Back for Summer Vacation!

I'm back! Just in time for summer vacation. I didn't really go anywhere, just busy working my usual stint teaching English classes in addition to working on an international conference held here in Galicia. But more on that later. Now I'm officially on vacation and hope to catch up on the past few months' of blogging. Time to start churning out the entries!

To kick off summer vacation, like many good lugueses we went to Miño to hit the beach. Despite it being July, the temperature maxed out at 75ºF and there were lots of cloudy patches. Plus the wind on the beach made it hard to bear at times. Mini sandstorms! That probably explains why even on a Sunday there were few people on the beach. The others must have gotten the memo that nowadays early July is hardly beach weather. Regardless, there was just enough sun to dive in a few times throughout the weekend. At times it was more pleasant in the water than out of it. Plus we had plenty of room to spread out and play beach sports.

Almost too rich
when not accompanied
by churros.

But Sunday morning it was definitely too cloudy to haul our gear to the beach. So what is one to do in a beach town when the beach is out of the question? First we had a very vacation-y breakfast of chocolate con churros. Yummo! And as you may know, in Spain the typical hot chocolate is thickkk. I always get a kick out of resting the spoon on the surface, just to prove how thick it really is. Next stop: the weekly fair to buy underwear! Afterwards we went on a new sensory walking trail from one beach along the train tracks, through a forest, ending in a quiet residential area called Ponte do Porco. 

Ponte do Porco: the pig's bridge. Time for another Galician legend! In the 15th century lived a servant named Roxín Roxal. He fell in love with his master's daughter, Tareixa. The feeling was mutual, but clearly impossible, so the lord, Nuno Freire de Andrade--nicknamed ¨O Mao¨ (the bad), so imagine-- sent Roxín Roxal away. He gave him a golden dagger and a few coins to get by. Time passed, Roxín Roxal disappeared, Tareixa got married. Then a huge wild boar began to torment the lands of Nuno Freire de Andrade. Crops were ruined and even some peasants were killed by the treacherous boar. So Nuno organized a boar hunt, with his son-in-law and daughter Tareixa taking the lead. They had cornered the beast at the bridge. When suddenly, the animal lunged at them. The son-in-law-- instead of facing it with a spear-- jumped out of the way. So the boar went right for Tareixa, killing her instantly. Everyone went into mourning, especially the lord, ashamed of his yellow-bellied son-in-law. However, one morning the boar appeared dead next to the bridge with a golden dagger sticking out of it. It was then that the lord knew that he had made a mistake. His daughter would have been alive if she had married Roxín Roxal as she had wished. Social class doesn't buy bravery.

Now there is a cruceiro there, meant to look like the markers the Andrade family would have used to designate their lands. Apparently the cross over the boar represents the triumph of good over evil (boars often representing the devil in Medieval times). And fun fact: both John Adams passed through Ponte do Porco some time after the Revolutionary War.