Spanish Adventure part 1

Hey everyone! I'm so glad to be back home for the holidays and back to writing! Unfortunately I didn't write as often as I planned while away but surprisingly the internet was hard to come by on the road. So I would love to fill you all in what happened. As mentioned I traveled to Spain to qualify for the Ladies European Tour. To qualify, there were two stages to complete before you earned your card for 2011. The weather was insane to say the least during the first stage which is 4 days on 2 different courses. To make it to the final stage you were to finish in the top 35 at your site (there were two sections split between the two different courses). I was in the top 10-20th all throughout the tournament. The weather was just perfect on the last day and the course was set up really easy in fact....but unfortunately for me I didn't get the job done. Scores were really low that day and I shot a couple over par which would have been fantastic for the other rounds but on the last day I fell back and missed the cut by a single stroke! It was actually pretty devastating to not have accomplished what I came to do. So missing the cut definitely changed my plans...just a little bit.

From here my father and I decided to turn into tourists and travel around Spain to see what it had to offer.  We were in the city Cartagena which is in the southern part of Spain just off the Mediterranean Sea. So before we left on our road trip my newly adopted host family wanted to show us the Fort of Mazzarron, which is a army fort built in the early 1900s during the civil war. The drive there was incredible. We drove in and around mountains with the constant view of the Mediterranean. The initial drive to the fort was actually pretty scary. The road was only big enough for one European car to drive on this incredibly curvy road where you couldn't see at all the cars coming around the bends! To say the least I was the silent back seat passenger gripping the car door as if my life depended on it! The fort was really cool and rock solid I imagine it will stand for hundreds of years. This great day trip ended with a great meal as well. I had the best French onion soup followed by amazing homemade tiramisu. That following monday we left for Granada a city founded by the Muslims in the southwest portion of Spain.... Ok this is where I'm leaving you all...in suspense! To be continued.....

stay with me!

Hey every one! Spain is interesting so far...unfortunately connecting to the internet has been an obstacle. Hopefully, I can stick to writing as much as possible. Im in the south coast of Spain where the weather is like the desert in where its cold and dry but when the sun comes out it can be warm. I've been practicing a lot every day since there's really not much other to do here. :) Monday my tournament starts for the q-school for the European Ladies Tour. Another obstacle that I've had to deal with is having my American food. The grocery stores here are not like home I can tell you that. The first time my father and I went I walked out of the store with a massive headache! My two years of high school Spanish really had to come out to try to figure out what I was looking at but then trying to figure what the ingredients were was another challenge in itself. So my peanut butter and protein powder I packed with me is like gold to me! I've decided to stick to what items I do know and unfortunately the meals have been pretty plain... so not too many new recipes to post at the moment. Tomorrow I'm really excited in trying the one dish I wanted to try in Spain...paella! Supposedly its like the Spanish version of Cajun dirty rice but they use all types of meat or seafood. So really the anticipation for paella is the most exciting thing happening at the moment! Friday my past teammate from Spain is coming down to play in the tournament on Monday. I'm really happy to see her its been a few years since she graduated from college. Ok readers I will do my best to stay posted and to take some interesting photos of my trip!

So what would be a good Spanish dish to try while I'm here? Would love to hear what you think!

Til next time!
Candace