To say this camp was better than the last is a slight understatement; it was Asda own brand beans compared to the Heinz variety. I lucked out with a really good class and we covered (well I made them talk about) immigration, religion, race, homosexuality and other major topics that seem to crop up here in fairly one-sided ways. (A view which in itself is biased!) Anyway after some probing questions, unusual examples and real life experiences I think a few more young minds are open to challenging the way things are versus the way they could be.
Chatting about immigration I asked if anyone knew any immigrants? A few said there were lots of Moroccans in their town but didn't really know any immigrants.
"None at all?"
Nah, not really.
"Except me of course?"
That's different...
So it went until we established race was a major factor in seeing immigrants as bad or dangerous. I asked if they knew Lance (another teacher at the camp who is African American) they did so I asked if someone had stolen a bag and it must have been Lance or I that took it, who stole the bag? A few more lightbulbs blinked into life.
Well until Tana, the Director who was sitting in on the debate, told them I probably stole it, lol!
Rambling here but I was genuinely very proud of my little group and pretty sad to see them go :'(
must dash some *sniff* thing in... my eye
Monday, 1 September 2008
Friday, 15 August 2008
ghost town
Another bank holiday so everyone's away, Carla, Alex, Sandra, the rest of Madrid except me. I've got another camp which I leave for on Sunday fingers crossed it's better than the last one although as Alec pointed out I didn't actually write much about it except the food was bad. Well it was bad! Anyways I think I've sorted everything I need to do on the internet, our connection in the house is still goosed mind you it's only been 10 days (!). Bastards. Sat the first of my entrance exams for uni yesterday went much better than anticipated; the practice one I'd downloaded was nails. To the point where I couldn't see how it was physically possible to complete it in the time allowed, I was seriously thinking of jacking it in- it just didn't seem feasible. Anyway went fine although next one is much harder and cost a lot more to sit, I've sold the LeMond to fund it. I never even rode it :'(
Think I'll go for a longer pedal tomorrow, only managed a couple hours since got back because of the heat but it's been a lot cooler last day or so. Until then I shall indulge in some English language tv and write my personal statement for uni. Fun times.
Think I'll go for a longer pedal tomorrow, only managed a couple hours since got back because of the heat but it's been a lot cooler last day or so. Until then I shall indulge in some English language tv and write my personal statement for uni. Fun times.
Tuesday, 12 August 2008
disconnected
It's been a while but I'm back in the tourist office exploiting their free wi-fi as our phone and internet hasn't worked since we got back from Scotland. Despite spending 30 euros on mobile phone credit to call and ask what's happening and when it'll work again we're no further forward. The shitty service is unbelievable, they refuse to reimburse the money we've spent calling them because we used our mobiles (eh we don't have a fricking landline because it's broken) and they can't tell us when the problem will be sorted. Awesome. Welcome back to Madrid.
Leave on Friday for the next camp, fingers crossed it's better than the last. Also paid (ahem well Carla has paid) the £200 entrance exam fee so I can apply, not even get in just apply, to study medicine at 2 of my 4 choices of university. So the gorgeous LeMond is up for sale. I didn't even get to ride it :'(
Leave on Friday for the next camp, fingers crossed it's better than the last. Also paid (ahem well Carla has paid) the £200 entrance exam fee so I can apply, not even get in just apply, to study medicine at 2 of my 4 choices of university. So the gorgeous LeMond is up for sale. I didn't even get to ride it :'(
Monday, 28 July 2008
gruntin'
Went for first ride in 3 weeks after making a few changes to the ferrous. Stuck a 90mm stem on instead of the 100 that I'd been using but although feels easier to loft the front and spritely it's a bit too lively and when climbing it feels too short, so going back to the 100 tomorrow. Also changed the ratio from 18 tooth to 16 at the back, makes it much more of a grunt and grimace affair uphill but it rips on anything flattish. Hard work but I'll persevere to try and get some leg strength for when I finally get up to the sierra. Apparently changes to cog size have a greater impact than chainring size?
Finally and most successfully I got my 2.4 mountain king tubeless on upfront. It rocks. Partly, I suspect, because it's tubeless but also because with the rigid fork a big volume tyre makes a hell of a difference especially on the hard packed ground round here. That's it really, only rode for couple hours as it was so hot and because I remembered halfway round that I'd left the front window open. D'oh.
