I think there are 2 basic
criteria to measure if you’re “at home” in a new place:
- You bump into people you know on the street randomly.
- People ask for directions from you. (For me this actually means that I look “local enough”. :))
Well this is of course nothing
scientific or very serious, just something I “measure” for myself for fun, and I’m
proud to say, that after 2 months here I managed to fulfill both. Okay, it was
not so hard as this is a small town, but still. :)
All kidding aside, I started to
feel more at home now here in Illescas. I enrolled to a zumba class (those of
you who don’t know me, I started zumba 4 years ago and still love it, so this
was an important step :)) and I
also joined a mosaic class. The latter was quite an impulse decision, but as I
have a curiosity for creative things (and this year is about trying new
things), I thought why not. And so far I like it a lot, though I haven’t
finished my first piece yet.
In October I had quite some
other activities: last Friday I went to an open Latin dance class (already for
the second time). This was something I wanted to try for a long time and I’m
happy I finally did, because it was really great. :) We were taught bachata: first the basic steps and
then we got into couples and did some turns too besides just stepping from left
to right. As we were rotating, everyone got to dance with everyone, which was
really good, because we had a mixed level of knowledge, so like this I felt
less embarrassed of messing up the moves from time to time. :)
I also participated in a
“pasacalle” (parade) a couple of weeks ago: a group of actors dressed up in traditional costumes and
told us legends from Toledo as a part of the El Greco year (in 2014 there are
all kinds of festivities for El Greco here). They played music too and showed us
some dances as we went around the town with them; it was very nice (and easy to
understand :)).
And for the first time in my
life I went to a fashion show to the neighboring town with some friends, it
was really good. :)
At Ecocompartimos we have also a
lot of activities going on: in October we started English conversation classes
on Mondays (after a month we have more and more people coming :)) and we organized 2 more sessions of the
“intercultural meeting” series I mentioned earlier: one of them was about
typical food of different countries and the other was about typical dresses.
Both were really good, for the
gastronomical one we all prepared something, so we had a bite of many
countries: Spain, Morocco, Russia, Romania and of course Hungary.
 |
| Learning things about Morocco |
 |
| And about Spain too :) |
 |
| The feast |
Then for the one with the
dresses unfortunately I didn’t have anything Hungarian to put on, but I showed some
pictures and 2 of the participants dressed up in typical Spanish dresses. We
had a great time. :)
 |
| With the Spanish ladies :) |
I enjoy these talks a lot as we always learn many new things about each country and have great discussions. In November we'll have 2 more sessions: one about music and another is about things in our countries that we are proud of or ashamed of. I'm looking forward to them. :)
