O Nadal de Tirán

Bo Nadal! ¡Feliz Navidad! Merry Christmas!
Abaixo podes ver algunhas fotos das decoracións na nosa escola. / Abajo puedes ver algunas fotos de las decoraciones en nuestra escuela. / Below you can see some photos of the decorations in our school.

Bonecos de neve / Muñecos de nieve / Snowmen

Just a small taste of the overwhelming cuteness of our program

Verbs related to rejecting

Today I was in the library and while searching for a good equivalent for the English phrase "to turn down an offer" I got really carried away and researched lots of verbs relating to turning things down or rejecting things. In the end, I had a whole big chart of verbs divided by conceptual field. This post is not going to be interesting to the regular readers of this blog, but I am going to post it anyway; maybe somebody learning Spanish will find it via a search engine and find it useful; In any case I spent too long on this to keep it to myself. I can't vouch for total accuracy, since there are some verbs here that I've never even seen before. My main sources were the María Moliner dictionary and WordReference.

1) Dejar como inútil / Put away or get rid of something because it's not useful
Desechar
Apartar
Dejar en desuso
Quitar de la vista
Quitar del paso
Dar de lado
Arrumbar
Arrinconar
Retirar

2) Apartar algo de sí / To move something away from yourself
Desechar
Apartar
Rehuir
Quitar de la vista
Hacer retrodecer
Ahuyentar
Alejar

3) No tomar por elegir otro / Not to take something because you choose something else
Desechar
Descartar
Eliminar, Excluir, Hacer criba

4) Excluir a personas de un grupo / To exclude people from a group
Excluir
Apartar
Aislar
Rehuir
Prescindir de alguien
Arrinconar
Relegar (al olvido)

5) Mover algo para que no estorbe / To move something so that it's not in the way
Apartar
Quitar de
Quitar de delante
Quitar de la vista
Retirar

6) Rechazar a una cosa presentada para consideración / To reject something that is presented for consideration
Rechazar
Descartar
Despreciar
Declinar
Rehusar
Negar
Negarse a
Denegar
Repeler

7) Renunciar / To renounce
Renunciar
Abandonar
Apartarse de
Apostatar
Desprenderse de
Dejar de
Quitarse de
Prescindir de
Retirarse
Desistir
Pasarse sin
Renegar de

8) Dejar (de usar) / To stop (using)
Dejar de
Abandonar
Quitarse de
Cesar
Parar

9) Evitar el trato con una persona / To avoid contact with a person
Rehuir
Arrumbar
Arrinconar
Alejar
Relegar
Evitar
Evadir

10) Rechazar a una persona, personalmente / To personally reject someone
Rechazar
Desairar
Dar de lado
Dejar a un lado
Pasar de
Sacudirse

11) Negar / To deny or answer negatively
Rechazar
Negar
Denegar
Renegar

12) Omitir / To omit
Omitir
Prescindir
Suprimir
Pasar por alto

Gijón

(Trip to Northern Spain pt VI)

The city of Gijón is on the coast of Asturias, just about 30 minutes by train from Oviedo. (Remember that both the G and the J are pronounced as a heavy H sound, as in Loch Ness.) At first it struck me as a letdown-- the city isn't old and enchanting in the same way as Oviedo is. But it's interesting in other ways. It has ports, long beaches, and at night there are lots of people in the streets and squares-- a bigger and busier city with more movement.

Strong waves

Note the surfer

This was a market with artisan goods and food

One big park had big ponds with all kinds of waterfowl, as well as a caged section with chickens... and two emus. Looking at the emus I felt like I was getting an idea of what dinosaurs used to be like. They seem really primitive. Their feathers are stringy, their feet massive and plated, and the way they move their necks-- well, it looks like they are big puppets and somebody's arm is inside doing clumsy and cartoonish gestures.

Oviedo

(Trip to Northern Spain pt VI)

From Ribadeo, which is right on the edge of Galicia, I passed into Asturias. Asturias is one of those single-province autonomous communities (to explain that confusing phrase, Spain is divided into a number of autonomous communities, kind of like states, but each community is made up of a certain number of provinces. Some have a bunch of provinces, some are just a single province that has the status of a community). Even better, Asturias is officially the Principado de Asturias or the Principality of Asturias. The heir to the throne in Spain always holds the title Prince of Asturias, just like the heir to the British throne is always the Prince of Wales. The current Prince is Felipe, or, if we want to do the translating thing, Philip. (In older English-language sources, names of royalty are usually translated-- so we talk about King Philip, Charles, etc, or, even nowadays, Pope John Paul or Benedict. In Spanish this custom is still in vigor, so they talk about Isabel II of the United Kingdom, her son Príncipe Carlos de Gales, and the royal wedding of Guillermo y Catalina, los duques de Cambridge. Sometimes you'll even see references to people like Carlos Marx or Carlos Dickens. And I know I've seen a Galician-language source refer to the current king as Xoan Carlos I.)

After that lengthy aside, let's get back to the city at hand, Oviedo. It's the capital of Asturias, and is a really attractive city, a place you can just walk around and enjoy.

I find the big cathedral interesting-- according to what I've read, it's classified as Gothic, but somehow it doesn't seem that Gothic, it seems more primitive and blocky (hard as this may be to believe, I mean that in a totally non-pejorative way!!).

Of course I had to take a picture of the Academia de la Llingua Asturiana, the Academy of the Asturian language! Yep, just like any self-respecting region of Spain, Asturias has its own language. I'm not totally clear on how widespread it is; it doesn't have official status like Galician, Catalan and Basque do, but nonetheless I saw it on some municipal signs. The name of Oviedo in the Asturian language is Uviéu.

