because you really want to know more about mallorca

a few personal discoveries:

Fact #1: 1 out of every 13 girls in my town is named María (according to the government).  Those figures include anyone with a 1^st or 2^nd name of María: the most popular are María Carmen (Maricarmen), María Antonia (Marian), and Ana María.  In and around the town of Santanyí, there are 1,037 Marías, out of a total resident population of 12,823.  I’m pretty sure I’ve met most of them.

Fact #2: there are 400 kids in the high school where I teach, 60 kids in the elementary school, and 40 teachers between the two.  I really have met all 500 of them, and there is no way that I can keep 500 names straight, especially when most of them probably have something to do with María.

Fact #3: the 12-year-olds at the high school told me that I was like a celebrity in town.  Warm, fuzzy feeling. 

Fact #4: the 9-year-olds in the elementary school think I’m a bit of an idiot.  I constantly butcher their names (see #2 above)—but, come on, when their homeroom teacher is María, the Spanish teacher is Magdalena, one English teacher is María Magdalena, the other English teacher is Margalida, and four of the girls are called María Victoria, Marta, Margalida and Margalida María, cut me some slack!!!

Fact #5: the kids in the elementary school like to tell me about every time they see me.  “Jeni, I saw you at the grocery store!” “Jeni, I saw you riding your bike!” “Jeni, you live in my apartment building!” and my personal favorite: “Jeni, my mom sold you those shoes!”

Fact #6: despite the fact that I’m not allowed to speak in Spanish with the kids, they’ve figured out that I speak Spanish—which is probably due to the fact that the other teachers speak to me in Spanish in front of the kids.  I’m stubborn, though, so I still follow the English-only rule, but the kids only respond to me in Spanish.  They still aren’t sure how much I speak, though, and they talk to me like I’m the dimmest bulb in the room.  The other day in the class of 9-year-olds, the shoe shop owner's son was telling a classmate, “Jo vaig a Menorca…” (I’m going to Menorca…) so I jumped in and asked him, in English, “Why are you going to Menorca?”  “Jeni,” he explained in careful, ancient-turtle-speed Spanish, “There’s another island called MENORCA.  We’re on the island of MALLORCA.”  No shit, Sherlock.

***

actual historical facts (ish?) that have nothing to do with the Marías

A whole heck of a long time ago, there was a guy named Strabo who wrote a book (Strabo’s Geography—written about AD 20) describing various parts of the Roman Empire.  He dedicated a sizeable chunk to Mallorca and the Balearic Islands—which, in case you didn’t know, are made up of MALLORCA & MENORCA (the two of which make up the Gymnesian Islands) and IBIZA & FORMENTERA (which are known as the Pine Islands or Pityuses) as well as several uninhabited islands & islets.  I broke the text down into paragraphs and added fun links about pirates and slingshots; if you only want to read a part, make sure to check out the last paragraph.  Enjoy!

Source: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/3E*.html (text is in the public domain)

Of the islands which lie off Iberia, the two Pityussae, and the two Gymnesiae (which are also called the Baliarides), lie off the stretch of coast that is between Tarraco and Sucro, whereon Saguntum is situated; they are also out in the open sea, all of them, although the Pityussae have a greater inclination to the west than the Gymnesiae. Now one of the Pityussae is called Ebusus, and it has a city of the same name; the circuit of the island is four hundred stadia, with the breadth and the length about equal. The other island, Ophiussa, which lies near Ebusus, is desert and much smaller.

Of the Gymnesiae, the larger has two cities, Palma and Polentia, one of which, Polentia, is situated in the eastern part of the island, and the other in the western. The length of the island falls but little short of six hundred stadia, and the breadth but little short of two hundred — although Artemidorus has stated the length and breadth at double these figures. The smaller of the two is about two hundred and seventy stadia distant from Polentia. Now although it falls far short of the larger island in size, it is in no respect inferior thereto in the excellence of its soil; for both are blessed with fertility, and also have good harbours, though the harbours are full of reefs at the entrances, so that there is need of vigilance on the part of those who sail in.

