Your Very Own Guidebook – Cordoba Chapter
We hope everyone’s enjoying their spring break. This has been up on the main page for a few days, but no one seems to be seeing it up in the tool bar, so I’ve moved it to make it more obvious.
Last week’s meeting actually focused on one of the religious center of Spain – Cordoba. Mr. Doerr, Miss Filetti, and Mr. Curtis spent quite a bit of time taking about what you’d see in Cordoba, so you should know it well. This week there are only 3 questions, so pick your topics wisely.
Your Very Own Guidebook – Ronda Chapter
Happy kid, big Irish burger.
One of the questions I get asked most often about all the cool places I’ve traveled to is, “What’s the best food you’ve had?”
It’s a good question, because it stirs up memories of some fantastic food. I’ll never forget the cannolli I had in Capri, Italy; the bratwurst on a pretzel roll in Nuremburg, Germany will always be near the top of my list; the fantastic Irish Stew we had at a little pub in the Ring or Kerry in Ireland was unreal; and the first real gyros I had, from a little stand in Mykonos, one of the Greek Islands in the middle of the Mediterranean, was one of my all time favorite meals. Food is a big part of our travels, and it always will be. I’m dying to try paella in Spain and while the Japan trip has me a little scared, gastronomically speaking, I can’t wait to see what they have to offer.
However, for every good meal or memorable culinary experience, there’s something strange to go along with it.
My first moment of culinary culture shock came way back when I was going to college in England. I spent one December afternoon doing some Christmas shopping with my buddy Dan in downtown Birmingham (one of the bigger cities in England), and we both started getting hungry. Like a good Englishman, he was intent of finding a pub or a chip shop (a place where they sell the English standard – fish and chips), but, as we were wandering through Birmingham’s shopping district, I spotted what I felt was a little neon message from heaven.
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Your Very Own Guidebook – Gibraltar/Morocco Chapter
This week’s meeting actually focused on two stops from our trip – Gibraltar and Morocco. That’s a ton of information, so I’m going to allow you to choose what you want to research – The British colony or the African country.
Below are 6 questions. Answer 3 of them. If you want to answer all Gibraltar ones, fine. If you prefer to research just Morocco, that’s fine too. If you want to answer some of each, we’re okay with that. If you want to answer all of them, well, then you just became Mr. Curtis’ favorite.
During your research, be sure to stop and read this little article about some odd Spanish Christmas customs.
Holy Crap!!!
This article has some “not nice” words in it, but they kind of need to be there. I honestly couldn’t find a way to tell this interesting story without a few. I edited them as best I could. 
Holy Crap!!!
No seriously, don’t get mad at me for swearing. I’m literally talking about religious excrement today. Faithful feces. Theistic turds. Spiritual stool. Pious poo. Devout dookie. Okay, enough, I’ve proven that I know a lot of synonyms for poop.
Seriously, I’ve heard of some unique Christmas traditions in my day. My own family plays what we call the “dollar game” every December 25th. Each person in the family buys a few strange things they find at the $1 store, wraps them up so know one can tell what you’ve got, and dumps them on the table after Christmas dinner. Then we play a dice game where people try to win the prizes, taking them out of the pile, stealing them from one another, stealing them back again, usually “fighting” over one or two presents that will certainly turn out to be worthless and dumb, but the hour or so the game takes is hilarious fun.
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The Kevin Bacon of World History Game
Portugal, I’d like you to meet Greece. Greece, this is Portugal.
One of the coolest things about our travels with TAP is finding this weird little connections between the places we’ve visited. Some of it is stuff you never would have imagined linked two otherwise totally different cultures.
A church in Berlin missing some key parts thanks to WWII bombings.
Our first trip was to Germany, and, as you would imagine, the Nazis came up quite a few times in our travels. The next year, on our way to Greece, we had a pit stop in London, where the first thing we saw was a sign pointing out where the Nazis had bombed parts of London. That was coincidence enough, but when a year after that we found our way to Italy, who shows up in one of the first stories we heard in Florence – no, not Michelangelo or Galileo, some Nazis. It was like, for the last three years, every where we went the Nazis were following us. Finally, in Ireland last year we didn’t hear a single Nazi story.
Since the Celtic people moved across northern Europe, through the Iberian peninsula, and up into Ireland, we’re expecting a few Spain and Ireland connections. And, since Spain and Portugal were once part of the Roman Empire, there’s bound to be a few threads that connect those two trips. However, Greece and Portugal weren’t ones we were anticipating a historical mesh from. However, an ancient Greek hero named Ulysses will give us just that.
Your Very Own Guidebook – Seville Chapter
This week we focused on two separate areas of our trip. Mr. Doerr talked about the megaliths we’ll encounter in Portugal, and Mrs. Harig discussed the amazing things we’ll see in our first Spanish city – Seville. This week’s homework will be centered on those two places.
Take your time and research one item from each category below. Write a few paragraphs in your own words about your topic. Explain what the thing/place/person is, why they’re important, and how they fit in to history. DO NOT JUST COPY WIKIPEDIA AND CHANGE A FEW WORDS. Research your topic until you understand it well enough to write a paragraph in your own words – if you don’t understand a topic, email Mr. Curtis, Mr. Doerr, or Mrs. Harig and we’ll be happy to answer questions until you do understand it. If you find a topic boring – well, then you picked the wrong topic. Choose a different one. Read more…
What the Heck is a Dolmen?
What the heck is a dolmen?
The Poulnabrone Dolmen - aka a backyard fort for Pebbles and Bam Bam???
Really, what the heck is it? For the second year in a row, Minooka T.A.P. is going to visit some dolmens during our adventure, so this is the second year in a row that we have to ask the question – What the heck is a dolmen?
You can look at tons of pictures of them all over the internet if you want, but if you’re too tired to click over to Google, I’ll go ahead and describe the one we saw in Ireland last March. Picture a huge open field. It’s kinda hilly, not mountains or anything like that, just kinda hilly. And even though it’s Ireland, there’s not much green anywhere, not one single tree anywhere to be seen, and the grass, which is pretty sparse to begin with, is more of a greebrowbleh color. And yes, we do think that Crayola should add greebrowbleh to the big crayon box.
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Your Very Own Guide Book – Evora Chapter
Mr. Doerr spent this week’s meeting gushing over Evora. He even made the bold prediction that Evora would wind up being his favorite city on this year’s trip. That’s pretty tough competition, because Florence, Italy and Dublin, Ireland
As we researched in class this week, we found some pretty cool places to see in Evora. As you know, every cool place has to have a story behind it, so this week’s homework is going to focus on that.
Spaixican Cuisine???
Thanks to Jasmine G. for the cool logo she designed for our fund raiser.
“Hi, welcome to Taco Bell. May I take your order?”
“Uh, yes… I think I’ll have the snake burrito and an order of armadillo nachos. Can I get extra snake in that burrito please?”
What the… That may sound disgusting, but it’s not that far fetched. If a few things happened just a little differently back in history, that could be your lunch at a Mexican restaurant. While we’re not down with the idea of armadillo nachos, we here at Minooka TAP do love to eat. One of the greatest thing about travel is experiencing a country’s culture, and nothing gets you more in tune with culture than food. Some of my favorite memories of TAP trips past are the food.
Minooka TAP 