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.