And it is on account of the fertility of these regions that the inhabitants are peaceable, as is also the case with the people on the island of Ebusus. But merely because a few criminals among them had formed partnerships with the pirates of the high seas, they were all cast into disrepute, and an over-sea expedition was made against them by Metellus, surnamed Balearicus, who is the man that founded their cities. On account of the same fertility of their islands, however, the inhabitants are ever the object of plots, albeit they are peaceable; still they are spoken of as the best of slingers. And this art they have practised assiduously, so it is said, ever since the Phoenicians took possession of the islands.… And their training in the use of slings used to be such, from childhood up, that they would not so much as give bread to their children unless they first hit it with the sling. This is why Metellus, when he was approaching the islands from the sea, stretched hides above the decks as a protection against the slings. And he brought thither as colonists three thousand of the Romans who were in Iberia.

Referring to the conquering of the islands by the Romans—which happened in 123 BC, remember—see Florus (written sometime between AD 117-138)

Source: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Florus/Epitome/1L*.html#8 (text is in the public domain)

Seeing that the family of Metellus Macedonicus had become accustomed to the assumption of surnames won in war, after one of his sons had become Creticus, it was not long before the other received the name of Balearicus. The Balearic islanders at this period had ravaged the seas with their piratical outrages. You may wonder that savages who dwelt in the woods should venture even to look upon the sea from their native rocks, but they actually went on board roughly constructed ships, and from time to time terrified passing ships by attacking them unexpectedly. When they had espied the Roman fleet approaching from the open sea, thinking it an easy prey, they actually dared to assail it, and at the first onslaught covered it with a shower of stones and rocks. They fight with three slings apiece; and who can wonder that their aim is so accurate, seeing that this is their only kind of arm and its employment their sole pursuit from infancy? A boy receives no food from his mother except what he has struck down under her instruction. But the alarm caused among the Romans by their slinging of stones did not last long; when it came to close fighting and they experienced the attack of the beaks of our ships and our javelins, they raised a bellowing like cattle and fled to the shore, and scattering among the neighbouring hills had to be hunted down before they could be conquered.

in case you're wondering why i'm PSYCHED to go to psu

An edited version of my please-let-me-in essay:

***

I love languages. I love the way we pack meaning into sounds, how each generation recreates and rediscovers slang, and how all languages actively pickpocket each other. I love the rushing, escalating feeling upon first beginning to learn a new language. As a teaching assistant in Spain, I strive to share this love of language with my students; I want to help them get beyond survival English to see the beauty in the language.

My work as an English-language teaching assistant in the towns of Santanyí and S’Alquería Blanca in Mallorca, Spain is incredibly rewarding. However, in my current position, I am learning how to teach by the “sink-or-swim” method. I have been able to observe the teaching styles of seven different teachers, and it is evident which are the most effective: a good teacher is patient, creative, understanding of students’ needs, goals, and current linguistic levels, and is able to create an environment conducive to learning. I feel that I have the qualities to become a good teacher, but I lack formal training. I believe Portland State’s MA TESOL program will give me the foundation and tools that I need to be an effective ESL teacher.

I am attracted to Portland State’s program because it will fulfill my thirst to study the intricate inner workings of English, to study theoretical and historical linguistics, to learn how we learn, and, most importantly, to learn how to teach. Also, I love Portland’s diversity and progressivity: I want to work and learn with people from varied cultural backgrounds. Janet Cowal’s TESOL Community Activism class is especially appealing; I hope to take advantage of my time in Portland by participating in community-outreach programs. I also look forward to student teaching and developing my own curriculum through the Community ESL Practicum. In order to have more hands-on classroom experience, I would like to be considered for an ESL Teaching Assistant position. I believe eight months as an ESL Teaching Assistant in Spain, as well as teaching college-level Spanish classes for one week while filling in for Prof. Violeta Ramsay, will help me succeed as an ESL TA at Portland State.