The Christmas lights you see above are in the shape of the Cruz de los Ángeles or Cross of the Angels, which is a gold-plated and bejeweled cross you can see in the Cathedral, and which is the symbol of Oviedo. The other famous golden-and-jewels cross in the cathedral is called the Cruz de la Victoria, and, according to tradition, underneath all the gold is an old wooden cross that King Pelayo brandished at the battle of Covadonga (that symbolic first victory of the Reconquista). Spanish cities love to hang their streets with big lights like this, and these ones in Oviedo are the nicest and most tasteful I've seen... Príncipe Street in Vigo has some brilliant blue-and-white ones that are really verging on tacky.

praia das illas, praia das catedrais

(Trip to Northern Spain pt V)

These beaches were the destination of my hike across the countryside. There are a number of beaches all in a row; here I've got pictures of two of them, the praia das illas (beach of the islands) and the famous praia das catedrais (beach of the cathedrals).

I loved the colors visible in the rock above-- the slatey blue at the bottom ranging up to yellows, rusts, reds, terra-cottas. It really reminded me of a postcard from an art museum in Toronto that Aunt L had given me a year or so ago, which bore a photo of the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, the curved sides of which reflected indistinct rosey reds, metal-blues--

In the picture above you can see why it's called the beach of the islands-- the rock formations come up from the water like tall islands.

Below this are the pictures of Cathedrals beach.
As you may remember from the previous post, the timing of the tides wasn't very convenient, and even though I visited the beach at the end of the day, the tides were still at a medium level, impeding my visit.

Well, here's one buttress at least... anyway, the more impressive arches were surrounded by impassable water

Above, you can see the most famous sections of the beach, from a distance... maybe if you view the picture at a greater size the arches will be more easily visible.

Even though I didn't get to visit a good deal of this beach, I was still glad to have gone-- and even glad to have walked from Ribadeo, despite my subsequent fatigue. I thought that the praia das illas was definitely interesting and deserves to share a little of the fame of catedrais.

Camiño polo campo / Walk through the countryside

(Trip to Northern Spain part IV)

One of the most famous things on the North coast of Lugo province is this beach called a praia das catedrais or cathedrals beach. Before I got to Ribadeo I wasn't really sure how I'd get there, because it's outside the town. From what I could find online, there were buses doing a tourist shuttle service only during the summer. I looked on google maps: it didn't seem terribly far away so I thought, "maybe I could just walk." Oh, one more thing. Every time I told someone I was thinking of visiting catedrais, they would always remind me, "don't forget, you have to go at low tide, or else you won't be able to see anything!" So a few days before arriving in Ribadeo I consulted an online tide calculator. Unfortunately the first low tide occurred before sunrise and the second one occurred after sunset. Sure, I could go at about 5:30 immediately before the early winter sunset, but this definitely complicated my plan of walking back to town.

When I got to Ribadeo I went to the tourism office and asked about ways of getting to the beach. I realized that the FEVE train had a stop like 5 minutes from the beach. Perfect! That made everything easier. But the guy in the office also told me that there were "routes" through the countryside-- like a ruta da costa that hugged the coast (and which was, with all the zigzags, extremely long), and a ruta das praias that led from Ribadeo to the different interesting beaches. I had been thinking about walking anyway, so this sounded good to me. I decided I'd walk there and take the train back. "The route is well marked," said the guy in the tourist office (it certainly was not well-marked).

This is right outside of Ribadeo. Below you can see men fishing in the violent coastal waves.

When I heard about "routes" I was kind of imagining a paved path along the coast, or maybe some little signs or symbols to tell me I was on the right track. I soon realized, however, that the "route" was nothing more than country highways, the kind of rural ones with occasional cars. There really were no signs. I threw out the maps but I kind of wish I still had them so that I could show how little I was going on: they basically had squiggly lines that you were supposed to interpret. Honestly it wasn't so bad; when I went through a town I'd try to find its name on my map to confirm I was going the right direction; in any case all I had to do was follow the coast directly West and I'd get there eventually.

Here is a marker for the Camiño/Camino de Santiago! The standard route is farther inland, but there is a coastal route as well.

I took the photo above because this was pretty much the only sign I saw

What you see above is called a hórreo and it is a sort of storage shed for foods or other materials that have to be conserved from humidity. It's elevated to keep it away from the moisture on the ground, and the sides are slotted to aerate what's inside. These are extremely typical of Galicia; they're always built more or less in the same shape, and you see them everywhere. Once you cross the border into Asturias they have a different style of hórreo, more square, like a little house.

Next up, the beaches

Ribadeo

(Trip to Northern Spain pt III)

From Foz I made a kind of loop, first taking a bus to Viveiro for a few hours and then taking the FEVE train to Ribadeo. FEVE is a narrow gauge train that transverses the North coast of Spain.

Ribadeo is right on the border of Galicia and Asturias. It's another one of those smallish towns that's surely more lively in the summer, although it's slightly bigger and therefore more interesting. They had a Christmas fair with vendors, more shops and cafés and so on.

And in this last picture we're looking across the bay to Asturias, to an attractive town whose name, according to maps I found online, is Castropol. This, too, almost looks mitteleuropean; that big square tower looks like it could be placed into Luzern without too much trouble. This is an impression I got a lot while traveling up North; there are lots of pastures, green mountains, rustic chalets, cows, sheep... it really doesn't match up with the more well-known image of Spain, to wit, the arid plains or olive groves of the center and South.