Life Update

Hi all!  Well, I wish I could say I’ve been up to interesting things, but life has been pretty mundane here for the past few weeks.  My trip isn’t until the end of the month, this coming weekend, so I’ve just mostly been focusing on my teaching, lesson planning and general vacation planning.  I’m going to Merida this coming weekend with my wonderful Northern Irish roommate who is willing to travel with my crazy ass.  Other than that, I did the one day trip out to Rio Tinto and have been spending my weekends with my friends, and occassionally going to the beach when it’s warm enough.  The beginning of the month was very warm so we went to the beach two weekends in a row and took advantage of the good weather. 

 


I also took a day trip out to Sevilla with Camille at the beginning of the month and we explored some parts we haven’t seen before and went shopping!  The shopping is just so much better in the big city than in my little city.  And we discovered some cool new things they have in Calzedonia, the tights and leggings store.  Tights and leggings are more than just a thing here, they are a way of life.  So having cool tights is a must.  We went to the look out point on top of the Mushroom.  The Mushroom is a new building they made in 2010 or so.  It’s really just a strange looking construction with a bar on the top and you can walk around and get a nice view of the city.  It also has a cool museum underneath with some roman ruins that were under the city. 


 
 
 

And I saw this chocolate delight of mine that I wanted so badly.  It’s a chocolate float of one of the many they have during Semana Santa.  Yummmmm

That’s honestly all I’ve been up to.  This week reports are due so I’ve been correcting tests and writing reports for my students at the activity. 

My next post will be my fun trip to Merida. 

Oh, and my parents come in 18 days!! I'm so excited to travel around some of my favorite parts of Spain with them.  It'll be their first trip to Europe so it should be lots of fun :)

Much love!

Rio Tinto

I went to a small town called Rio Tinto last weekend and I just wanted to share briefly with you guys about the town and my fun excursion.

Rio Tinto literally means Colored River, and it’s the color red.  Yup, that’s the right, the water is red.  It’s big talk here in Huelva, and it is for a reason.  Rio Tinto used to be an old mining town, and is basically the reason the province of Huelva exists.  Huelva has a old British Quarter where there are houses that look like British Cottages and such, and those were where the British used to live back when Huelva was a mining province.  They used to mine sulfur and metals there and the large amount of metal that is in the water actually turns it red.  Rio Tinto is the most acidic river in the world, and nothing can live in it except for bacteria.  You won’t find fish or any other living thing because it’s too acidic.  But it’s very cool and doesn’t burn your skin or anything, it’s perfectly safe to rub on your hands, but not to drink. 

So I went with my friend Sarah, we made the 2 hour bus ride out to the town, and were kindly driven in the guide company’s car to the site of the old mine (it has since been shut down) and were able to see the tunnel that they used to get to the mines, and were walked out into an open area where you can see the different levels of the rock they chiseled out and the different colors because of the different minerals that are in the rock. 

Then we were brought to the train where they take you on an hour and a half train ride next to the river.  This again I think used to be a part of the old mines and they used this to transport the minerals to and from different locations.  But the train ride takes you along the river and you can see there how truly blood red the water is, it’s really cool!  They stop the train at one portion of the river so you can get out and take pictures and go down to the water front and touch the water or even fill a water bottle with some (although it looks more diluted in a water bottle and I feel like I just have a bottle of pee sitting on my desk)

After we stopped they brought us back to the main station and the nice guide took us to Nerva (apparently there are only two taxis in that area….so hitching a ride was the only option). There we had to catch the last bus back to Huelva and we ate lunch at a hotel restaurant where the waiter was a singer at heart.  He served us a delicious lunch full of fresh seafood and chocolate cake and then sang Karaoke!  It was certainly the most entertaining lunch I’ve had in a while.  Rio Tinto was really interesting to see, and while we didn’t get to see everything the town and the mines had to offer, due to the horrible bus schedule, it was still charming and worth the ride out there.