My only teaching and tutoring experience to date has been with Latinos and people whose first or second language is Spanish (my current students on Mallorca speak Spanish as a second language. Their first language is Mallorquín, a dialect of Catalan—a language I am beginning to learn). I know that the techniques I will learn at Portland State will be applicable to teaching native speakers of any language, and although I want to focus on the Hispanic community, I hope to work with many culture groups.

The opportunity to interact with the Hispanic community in Oregon and Wyoming has motivated me to continue to work with Latinos living in the US. When I first arrived at Linfield, getting to meet and make friends with the visiting international students and becoming involved in the Hispanic community were wonderfully broadening experiences. In the community of McMinnville, I taught adult education classes in order to hear people’s stories (if they were a first- or second-generation immigrant, if they had a steady job or were migrant workers, what their experience as a marginalized minority was like, what I could do to make a difference). During the summer following my graduation, I worked as an interpreter/naturalist in Grand Teton National Park, developing ranger programs, leading guided hikes, and teaching visitors about the natural and cultural resources in Grand Teton. As a Spanish speaker, I was able to help develop and lead special “Latino Family Day” programs. The excitement of the families on their first visit to Grand Teton was contagious. We gave programs in Spanish, but my dream is to lead community adult-education English classes for those families and others, to help them master English in order to more fully and independently enjoy and understand places such as Grand Teton and Yellowstone. I want to use my experience from living abroad in Ecuador, Germany, and Spain, to help non-English speakers, especially Latinos, to succeed while living in the US. I want to continue to grow as a person by learning about their cultures and learning from them. I want to teach.

my future is set until at least May of 2013

Apart from my lovely life lounging around on beaches and eating far too many rubiols (which we made today in school), I do have a few worries, namely, THE FUTURE.  To put things in a timeline, here is a silly-ish poem I wrote a year ago:

***

Beethoven, Emma, and The Future

by Jen Sacklin

(Fall 2009)

Classical music, they say, beats as the heart—

THUMP-tap…THUMP-tap…

A masterpiece will subtly gather each of attention’s strands

and start to pluck them as it wills.

                THUMP-tap… THUMP-tap…

I am curled in my chair reading Jane Austen, my thoughts pleasantly

engaged with Mr. Knightly in Hartfield.

                THUMP-tap… THUMP-tap…

My music, Beethoven for Book Lovers (rather apt for the occasion), insidiously

works into my brain.

POUND-pat-pat-pat—POUND-pat-pat-pat

It speeds up!  My anxieties for Emma, smoothed over many re-reads,

assault my sub-conscious.

                bah-BUMM, bah-BUMM, bah-BUMM

What if, this time around, they don’t fall in love? What if good sense

doesn’t prevail?  Will she be doomed

                DUUUN-DUUUN-DUUUN

To a boring life, stuck in a phone-answering desk job because she

isn’t utilizing this precious evening to study for her GREs, until

                deedle-dah-DEE-DEE

We’re back to the String Quartet No. 6 in B-Flat, (adagio, thank heavens) and life

goes back to its proper, Surrey-sized proportions.

***

I recently discovered Santanyí’s municipal library (which is attached to the high school—I walk by it every single day and STILL never managed to make my way inside for five months), and one of the first books I checked out was Emma, in Spanish. I loved it just as much as ever, right up until the point that I remembered this poem—and then I started fretting about how I STILL hadn’t figured out my future.

Well, after a long couple of months of nailbiting and dithers, I can now proudly announce that I will be attending Portland State University, to pursue a Master of Arts in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.  Woot, woot!  Georgetown accepted me way back in early March, but was still holding out for Portland State University, because it 1) is quite a lot cheaper than Georgetown, 2) has a program that is more focused on the things I’m interested in, 3) is closer to my grandparents’ house (my grandparents are getting older a lot faster than any of us expected, and I need to spend more time with them NOW instead of gallivanting around in Europe and on the East Coast), 4) is in Portland, a city where lots of friends live and where I think I could live without going crazy from being surrounded by concrete and thousands of unfamiliar souls, and the icing on the cake: 5) going to PSU would come with the added benefit of having a schedule compatible with my amazing summer job working in Grand Teton National Park. Win-win-win-win-win.

