spring break account, part one

Ever heard of reverse culture shock? It´s what happens when you go back to where you live from another place and it seems foreign. That´s how I feel returning from Belgium -- I knew it would happen, so I braced myself for the constant ¡¡¡HOLA WAPA QUE TAL UN BESITO Y TUS VACACCIONES DIME TODO!!! ...No punctuation necessary.

Mis vacacciones were excelente. I went with my roommates Becca, Claire and Michelle to Germany and Austria for 4 days (actually Michelle is a former roommate, but yeah), then I broke off from the group and went to Belgium to see family. I´ll start from the very beginning (a very good place to start):

FRANKFURT
The girls and I got into Frankfurt late on Friday the 3rd, from Seville. We started off the day, early, and took a bus to Seville in order to make our early afternoon flight to Germany. This may be too much info, but whatever: the bus always makes me feel queasy, and it was especially aggravating because I was getting over the worst of my stomach flu. The first few days in Germany were hell, and I stuck to eating pretzels (but I did cave and get some Starbucks, too, which I later regretted, that day). Anyway, we got into our Frankfurt hostel pretty late at night and just chilled in the main lobby room with people from all over the globe -- there was even an American guy there, so I chatted with him, a British guy, a German guy, and a whole bunch of Croatians...it was a total sausage fest, there was not one other girl apart from me and my roommates, so we got a ton of attention by default. I think some of those guys were on their 5th or 6th German beer and were definitely feeling it. So we just chatted with them, and the Croatian guys playing us some music and we sang with them. Becca and I took the main singing parts, since we´re constantly singing at ¨home.¨ It was fun. The not fun part was the mosquito infestation in our room. Claire and I were attacked with bugs, and I seriously looked like I had chicken pox on my arms and legs for the rest of the trip. I´m still completely red and scratching them, I think I must be allergic to the German bugs, or something. Anyway...

MUNICH

We left for Munich on Saturday morning, and I did my usual sleeping on the train thing, for probably 3 of the 4 hours on the trip. I possess the happy skill of being able to sleep anywhere in any configuration. We arrived in the early afternoon and settled into our hostel and went to get Starbucks. Being a former Starbucks employee, I had to impress my roommates with the complexity of my drink order (Iced triple grande caramel soy latte, please). I was so extremely caffeinated after that, I thought my already naturally jumpy legs would fall off from over exertion. I would say I have that weird ¨disease¨ restless leg syndrome, but it´s never bothered me. So...the Germans. I was immediately struck by how many blondes are in Germany and how tall everybody is. For the first time since I´ve been here, I felt like I fit in, height-wise (Spaniards, overall, are really short). German sounds really, really weird to my ear, so that was an adjustment. Lots of ¨k¨ sounds and such.
First, we went to an outdoor market and checked out enormous pickles and schnitzel and frankfurters and the like.

This was right after I had left my coat in a McDonald´s bathroom after being sick and forgetting to take it with me (woops). I was a bit upset, because it turns out it was stolen - I went back to the hostel to rest for a while and try not to yak while Becca kindly went back to ask for it. Frown Town. Anyway, once I felt a bit better, we went out again. We went to the Munich Olympic park, where the Olympics were held in 1972. Pretty awesome.

And the German police are total BAMF´s, as expected. They charged the girls and I 40€ fees for having the incorrect ticket on the train without any sympathy whatsoever that we´re tourists and don´t speak German. Fork over the money, ladies, was the vibe we got. Ironically, that was when we were on the way to check out the Dachau Concentration camp, so the image of nazis was fresh in our minds.

Dachau, as you´d imagine, was a rather intense way to start off the day. We got one of the audio guides, which I was responsible for holding and telling the girls about (being the journalist that I am, I´m always eager to know everything possible about a new place, not to mention I´m very interested in the history of the Holocaust). The atmosphere of Dachau is stark and creepy. We went into the rooms where the cremation ovens and poison gas were and we saw the bunkers where they slept. The audio guide had info about every area of the camp, including first person accounts from camp survivors and American camp liberators. Some of the info was told by a narrator, about people who were killed. Sad.

