Who Wants Almonds?

Casey (the other auxiliar) and I have decided to really weird the other Spanish teachers out at school by pulling a very American move: power walking on our two-hour lunch break.

Now you may say, "Oh wow, using that crazy long lunch break to exersize...pretty good idea." American thinking: Efficient.

But when our Spanish colleagues see us decked out in work-out clothes and tennis shoes, they think and even say to us, "BUT HOW?!!!"

Spanish thinking: Locas. (We're crazy...)

So what does all this have to do with almonds?

Well, trekking across the (often-times desolate) San Blas area in the Madrid suburbs has certainly led us to some places we'd never expected to see, including beautiful parks.

One day, however, a Spanish teacher told us that we must walk to El Parque Quinta de los Molinos. Supposedly, this park is actually an almond tree orchard (which used to be a privately owned farm). And the cool part about it is that the almonds only "bloom" for two weeks out of the entire year.

So off Casey and I go to see the almonds. We didn't go with the highest of expectations. I mean, almonds are cool and all, but what's there to actually see, right?

Wrong.

I have to say I haven't gone to too many orchards in my life, but from what I've seen this orchard beats them all. The park is absolutley gorgeous. As we walked through the dirt paths sprinkled with white petals from the trees, I even noticed quite a few tourists from other areas of Spain admiring the trees as well. The 4th graders at our school even took a field trip here! Are you getting that these almonds are a big deal?

Trees and trees and trees of all white. It almost felt as if we were walking through clouds.

We loved the park so much that we walked back to it later on in the week, and we could already tell the trees were beginning to turn from all white to white and green.

Sadly today, we walked past the park and saw only branches. Until next year almond trees. But I will always have the pictures: