Turkey Bowl & Spanish Ghost Towns

This week had its highs and lows. As it inches closer to Thanksgiving, I get more saddened of the thought that my Mamaw Pressley's macaroni & cheese, mashed potatoes, smoked turkey, and cranberry sauce (without the berries of course) will have a portion less for me and Adam. I know it's just a silly tradition but one that I've known for 26 years.

But this week also had its highs. I had kabobs (a gyro like sandwich), played Dutch Blitz, and got to play two-hand touch football against the High School PE class yesterday as a part of the "Turkey Bowl". Also, it is possible that I may be summoned to teach another class at ECA - Accounting :) :). I will not hide my excitement in potentially teaching this. Although the students made me sad, when signing up for 2nd semester classes, a lot said, "What is accounting? Oh...I'd never take that class" They have no idea....my nerdy little personality blossomed in 10th grade when I took "Computerized Accounting" with Miss Boyer. We learned the basics about accounting (balance sheets, assets, liabilities, etc.) and I knew that was what I wanted to spend my life doing. So somehow the Lord has allowed me to come full circle - back to the classroom - to offer students the ability to decide if accounting is their passion. Maybe not. But just the possibility makes me smile.

Also last night, I realized how risk-adverse a person I really am. Encouraged by another teacher at ECA (Mr. H) we went last night to see a Spanish ghost town. Now, maybe my days of Tweetsie Railroad and the ghost town sets there had alter my view of ghost towns. Or movies I've watched where there is a main street and main town buildings line the sides, but this was something completely more scary.

We drove about 30 minutes away to a place called Villaflores near Guadalajara. I immediately wanted to stay in the car when we drove to the "road" that led to this place and there was chain linked fence blocking people from entering and a sign (in Spanish of course) that read "Watch for Falling Objects - Do Not Enter". I've never crossed a fence with a sign like that before. Obviously they wouldn't have written the sign if that fact wasn't true and they didn't want people up there. So that was time #1 when I was like, "Well, we should turn back". But no - Mr. H and Adam (and the manly adventure spirit) desired to go further. "We have to see it" - they said. "Think of the stories we'll have". None of these statements encouraged me to go further, but I was for sure not sitting in the car beside a spooky house, so onward I went.

Climbing up the hill, we arrive at the beginning of the town and a giant town hall/marketplace. Now keep in mind, this place has been abandoned for over 30-50 years. Everything is boarded up, slightly decayed, and it's at night. Nighttime. I don't go to scary places at nighttime. So we proceed to go inside every one of these abandoned buildings of Villaflores. I had never been so freaked out - knowing we were go to come face to face to a person who chose to sleep here or animals or other things. The only slightly comforting thing was that it was graffitied intensely. This was not comforting however, because what if others were up here continuing their art when we were there...sigh. But I continued partly out of not wanting to wait anywhere by myself and partly because I had no choice.

We toured the whole ghost town - town hall (which had two areas for cattle/livestock, a courtyard, and was humongous), a church (which still had the marble floor in it), houses (one main house and 5 other duplex homes), a giant silo type building that was the weirdest thing I've ever seen (it was stone and brick with a huge dome on the top that looked like a planetarium) - there are no silos that fancy back on farms in NC, a barn that contained tons of 500 lb. clay pots (this was creepy too - It was like a basement that housed these jugs - we had no idea what that was), and finally a barn. All the while wondering what this place was originally built for and why was it now abandoned.

We spent an hour and a half (the longest hour and a half of my life) touring this place in the dark. And thankfully we did not see any other individuals and only one creepy graffiti of a giant head with glow in the dark eyes (I refused to look at it - it was indeed creepy).

The boys probably hated my being there. I was constantly saying "I don't know..." or "Be careful" "Can we go now?" But I am not a risky person. While it was an odd and interesting thing to see, I would have been fine looking at pictures on the internet.

So that was the way I ended my week here in Spain! Freaked out in a ghost town. What other adventures will I experience here?