These are some more pictures from the first Englishtown program I did in Puerta de Gredos, Avila. A lot of 'em are mine, but I've also gotten some from other people, too.
Like these, for example. The first one is the entry gate to the land the hotel was on. You can see the reception area (close up in the next picture) there in the background, as well as the hills where the fire was (see below).
The second one, obviously, is the group photo. I include it more to show the size of the group and the front of the reception building at our (four-star) hotel. The hotel employee who took all the group photos, or rather the same group photo multiple times with different cameras, was very nice to put up with us but probably should have come closer...even in the higher resolution ones I've seen, you can hardly make anyone out.
Among the Spanish folks, Miriam and Oscar were two of my best friends during the program...and, frankly, two of the better-looking people on the program, although these pictures don't do either of them justice.
I could explain what Miriam and I are doing - in fact, I've tried writing about it twice - but...it just doesn't quite work. We have our fingers in each other's ears, okay? And, in case any of you are thinking this is some bizarre form of Spanish foreplay (no aural sex puns, please) - she was already together with a giant Rugby playing Australian guy, Chris, who is in the last picture on the other page of Gredos pics.
In the middle of the program, we had ourselves a good ol' fashioned uncontrolled brush fire, which was quite exciting to see and then wonder whether it was going to spread to where we were. Again, the pics don't really do it justice - but the flames were quite easy to make out from where we were - as you can probably tell from the picture of the fire I took at night, on the right there. I'm rather proud of the contrast between these two pictures, myself; I think it worked out quite well.
Avila is a well-known walled city in between Gredos and Madrid, and took a day trip there in the middle of the program to give everyone a break and all. Like so many things in Spain, the walls date back to medieval times, when they were used to keep out British tourists. You can go up on the walls and walk around, and get a pretty nice view of the surrounding area and, of course, the Visigoth armies sweeing in from the northeast.
The tiny people are Lisa, a teacher from L.A., Josh, and Miriam, whose family lives in Avila and so she's been on the walls a whole bunch of times. It also meant that she got to go home and hang out with her parents while the rest of us were wandering around.
The cross is known as the Cuatro Postes, or Four Columns, and marks the location that somebody fleeing some oppressive force hid for a time. He was later killed, and is now a saint. See how easy it is? Incidentally, the picture of Avila from far away in the row above was taken from the place where the cross is - and in the dark picture in the row above, you can get a rough idea of where the cross is. It's on the far side of the highway, in the lower right-hand corner.
You may also remember on the other page that I mentioned a paella night where the cook then went on to give us a small Flamenco guitar concert (he did the same thing in Valdelavilla, but I didn't take any pictures). Well, that's him on the left, Silva, and that pan is what a paella for 50 people looks like.
I did also do some acting in Gredos - and Valdelavilla. There was an entertainment coordinator in charge of getting us to find ways to entertain the group...and since I had a theather background, and played guitar, I did three performances apiece during the two programs - a couple songs on guitar, playing Mr. Smith in a scene from Ionesco's The Bald Soprano, and doing an improv performance with some of the others in the group.
The picture on the right is from the first performance I did of The Bald Soprano.
