Dinosaurs and Mortar Shells

This Thursday, instead of having one of my normal English lessons, I got to go to the local dinosaur museum/theme park in Teruel. By theme park, I don't mean giant roller coasters or anything. The small attractions are mainly aimed at children. It's still quite impressive, considering Teruel doesn't really have anything else that's comparable in terms of being so technologically advanced. One of the students gave us a tour of the main museum, which houses several large skeletal reproductions and even some real fossils and fossilized footprints. I commend the student for attempting to give a presentation in English, given the number of really specific vocabulary words he had to use and the typical shyness Spanish people seem to have about speaking in English. It was a nice change of pace in comparison to being in class and I didn't really have to do anything besides help with pronunciation and a few unknown vocabulary words. I'm also glad dinosaurs still manage to retain their strange allure and weren't just a passing childhood fad propagated by Jurassic Park.

Today, I headed with some students to Monterde de Albarracín to take part in an English-speaking activity. One of the students, Santi, owns an old country house in the small village of Monterde, which is located in La Comarca de Albarracín (kind of like a county that contains several small villages, including Albarracín, where I work). We had originally intended to have a weekend-long retreat, but due to insufficient numbers, we limited it to