Before I begin recounting today's adventures, I have some miscellaneous things with which to contextualize the rest of my story here:
There are now 5 people permanently staying on the farm: Lola, Candela, Ester, myself, and Lindsay. Lola and Candela are the owners of the farm and casa rural, and Ester and Lindsay are WWOOF volunteers like myself. Ester is somewhere in her early 40s and is from Valencia, Spain, and Lindsay is 20 and from Utah (!). Ester came a few days after I arrived, on a referral from three of her close friends who had volunteered here before. Lindsay just arrived yesterday - she goes to school in Portland, but took the last year off to work in Madrid, and is WWOOFing until she heads back to school in the fall.
In other news, there are bunnies on this farm. I haven't met them yet, but I will make sure I do soon (even if it means waking up early one day...). I thought there were goats or llamas or something - Lola kept talking about the "conejos" and I just figured it met some type of farm animal so I didn't ask, considering the difficulty she would have describing to me the difference between a goat and a llama (which I probably wouldn't understand anyway, because I don't have such a solid grasp of the difference). I ended up looking it up yesterday, and learned that it means bunnies. What purpose bunnies can serve on a farm is something I have not yet figured out, but I'll let you know when I do.
Also to follow up on the bread-making adventures...I woke up the next day around noon and saw the kitchen filled with bread! This is apparently an early morning event, so I missed it. Oh well. There is now a ton of bizcocho and deliciously fresh bread in the kitchen though, so it's not too bad.
And one final thing: my only major complaint thus far about the farm is that there is not hot water for the showers. I really mean zero. Showering here has been a really painful and dreaded experience for me. Literally painful - the water is absolutely FREEZING, to the point where it stings my back. Thus, I have avoided showering as much as possible. It has really been quite disgusting. At one point I didn't shower for two days, and swam in the pool one day to justify it. I actually caught a fly on my arm who whipped out his mouth tube thing and started feeding on my arm. There was rotting fruit and plenty of chicken poop around, but no: the fly would rather feast on the dirty sludge I had accrued on my arm. It was really an issue.
I finally decided to ask Lola about it. But first, I tried desperately to see if maybe there was indeed hot water and I was just doing something wrong. Of course I was just doing something wrong. I turned the faucet the other way, and voila, there is hot water. I'm an idiot. I had the water turned on to be as cold as possible. Of course showering sucked. (side note: I'm still trying to limit my use of the hot water here, even though I have it, because it's just something I need to learn to do in general)
So now for my story:
In Spain, July 4th is just like July 3rd. Well not actually, because today was my day off! Ester and I decided to drive out to a beach (just 30 km away..WOOO) for the day. I woke up early, ate my breakfast (bizcocho and coffee and figs and bread with mermeladas...a little bit of everything), and got ready to go. We drove out to the coast and then drove along the coast looking at the beaches to see which ones we liked. The coast was incredible and unsurprisingly very different from any coast in America that I have ever seen: the continent ends in a mountain range, so most of the coastlines are cliffs of varying heights, interspersed with tiny stretches of light, soft sandy beaches. The water is clear and blue and amazing. We find a beach that isn't too crowded, and park ourselves under an overhanging rock ledge. We're in the shade, but the rock we're sitting on leads right into the water, where a few parents and there little kids are trying to catch crayfish...apparently a popular activity here.
We sat there for a little while, reading and periodically walking through the water. We then moved to the under end of the beach, where we sat in a little cove in the mountainside on a carved out plateau. It was kind of like a couch sticking out of the rock where our feet could dangle into the water. We ate our lunches (bocadillos from the bar) and relaxed there for a while. I walked up and down the beach a few times, exploring around the rocky edges in both directions to see what the other beaches looked like.
When we were done, we got back in the car to drive to find some ice cream or coffee. We ended up stopping at another beach, because Ester decided it was unacceptable for me to travel all the way out here and not swim in the Mediterranean. Good point.
So we swam and it was beautiful.
After we dried off, we got back to the search for ice cream / coffee. We stopped at an heladeria, and ordered the most brilliantly delicious dessert ever. It comes in two forms, called the Nacional or the Blanco y Negro, depending on what kind of ice cream you get. Essentially it is a cup of slushied iced coffee with ice cream on top. I got the Nacional (vanilla ice cream) and Ester got the Blanco y Negro (I'm still not clear on what kind of ice cream this is; it tastes kind of like sweet vanilla ice cream with lemon or something) They were both DELICIOUS. After dessert, we drove back to the farm. I sat and read for a while, and swam in the pool for a bit.
Today was a good day. I feel relaxed and refreshed and want to be more helpful tomorrow!
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