EXCEPT, Georgetown needed an answer from me before April 15th. PSU said they weren’t going to let me know until AFTER April 15th. I couldn’t simply turn down Georgetown on the blind hope that PSU was going to let me in later, so there was a bit of panicking and nail-biting and the like. One friendly chat with PSU, though, got the ball rolling a little more quickly, and I got my scanned copy of my acceptance letter yesterday.

***

Relief?  Have I made the right decision?  Did I turn down one of the best MA TESL programs in the country for the right reasons?  I think so.  Lots of congratulatory Skype calls with my family reminded me of the best benefit of all: I’ll only be 2 hours away from my grandparents.  Being in Spain this year has been what one friend called a “personal sabbatical”: it’s a whole lot of me-me-me time.  No matter how much fun it is to have a self-indulgent, epicurean life for 8 months, it’s nothing compared to having true relationships with family and friends.  The highlights of this year have definitely been the amazing times I’ve spent getting to know people: other Linfielders, my family, my roommate Sofia, and my coworkers and friends here.  I know I would make lasting relationships in Washington, D.C., and that my brain would be punch-drunk happy with all of the intellectual stimulation, but PSU isn’t a pushover school, either.  I want to cultivate the relationships I already have—as well as meeting new people in the Portland area—and I want to be able to zip up to my grandparents’ house for a weekend while I still can.  I would have been going to Georgetown only to satisfy my ego, and I think I’m spending PLENTY of time right now on satisfying my own pleasures.  (To celebrate my going to PSU, I’m having a mini-party with my roommate by drinking lots of action-packed Mallorcan wine paired with aged cheese and sharp fig mustard.  A hedonistic heaven.)

kith and kin in the mediterranean

My uncle (UT) and cousin (CK) are spending 15 days in Spain.  I was with them for the first 3 days in Barcelona, before they drove up into rural Catalonia to spend a few days in peace and quiet.  They spent the next leg of their vacation with me on Mallorca, and they are currently exploring the cultural delights of Valencia.

When they were on Mallorca, as well as showing them the usual bits around where I live (the beaches, the market, my favorite café), we explored large swathes of the island that I had never seen before.

Saturday afternoon saw us driving into the interior to explore wonderful little towns: picnicking in Sineu, checking out a 1000-year-old Moorish well in Pina, and looking for a 3000-year-old settlement near Montuïri.  I say looking for, because we probably drove around Montuïri (and drove through, and by, and over—it’s a town on a hill) for about an hour, first looking for the historical museum that was going to tell us about this ancient settlement, and then looking for the settlement itself.  When we finally found the place, it was late afternoon and we had it all to ourselves.  We explored all around the ancient structures, and went inside one of the tall, round talaiots.  There are about 400 talaiotic sites on Mallorca, left from a prehistoric civilization that suddenly started building these things about 3000 years ago.  According to the museum dedicated to this talaiot (Son Fornés), about 550 BC, there was “a period of conflict and crisis,” and people stopped building talaiots, although they continued to live around them.  The Carthaginians had set up camp on the nearby islands of Ibiza and Formentera, and they used Balearic warriors who were handy with a slingshot as mercenaries in a lot of their wars.  After the Romans thoroughly kicked Carthage’s ass in the Third Punic War (149 to 146 BC), they invaded the Balearic Islands in 123 BC (easy date to remember, right?). The arrival of the Romans put a pretty big damper on the talaiotic culture, and by the time the islands fell under the power of the Caliphate of Córdoba (the Muslim rulers—sometimes called the Moors—who controlled a large part of Spain until 1492) sometime between the eighth, ninth, & tenth centuries, the talaiots were completely abandoned.

