Spain

At the beginning of April, I went to Spain two weekends in a row. The original idea was to stay for the week in between, but I had to be at the office for a few meetings (You can check out what I was up to in Switzerlnd here). The first tournament was La Abuela in Madrid, which was hosted by Quijotes, the team that I trained with duringthe first semester of my masters program.  It was a mixed tournament and played with Headless, one of the clubs here in Zürich. I didn't know it until afterwards, but it was part of the tryout process for the A Squad that they will take to the mixed Swiss nationals. There were mainly Spanish teams and we lost to the hosts twice, but did really well in all of our other games, so we finished second. I arrived in Madrid midday on Friday and  I had intended to finally visit the Reina Sofia, but touristed it up with some teammates visiting the Templo de debod and eating shrimps near Sol, instead. It was a great weekend: getting to know the Headless people better, (re)exploring Madrid (I tried and failed to find the bar where some friends and I were served a bowl of spaghetti with 3 forks as a tapa!), and seeing old friends again. So many memories of the good ole days!

Second place feels pretty good! (photo stolen from Q+D's facebook page)

The next weekend, I was back in Spain --this time flying in and out of Barcelona-- for the Costa Brava Tourney on the beach of Lloret del Mar. Lloret is kind of Spanish equivalent of Myrtle Beach, but for very distinct demographic groups: 16-19 year olds who are there to party and the 75+ crowd who is there to do the same. I played with Red, a team from Leicester, England. I had played at a few other beach tournaments, including Burla, with the team's organizer. The team didn't have many girls, so I think he asked all of the women he has ever played ultimate with to join. A weekend of ultimate on a sunny Spanish beach with a mini-castle in the distance? Sign me up!  There were three other pickups, one off whom came to Zürich and trained with my team the next week! The team was so much fun and very welcoming (sometimes it can be really awkward to be a pick-up).

The idea was to land in Barcelona in the morning, do something cultural (probably something Gaudí-related) and then head to the beach, but I just skipped the culture (again) ... I hope Barcelona will still be there for me to visit properly later. Usually, beach ultimate is played on sand, this beach was comprised mostly of  rocks like you would find in an aquarium - quite painful! We only won one game, but had a blast losing (and won the party... but I didn't really pull my weight in that aspect)! Swimming in the frigid sea is just what my body needed. My knee had been feeling strange for a few months and floating around let it realign or whatever needed to happen for it to get back to me not noticing it. However, trying to touch the bottom of the sea on the first day was just what my sinuses didn't need and I randomly had salt water coming out of my nose at inopportune times throughout the afternoon and evening.

The first party theme was "Happy Birthday." Here are several of the teams in costume. The winning team all dressed up like Marilyn Monroe in matching white dresses.
(all of the photos from this tournament were stolen from Simbie, a teammate)

!

 As it was the 10th anniversary of the tournament, we spelled out HAPPY 10th BIRTHDAY in tin-foil and then danced until about 4 am!

Then played ultimate the next day, luckily the first game was at 11, so there was time for some rest.

The beauty rest was important for the "Black-tie" event that evening (It is a little difficult to look formal with only   and a day's notice of the theme, but we look pretty good- improvised ties and all!), which was followed by more dancing.

All and all, there is a lot that I don't miss about Spain: (most of) the food, not being comfortable with the language (I have started trying to learn again for professional reasons: I now know 242 words according to duolingo), it taking forever to get anything done, and the confusing university procedures, but in small doses of leisure it was perfect!

Tortilla

We had a brunch with the ultimate squad this weekend and while I was looking for recipes, I kept being drawn to frittatas. The one I wanted to make called for goat cheese, but the grocery store I visited did not have any, so I changed course mid-shop and decided to make a tortilla (the Spanish variety).  This is a thick, dense potato and onion omelet that is served at all hours in Spain.

It's been about a year since I left Madrid and this seemed like a fitting marker of that milestone. After consulting several recipes and Alberto, my Spanish course-mate, this is what I came up with:

After adding the mixture of egg, fried potatoes and onions to the pan. 

