My village

Xodos is a small village located in the region of Alcalaten. It has about two hundred habitants. It has been built up on a huge rock, with a small castle on the top of it. It’s very beautiful to see this, especially when it has snowed and it’s covered with a white layer. It is located aver 1000 above the sea level, so it snows frequently. Well, now with the climate change it is strange to see it snowed, but some years ago it was always white at winter.

It has very beautiful views: it’s all green there, and the Penyagolosa (the second higher mountain in Spain) is very close. You can stay at rural houses or you can rent a room in one of the two hotels (restaurants with rooms) there are in the village. The food of one of these restaurants is extremely good. The food is home cooking, and they cook things like paella, soup, “tombet” (a typical plate from there). I enjoy eating roast meat until I am about to explode. The basic menu is first plate, second plate, deserts and café. But if you hadn’t ate enough with the things they have served you (what I doubt), you can ask for as many food as you want. I don’t know if the other restaurant is as good as this because I have never gone there.

There are many routs to make excursions, and all of them very beautiful. Maybe the most known is going the sanctuary of Penyagolosa and take a break to eat and rest there, and then continue the journey to the top of Penyagolosa. It is a very long and tiring excursion, but I recommend everyone to make it even once in life.During the year is a very calm and relaxing place. You can go there at weekends and all the stress will leave you.

But when I like it the most is in summer, because of the atmosphere that is all over the village: everyone is in the streets, children play and run , the eldest people sit outside and talk with the others. But the best of it is the bar. Almost all the village goes there to meet the others, play cards and talk. I also enjoy a lot going to the swimming pool, where all the young people usually is. I’m really happy at this moment of the year. And then there come the village festivals. They are in mid-August and last for a week. The first day is only for races and contests and, of course, dancing at night. The best day, of course, is Saturday. I always invite some friends to come and it’s even funnier.

Well, I have told you a bit of my village. I am sure I could have said more, but I now I don’t know what more to say and I am a bit tired of this blog, so I will see you another day. I hope you have enjoyed this, and if you want to know more about it I encourage you to come and visit it, I will be waiting you^^. (532)

Rural house

Some days ago I was living at a really fantastic place located in “La Vera”, a region very close to Caceres. Its name was “Valvellodos” and it was in the middle of a really huge valley. “Valvellodos” is like a “country house-hotel-farm” where you can spend a really relaxing time.

From the outside, the house looks picturesque and big. There are lots of animals around the house such as horses, cows, pigs and sheep. You can go with the animals and touch them if you want to. The children of the family can have a really great time while the elders are having a cup of coffee at the bar. The views are really much “greener” than they are in Castelló and it makes you feel better. The house has lots of rooms where a lot of people can live at the same time. There is a quiet bar next to a big dinning room where its smell caries you into a fantastic world. Although the rooms are a bit small, they are big enough. We spent most of the time at the house, but we also visited other towns and made some excursions.

I liked that house because it was really calm, beautiful and lovely. Some people prefer going to big cities and saying at luxurious hotels, but from my point of view it is much better going to places like this, where you can stay calmly and enjoying the views you have. I also love that kind of houses: rural houses that are extremely homely. I have been thinking about it and I would like to live in a place like that when I am older. It is a bit depressing when you return home, at the stressing daily routing, after spending some days in a place like that, where the time seems to stop. (309)

Climate change

Nowadays, the climate change is an issue to be worried about. But are all the people concerned about this? Do they do their best to help our planet? I think everyone should do what they can, but many people think “It doesn’t matter what I do. There are many people in the world that doesn’t help the planet. It should be a useless effort.” And that’s exactly the kind of thought we have to remove.

Some years ago, I didn’t believe what scientists told about the climate change. Well, maybe I believed it, but I thought it would much later than this. But now we can see it very clearly. The climate is turning crazy. One day there can be 11º outside and the next day there are 22º. I remember that when I was very young (7 years or so), every year it snowed in my village, and me and my sister went with the slid to have fun. This is impossible to do now. I rarely see my village snowed again, and if it snows, the next day the temperature is so hot that the snow is melted again. But this is just an anecdote, let’s return to the main subject of today.