After that, we got back on the train (with the correct ticket) and we set off for a 4 hour bike tour around Munich....it was a great way of seeing all the key sites of the city in a relatively short period of time.

We got to stop in some of the main plazas and see a whole bunch of statues representing Bavaria with lions and the like. Our tour guide was this Hawaiian guy who was extremely funny and had us ring our bells and shout ¨mullet¨ every time we saw one. Unfortunately for Claire, who gave us the idea of going on the tour, a guy got a flat tire and we had to make an unexpected stop. The guide couldn´t fix it, so the guy ended up taking Claire´s bike, and Claire (being just over a hundred pounds and pretty short) was the unlucky one to have to sit on the front of the guide´s bike. ¨Is it too hard?¨ *wink* ...So ridiculous. We kept on keeping on and we went to an enormous beer garden where the beers and pretzels are bigger than your head.

When the tour was over, the girls and I went out with some people we had met on the tour to Hofbräuhaus, a famous beer house. I only had one more, and not even the entire thing, since I was pretty dehydrated, but fortunately, almost over my stomach flu.

Moving on...

SALZBURG
We set off for Austria the next morning, which was a short train ride just over the German border.

Salzburg is stunning -- the Alps, the chalets, the water, the snow, the buildings, the music...I love it all. I really want to go back and see more of Austria, especially Vienna.

The first day, after settling into our hostel, we were off on a tour of the sites in The Sound of Music film. I was in the musical in high school, so for me, it was pretty cool, if really cheesy. At least we got to see the great views of the city and hear more about the story of the real Von Trapp family rather than the syrupy sweet story you hear in the cheesy, cheesy musical.

The house used in the movie

An accurate depiction of both my feelings about The Sound of Music and how I was feeling when spring break started.

We met up with 2 guys from our hostel, and we went off on a self guided tour of the Salzburg to see the salt fortress and other sites around the city. The salt fortress was quite a hike, but the view made it all worth it, especially with the sunset.

The next morning, we went with those two guys (an American and an Australian) to see the Alps. We took a gondola up to the summit and hiked around. Stupid me, I wore the worst possible hiking shoes, so I had to hold hands with Zach and Russ, our two new friends, so I wouldn´t plummet to my death off the side of the guiderail-free Alps. I´m not afraid of heights, but I am afraid of being in traction-less shoes in hard snow when a cliff is involved. Way to go, Meg...

After that, we went on a mini boat tour that was included in our ¨Salzburg card¨ purchase which also had taken us up to the Alps. We went on the main river of Salzburg in a little motor boat and saw some awesome houses, narrated by some creepy recorded voice both in German and then played in English.

We went out for some drinks by the water after that. So pretty.

We also went to Mozart´s birthplace (also on the Salzburg card list of attractions). Ever since I saw the movie Amadeus, I was really interested in Mozart. The movie isn´t a completely accurate representation of his life, but it´s still really well done -- probably why it won best picture in 1984 and was nominated for a bazillion other awards. I love the villain in the movie, Salieri. Ironic they made him the villain, seeing how I´m pretty sure Mozart and Salieri didn´t interact, at all, in real life. Also, the movie showed that Mozart didn´t have siblings and that he only had 1 child, himself, when in reality, he had 6 (even though only 2 survived to adulthood).
Unfortunately, we weren´t allowed to take any photos of the house, which was so lame. There were tons of things I wanted photos of, including weird things like locks of Mozart´s hair. They also had his first violin as a little boy, and it was so small. There were lots of commissioned paintings of him and his family and examples of his own handwriting and the original copies of his music. I love Mozart operas, especially Le Nozze di Figaro and The Magic Flute. My dream would be to sing the Queen of the Night aria, someday -- I already practice it a lot, haha...

VIENNA
The next day was my last day -- I took the train to Vienna with the girls, and all I did there was take a short walk around the center, eat pizza, and go check out the Spanish Riding School of Vienna, with all the Lippazaner horses. Unfortunately, the tour the girls and I wanted to take was completely booked until 4 pm, which was too late for me to go to in order to make my flight to Brussels. Boo :-(. I´ll just have to go back someday, I guess.

