Climbing in real rock

Bringing a state-of-the art semi-professional camera with very good lenses in order to make some nice pictures of my first climbing session in Gran Canarias was a great idea. Remembering to charge the battery would have been an even better idea, so for this blog post I can only present some bad quality photos made with my phone.

 After breakfast I went by car to the nearby crag Fataga; a dried out river below a dam a 40 min drive from our flat. I had made some previous contact with local climbers via internet but it was really not necessary since the place was full with climbers so I simply approach them and said “Hola” and we started climbing together.

I had a few good hours and climbed some nice routes. When I’m at places like this I always envy the climbing community they have in countries like Spain, France etc. I definitely also appreciate what we have in Sweden where you can be all-alone at the crag, listening to nature and go exploring. But as a climber it would be so much easier to develop yourself living in a place like this where you can just go down to the crag any given Saturday, find 20+ climbers and routes stacked side-by-side in all grades. On top of that you are greeted with a great attitude and everybody is supporting you and pushing you at the same time.

On the way back I stopped by a nice viewpoint in the mountains and had my well deserved pasta lunch and contemplated on a nice climbing day.

 

Climbing in the tunnel

Today I got the first opportunity to go climbing together with a local climber. Since normal people here are working during the week and only have a few hours after work (I have kind-of forgotten how that feels) it was not possible to go up in the mountains today but instead I tried something else; in a dried out flood-tunnel under a road the climbing community has built a rather cool outdoor climbing gym.

There were some easier routes on the walls outside of the tunnel and some rather stiff overhanging ones inside the tunnel and I got to try both. Climbing inside the tunnel was a new and awesome experience but I'm really not used to that kind of overhanging routes. Great practice to try something new.

Tomorrow hopefully I will be able to get out and try some real rock.

Beach Girls

No real story in this post except some nice pictures of two wonderful little girls, Tilda and Gabriela, enjoying the beach in Puerto Rico en Gran Canaria together.

And finally a picture of the best little thing on this planet, Tilda, flying high above dads arms and enjoying every moment of it.

Arriving at the island

The trip from Austurias to Gran Canaria went really smooth and we arrived monday evening. After some confusion we finally found our flat above playa Amadores close to the village Puerto Rico. The flat is nice with a really nice morning view from the terrace.

The weather is like a really good Swedish summer so it is very nice to stand on the terrace in the morning with a cup of freshly brewed coffee in hand, enjoying the view as the sun is raising above the ocean.

By coincidence we have not only one but two families that we know from Sweden that are staying in Gran Canaria at the same time as we are. They are only here the first week of our stay so this week we will try to spend as much time as possible with them. Yesterday we started by hanging out with Anna, Rickard and Gunnar at their hotel and at the beach. Gunnar and Tilda spent a lot of time together in Sweden and seemed really happy to see each other again.

In the evening we went to see Gustav and Gabriella for dinner at Gustav's place. Both Tilda and Gabriella have started to walk around a lot and they had a great time playing together. It is really cool to see Tilda play with kids her own age since they are now interacting a lot more then before and actually playing together, not only side-by-side.

The Queen’s Speech

Since Vlora and I are who we are we could of course not just relax during our time in Asturias but we also had to do something useful. We got the idea that it could be interesting for students that are about to finish the last year of their psychology studies to get some insights into the professional life of a former alumna of the faculty working abroad. Vlora contacted her faculty to pitch the idea and they were very interested, so this Friday Vlora gave a speech at the university for about 40 students and teachers. She covered many topics such as the difference between phycology studies in Sweden and Spain, the process of moving abroad and validating your studies in another country, how to find your first employment after your studies, experiences from working as a youth therapist and as a clinical psychologist and many personal stories about her development from a recently graduated student to a professional and confident psychologist.

There was a lot of interaction with the students who had many questions and it felt like they appreciated the opportunity to talk to someone from the world outside of the university. Hopefully we were able to plant some seeds about the possibility to move abroad and maybe even to move to Sweden, as Spain is graduating a lot of psychologist but has few jobs to offer while we in Sweden have a rather high demand for psychologists and will have even more in the near future since we are facing an old generation of psychologists about to reach their retirement age.  

The speech felt like a nice way to give something back to the university and could maybe be the start of future interesting collaborations.

Tilda’s favorites

Tilda’s vocabulary is still fairly limited to;

• “Titta” (look)
• “Nam-nam” (food)
• “Ma-ma” (mum)
• “Auw-Auw” (dog barking, or any other animal)
• ”Aahj” (dad please stop biting my finger)
• “Ogi-ogi” (we haven’t figured that one out yet). 

With that vocabulary it is a little bit hard to have too advanced conversations so we haven’t yet been able to ask her about her favorite episodes in Asturias, but a qualified guess would be;

Third place – Palacio de los niños (kids’ palace)

A few days ago we took Tilda to a huge indoor playing ground called the “Palacio de los niños”). With her newfound walking skills she was really enjoying herself with all the toys, slides, small houses and bouncy castles.

Second place – Gigant stuffed toy animals

Yesterday we went to a shopping mall where they had huge stuffed toy animals as an attraction for kids. With Tilda’s love for animals she was in seventh heaven. She was running between animals, hugging them, smiling at them, kissing them and laughing all the time.

First place – Spending time with Rrezarta and Maikel

Tilda, Rrezarta and Maikel became friends from the first moment they met. Both Rrezarta and Maikel are great with kids and they have had many nice moments with Tilda during our time here and Tilda is enjoying every second of their attention.

Life in Oviedo

At our arrival Asturias showed its best side with really nice autumn weather. It was sunny and dry but the last week has been more like we expected with the standard grey, rainy and rather cold autumns of northern Spain.

So how do we spend our time here? The days are rather relaxed with some small excursions and adventures each day. Tilda is really enjoying herself. She has started to walk a lot and probably because of that she is eating like she never has before. The amount of food that her small body can absorb is rather amazing.

We meet a lot of old friends and I have been able to do quite a lot of running. However any kind of positive effects on our fitness level is heavily compensated for by going out a lot to eat at the many nice restaurants in Oviedo.  

We are almost always bringing Tilda to the restaurants and bars, which is a very common procedure in Spain, but we also took some nights during which one of us stayed home with Tilda and the other got the opportunity to go out with friends and party.

During some days we have taken the train to Gijon, where I lived during my time in Spain, and it has been full of nostalgic walks in the city where I have many nice memories.

Close to the apartment we have a nice park, el Parque del Invierno, where we go out with Tilda. The park is full of dogs and Tilda tried to imitate the local dog habit of drinking from the water fountain.