After the flip. It was not very graceful.

Finished product. Super oily.

I ended up not taking it to brunch (I opted for scrambling eggs and baking some spare peanut butter chocolate chip cookie dough). It tasted fine and had the right consistency, but it was just sort of underwhelming. Like it's hearty, substantial and nice, but wasn't really impressive. It also took a really long time to chop all the veggies and cook through, so I don't know that I'll make it very often, but I'm really glad that I tried. I have been snacking on it all weekend and will continue to enjoy it with lunch this week.

Valencia

okay, so school has been cray-cray. I'm just popping in to share that a tourney I went to in Valencia (and my team won) made the news and you can see me making a d (aka probably fouling?) about 40 seconds into the video below. It was such a pretty day at the beach. Running in the sand is exhausting. More substantial updates coming over break! {pinky promise}

Help!?!

My apartment is oven-less and aside from getting a little tired of stir fry, salad and soup I find that I'm having a hard time expressing myself without being able to make muffins/cupakes/cookies/roasted brusselsprouts... I mean rice krispie treats are okay, but get old. So, I am in need of some stovetop/ovenless recipes to add some variation to my diet (entrees and desserts).

Week Recap: A little Stressful, but super great

Last weekend, the Madrid ultimate team that I play league with took a split squad to a one day tourney in Zaragoza and our squadron went undefeated and won the tourney! Which was nice, but more importantly, we played on grass... such a luxury. Below, you can see me throw the first score of the match (and then some turns) and run really funnily. I've heard that I run strangely before, but seeing it on tape makes me never want to exercise in public again.

This school week was mostly focused on accounting. Our professor thought it would be awesome to give us a quiz on Thursday and the Final on Friday. Who does that? + the subject matter on the quiz wasn't on the test, so preparing for one, didn't really help with the other. Accounting is now over (time to burn the flashcards!) - The prof was perpetually grumpy and rude, but the final was strikingly fair and relativity easy. While getting ready for the assessments, I procrastinated proactively by playing ultimate two evenings and going to see Alela Diane in concert. Aunt Val, if you are reading, I think you'll like her. Here is a taste:

After the Exam we went on a field trip to a historical hydro power facility that also had pumped storage, which was pretty cool. I was mostly interested in the pumping part, but the host talked mostly about how the royals have visited many times and the geopolitical aspect of water (the water that wasn't stored was put into a canal that took it 300 km away). I wrote a horrible term paper once about pumped storage and now I feel like I should apologize to the professor. The pumping pipes:

I'm currently in the middle of a 6 day weekend that will end with a field trip to a concentrated solar facillity between Seville and Cordova. At a Halloween party on Saturday, I went as the solar system (yes, again, but i didn't have any time to come up with something new); however, apparently, in Europe you are actually supposed to go as something scary - the party was me, the Canadian flag and basically everyone else was a zombie. I'll have to tweak my costume for this evening.

canadians know how to throw down on columbus day

As there are two Canadian's in my master's program, we recently celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving. It was a delicious warm up for actual Thanksgiving. Boy, my classmates can cook! Emily, our hostess with the mostess roasted some beautiful chickens {finding a whole turkey will require some effort, but is something I hope to accomplish for 'merican t-giving}.

People generally brought things from their home country. {the Mexicans made guac and refried beans, the italians made tiramisu, not pictured: there was indian food, mashed potatoes, tortillas, taziki, sweet red bean balls and loads of other deliciousness [but no beaver, as was promised])}

In order to canadianify my favorite fall staple, I made maple pumpkin pie (seen below to the left of my second plate of the evening).

I also made an all canadian playlist, which can be found here for your next canada themed partay, to start off the evening, but by dessert we were dancing to indian and latin music (there was the mayonnaise song & dance), and apparently busted out something cancanesque.

So that was delicious and fun! And we will hopefully get to do it all over again in about a month!