Finally and most successfully I got my 2.4 mountain king tubeless on upfront. It rocks. Partly, I suspect, because it's tubeless but also because with the rigid fork a big volume tyre makes a hell of a difference especially on the hard packed ground round here. That's it really, only rode for couple hours as it was so hot and because I remembered halfway round that I'd left the front window open. D'oh.
Sunday, 27 July 2008
guantanamo soup
I arrived early doors in Segovia (town near Madrid) to get picked up and taken to village where the camp was because there aren't any buses to get there.....
Shoehorned into the back of a tiny car with a Spanish woman who was our boss, an Indonesian guy, a Scottish woman who has lived in Spain for 14 years and a guy who grew up in Spain, studied in UK has an Irish dad and an Indonesian mum we set off for Fuente Pelayo. As they all knew each other they were pretty relaxed but I was quite frankly asking what I'd let myself in for. Joanna, Scottish woman, and Nick, Spain/UK/Ireland/Indonesia, are both monitors at the camp; generally monitors need to be extroverted and happy to do pretty much anything and these guys are no exception. At the time I felt like I'd signed up to serve aboard the Black Pearl, they were screaming and laughing all the way to the camp and I was worried I wasn't going to fit in. As it was I needn't have been concerned, I soon discovered how friendly they were and that laughing as hard as you could was the best way to get through this camp - the alternative was crying.
It soon transpired that the money wasn't the only crap thing at this camp, the stories I heard about the food in the first hour of being there were making me very nervous. Andy, Indonesian guy, is Muslim so can't eat pork. Except that the only meat they serve in the camp, with the exception of 3 meals, is pork. So they make him a different meal. Sort of. In the first camp they'd done (remember a camp lasts 2 weeks) they refused to cook different meals and said the only thing they would make was fried eggs. The boss had told the kitchen staff to give him pork and tell him it was beef! So he ate a lot of eggs.
Thankfully in the camp I did they had bought more food and prepared him fish, chicken and other things, in fact a lot of the time his food was better than ours. For breakfast there were three 'meals' that were rotated in order: cola coa (hot chocolate) with concentrated juice and biscuits, cola coa with concentrated juice and fairy cakes, cola coa with concentrated juice and square shaped fairy cakes. Not the healthiest breakfast in the world but to be fair not that unusual for here, cereal isn't as big here and toast doesn't exist.
However, people in my experience at least normally have something mid morning or later to keep them going till lunchtime, which is about 2ish here and much more substantial than in the UK. Not at this camp though, the kids (and us) ate at 9 then didn't eat again till 1.45 by which time we were all fucking starving. I'm a big eater, I'll admit that but I am not by and large a fussy eater. Aside from tuna and hard boiled eggs I'll eat pretty much anything put in front of me yet even I struggled with some of the fodder on offer.
It's fair to say the food was basic, you'd expect that at any sort of camp but in 2 weeks we had salad twice, lentils once and vegetable soup three times. Aside from that I cannot remember eating any other vegetable aside from potatoes. There was rice with tomato frito (very basic tomato sauce) poured on top, spaghetti with tomato frito and chorizo, chicken noodle soup no less than 4 times (dubbed guantanamo soup), cold pork, pork 'steaks,' battered pork, pork omelette and a host of other dull carbohydrate rich meals. There was more than one occasion where we gave some of our own table's food to the kids and every single day without fail we had to race the flies to our meals. Last Monday the weekend kitchen staff had left out the watermelon (to be fair we did have fruit every other day) we'd had on Sunday night so come the morning the place was swarming with the buggers. It was slightly worse when the staff on Monday didn't bother to clean it away either and by lunchtime there were even more flies.
So the food was bad. The kids were, thankfully, great. A hundred times better than the class I'd had at the last camp I was genuinely sad to see them go. It was a small camp, only 50 kids compared to most camps which are 200 or more and that meant after 2 weeks I could name pretty much everyone which was nice. I'm not sure they learnt all that much but they seemed to have a blast and after a few days coercion, debate and finally submission they even sang Bohemian Rhapsody for the final day talent show.
