Did Ibn Battuta Sleep there in Granada, Spain?

Somewhere in this "bride of Andalusian cities," one of the greatest travel-story meeting of minds took place. A rendezvous that seven years and a different continent later would give fruit to one of the best travel books ever written, Rihla (also know as A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling), perhaps the most accurate portrait of medieval life across the then-known world we have. On his round-the-world trip back from China, Ibn Battutah met his ghostwriter and local boy, Ibn Juzayy, in an unknown garden. Granada's not as old as most think, the Alhambra itself was then just a red castle and a dream in a young king's mind when Battutah gave it its nuptial title in 1350. The oldest Muslim building in the city isn't the superlative palace atop the hill, but the Corral del Carbon, which in its time served as a hotel for travelers and traders. Just maybe where the world's greatest traveler laid his head?

#architecture #getaway #medieval #muslim #muslimarchitecture #islam #book #andalusia #alhambra #islamicarchitecture #14thcentury #andalucia #travelwriting #ibnbattutah #travelwriter #nazriddynasty #redfort #ibnjuzayy

Originally published on Trazzler

You Call it Tomato, I Call it Quasi-Legal

Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here's my version, then theirs.

My wife and I spent some time living on the banks of the Mekong in a country that is known to most Spaniards as Roldan’s hideout. Back then, the first traffic lights were just going up and life moved at a pace that was reflected in that great river. I worked at a University, helping young Laos prepare to study abroad and also provided training for public school teachers. The Lao are some of the friendliest people on earth and my wife and I quickly built up a solid network of friends, both local and foreign. Our social life was either spent by the river drinking beer with icecubes, an acquired taste in the heat and humidity and absence of refrigeration, or having improvised barbeques under the mango trees of our courtyard. In a context as foreign as south-east Asia, you are bound to come across cultural differences and these barbecues were no exception. We would invite our friends over and without fail, the locals would arrive, not only with food but their own little barbecues too. To make matters more awkward, while the foreign men were standing around discussing various techniques to speed up the charcoal process, the local women would have already got their embers sizzling and would be serving food. While this particular custom always struck me as strange, I quickly got used to their way of doing things and adapted my thinking even though I was never entirely comfortable with people bringing their own food to a barbeque I had invited them to. It had been awhile, but I had a similar feeling in my stomach the other day when I walked up the Calle Amargura to my polling station here in Caceres and saw people bringing their votes with them, readily sealed in their little envelopes. But here I wasn’t standing on the banks of a mighty Asian river, and yet this cultural difference struck me just as strongly. I’ve since heard tell of well-meaning patriarchs handing sealed envelopes to their adult children as they head out to vote as a family and of course there is the recent case in the papers. A case where, surely equally well-meaning people who happen to be associated with a particular party on the right, have taken on the burden to assist the elderly to exercise their democratic rights, previously sealed envelopes in hand. When confronted at the polling station, the befuddled pensioners were unable to say who they were voting for. While I was able to get used to and even enjoy the wonderful food that the Laos prepared, I’m afraid that this particular puchero español will never seem quite right to me. 

You're Not From Around Here

Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here's my version, then theirs. (This time, markedly different endings.)

“Usted obviamente no eres de aquí,” (You're obviously not from around here) and while my linguistic pride may have been mortally injured, the policeman on the telephone was right, I’m not. He was right in noticing that my Spanish has inexplicably worsened this year. He went on, “Como todo los años, hay aglomeraciones en Santa Maria y es normal que no se puede pasar con su coche porque todo el mundo quiere ir al besamano.” (Like every year, there are large crowds of people in Santa Maria square and it's normal that you can't drive your car through there because everyone wants to go and kiss a virgen) But that wasn’t my question. What I was asking the policeman on the phone was why had there not been any notice posted about the road being cut in Santa Clara, the entrance to the Old Town? Why were two harassed local police officers suddenly directing all traffic into the tiny, yet full, plaza de los Caldereros and then asking them to drive against traffic back where they came from? I may be from a country far across the water but my question was why there hadn’t been any notice posted like they do in WOMAD or Semana Santa. I was calling the local police to see if for some reason I had missed the information that the road was going to be cut and what the alternative plan was. My accent aside, the policeman on the phone repeatedly told me that there was no such plan in place, that there had been no special preparations made for the event and that the poor policemen that I had questioned on the way home were only trying to mitigate a potentially dangerous situation. I felt terrible and immediately set out to apologize to the policemen but when I got the the plaza de los Caldereros, they had disappeared and in their place was a plastic barrier blocking traffic. I ran up to Santa Clara to see if they were directing traffic there, but found nothing, no police, no barrier, still no information. Back down to an overflowing Santa Maria and other than some national police guarding against what I suppose might be terrorist attacks, no local police to be found and surprisingly no emergency crews either. That policeman was right, I’m not from around here but if indeed this mass of people happens every year, I’m not sure I would only count on the virgin’s benevolence in case of an emergency. 

