Jaca in English

Tuesday, 3 January 2023

5k for cancer research

This was a walk. Five km again, very sociable, lots and lots of people. AsI enrolled at the last moment, there wasn't a pink t-shirt for me. I got an xxl green one!

Tuesday, 27 September 2022

Jaca's pride

This is a matter of personal and civic pride.

On Saturday in our little city of about 12,800 people, 1,300 had registered to take part in a 5k-in the city.

This was a charity event for something called Duchenne, which is a rare kind of muscular distrophy.

https://jacetaniaexpress.com/ni-la-lluvia-pudo-con-quique-gravalos-la-lucha-contra-duchenne-llena-las-calles-de-jaca/?fbclid=IwAR2Yhn2yywNuKyS87GfqySOaJToReMWhQ46s_LXK21D3E3SROuzpBN9y_8g

The above is a link to a local digital newspaper, of course it's in Spanish.

Some of the photos in this post are copied from Jacetania Express; if this is wrong, please tell me so.

Anyway, I've been running since the start of this year; I needed exercise and found that I enjoyed it-within the limits of my age and (in)experience. Posters advertising the event started to appear in shop windows in the summer-I was tempted and eventually enrolled, paid my fee of 10€ and started trying out the circuit, to see if I could manage it.

I asked my friends and several said they would take part, but walking, so my personal challenge was solitary.

Before

Before the start

My friends cheered me when I passed them on the return route

There were many people at the starting point. The municipal band was there, some in uniform and some in shorts.

Many local businesses had contributed to the event, and we were lucky with the weather-the storm that had threatened didn't happen and it was neither too hot nor too cold.

The starting gate

There were chaotic masses at the starting gate. When the off sounded, the runners wove through the wheelchairs and walkers. There's a video of the start: it's my only appearance-at one point I spotted myself threading my way to the front. I've never run with other people-my jogging has been solitary, so doing it with a mass of varied ages and skills was interesting. In the end, you have to set your own pace, and of course, mine was way slower than the athletes. I made it though. Right to the end. I crossed the finish line alone and nobody took a photo of me, which was disappointing. The race started just after midday and at the finish my watch said 12.40. I'm proud of myself for completing the course, and I'm proud of my city for promoting this togetherness and community spirit.

I think these are the runners who crossed the line first and Quique Grávalos, the man who started the whole thing.

The mayor of Jaca crosses the line

I wish someone had taken a photo of me like this!

The first wheelchair to cross the finish line

I was there to take their photo

Well done, Jaca!

Monday, 19 September 2022

A walk in the mountains

Just before you reach Candanchú and the border with France at Somport, there's a very rough car park called l'Anglassé. From there you can walk up and down and round and over rocks and streams along the Canal Roya, which is the start of the Aragón river. Technically, you can cross into the Tena valley but that was too far and too hard for us. In three hours of scrambling and rough walking we arrived at the corrie at the end of the valley, with Anayet on one side of us and theVertiente de Anayet on the other: what looked like a hard climb straight ahead. It was very impressive and beautiful. On a Friday morning mid-September, very few people.

Plantnet identifies this as whitebeam. There were lots of mountain ash trees with their red berries and lots of these, but it's been a bad year for blackberries.

Plenty of cows too.

I've no idea about mushrooms

Just wow!

Balloons!

When I was out running yesterday morning, I heard a sound a bit like a big, heavy roller blind being raised. It wasn't that at all, it was a hot-air balloon being fired; I could see it between the trees, rising into the morning air. Going round a bit further I saw some more just going up.

Then, on the way back, I saw the last of them, a beautiful rainbow coloured one.

Tuesday, 13 September 2022

Words used too much

There are words I don't like, and expressions as well. Maybe it's someting about age: people don't talk or write like they used to, or the way I understand to be correct. It's probably just a question of taste: I don't wholly subscribe to the old-fashioned prescriptive view that there is only one right way to express something. Language is a living organsim which evolves and develops with time.

Anyway, I want to gripe.

One of the words which I dislike is feisty. It's often used to refer to a young woman character in a work of fiction, boldly making her way in the world against male-dominated odds.

If you use a word too often it loses power and becomes boring, uninteresting. No more feisty heroines, please.

Then there's iconic, Over-used by the press to mean emblematic, well-known, symbolic, recognisable.

I really dislike today's use of sibling. For me, the expression sibling rivalry, which I imagine counts as psychologists' terminology, is normal, but to say 'I have two siblings' is not. I have a brother and a sister. It's not that hard. As an English teacher I know that my students, who are Spanish-speakers are influenced by their native language. They can say 'somos tres hermanos, dos chicas y un chico' (there are three of us, two sisters and a brother). Well I don't like it,and I have noticed that sibling is being used more and more.

An expression my students all learn not to use because I tell them is 'from my point of view'. All too often learners say this when they are expressing an opinion. If you say from my point of view it's incomplete unless you express what that point is: as a student of English, as an expert on the subject.

These are words and expressions that annoy me. Any more suggestions?