Its official, when I retire I'm moving to Spain to be a swim coach. Today was great- we got to Almendralejo around 10, did a half hour of warm-ups and started the meet at 11. I swam the 50 (meter) butterfly in 29 seconds, won my heat! I have no idea how I did overall though, it was all run by stopwatch and paper so we'll have results sometime this week. There's one set of touch pads in Extremadura and it was in Caceres with the girls team. I guess I should e...

Plans have been made! We've got a hostel at the base of Mount Olympus and plan to hike to the summit on Sunday the 5th. As for afterwards Jeff and I are slowly putting together our trip through Italy and Switzerland and who knows where else. So far I have tickets from Madrid to Dublin to Glasgow, Edinburgh to Rome, Rome to Venice.... no return ticket yet! Tomorrow I have my first swim competition as a "Delfine Cacereno" (Caceres Dolphin) in Merida. ...

Another great week in Caceres. Its Sunday afternoon, I just got back from Mass (the usher no longer asks me if I'm there for a tour!!!) and in a little bit we're meeting up at the Gastronomic Fair. This week has been the Caceres Film Festival, there was some sort of awards show here last night televised nationally. I've booked flights to Athens for spring break! I'll be there about 8 days; I'm looking into some cool side trips around Greece, it's going to be ...

Last week 8 of us took a trip to Barcelona, a 12 hr bus ride that left at 5:00 Thursday and got back at 6:00 am Monday. When we first got there we headed straight for a coffee shop, then down to the beach for sunrise. It's a good thing we did too because that was the only cloud-free part of the day. Sean, Ginny and I were the only ones that came on the bus--the others flew but that didn't work out too well because they had to be at the bus station at 3 am ...

We took a class trip to Merida, the capital of Extremadura, to see the Roman architecture and buildings. The highlights were the Roman theatre, the ampitheater where the gladiators used to fight each other, lions and tigers, and an aqueduct. We also went to the museum, designed by the famous Spanish architect Moneo, where they have statues, mosaics (the intricate tile floors of a lot of Roman homes were discovered in tact) and underneath the building they are c...