Volleyball Update

So as most of you know I've been practicing with a club volleyball team for the past 4 or 5 months. The first few weeks of practice were humiliating. It doesn't help that the team I'm on won the Madrid Regional Championship last year. However, I stuck with it, mostly because it was too late to sign up for another sport, but I'm glad I stayed on. After around 1 1/2 - 2 months I started feeling like I could practice without messing up the other players and now I'm starting to feel like a little threat.

This year we went back to the championship tournament - only the top four teams get to play in it. After the second game of the tournament I was hoisted onto the shoulders of my teammates and thrown up in the air four times as my team cheered for "Ingles" ("English" which is what they call me). Yeah, I know, you can start applauding now...

Actually my team lost that game and I haven't played one minute this entire season. First of all I signed up too late to play and so I can't officially play in the games and secondly I'm not quite up to the standard. They played well but just couldn't keep up with the giants on the other team. I was really proud of the guys though; never got down on each other, didn't fight with the referees, restrained each other from fighting, and even after they lost they still cheered for playing well and for having a good time - they were jumping around center court and acting like they'd just won the championship....then they saw me standing with the other fans. They ran over and had me hop over the fence that separates the court from the fans and let me fly for the first time ever :) Haha, so yeah, I wasn't lying, but no need to applaud.

I'm sure going to miss those guys. We're going to still keep practicing but only for the occasional friendly match/tournament. And that's all for now...

Torijas

I thought I'd share a Spanish recipe I learned today. It's really simple (and kinda weird...but tasty). They're called "torijas" and are eaten around the time of La Semana Santa (the Holy Week). La Semana Santa is a week with religious festivals...but for most people it's like the American Spring Break. Anyways, I made them with my host mom today and they're pretty good, so here's the recipe:

Torijas

French bread (not the really soft type but stuff a little firmer and denser, it's actually good if it's a bit old and dry. See the picture. I also saw a store selling bread for torijas which look like thick pieces of normal bread)
Eggs
Milk
Sugar
Cinnamon
Oil (lots, we used olive oil for a healthy alternative :)

1) Heat up a pan of oil (quite a bit because you'll deep fry the bread in it)
2) Cut the bread into circular slices
4) Crack some eggs into a bowl and mix them up
3) Fill a bowl with milk and soak the bread in it until it's completely...well, soaked through
4) Take the soaked through slice of bread and put it into the eggs, make sure it gets coated
5) Carefully put the slice of bread into the oil, leave it in there until it's a nice golden color, flip it over once (~1 min)
6) Mix the sugar and cinnamon together and roll the deep-fried bread in it

Now you have torijas! We put the torijas in a big bowl and covered it to let them get nice and wet. If you do this don't be surprised if they end up looking like soggy bread coated in sugar and cinnamon. My host mom mixed a little bit of the leftover milk with some leftover cinnamon sugar and some lemon juice into a small bowl and poured it over the torijas (only about 1/4 cup for 12 torijas). It's pretty simple, I didn't put in quantities because I think you can figure them out (and I don't know them).