Some nice Viennese lady took that picture for us.

OK, that´s about it for part one of my spring break...Belgium deserves its own post, especially since this one is already so long. Hasta ahora...

¡TENGO AGUJETAS!

How would you feel if you suddenly had to join the cast of a play and you didn't know any of your lines? Well, that's one of my recurring dreams, and I felt like I was living it for real in the aerobics class I took today. Claire (roommate) and I decided to do an aerobics class today at the gym we go to, and it turns out the bulk of the class is choreographed, and it's like we're in a Britney Spears music video, or something, that's how complex it was. It was quite effective in making us sweat/raising the heart rate, though, so hooray for that.

When Claire and I arrived at the class, the instructor was super enthusiastic about us being there and, as if we didn't stick out enough already, she shouts "¡Estadosunidenses! ¡Qué chulo!" (Americans, how cool). Then she said some other stuff to the class and us about what we were going to do and then she addressed Claire and me again to say "Guiris, síguenos y hagad lo que podéis," which means "foreigners [think "gringo," but the Spanish version], follow us and do what you can." I had no idea it was going to be so ridiculously difficult! But it was fun, so ultimately, vale la pena (it's worth it). So that was my ridiculous experience of the day.

I've been going to the gym a ton lately to run/do pilates and now aerobics in order to ponerme en forma or get myself more in shape for the upcoming swimsuit season. Claire has done a great job of being moral support, Colorado mountain woman that she is -- she is by far the most athletic of the group of Americans here. She's run a damn marathon, for god's sake, not to mention she was on a bazillion sports clubs in high school. What did I do in high school? Drama club and traveling choir and church choir cantoring...oh, and I rode horses in the first part of high school before I gave it up and then picked it back up when I was 21.

School has been good here ~ here's the Easter poster I made:
And yes, I did the drawings -- that's about as far as my drawing skills go, don't judge. I basically made little doodles in my notebook and then redid them, bigger, for the big old poster. So I made an Easter egg, an Easter bunny, and a Peep. I miss Peeps...! I also printed out 2 of my old pic's : my first communion and a pic of me with my bro's when I was 2 and we got a pro picture taken complete with bunnies. I also wrote out and translated part of the chorus from the "Easter Parade" song (you know it: "In your Easter bonnet / with all the frills upon it / you'll be the grandest lady in the Easter parade"). Oh, and I translated it to Cuando llevas el sombrero de Pascua / todo de vuelo / serás la mujer más distinguida del desfile de Pascua.

Euro-DST starts today, woop

I only now just figured out how to change the date settings on my phone so it would read month-day-year instead of day-month-year. The time also used to read that obnoxious 24 hour military thing, now it's back to good old American 12-h time. Hooray.

Big week coming up after this upcoming one. :-D Thursday, we'll be going to a Spanish production of Jesus Christ Superstar (YAY), then we'll be leaving for Germany on Friday morning. It'll be a pretty stressful day, Friday, first getting to Seville on a 3- hour bus (luckily for me, I have the delightful ability to sleep in any/every environment), then we'll mill around the dinky Seville airport to get to Frankfurt that night. This will mark the first time I'll be in a country 1) without speaking the language and 2) not knowing anybody ELSE who speaks the language.

Sure, I'm not completely fluent in Spanish, so I've discovered how body language comes in handy when I've reached a communication impasse, but I'm going to hit a huge wave of culture shock in Germany. And the German language always freaks me out, since you can say anything and it sounds like a death threat. That's probably just being an ignorant American...then again, the Spaniards I've mentioned that to laugh and say they agree, so who knows.

At least my trip to Germany/Austria will be a nice little segue to Belgium, since Dutch and German sound really similar to my ear, kind of like Portuguese and Spanish, like they are mutually intelligible. Not sure, though.

By the way, my Belgian relatives are descendants of my Grandma Boberg's first cousins. Cool, right? My great grandparents left Belgium in 1918 or 19 after WW I with my grandma's older brother and sister, but my grandma wasn't born yet...she was born in 1925, in Illinois. Sidenote: if my grandma HAD been born in Belgium, then I would have an in on the highly coveted dual citizenship, since American grandchildren of European-born grandparents can get a European Union passport on that merit alone. So frustrating! That would mean, then, that my second cousins on my dad's side are eligible for that dual citizenship, since their grandparents (my great uncle Renee and great aunt Irene, both deceased), were born in Belgium. And yet, I'm fairly sure none of them have any interest of living or working in Europe. Murphy's law?

