Doing Stuff that is Fun

It is Thursday night, which means my work week is over. I am pretty tired, but oh so content. I really feel like I am hitting my stride here in my making a home away from home happiness project. I mentioned before (I think) that I felt like I had been here long enough for the newness of my life here to wear off, but it still didn't have a comfortable meaningful layer to it.
Well, I have been a busy bee over here in La Linea. I joined the rugby team, which was an excellent decision, socially and recreationally. I've been to three practices so far, and I am still getting to know the rest of the team, but they are a pretty jolly group. The vocabulary was a bit of a hurdle, because the words I had looked up were the South American terms for the positions. Oops.

A mini rugby vocabulary lesson:

-placar: tackle
-ensayo: try
-forwards: delanteros/gordas (in an affectionate way)
-backs: tres cuartos
-depressiones: push-ups
-mele-scrum
-Ruck-ruck (pronouned 'rak')
-I'm just realizing right now I mixed up the order of English/Spanish on all of those...what does that tell you about my thinking patterns right now?

A teacher at Hilaire's institute, Raquel, invited me to play padel with her on Wednesdays, which fills the hole in my heart forming from separation from racket sports. Padel is wonderful, the child of tennis and raquetball and pickleball. Look it up, it is as fun as it looks.

This weekend I am going to watch the men's game in Algeciras with the ladies team...just the group of people I was looking for and didn't have two weeks ago. Talk about things taking a turn for the better! I am just so happy and grateful to be in a position linguistically and self confidence wise that allows me to pick and choose activities that I love to do in a second language. Really just pleased as a peach. And tiiiirreeddd, between school, private lessons, padel, rugby, running, weight training for injury prevention, social time with other teachers and other auxiliares...leaves Jack tired.

In other news, I went to a town called Castellar last weekend with my friend Rocio and her friends from Huelva that came to visit her. It is about 20 minutes outside of La Linea, and it is an old castle on the top of a hill that people still live inside. Very cool.

After we went to a 'venta', a countryside restaurant with local food. We had some wild boar and venison...nom.