The Saint of Towed Cars

Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here's my version, then theirs.

I noticed the license plate as the local police slid the hoist under the car. Then when the tow truck roughly yanked the car to the right and then lifted it up, I saw it even more clearly, P for Portugal. I immediately thought of the poor tourist checking out of her nearby hotel, preparing herself for the long drive home and then turning the corner into the Calle Zurbaran only to find another car parked where she had left hers three days ago. She would thinking, had hers been stolen? No, it couldn’t have been. The car definitely wasn’t new and she had been deliberately careful to leave nothing visible. Had it been parked illegally? No, no signs or blue paint on the road. In fact she remembered feeling terribly lucky that she had found a free parking spot so close to her hotel and as everything she had needed was within walking distance, she had completely forgotten about her ride home during her visit. My hand fumbled in my pocket, looking for my phone but then I remembered reading something about the new gag laws they were passing here in Spain and the terrible fines that they could now give for taking pictures of the police at their work. The threat worked, I thought twice and left my hand where it was. I looked around for some explanation as to why they were towing this tourist’s car and then the thud of nearby drums triggered my memory, it was Semana Santa, Holy Week. Three days ago, her car had been fine but little scrawled signs probably went up in the middle of the night and now this tourist was going to have to pay more than her gas to get home. In a year that reeks of elections and when there is so much talk of transparency and facilitating information to the people, which is all well and good, profound changes need to be made in the way that locals and tourists alike are informed about day to day things in our fine city. Catovis (life-long Cacereños) and procession-goers might know that the procession of the Saint of Old Shoes goes up Zurbaran street on Easter Friday but what about Almudena from Lisbon? If, in our desire to attract more tourism we want to hang out the No Vacancy sign, we should make sure that other signs are clear too.

Cherry Blossoms in Bloom

Early spring and an entire valley looks to the sky and prays. However this isn't one of the many religious festivals in Spain, but a delicate dance between the weather and the calendar. Snowcapped mountains descend into green terracing where two million trees await their cue from Mother Nature before exploding into one of nature's spectacles... turning the entire valley white with their blossoms. Problem is that the grand old lady can be slightly unpredictable and the dates of the festival vary each year. Locals hope that it coincides with Semana Santa, the Easter celebrations, and if it does expect traffic jams all the way back to Madrid. Depending on the variety, some of the performers will bear fruit as early as late April, but the queen of the ball is the highly prized picota cherry. It may fall from its stem last, but the sweet wait is ever so worth it.


#culinary #festivals #festival #outdoors #mountains #nature #flowers #valley #getaway #fruit #spring #walking #trees #cherrytrees #cherryblossoms #flower #event #fruittrees #villages #blossom #cherries #valledeljerte #picota #jertevalley #cherryblossomfestival

Originally published on Trazzler

Subtle Satori IATEFL TDSIG

I look back on the time that we lived in Vientiane, Laos very fondly and in fact often question why we ever left. The city was opening to the world back then and seemed to change daily and I'm sure that it would be unrecognizable now, but memory has a way of playing tricks on us. Even if there were no change, I'm sure the image I hold might not match reality.

I was asked to write a piece about my development as a teacher and as  Director of Studies of a large language school and Laos kept coming to mind. My story was recently published in IATEFL's Teacher Development Special Interest Group newsletter. It's a journey rather than an academic look at change but I suppose all change has something of a journey inherent in it. A quick link here.