More about family -- I am completely unaware what happened with the Italian and Swedish sides of the fam (my maternal grandpa and paternal grandpa, respectively). My Grandpa Catanzaro grew up hearing his parents speaking Italian, so I'm going to assume you'd only have to go back a few more generations to find out who emigrated from Sicily. Oh, and they changed their last name from whatever it once was to "Catanzaro," for unknown reasons. Catanzaro is a name of a city in the southern region of Calabria in Italy, which isn't even in Sicily. They might have been fugitives, which is kinda funny.
The Swedes are even more of a mystery. Boberg is a swedish name, though, even though most people don't think that. And I don't have the typical Swedish looks, either. I might not ever figure out when or why the Swedes in my family decided to head over to the US, especially because my Grandpa Boberg died in 1996 and all of his siblings are also gone. My Great Uncle Ben died a few years ago. I met one of my Grandpa Boberg's cousins, Glen Slater, within the last 10 years, and he showed my dad and I some of the Swedish family tree, but that stuff is lost on me. My dad would probably know more than I would. I should probably ask my Grandma Boberg what she knows about this whole thing, because I'm confused/curious.

Speaking of closer relatives, I'll be heading to Illinois this summer for a least a week or so to hang out with the grandparents/cousins/aunts/uncles. I'm not exactly sure what we'll be doing, though, probably just catching up and hanging out, and I'll be answering a barrage of questions about what I've done/what I'll be doing with my life. I don't even know yet!

¿viviendo la vida loca...?

Right now I'm watching mindless American TV and mourning the apparent death of my built in camera card reader. Why did it happen? Come back to me, card reader. This is a cruel joke.

Lots of junk happened since I wrote last. The padres came to Spain, we did a whole lot of stuff, but I think anyone who reads this also sees my facebook. In any case, some photographic highlights (scenery/indoor shots to start, sorry):

Fans at the Alcázar in Seville

The ever-impressive Plaza de España

The enormous, medieval structure, Ávila's "muralla." Bonus points to you if you can find the storks in this pic!!!

Salamanca's "New Cathedral"

The ceiling of a cathedral in Madrid.

Now for pic's with the parents.

With mom in Ávila

With dad at the Alhambra in Granda

The parents doing their "cute" shot at the Alcázar in Seville

With both the parents at Ávila's ridiculously old pig (their city symbol, I think, apart from the wall)

With the girls: Claire, me being burned, Michelle, Emily and Becca (Kim couldn't make it)

Life is good otherwise, despite worrying about future employment. I've reached the home stretch of Spain life, which is weird, but cool. I still have plenty of trips on the horizon, which is exciting. Spring break, AKA "semana santa" (holy week) is not the next week but the one after that. I'll be traveling with Michelle, Becca and Claire for 4 days, then heading off to Belgium for 5. Yay. :)

Lots of stuff going on...sleepy time! Tomorrow is my long day...in Spanish terms, anyway.

In Madrid, otra vez

I´m being un-Spanish tonight, since I plan on faceplanting in my pillows in T minus one hour, more or less, seeing how I´m completely wrecked. Maybe I figured it´d be the best way to empathize with my soon-to-be jetlagged parents? I´m in Madrid por la noche, and I´m going to get my padres around 9-ish.

Luckily, I was able to meet up with Emma, another conversation assistant, working in Madrid. She´s from the British version of my same program and I met her at the hostel where I was staying in November, along with a bunch of other UK-ers and Aussies and Americans. It´s really odd to hear so many people speaking English, since I´m so used to constant Andaluz (Spanish dialect). The hotel where I´m staying even has two English news stations on, which is cool. It also has a French and a Portuguese station, and I watched the Portuguese one for a long time because I was simply mesmorized by how similar it sounds to Spanish --I could understand virtually every sentence, and if there was a word I didn´t get, it made sense it context. So weird. I had no idea that Portuguese and Spanish were THAT mutually intelligible, even though when I´ve heard Portuguese briefly, before, it sounded like the inbred child of French and Spanish.