Some governments also want to help, and they make laws or invest in products that are healthy for the Earth. For example, the eco-friendly products. It’s a fact that the sale of eco-friendly products are increasing day by day. But, are they really useful to reduce the pollution? And, are the increasing number of sales the result of becoming aware of the climate change or just a passing fashion? I hope that the answer is the first option, but the truth doesn’t seem to be that.

Firstly, global warming is a problem whose effects, like the climate change, are intensified every year. Due to that, lots of people think that the use of eco-friendly products can help to reduce the pollution and, consequently, the global warming.

Apparently, there aren’t many people who don’t like eco-friendly products. However, many people buy them because they seem to be popular, not because they are thinking about the climate.

From my point of view, it’s absolutely necessary to begin to use eco-friendly products. And, if it is a fake, we should think about how to make this fake to continue indefinitely to guarantee our survival.(396)  

Travelling to Amsterdam

Last year, when we finished the course and the university entrance exams, four of my friends and me travelled to Amsterdam. We went together, and some girls of our class went to Amsterdam too but on their own. We spent a whole week there, and I have to say that it was the most incredible journey of my life.

When we got to Amsterdam, we checked-in in the hotel and go for a walk around the city. We were a bit surprised with the prices there. Amsterdam is much more expensive than Spain, and we all were used to the prices we have here. But well, we had to exploit our trip, so it didn’t matter. The first day we didn’t do anything important. It wasn’t until de second day that we began visiting the museums and the sights of the city. I was impressed how many museums there are in Amsterdam. We bought a city book that gave us free entrance to some places and discounts on other things. Probably the most important museums that we visited were the Rembrandt museum and Van Gogh’s. I didn’t enjoy this part very much, but you can’t go to Amsterdam and don’t see these things, even if you don’t like them.

One day we and our other friends organized a guided tour of the major cities in the area, like Rotterdam and Delf. I didn’t like Rotterdam very much, it seemed to me that it was too industrial, it didn’t have anything beautiful. Delf, on the other hand, was very welcome. We visited there a farm and a ceramics factory. In the farm we could see how they make cheese and we also could taste it, and they also showed us how they made wood shoes that are typical from there. And in the ceramics factory we saw how they made the objects, the tools  they used, and finally some ceramic objects they had made and we could buy.

We also rented bikes one day. Guess how much it cost us? 15€ for eight hours! And it was the cheapest place we found. Other places made us pay a guarantee of 100€. Now let’s compare it with Castelló: here you can have a bike card paying 10€ a year. With this I hope you will be able to get an idea of how expensive can Amsterdam be. An anecdote about this could be that we almost had to pay an enormous amount of money because we got lost and we arrived at the last minute we had to return the bikes. After that we had to have a shower and rest for a while. You can’t imagine how fast we had to move to arrive in time…

Maybe you won’t believe me, but the last days of the trip we wanted  to go home. Well, we didn’t want to go home immediately, of course we wanted to finish our days there, but we wanted to eat some healthy food. I lost the count of how many hamburgers of the McDonalds I ate, or the Kentaky Fried Chicken, or the Wok, etc. many things, but none of them healthy. When I was arriving home I told to my mother: “Mom, please, cook me some vegetables and boiled tomatoes”. I usually hate this kind of food, but I needed it.

And that was part of my journey. I won’t tell more because I don’t want to bore anyone. Despite it was an expensive trip, I would repeat it without any doubt . I just hope this year I will go somewhere when I finish the classes.  We thought about an Interrail through southern Europe, but we still have to talk about it. I’m looking forward to it! (623)

Hobbies

The subject of today is “hobbies”, and more specifically mine. The most I enjoy is playing basketball. I think I have been playing basketball since I was six more or less. I have played in my school team at the beginning, later I went to the Almassora basketball team. Then I wanted to try the Castelló’s basketball team, but I didn’t like it very much, so I went back to Almassora, and there is where I am now. I train two hours three days a week, and every weekend I play a match. Basketball helps me to relax and forget for a while all the things I have to do for the university. I would like to play on the UJI’s basketball team, but I don’t have enough free time. Furthermore, if I played on the UJI’s basketball team, I would have free access to the gym, what I would like very much. But like I said before, the time is a problem.

