Trevor Huxham

Well y’all, my last month as a language assistant in Spain has come and gone; the end is here. It’s been a fun, yet challenging, year, and I’m ready to do it all over again in Galicia this October. Here’s what I’ve been up to since my last update four weeks ago. La Malagueta neighborhood, Málaga Traveling to Málaga We had the day off on May 1st for Día de los Trabajadores —“Day of the Workers” or Labor Day—but my school decided to put two of its free placement holidays on the following Thursday and Friday to give us a crazy-long weekend. I didn’t go traveling for the whole five days, but I did spend a few days going down to south-central Andalucía. First stop was Málaga , one of the oldest cities in Spain, where I was a beach bum despite the chilly weather and did usual touristy things like explore the cathedral, appreciate Picasso paintings, and hike up castles. Spit-roasted sardines, popular along the coast, were some of the best food I’ve had anywhere! Enamorados Rock

Having planned a week-long trip across northern Morocco for this year’s  Semana Santa  (Holy Week) Easter vacation, I next had to figure out how I would actually get there from southern Spain. Some people recommended flying, but that seemed impractical given the circuit I would be making. Another option was taking a ferry—a boat designed for *ahem* ferrying cars across bodies of water but that also carries people—from Spain’s Mediterranean coast to the coast of North Africa. Ticket prices were reasonable, and there was even an overnight option to get to the eastern side of the country. So I bought a seat on the night ferry from Almería, Spain to Morocco Melilla, Spain—but more on this geographic oddity in a forthcoming post. Alcazaba de Almería To make a long, missing-the-train, getting-pissed-off-at-the-bus-company story short, I was left with a half-day layover in the city of Almería, a provincial capital on the Mediterranean coast a few hours southeast of Granada. Spending

Flags of Spain & Valencia Valencia may be Spain’s third largest city, but it’s hardly its third-most-visited one. Perhaps passed over by tourists on their way from Barcelona to Madrid, Sevilla, or Granada , or skipped in favor of other Mediterranean beach towns, Valencia sadly doesn’t have as much fame as Toledo or San Sebastián might for people traveling around Spain. I have to admit, I wasn’t even planning on taking a trip here until I ran across Zach Frohlich’s blog Not Hemingway’s Spain , a website where he not only tries to break down stereotypes about Spain but also introduces readers to his adopted hometown of Valencia. His many blog posts about the city convinced me it was worth going to, and besides, I had some friends from college studying abroad in a town two hours south (Alicante), so I thought, what the heck, why not? It ended up being a great decision and I realized Valencia is one of the most beautiful cities in the country. City of Arts and Sciences

Seven months into my stay here, and I am both happy and  homesick . Happy, because it’s finally stopped being cold and rainy every day—which means you can smell the flowers and wear shorts—and homesick, because I miss my family and I’m simply weary of all the annoying things Spain does. Don’t get me wrong, I love living here! But when June 21st rolls around, I’ll be ready to go home. It’s finally springtime! View this post on Instagram w i s t e r i a h y s t e r i a A post shared by Trevor Huxham (@trevorhuxham) on Apr 12, 2013 at 7:35am PDT My joy at spring’s arrival has never been so great. From November or December all the way through March, it has been cold and rainy, often for weeks at a time. Talk about demolishing the “warm and sunny” stereotype of southern Spain. I couldn’t go outside without wearing at least three layers and bringing an umbrella, and the bitter wind made the simple act of buying groceries a

I know I’ve already tweeted about it twice now, but I would like to officially announce on this blog that I will be a North American Language and Culture Assistant at an elementary school in the town of Boiro, Galicia, for the 2013-2014 school year. (Source: Wikipedia ) Galicia is a little-visited region of Spain in the northwest corner of the country, just to the north of Portugal. The language they speak there is very closely related to Portuguese, although everyone speaks Spanish as well. Like the Pacific Northwest of the U.S., Galicia is green, lush, and rainy—and it’s the last adjective that everyone here down south always uses to describe the place, even though it’s been really rainy here, too! Famous for its seafood, the region is well-known to the rest of Spain for pulpo a la gallega  (Galician-style octopus) and mejillones en escabeche  (canned, marinated mussels). Perhaps infamously, the naval town of Ferrol is the birthplace of dictator Francisco Franco.