Emma was able to tell me how exactly to get from the center of Madrid to my hotel, so that was pretty cool. Being alone in a hotel isn´t, so much, but oh well.

The padres and I will be hitting up Madrid, Toledo and Salamanca in the next three days, then we´ll be returning to the Andalucía region so I can get to work. After work, we´ll be going to Seville, Córdoba and Granada, on different days. It´s going to be a whirlwind tour and the guide is yours truly...I´m a bit irked about the being the group communicator, but it´s all good. The worst part will be ordering food, no doubt, seeing how I´m not quite knowledgeable about all food vocabulary, especially when it´s just Spanish food. I do have one tip for any potential visitors, though: a Spanish tortilla is not a quesadilla, or anything that is normally found in the US. You have been forewarned...


After the ´rents leave, I´ll have a few weeks just to chill in Cabra...hooray. Truth be told, I´m more of a homebody than a traveler extraordinaire, even though I like both...obviously. No doubt the constant moving around from my teen years has contributed to the omnipresent bee in my bonnet to travel.

(Wow, I am clearly out of my mind tired when I type things like that...woops!)

Time to watch more Portuguese TV and then hit it. ¡Buenas noches!

back from Irlanda

I spent the long weekend in Ireland (Andalucía had a holiday weekend -- funny that all the English speakers fly the coop, then)! My Irish family made contact relatively recently -- Bernadette, my cousin, already met several of my second cousins, some whom I still have never met in my life, for some reason. Probably has to do with the distance issue, being that we left Illinois in 1988. I can't remember who, exactly, made it to my Grandma and Grandpa Catanzaros' 50th wedding anniversary in 2004, either.

Woops on the tangent.

Ireland was incredible. And the saying is that the place is immaterial without the its inhabitants is true. Everyone was warm, welcoming and eager to meet more of their American family. I learned more about my Great, Great Grandma Moriarity and her reasons for leaving Ireland. It had to do with the Potato Famine (An Gorta Mór) which still managed to ravage the country decades afterward. Bridget was born in 1875 and I'm not entirely sure of the circumstances surrounding her departure and whether it was her idea or her husband's, really. Also, it seems like it must have been a miracle that they survived what was probably a horrendous journey by boat, for weeks, probably eating possibly rancid food and living in squalor, with nothing and nowhere to go, I'm sure.
Makes me wonder if they thought they had made a big mistake.

I read The Gravedigger's Daughter which is about a German family who emigrated to the states in the 1930s and the prejudice they endure about being Jews and, paradoxically, being looked down upon for Nazism. Anyway, the whole immigrant issue is fascinating to me. The fact that I could've ended up in Ireland, too, blows my mind. But I'm not only Irish, so I suppose I wouldn't have been born at all, since I'm such a mixture of the meetings of fellow immigrants, all milling about Chicago and building a new foundation.


The majority of my weekend was spent in County Kerry, or with the family in Cahersiveen, a cute, small town in the Ring of Kerry. I keep thinking about how I'll have to translate my trip into Spanish for my coworkers, tomorrow, and I'm curious to see their reactions. They were worried I was going off half-cocked and maybe my family wasn't sure if they wanted me there, but I can safely assure them I was prepared by my Great Aunt Liz's advice and her stories about Ireland and our family there. They really were fantastic, very accommodating, unwilling to take a quid from me, it seemed, which racked me with guilt. I spent 10 euro as a donation to Mary Daly's Special Olympics fund and I gave 20 p to the church to light a candle, a family tradition, and then I put some loose change in the collection basket and later in a cancer hospice care collection.