One thing we missed during our solitary amblings: in July there was a night-time chamber orchestra concert inside the settlement: the orchestra played Vivaldi, Boccherini, and Gardel, with the lit-up talaiots as a backdrop.  Anachronistic?  Or just really cool staging?

Another thing we missed while we were in Barcelona: being naked.  Apparently, it used to be perfectly fine and legal to walk around in your birthday suit because it’s an “artistic expression,” but now, due to half-naked tourists wearing too-skimpy clothes inside real artistic places (such as wearing bikinis in museums and churches), the city is looking to fine on any “improperly dressed” people, including nudists, who wander the streets.  I guess we missed our chance.

ANYWAYS, MOVING ON.  On Sunday, we set off on a grand adventure to reach the northernmost tip of the island: the Cap de Formentor.  We stopped in the picturesque town of Artà and wandered around the restored wall + turrets on the top of a hill, and then we chose a road that looked as though it was bordered by the ocean on the right and a large, freshwater lagoon on the left.

see?

Wrong.  So, we thought we would just drive through Can Picafort (which means “House of the Strong Itch”) and then be on a lovely, natural road.  WRONG.  Can Picafort, which was REALLY ITCHILY TERRIBLE, stretched for miles.  Ocean on the right? Try high-rise hotels.  Lagoon on the left? Try KFC and Pizza Hut.  With the palm-lined strip malls lining the road, CK dubbed it “Florida, Jr.”

As soon as we got the hell out of Itchy Port, we jumped onto the much more scenic road out to the end of the point…

this point

…which involved several stops to take in the scenery and to have a picnic.  Since we were up there on a beautiful sunny Sunday, the tourists were out in hordes, and UT showed off his mad driving skillz by dodging manadas de ciclistas.  Man, if only I had some of UT’s pictures to share!  I could show you about a hundred spandexed behinds that we zoomed around on the way to the end of the road.  Also, I could show you pictures of our picture-perfect picnic spot, which was only marred by the fact that it was basically in a parking lot.  Besides the view, we had a wonderful picnic: jamón serrano (serrano ham), queso curado (extra-cured cheese), mostasa de higos (fig mustard), Mateus wine (an amazing rosé that my mom says is rotgut, but I respectfully disagree), and a bit of horchata, just to shake things up a bit (horchata is a Mexican milky-ish drink that my uncle declared tasted like old furniture. Again, I disagree.) 

On Sunday night, we went over to a house of some friends for a barbecue.  UT got to discuss the origins of the conflicting philosophies in corporate culture with a philosophy teacher, CK talked about her experience living in China and the importance of making good friends abroad, my good friends here said that they had been so impressed by American hospitality when they visited the US that they wanted to show the same attitude towards me, and all in all we had a wonderful time and stayed up way past everyone’s bedtime.

Early(ish) the next morning, UT and CK packed their bags and headed off for Valencia.  I had a WONDERFUL time with both of them, and I can’t wait to see them more often back in the US.

barcelona & long-lost relatives have nothing in common with fish

My family is tiny.  The roster reads:

• Immediate Family: 1 father, 1 mother, 1 brother.
• Close Paternal Relatives: 2 grandparents, 1 great-aunt, a few second cousins, 1 aunt, 1 uncle, 1 cousin (now living in Texas), 1 cousin’s wife (ditto), 1 cousin’s baby (never met). 
• Close Maternal Relatives: 2 grandparents (now deceased), 1 aunt, 1 uncle, 2 cousins.

OK, so nobody qualifies as a “long-lost” relative, but it has been a long time since we’ve been together.  I only have 3 cousins, and I haven’t spent any significant time with them since I was running around in my older cousin’s hand-me-down matching-turquoise-sweatshirt-and-sweatpants deals.  Even when we were little and spent a lot of our lives driving back and forth across the country to visit both sides of the family, the time we spent apart was long enough that each time we got back together, we had to go through those awkward moments of: “I-wonder-what-they’re-like-now?” and “Are-they-too-old-and-too-cool-for-me-yet?” before we were friends again.

