La Virgen de la Romería en San Lorenzo de El Escorial

09.12.10 - San Lorenzo de El Escorial - In the action-packed weekend that was, Sunday was a fiesta in our town. Something called a Romería, which I still haven't pinned down a proper definition for yet, but seems to be when every gets dressed in traditional costumes, builds parade floats and walks down to the nearest park to barbecue in the morning and comes back late at night. Missed the barbecue part unfortunately, but we did see them coming back. Seemed like a good time.

-Will

Drummer boy.
Dancing queen.
Romero.
Guarding their trophy carefully.

A bit of motor oil and a bit of homemade tinto de verano are something to always keep on the back of the parade float. It's just a good idea.

Summer Camp Vol 4-8

09.02.10 - El Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain - As you may or may not have noticed, my plan to post weekly photos of TECS Summer Camp on my blog failed in spectacular fashion somewhere between weeks three and four. It was probably a bit ambitious anyway. At any given moment I was juggling requests in all types of media, from downloading music for performance night, shooting daily photos, updating the website and trying desparately to keep everything organized.

Suffice to say, being a camp IT Specialist is not an easy job and doesn't lend itself well to updating personal blogs. Anyway, below is my Photoshelter gallery of the summer. I tried to keep a tight edit of 20 photos and give a little idea of the chronology (using "story" there would be a bit ambitious for what I accomplished). Flip through it when the inspiration strikes you.

-Will

Summer Camp Vol 3

07.25.10 - El Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain - Volume 3 brings us week 1 of camp 2, sort of like a real life sequel, same gang back together again. The week was full of peaks and valleys and included a trip to four of the other camps.

-Will

Arrivals games
Class time
Kite surfing at Sports Camp
Working at the board in Star Camp
Magic Villagers debate possible UK superstitions during class
Wouldn't be camp without a bit of archery, now would it?
Learning articles
Junior performance night, Ghostbusters riff
Mr. Muscle competition for the seniors
Senior Disco Night

Summer Camp Vol 2.

07.25.10 - El Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain - Week 2 of the first camp brought some new excitement. We had Intercamp competition (between the 6 camps of TECS), English Day (a day when kids are divided into countries and learn about their cultures, chant funny things like Lovely Jubbly and Howdy Partner), the Colour War victory dinner, casino night and departures. It was a lot and good times.

-Will

Heading home
Intercamp chanting competition
English Day, the Aussie team chants "Tie Your Kangaroo Down"; notice the face paint
Each camp one staff member is "gunked" during Casino Night (the last night of camp) and after being covered in a purplish slimy substance, runs around the park and tries to grab as many campers (all 206 of them) as possible. This time it was Pelayo and he managed to horrify several of the sophomores (aged 5-8).
Henry, the welfare coordinator and victor in sumo wrestling during Casino Night
Intercamp water polo
Class time
Sophomores in line for the haunted house

Summer Camp Vol. 1

07.25.10 - El Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain - I've finally had a chance to catch my breath here in El Puerto since arriving five weeks ago. As I've mentioned to nearly everyone I know, I'm working as an IT Specialist at TECS Summer Camps until the end of August. My main job is camp photographer, a task I try not to take lightly. As a result I spend at least a couple hours a day shooting the kids in their various camp activities.

Days follow a similar path: breakfast, classes (it's an English camp, so school is part of it), lunch, sports, dinner and evening entertainments. I look for a variety of the goings on each week and things have turned out pretty well. As best as I can for the next five weeks I'm going to post a small selection of photos from each week of camp.

Thanks for following,

Will

Volleyball
Jump rope in the basketball courts
Rounders
Arrivals Day
Colour war dance competition. Colour war is a camp wide, 24/7 competition between the kids and the teams are divided into blue and white. After three weeks of having campers here I've found that nearly anything can be turned into a game, even handing out workbooks.

Spain wins!

07.11.10 - El Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain - At long last the Spanish national team won the World Cup last night with a 1-0 victory over Holland. I'm a bit swamped with summer camp work at the moment but we did watch the game with the kids and afterwards, I shot some photos just outside the gate (we had to stay on site with work beginning, win or lose, at 8:30am Monday).

Enjoy,

Will

Yo soy español, español. . .
Guille doing his best torero impression.

The kids attack Dutch fan Lacklan.

David and the kids celebrate Spain hoisting the trophy.

Los Cañones

05.27.10 - Ourense, Spain - I went with my Spanish class on a field trip to the canyons in south eastern Galicia. They are quite dramatic. We toured the countryside of the Ribeira Sacra all day stopping in various towns to see the sights.

-Will

The Canyons. We were traveling with some crazy Senegalese guys who liked to climb on things.
A Parador outside Ourense.
The first language is Galego, followed by Spanish and of course, English.
Countryside in Parada do Sil
More countryside.

Photos of Phriends

05.22.10 - A Coruña - A couple of portraits of my friends here in A Coruña. We went out together on Saturday night, watched the sunset along the Paseo, ate dinner at Bania, the local veggie restaurant, and then toured a few bars.

-Will

Manuel, el lector de italiano.
Manuel and Roisin.
Anne, la lectora francesa.

The Beach

05.22.10 - A Coruña, Spain - At the end of a sunny week, I went to the beach in search of some photos. Thinking like a photographer, I was after photos of people doing funny things and maybe some good culture photos. Only later did I realize that I looked like a pervert roving the beach with a camera.

C'est la vie,

Will

Playa Club runs along Riazor beach.
Along the paseo.
Pondering.

Happy Cinco de Mayo - ¡Olé!

05.05.10 - In short, this is what happens when I get bored. Well, you know what? It was productive. Wanted to get something that said "Cinco de Mayo" and yes, I went with the beer (sorry Mexico). Anyway, wanted to give it a blue background, then I changed my mind and decided I wanted a red hue and highlight the "Sol with a light from the right.

¡Salud!

Will

Results.
Blue t-shirt, two speedlites, a red cover made out of the packaging of the two 12 packs of Mahou that are holding up the t-shirt.

More Black Towers Portraits

05.05.10 - A Coruña, Spain - I've been finishing up the portraits from the football story at various practices this past week. Still learning light, but I like the ideas.

Not sure I've mentioned this, but the teams practice in two different places and play in a third, so the fields are quite different. Their "facility" is the dirt field in Santiago and on Tuesday nights the members from A Coruña practice on city soccer fields near the Tower of Hercules.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Will

David "Presi."
Pati. Superfly. Jeje.
Coach Ricardo.
David Siso.
Running sprints.
I know, I know. Two panning pictures in two weeks. But I've been to three straight wind sprints practices and its starting to feel like Spring Training. Also, this one is better than the one from the other day.

A break at practice in Santiago.