Mary Daly -- I can't say enough about her kindness, bubbly personality and active lifestyle. She is bursting with activity and life and is up for a good card game, chat, meal or hike at any given moment. She cooked for us (Cabbage and "bacon," which looked to me more like a ham and pork hybrid, to me -- the tenderness of good pork and a slight salty flavor of ham -- my favorite...it wasn't fried). She made tea and coffee (in a French press, too!) and also had tea biscuits. She has an infectious smile, too. She has had a very full life with a good deal of green pastures with the ocassional flood -- one would imagine that would be the case, what with 9 children. Oh, and 14 grandchildren. And the occasional visitor from the USA -- descendents of her own aunt, Bridget Moriarity.

Enjoy these videos -- more are on the way. Keep in mind, this is raw footage. I'll be putting up an edited video ASAP.





....Now I'm back to the grind. Here's some stuff I have coming up to do presentations about and so forth, and there will be comprehension exercises. We'll be chugging forth with present simple irregulars (barely right now, more in the future). Also, I like asking questions that will generate a negative response, because the kids have to think about it slightly more. And I don't take monosyllabic answers for it, they have to conjugate the verb and make sure the person is correct. Also, I have one student read the question then another respond. I have plenty of opportunities to fine tune (sometimes overhaul) pronunciation problems, which are generally predictable at this stage. My students really need to get to the point where they relinquish their idea that English is a phonetic language, because it isn't even a relative of the completely phonetic Spanish language.

woooooooooooooooooooooooo....!

Today was un día fantástico, hooray...

Tomorrow I'm going to Ireland, and today I got a call from my Gianna, the lady whose house I lived in while I studied abroad two years ago, in Florence. I saw the Italian country code pop up on my phone and my eyes got huge, in anticipation of a) having to speak Italian in the next breath and b) thinking about Gianna being on the other end. The first thing she said after "pronto" (which is what Italians say when they answer the phone -- it means "ready") was "non posso credere che sto parlando con Megan!" or, "I can't believe I'm talking to May-gahn!" It was pretty funny, but then I got kinda nervous, since my Italian speaking skills have gone straight down the crapper. After a couple seconds, I told her it was almost "quasi impossibile" for me to speak Italian, but then she insisted, claiming that my emails are so well-written, so I MUST be able to speak Italian. Ack. Note: writing in another language is a thousand times easier than speaking it, seeing how you can look up conjugation and vocabulary instead of thinking about those things on the spot.

Anyway....(stream of consciousness writing, sorry)...She told me I had to visit her, so we decided I'll go see her April 30th - May 4th. Yay! Another note: still impressed that I was able to piece together several coherent (though horribly grammatically incorrect) Italian phrases together on the phone.

Now the daunting task of brushing up on Italian during the next 8ish weeks so I'll be able to hold a semi-decent conversazione. Actually, Gianna does in fact speak English pretty well, but if the phone call was any indication, apparently I'm expected to speak Italian. Mehhhh.

Good times...now I have to finish packing for Ireland to see my fourth cousins. That's right. My dad figured it out. And according to Wikipedia's article on consanguinity, that means these people and I share a Great³-grandparent. I have no idea who this common relative is (errr, was), anyway, other than the fact that the people who I'm visiting are descendents of my maternal great, great grandmother's brother. Or, my great, great uncle. My great, great Irish grandmother decided to get outta Ireland, for whatever reason. I'd kind of like to know those circumstances, it'd be interesting to hear, I'm sure. Anyway, if you go back another generation from that lady, there is the common grandparent with the people I'll be seeing. Thinking about family trees kind of makes my brain explode...

OK gonna go face plant in my pillows.
One last thing: I'm psyched to hear these Irish accents, tomorrow.

stuff I've worked on lately

algo diferente, hoy

• Something weird: students here call their teachers by their first names. Hmm...
  

• The Spanish press predictably went a bit nuts about Penélope Cruz winning the best supporting actress oscar.
  

• I leave for Ireland in a few days (YAY)!!!

• My roommates and I figured out what we're doing for Semana Santa AKA spring break. The plan is to hit up Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic. I'm planning on doing Germany, but then the plan is to break off and visit my Belgian relatives, again.

• I still want to go to Italy, again. I wrote a letter to my host mom, Gianna, in Florence, but she has yet to respond. She sent me a postcard a little while back, so hopefully she'd be up for a visit from me...I miss her food...