I hadn’t even seen my mom’s side of the family since my grandma’s funeral almost four years ago, and so I had the agitations and fidgets worthy of a fourteen-year-old when my uncle Tom (hereby shortened to “UT”) and cousin Katie (“CK”) started planning a trip to Spain. 

I shouldn’t have fretted at all—we had an absolutely wonderful time, characterized by laughter and giggles and uproarious snorts, exploration of new places, confusion of how the heck we get to these new places, goofy eponyms of really goofy places, and goofy UT dances.  Yes, my UT can dance.  We spent about 7 days together, split between Barcelona and Mallorca, and I’m going to miss having them around.  I like people I can giggle with.

I don’t have any photos that I can share with you here, because after carefully documenting the entire trip and promising to let me nab the photos at the end, UT and CK left this morning in a screech of burning rubber with all of the photos still on their memory chips.  Scoundrels. 

Barcelona: April 1^st-4^th

I flew to Barcelona last Friday, and they arrived from the States, bleary-eyed and jet-lagged, on Saturday morning.  We checked into the hotel, freshened up, and hit the streets.  First stop: the Boqueria Market, a permanent, outdoor, fresh-food market, full of delicious colors and smells, where we picked up lunch supplies.  Toting our goods, we made our way down to Barcelona’s port, where we had a makeshift picnic on a bench in the sun.  Next, we wandered our way through some of Barcelona’s old city streets, past the cathedral and through the old Roman district, took a few coffee breaks, and then caught a bus up to the Parc Güell, a city park enlivened by Gaudí’s modernista sculptures.  I had gotten restaurant recommendations from a teacher at one of my schools, and so that night we went to Can Culleretes, where they got their first taste of traditional Catalan cuisine.  A little before midnight, after forcing themselves to stay awake by propping their jet-lagged eyelids open with toothpicks, they got to crash at the hotel.

The next day, the layabeds didn’t get up and at ‘em until mid-morning, so we had a late breakfast and spent the rest of the day exploring.  The Museu d’Història de Barcelona was fascinating: lots of underground Roman ruins, maps of conquerings and reconquerings and expansions, and Neat Old Stuff.  The line for the Picasso Museum wrapped around the block, so we skipped it in favor of having a few coffee and pa amb tomàquet breaks, and we had dinner that night at another recommended restaurant: Els 4 Gats.

We got up at the crack of dawn (before 8am) to get breakfast at a local bakery before meeting a guide that we’d arranged a 4-hour walking tour with.  The guide showed us all around the old city, telling stories about the buildings and their history, before going to the Casa Milà, also known as La Pedrera, a wacky house designed by Gaudí.  The last stop was the Sagrada Familia, Gaudí’s masterpiece.  La Sagrada Familia is a soaring church, still unfinished, full of symbolism and color and TOURISTS. Man, is that place busy; even so, it’s absolutely worth visiting.  The interior is finished except for one wall of stained-glass windows, and is reminiscent of being in a brightly-lit forest.  The columns curve and branch up to the arched ceiling, and the stained-glass windows use browns and reds near the floor, blues at the top, and greens in the middle, to mimic the color scheme in the woods.  Since all major Catholic churches had choirs (usually a large, rectangular elaborately carved wooden room in the middle of the church for the monks to sit and sing in), Gaudí designed the Sagrada Familia with a choir, except instead of being a huge room stuck in the middle that blocks all the lines of sight, he designed a narrow platform to run high up on the walls, where members of the choir can serenade the worshippers from above.  The church is so huge and architecturally complex that it isn’t expected to be finished until after 2025 (work started in 1882).

