Mozuelos de Sedano - The village I've helped to rekindle

My village on July 2016

Instead of talking about myself, now I'm going to talk a bit about my village where I spent last weekend with my wife and my father. You can see some pictures I shot there. My village is named Cuzcurrita de Juarros. It's about 20 Km away from the capital and near to Atapuerca which is the best reference nowadays because everybody has heard about it. We arrived there on Friday night and happily, we had to put on a sweater because of the cold weather. It was a relief after the very high temperatures in Madrid. On Saturday morning we went to one of my father's vegetable patchs where we picked up two bags of broad beans and a lettuce for lunch salad. At two o'clock it's compulsary in my village to have a drink - or two or three - in the only one bar we have. That's a social activity and most of people are there. In the evening we went to a close village, Salgüero de Juarros, where there was a traditional festival of sheepshearing and sheepdogs and wool related trades. You can see some of the contestants in the pictures.

On Sunday morning my father stood up at 6:30 but I joined him at 9:00. We were watering two vegetable patchs as you can see and at two o'clock you can imagine what we did.

I have to admit that my village doesn't have anything special for anyone who hasn't lived there. It's only my village but if you had spent some summer when you were a child or teenager in a village like this, you would understand what I mean. The bicycle, the river, the traditional parties, the countryside, the friends, the freedom, etc. They are old memories that you can't never forget. I feel at home when I arrive there. My father usually says that there'is nobody in the village most of the time and that's true. In winter no more than ten people sleep there. I usually say to him that I don't need people around me. Silence, not too much family or friends and the countryside to walk around are all I need when I go there. Sometimes I've thought to move there but my wife doesn't want to and I'm not sure if I'd be able to endure living there.

What do you think about it? Would you like to live in a place like this? Where do you think people are happier, in a big city or in a little village? A city provides us with a lot of services as libraries, cinemas, shopping centers, theaters, university, hospital, schools, etc that we don't usually have in a village. Is it worthwhile? How many of them do we use everyday or every week? Isn't a way of live without traffic jams, pollution, noise, etc better? Don't you dream of opening the window to a field of grass or a mountain instead of a road or a wall of bricks?

How I feel myself

The first thing I’d like to say is that I don’t like speaking about me too much. I’m quite a shy person. I usually blush when I’m the center of something. This could seem a bit weird because I’ve been working as a teacher for 25 years but that is one of my contradictions. In my classes, I know that I’m the reference for everybody and I’m not a good improviser so I usually prepare well what to do or say. In my job, I consider myself overall as hardworking. I don’t mind to have to learn new things every year and this happens frequently in my subjects. Now, I’m learning 3D printing and robotics. About this kind of things related to technology, I’m really open-minded. But although I try to be good at my job, I have to admit I’m not really the best, the kind of teacher students remember all their lives. I’m a bit jealous of other co-workers of whom my students speak really well. On the other hand, I think I’m a really good listener and people like talking to me about their things. But I’m so sympathetic that different opinions about the same thing could persuade me equally. I’m a quiet man too and I don’t get stressed easily. Finally, I’m learning English for two reasons. One of them is that I like traveling abroad a lot and in many countries if you don’t speak English, you can’t communicate properly with natives and in this way, you lose many opportunities to know them and their customs. The other one is that I need English for my job because with bilingual education, my subjects are the more suitable to be taught in English. Although I’m a civil servant and my job is permanent, I don’t want to be left behind. I want to be able to choose if I teach in English or Spanish and where I do it. In the same way I deal with new technologies, I’d like to be able to speak English too. And that's all about me I’ve been thinking until now. In future articles I'll write down other ideas and more thoughts about me. Please, feel free answering me with your personal opinion about what I've written before.