Paella with the prof.s

Saturday morning I walked around Priego by myself for a few hours. I went to a few of the overly decorative baroque churches and took lots of pictures. Shops are only open in the morning on Saturdays (and not at all on Sundays). Business hours in Priego are 10a-2p Monday through Saturday and 5:30-8 Monday through Friday. Some places, like banks, are only open during the morning Monday through Friday. This means that we don’t really have time during the week to go places because we’re at school all morning. During the afternoons we usually go to the gym because that’s when our exercise classes are.







I was somewhat surprised at the amount of people who were out Saturday. There were lots of people in cafes, at the produce market (which is really tiny), eating churros (fried dough), and at the castle. We still haven’t been to the castle or to the Carnicería Real (old meat packing business) because we’re waiting or our residency cards which grant us free entrance.



After visiting a the churches and wandering around, I met Cecilia and Erin at the Ayntamiento (town hall and central meeting place in Priego). We were then joined by David (English teacher) and Lourdes (secretary/music teacher). We went to a bar and met up with Sole (science teacher) and Guillermo (gym teacher). Maria Jose (principal) and Jose Maria (vice principal/resource teacher), who are married, arrived later. We had a drink and some tapas (this was around 2pm). The tapas were pretty good: lightly fried eggplant sticks, meat stew (I ate a carrot) and fried pinwheel sandwiches with ham in the middle (I did not eat these).

From here we went to a neighborhood restaurant (there are tons all over Priego) where we were joined by more people (Sole’s husband and Guillermo’s friend). Sole had organized everything and ordered paella ahead of time. Mine was seafood paella and everyone else had meat and seafood mixed. We were at the restaurant for about two hours and then went to another bar and had a drink and stood around talking. The Spanish like to take an event like lunch and drag it out to an all-day affair. The entire idea for this meal started because Lourdes asked me what we were doing this weekend and I told her we were going to go to the market and probably eat paella after. She decided she wanted to come and started telling other teachers and somehow we got a group of 11 people together.



It was a ton of fun to hang out with the other teachers and the paella was delicious. They are all interesting people and really funny. Lourdes tried convincing everyone that Portugal was shaped like a face (I think Lisbon might be the mouth or nose or something). We talked about difference between the US and Spain and various phrases that we use here or there.