to see the outside of it, because the chapel visiting hours were over. By that time, it was about 1 PM, so my grandpa realized that we still had time to visit his friend who's in a nursing home in the next town over. So we drove over there, which took us about 20 minutes, and finally we arrived in the beautiful old town. We then walked along the cobblestone streets until we arrived at the surprisingly very modern resting home, where my grandpa's childhood friend was staying. We walked in, and we found his friend in the smoking room, with a small handheld radio clutched to his ear. He was listening to the winning numbers for the lottery. He recognized Pepe right away, and then Pepe introduced me to him.We talked with him for a while, and then he told my grandpa that he had just won the lottery. He was obviously losing it because that's what happens to old people. My grandpa played along with it, asking him what he's been doing with all the money, and the man responded that he had bought himself a red Ferrari from Italy, and today, he bought himself and expensive Cuban cigar. I thought it was kind of sad that he honestly thought that he had won the lottery, but I guess he's happy, so it's okay. So we left the nursing home and drove over to another tiny village, Casabermeja, where we ate the best migas in the world, from my grandpa's friend Frasquito. Migas are the white part of the bread, the soft part, but fried, and served with chorizo, lomo(pork), and a fried egg. Then with our stomachs full, we drove another 45 minutes home. Ah what a day! 

Madrid

This weekend our family took a trip down to Madrid to visit my aunt Mari Carmen and my uncle Pepito's family. My mom, my brothers, and my cousin Lena all took the AVE, or bullet train, down to Madrid. They only took 2.5 hours to get there because they were traveling at 270 km/hour. However, my dad, my aunt Ana, and I rode in the car with all of the luggage, and we took 6 hours to get there. I however, was smart and I brought my iPod to entertain myself for about 5 hours so I wasn't too miserable for the whole ride. But my dad was kind of upset with me because I barely talked to him for the whole ride because I had my headphones in. But after the long six hour ride, we finally arrived at my aunt Mari Carmen's big house in a small town outside of the city of Madrid at about 11:30 PM. I hadn't seen my cousins Santi and Nacho in about two years so it was fun getting to finally spend some time with them again. But we had to get to bed right away that night because both Santi and Nacho had soccer matches the next day.

My cousin Santi (who's 13) woke me up at 8 that next morning to play XBOX 360, while big Nacho kept sleeping, so we got an early start. Santi was excited to show me his new games HALO 3, Call of Duty 4, and FIFA '08. Then, after about an hour of silent videogaming, we heard that everyone else in the house was already awake, and that Mari Carmen had went out and brought churros for everyone, so we woke up Nacho and went downstairs to the kitchen. Then, my little cosin Mateo rang the doorbell, and ran into the kitchen, in full soccer uniform, asking if we wanted to go see his soccer game at noon. That was only in a little while, so we all went back upstairs to get changed. We then went to 7 year old Mateos game, which was pretty exciting actually. Mateo scored the first goal of the game and led his team to a 7-6 victory over the hometown heroes, Cadaquiz. However, Mateo cried after the game, because he felt a lot of pressure on his shoulders, with the whole family being there and all, because they almost lost. But we all congratulated Mateo on his team victory, letting him know how well he did, to try to cheer him up. Then we had to rush home so that Nacho and Santi could eat something and catch their team buses to the field. After Nacho took the bus with his team to his field, I rode in my uncle Chico's car with Natalia's fiancé Oscar and two of Nacho's friends to the field. However, once we got to our seats, we were a bit disappointed because the coach decided to bench Nacho, only because he had been injured for the past two games. Nacho's team was tied with the home team 1-1 after the first 45 minutes, but then they lost 1-3. When we got back home, after the game, we found out from the rest of the family that Santi's team had reigned victorious over the other team 8-0. 

On Sunday, my dad, mom, and brother David drove down to the city of Madrid to go see EL MUSEO DEL PRADO. Once inside, we saw a bunch of masterpieces by painters like Goya and Velazquez. But the cool thing was that outside, there was a huge parade in the streets celebrating immigrants from Latin America. There was a section of the parade for each spanish speaking country in central and South America. We then ate at a small restaurant, and much to our surprise, there was a STARBUCKS and KFC across the street! How sad. Then we got back into our car that we bought off of Pepito, a Volkswagen Passat, and we drove back home. The next day, we had to get up early, pack our stuff and drive back home.

Physical Education

Today was a fun day at school. We started out the day with P.E., which was really intense. The class began by us running around the futbol sala court for 15 minutes straight, by that time I was already sweating. We then brought the mats out to the court, and laid down on them. Our P.E. teacher, Mario, then told us to do 30 sit ups. We did them, and then we had to do leg lifts, which work your abs. After that he told us to lay down and draw big eyes with our feet, or make big circles with our feet, but slowly, so it burns. Push ups were next, and then Mario told us that we were going to repeat the whole process again. So we finished the "warm up", and then it was time to run again, yippee! But the funny thing was was that whenever Mario would turn around or go inside the gym, everyone would stop running and take a short break. Then he'd walk back outside, and everyone would start running again. Finally the P.E. class was over, and my classmates and I, drenched in sweat, walked on to our next class, English.