Shoehorned into the back of a tiny car with a Spanish woman who was our boss, an Indonesian guy, a Scottish woman who has lived in Spain for 14 years and a guy who grew up in Spain, studied in UK has an Irish dad and an Indonesian mum we set off for Fuente Pelayo. As they all knew each other they were pretty relaxed but I was quite frankly asking what I'd let myself in for. Joanna, Scottish woman, and Nick, Spain/UK/Ireland/Indonesia, are both monitors at the camp; generally monitors need to be extroverted and happy to do pretty much anything and these guys are no exception. At the time I felt like I'd signed up to serve aboard the Black Pearl, they were screaming and laughing all the way to the camp and I was worried I wasn't going to fit in. As it was I needn't have been concerned, I soon discovered how friendly they were and that laughing as hard as you could was the best way to get through this camp - the alternative was crying.
It soon transpired that the money wasn't the only crap thing at this camp, the stories I heard about the food in the first hour of being there were making me very nervous. Andy, Indonesian guy, is Muslim so can't eat pork. Except that the only meat they serve in the camp, with the exception of 3 meals, is pork. So they make him a different meal. Sort of. In the first camp they'd done (remember a camp lasts 2 weeks) they refused to cook different meals and said the only thing they would make was fried eggs. The boss had told the kitchen staff to give him pork and tell him it was beef! So he ate a lot of eggs.
Thankfully in the camp I did they had bought more food and prepared him fish, chicken and other things, in fact a lot of the time his food was better than ours. For breakfast there were three 'meals' that were rotated in order: cola coa (hot chocolate) with concentrated juice and biscuits, cola coa with concentrated juice and fairy cakes, cola coa with concentrated juice and square shaped fairy cakes. Not the healthiest breakfast in the world but to be fair not that unusual for here, cereal isn't as big here and toast doesn't exist.
However, people in my experience at least normally have something mid morning or later to keep them going till lunchtime, which is about 2ish here and much more substantial than in the UK. Not at this camp though, the kids (and us) ate at 9 then didn't eat again till 1.45 by which time we were all fucking starving. I'm a big eater, I'll admit that but I am not by and large a fussy eater. Aside from tuna and hard boiled eggs I'll eat pretty much anything put in front of me yet even I struggled with some of the fodder on offer.
It's fair to say the food was basic, you'd expect that at any sort of camp but in 2 weeks we had salad twice, lentils once and vegetable soup three times. Aside from that I cannot remember eating any other vegetable aside from potatoes. There was rice with tomato frito (very basic tomato sauce) poured on top, spaghetti with tomato frito and chorizo, chicken noodle soup no less than 4 times (dubbed guantanamo soup), cold pork, pork 'steaks,' battered pork, pork omelette and a host of other dull carbohydrate rich meals. There was more than one occasion where we gave some of our own table's food to the kids and every single day without fail we had to race the flies to our meals. Last Monday the weekend kitchen staff had left out the watermelon (to be fair we did have fruit every other day) we'd had on Sunday night so come the morning the place was swarming with the buggers. It was slightly worse when the staff on Monday didn't bother to clean it away either and by lunchtime there were even more flies.
So the food was bad. The kids were, thankfully, great. A hundred times better than the class I'd had at the last camp I was genuinely sad to see them go. It was a small camp, only 50 kids compared to most camps which are 200 or more and that meant after 2 weeks I could name pretty much everyone which was nice. I'm not sure they learnt all that much but they seemed to have a blast and after a few days coercion, debate and finally submission they even sang Bohemian Rhapsody for the final day talent show.
skip to the end
ok let's fill in the blanks:
4th of July party was good, on a rooftop terrace thing with a barbeque and loads of food. Stumbled home (Carla was in London) and spent couple days enjoying silence after a week of noise teaching kids.
Saw out the second week which was pretty straightforward and went out again on the Friday, got home bit later than first time and managed to wake up Carla.
Chilled on the Sunday while got ready to go to my next Summer camp which was residential and in a wee town an hour or so away from Madrid. Wasn't sure what to expect, knew it was shit pay but felt bad bailing (got few other offers from camps with better money) so decided to head out anyway. It was certainly interesting.
4th of July party was good, on a rooftop terrace thing with a barbeque and loads of food. Stumbled home (Carla was in London) and spent couple days enjoying silence after a week of noise teaching kids.
Saw out the second week which was pretty straightforward and went out again on the Friday, got home bit later than first time and managed to wake up Carla.
Chilled on the Sunday while got ready to go to my next Summer camp which was residential and in a wee town an hour or so away from Madrid. Wasn't sure what to expect, knew it was shit pay but felt bad bailing (got few other offers from camps with better money) so decided to head out anyway. It was certainly interesting.
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