After our tour, I had to catch a flight back to Mallorca to be able to work on Tuesday.  UT and CK spent another night in Barcelona, then rented a car and drove up to the quiet town of Vic, where they spent two nights in a parador (a restored farmhouse).  On Thursday, they hopped over to visit me on Mallorca.  3 days was too little time to spend in Barcelona, and too little time to spend with these fun people that I'm related to:

Stay tuned for the next installment of Kith and Kin in the Mediterranean.

santanyí’s beaches

So, sometimes I’ve casually told people that within 10 miles of my house there are at least 10 beaches.  *cool shrug, as if it’s totally no big deal that my 3^rd grade classroom has an ocean view.*

Well, I now stand corrected: there are actually 41 beaches within a 10-mile radius.  
FORTY-ONE!  
And those are only the SANDY beaches.  There are probably a hundred rocky beaches and coves that I’m not going to bother listing here.  Also, there are definitely two more sand beaches (see picture below of the mini beach) that I found on Google Earth but that apparently have no names; the list below only includes the 41 beaches officially recognized by the Mallorcan government. 

I’ve been to only 10 of these beaches, but I could get to almost all of these with an hour’s bike ride.  I have no excuse for my laziness!  I have made it my mission to visit every single one of these beaches before leaving the island.

In case you need a refresher on where I live:

 <-- I live on the big island, that one right there, surrounded by all the water.

This one:

<-- Near the bottom-right-hand corner, there’s a town called “Santanyí,” which I currently call home.

Within 10 miles (16 K) of Santanyí, there are 41 registered sand beaches.  

(Click to enlarge the map)

1.    S'Arenal de sa Ràpita

2.    Ses Covetes

3.    Es Freu de ses Covetes *

4.    S'Arenal d'en Tem

5.    Platja d’es Trenc

6.    Platja d’es Pregons Grans

7.    Platja d’es Pregons Petits

8.    Es Molí de s'Estany

9.    Sa Raconada de s’Estany (also known as Ses Estanys or Es Coto)

10. Bassa des Cabot

11. Cala Galiota

12. Platja d'es Port

13. Platja d'es Dolç

14. Can Curt

15. Es Dofí

16. Platja d'es Carbó

17. Cala en Tugores

18. Es Caragol

19. Es Caló des Màrmols

20. Cala s'Almunia *

21. Es Caló des Moro *

22. Cala Llombards *

23. Cala Santanyí *

24. S'Amarador *

25. Cala de sa Font de n'Alis *

26. Es Caló d'es Burgit

27. Es Caló de sa Barca Trencada

28. Es Caló de sa Torre

29. Es Caló des Homos Morts

30. Es Caló de ses Egos

31. Es Caló des Pou *

32. Cala d'Or (used to be known as Cala d'Hort)

33. Cala Gran *

34. Cala Esmeralda *

35. Cala Ferrera

36. Cala Serena

37. Cala Mitjana

38. Cala sa Nau

39. Cala Brafi

40. Cala d'en Marçal

41. Platja de s'Arenal

* denotes beaches I've been to as of 4/7/2011.

Mallorquín Vocab:
Platja: beach
Cala: cove
Caló: small cove (covelet?)
Arenal: sandy area, or long strip of sand (generally known as a "beach", in my opinion)


The most atmospheric names: Es Caló de ses Homos Morts (#29), which means "the small cove of dead men," Platja d'es Dolç (#5), "the sweet beach," or "the beach of the sweet thing," and Platja d'es Trenc (#13), which has a gazillion meanings: "the beach of the cut, the break, the opening, the splitting open of one's head, the wrinkle, the trench, the ravine, or the daybreak."  The prettiest two beaches are part of the Natural Park Cala Mondragó, which are the beaches of S’Amarador (#24) and sa Font de n’Alis (usually just called Mondragó, #25). The closest beaches are Cala Santanyí (#23) and Cala Llombards (#22), and sometimes after a long day at school, I ride my bike the 15 minutes down to either beach just to sit in the sun, read, pray and relax.

mini nameless beach

Yes, I love my life.