Mt. Naranco pics

It seems I was a bit mistaken about the "German brother" of mine (Andreas)... Yes he has visited Oviedo before, but he has not stayed here before and in fact, will be here for about two weeks staying in the other bedroom here. His girlfriend is staying in another place in town apparently, but they both seem nice. Andres' Spanish is, well, not so good, but he speaks English (and German of course) so he keeps switching to English to ask me what the Spanish word is for something, haha. His girlfriend Angelica was here for a bit too, but she has her own place in town because she is working here as a German to Spanish translator.

Merche made some apple-muffins of sorts that she had learned about when she studied in Ireland, so I couldn't resist the opportunity to teach the locals here some fine American sayings, such as... "muffin top." They were highly amused. Thanks, Meredith. That was all you.

So since I have not updated in awhile, I wanted to share a few pictures that I took from our walk around Mt. Naranco... Becky and Jonnie had asked me if I wanted to go out on a "walk" so I said sure, but it turned out to be an all-day trek halfway up a mountain... only halfway for now, haha.

First of all, here is a nice little picture of the Spanish flag and the Asturias regional flag... nobody seems to know what the flag on the left is, perhaps something local.





This is sort of gives you an idea of the path we were dealing with. About 20 years ago the governor built this really nice little pedestrian trail with little exercises along the way that you can do. A lot of people were out walking for some exercise or with their dogs.


In the photo you can see Pedro and Merce on the left, Merche with the backpack on the right, and in the distance in yellow is Jonnie and Becky next to him... and of course some random old guys with their dogs.




More views of Oviedo from Mt. Naranco... These are the only actual houses or "chalets" I have seen while here, most people live in flats or "pisos" more or less in high rises.



This is part of a small aqueduct which had a small inscription on it dated 1778! (on the left is Merche of course).





Some horses hanging out on the mountain



I have a ton of pictures of course, but I don't want to kill my connection with the uploads so I will leave it at that for now.

A note to Margie: I got your package today, and THANK YOU!!! Mint chocolate goodies are really not very popular here so it is tough to come by. Luckily Jay sent me some York Peppermint Pattis to tide me over, hehe. I don't have your email address because all my addresses were on my thumb drive which I lost a couple weeks ago so I just thought I'd post it in here and you would read it soon enough :-)

As a random side note, my mp3 player died and I am really bummed about that... I really miss having music to wake me up in the morning and to get me up that monstrous hill during that 20min walk to school or so. Sigh.