Dead Ends and New Challenges

This weekend I had big half baked plans. Friday night we went out to The Cuban, a restaurant in Gibraltar that has very good food, fun decor, overpriced weak drinks and is location on a dock over the water. I went with a group of 13, the 8 auxiliares in La Linea plus Erin from Los Barrios, plus 4 American girls who were placed in/around Malaga that Elle and Millie met in their pre-program thing in Sevilla. We were a very jolly group. On our way back we staggered out a bit because half of the group stopped at the gas station before the border/airstrip to pick up cigarettes/gum/alcohol depending on the person. A fifth of vodka there is 3.75, whaaaaattttt, but they don't sell after 9pm, we found out, leaving some in our party SOL. I got the gum I came in for and we headed back. Once we passed security we found the rest of the group... and my crying roommate. She had jumped up on one of the plastic road barriers expecting it to be weighted, but it was empty, so it shot out from under her and she landed back on her wrist and fractured it. That took the wind out of our sails pretty quickly. Two people went with her to the sala de emergencias and the rest of us went to Molly Bloom's, the Irish bar in town.

I lasted a few more hours before I headed home. By that time Hilaire was home and in a cast up past her elbow. Talk about an awful end to her evening.

Saturday was my half baked plan with a teacher from my school to go to Castellar, a medieval castle the people live in. Principally hippies, as I have heard. But that teacher, Noelia, went back to her home city of Cadiz (Capital) to see her family, so that was a no go. I am discovering, after 24 years of trial and error, that in order for something to happen, one must plan and communicate. There is a free nugget of wisdom from me to you. We might go some time later this week...pending on my ability to plan ahead. In the end of it all, I slept instead and then went on a run. Now I have talked about my first dead end, the trip to Castellar, so it is high time to mention one of my new challenges.

Last year on Westerns rugby team we had a French exchange student, Maeva, who I did a half marathon with in January. She is back in France this year and asked me about a month ago if I were interested in doing a marathon with her and I immediately said 'no!'. Too much running, I thought. Nahh. But I kept thinking about it. I have plenty of free time here, and if I want to do a marathon at some point in my life, why not do it europe? So then I started considering it, and I had I started thinking 'I don't know if I can do it..'. And that annoyed me. There is no reason I shouldn't be able to do it! So to prove it to myself, I got back to Maeva. I'm in. April 28th (barring any sort of injury, knock wood) I will be running the Rock and Roll marathon in Madrid. Say whaaaaaat. I have been working up my miles slowly, I am up to 8.75 now. Only 17.5 miles to go...

My plan for Sunday, today, was to go to Malaga for the day to watch the women's rugby team from the University of Malaga play the University of Granada at noon, followed directly by the men's team. I was really excited, a day of rugby spectating, a new city, maybe a few beers, recipe for a delightful day right? Unfortunately I couldn't find a buddy. I generally don't like to not do things because no one else will do it with me, but traveling for 3 hours to watch a sports game in a foreign country is one of those things. And there was an 80% chance of rain today. I pulled the plug on the event, which was disappointing. They have another home game in a month, so I think I will go for a weekend trip.

But speaking of rugby, I am going to go this week to play with the newly formed women's club team in Algeciras. I emailed the Malaga team who emailed me the phone number of a player in San Roque who I called who told me she'd pass my info on to a guy in La Linea who plays in Algeciras who could give me a ride, and who texted me this morning. What a string of communication. In another language! I am a champion! And also pretty excited; I miss team sports and people who work out and are competitive. This past year has been the first since I was a toddler that I wasn't on any kind of sports team. Plus I will meet more Spanish people in their 20's. Woohoo! That is new challenge number two. That is a lot of new people to meet in Spanish, and also nerve racking is the language itself...how do you say tackle in Spanish? or spandex? Or ruck? Scrum? not to mention all of the positions on the field... They say do something everyday that scares you right? Okayyyyy

So today I decided to hike up Gibraltar for something to do, so after puttering about the house for a few hours drinking coffee and having a lazy sunday, I get ready and head out the door. Within 2 minutes of getting out the door it starts to drizzle, which two minutes later has turned into heavy rain. I stood under the eave of the building by the border and studied the clouds and things did not look promising. After 10 minutes I gave up and headed home, taking a few pictures of the center of La Linea as I went. I got home and a half hour later it stopped raining...it looked like it would rain again in a moment, but here I am an hour later and it still hasn't rained. The weather is teasing me. Ha. Ha. Very amused.

The good news is that it inspired me to write in my blog again. I will let you know how things develop this week! And Happy early Thanksgiving!

The photos below are from today in the rain; the first from the border where I waited in vain for the rain to stop, the others from the pedestrian bridge over Avenida del Ejercito. You can see the park across the street from my apartment, and the picture with the car going around the roundabout is my street, I live just behind the buildings on the left!

The central plaza, 'Plaza de la Constitucion'