What Goes On After Dark

Spot the Stork

Aquarium Diving in Gran Canaria

Aquarium diving, snorkeling 3 meters from the shore in la playa chica. A solo 3 metros de la orilla en Las Palmas. http://nonotfar.blogspot.com . . . . . . . #beach #snorkeling #snorkel #estoesgrancanaria #thisisgrancanaria #visitgc #grancanariahoy #grancanaria #lascanteras #playa #visitspain #ineedspain #playachica #canariasgrafias #canaryislands #subtropical #laspalmas #playaurbana #visitlaspalmas #bajoelmar #wishiwasthere

Una publicación compartida por Troy Nahumko (@troynahumko) el Feb 3, 2018 at 5:51 PST

Fear of Change

 Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here's my version, then theirs.

As I write this, a constant hum drifts up to my fourth floor vigil from the busy Rua Mayor below. I’ve been to Salamanca many times and in many different guises. My first visits were made on day trips from Madrid and more recently I have been coming here to explore the hollowed out basement bars from behind a guitar. This time it’s different. This time, I’ve been invited to go behind the beautiful orange stones that make up the University buildings here for an international language conference. While the hum may be constant, it is in no way uniform. Down below I can hear the languages of Cervantes mix with those of Shakespeare and Goethe. People come here from all over the world in search of the frog and the astronaut on the baroque walls of this homogenized core, yet end up staying for the life that flows through it. Tradition runs as deep here as it does down the Cuesta del Marques in Caceres but it seems to me that Salmantinos aren’t afraid to adapt these glorious renaissance buildings to suit the needs of today. Numerous parking garages feed into the medieval core and the ten minute stroll from your car to your destination is far from a chore, no matter how many times you see those shells on the side of the Casa de las Conchas. Museums and galleries are needed and indeed serve their purpose but in rare cases to they reflect the here and now of a city. No matter how modern the exhibition, there is always a sense of the past, a sense of emptiness in the quiet rooms. Listening to the life below my window, the knee-jerk resistance of many Cacereños to rejuvenating ideas like moving the Escuela Oficial de Idiomas to the lifeless Palacio de Godoy in the equally moribund barrio de Santiago confuses me. In fact, local resistance to change at all costs totally bewilders me. Absentee owners in Madrid and Rome are free to do what they want to do with their palaces that stand empty in the Old Town but this particular palace belongs to the state, to everyone. In this monument in stone we can choose life because without life, without use, without a sense of now, the monumental old town and the surrounding area will remain just that, old.

Making it Real

Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here's my version, then theirs.

I grew up attending a French immersion school on the very English speaking prairies of western Canada. Every subject, except English, was given in French by first language French speakers from Quebec or France. The problem was that when we stepped out into the freezing cold, the only French that existed for us was the obligatory translation on everything from chocolate bar wrappers to cartons of milk. 

Contrary to popular belief, only about twenty percent of Canadians speak French and the great majority of those live in the east. Out in the Wild West, exams were the sole motivation to use French and as the language didn’t exist to us outside the classroom, the system generally produced students with excellent receptive skills but only mediocre speakers. The added difficulty of learning everything in a second language only fueled the resentment that I used to feel while trudging off to school in the snow. 

It took me more than twenty years to finally thank my mother for her perseverance when I gave her a phone call from my first tour in Paris, thanking her for giving me the gift of another language. It’s with this experience in mind that I have always been a bit skeptical of the mad push for bilingual schools here. That is until the other day when I was given the chance to swap my normal workplace environments of concerts halls and adult classrooms for a crowded music room full of 5^th and 6^th graders in the Castra Caecillia. 

My bandmate, harmonica ace, Jose Luis Naranjo and I were invited to give a bilingual workshop on the Blues and in the talk we worked on the Blues as poetry and then showed them how to accompany the song they created on their instruments. 

It was one of those rare moments that every educator strives for, the learning was palpable in the room, the classroom fell by the wayside and the kids were learning without realizing it. Their language skills completely surprised me and the songs they played were excellent. With motivational activities like this, no wonder these hardworking teachers are making me reconsider.

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