Another thing that I like very much is playing drums. I have been playing the drums for five years. I have been in two different bands, and now I am in my music academy’s band. We do concerts every three months. We practice one hour a week, so we can’t play mane songs, but it’s funny. We play mostly rock, but I enjoy more playing reagge, ska or jazz. I have an electronic drum here in Castelló, and an acoustic drum in my village. That’s why I don’t want to annoy my neighbors, but in my village I can play it without annoying anyone.

And finally in my free time I study German at the Official Collage School. I also enjoy going there, because the teacher makes the lessons very funny. Maybe this isn’t a hobby, but I also like this. (304)

English

Today I will talk about English, because it has become very important in our society and all over the world. Nowadays learning languages is very important and useful, because now it is easier to travel around the world and you need to speak their languages to understand them. English is specially important, because everywhere you go you can communicate with people speaking English. That’s one of the reasons why I’m studying this career. I enjoy learning languages, and I hope when I finish the career I will be able to travel to many places and speak their languages. But let’s come back to English and his importance on the actuality, what is the point of today.

I think there are only advantages about learning English, the only problem is that you need a lot of time to learn it. But once you can speak it you can travel, listen to songs and understand them and things more important like business and commerce. Currently, you need to know at least English for almost every job you apply for.

However, as I said before, it takes a lot of time to learn English, and that’s the reason why many people don’t want to do it. Although lately I think that more people is realizing about its importance and it’s beginning to study it.

In conclusion, I think everyone should learn many languages as many as he or she can even if it takes a long time, because eventually you will be able to meet people all over the world and get better jobs. So I encourage you to study Translation and Interpretation! It’s hard and busy, but it’s very funny too. (279)

The rest of the weekend

The rest of my long weekend was quieter and boring. We didn’t any other trip, and I spent most of the time inside my house with my friends, studying or watching TV. We were bored of being all the day at house, and we didn’t want to study, but we didn’t want to go outside either (it was really cold, and we were so good inside with the electric heating…). So I don’t have so much more to say about it.

Tuesday’s night was different. We found out that in the nearer village (named Atzeneta) they were celebrating the “Kinto’s” party, as we call it here. It is a party where the people of the village who celebrate his eighteenth birthday that year have to organize a party. We didn’t have anything more interesting to do, so we went to Atzeneta. Although the night was really bad: it was very cold and it was raining.

And that’s all I have to say about my long weekend. It hasn’t got anything special, I would even say that it was a bit boring. But at least I could relax, and now I feel that I’m strong enough to face the exams and worksheets that I have to do for my careers in the next weeks.(213)

Long weekend

The last weekend was very large, because Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were holiday, so we had a lot of free time. I spent it at my village, Xodos (maybe another day I will talk about it, because It’s very beautiful and there are many things to say about it). I went to my village on Friday, after finishing my basketball training. When I arrived there it was too late to do anything, so I ate something and went to bed.

On Saturday morning we woke up early, because my mother had organized a day trip to the Penyagolosa’s peak (one of the highest mountains of Spain).  So she prepared some food, and then we went to the village’s square, where we had to wait the others. Once we were all done, we began our excursion. It was a very beautiful and funny journey, although a bit tired. We walked on roads that made it through the forests and vegetation. That was the beautiful  part of our trip, but when we arrived at the foot of the mountain began the hard and tiring part. When we arrived at the peak, we had lunch (I have to say that I was about to starve). We stayed there a while, enjoying the views that we had up there, but we had to go back to Xodos soon because now the sun goes down very early.

I really needed something like this to disconnect for a while of the stressing life we have in big cities, this is the perfect thing to relax. And that was my Saturday, later I will tell you about the rest of my little holiday. But now I have to go to have lunch, talking about this have made me hungry. (292)

Beginning

Today I'm beginning my blog. I know I should have started writing it before, but I never remembered, or i didn't want to do it or something, and now I have to do it against the clock. The teacher warned us about this and I remember thinking: "I'm not going to wait until the last moment, I will write in the blog everyday so I will be less stressed  for Christmas." That's not for me, I always wait until the same moment and I alaways regret myself for it. I can't help it.(93)