Stuff I have to do: give kids my handout/homework about Tchaikovsky, make a powerpoint about stuff having to do with the present simple/continuous, make a handout about the color wheel, decide what I'm doing for some tutoring classes coming up...that's about it. The bell just rang, gotta head to la clase de música. Hasta ahora.

Go chase your dragon and I'll chase mine

So much for Beckham making his big Euro comeback -- the Spanish national fútbol team beat the Brits yesterday, in Seville. One of the highlights of watching fútbol on TV is the Spanish announcers. GOOOOOOL!!!!!!!!!!

Andalucía is also a happier place because the tiempo is totally mejor these days. After a month of so of rain every day, suddenly we have lots of sun, which is great. I finally got to ride my bike to school, again, which is especially fun to ride back from school, since it's downhill the whole way back. Oh, and I can hang my clothes to dry outside and only wait a few hours for them to dry as opposed to a week + indoors -- it would undoubtedly dry faster if we had central heating, but what can ya do.

After that I watched some of My Big Fat Greek Wedding on TV -- dubbed, of course. It was kind of amusing how a lot of the jokes wouldn't have much/any meaning for a Spaniard. For example, in one of the scenes, a family member brings home a giant, dead lamb to cook on a spit in the yard, which wouldn't really be seen as funny to the typical Spaniard, seeing how most of them have a giant pig leg in their kitchens at any given moment. I'm pretty sure the Spaniards would side with the Greeks in seeing it as normal. That, and getting drunk off Ouzo the first time you meet your future in-laws.

Woo.

good times

Remember how I said Cabra doesn't have international food? Well, this week is AMERICAN FOOD WEEK at the Lidl store, so today I went with Claire to stock up on some tasty treats. After we went, I made myself some s'mores over our stove and burned a finger on a marshmallow. I always did enjoy my marshmallows toasty roasty and burnt -- I even had a rabbit named Burnt Marshmallow when I was a kid (clearly I was a strange kid, but that should be clear, seeing how they usually grow up to be strange adults).

Yesterday, my coworker Carmen showed me something in the paper about American food week and I almost projectile vom'ed since the first thing I saw was hot dogs in a jar. I may enjoy the occasional Chicago-style dog, but that image was disturbing.

Speaking of Carmen, after I got done tutoring her kids yesterday, I ended up staying over and talking for about 4 hours. That's how they do it in Spain - you don't visit, you spend a portion of your day at the inviter's home. Good times. I ended up meeting her husband for the first time -- Paco. Paco is also the name of his father, and his son, and apparently little Paco is in a line of 7. So...I guess the original Paco would be his great-great-great-great grandfather. Interesting. Anyway, my tongue felt like it was in a knot afterwards -- even though I speak Spanish every day, here, it's usually not for hours on end.

Cabra continues to be cold and rainy and yucky. We've had rain every day for weeks, here, but apparently it's going to clear up on Tuesday. Let's hope so -- I was told southern Spain had weather just like southern California, and that's only true for spring-fall. The winter is miserably rainy. It's not particularly cold, though, but it feels like it since Spaniards haven't all caught on to the phenomena of carpet, central heating and clothes dryers. I have to determine when I'm going to do my laundry on account of the weather, because without being able to hang clothes to dry outside, it takes a good week for stuff to dry in my cold, dark apartment. Obnoxious.

What else -- oh yeah, I'm reapplying to stay here. Not that I'm even sure I WANT to, but I figured it's a good idea to keep my options open, what with the US economy being in the crapper. Ironically, Spain's is, too, it's just that it would probably be easier to renew my position here than look for some entry-level type job in the US. It's been causing my roommates and me a ton of stress and anxiety. Sucks. All I know is I want to write in some capacity when I get back, but of course journalism is ALSO in the crapper because written publications don't fly off the shelves, thanks to the internet. Ad revenue is what is giving newspapers a weak pulse, seeing how subscriptions and hard copies don't sell nearly as well as they used to. Musicians are always in the limelight as far as stealing songs go, but what about reading something that someone worked hard to produce for free? People have a right to know what's going on, of course, but it just seems like a catch 22. I definitely want to make some dollah dollah billz for my future career. And it should ALSO be pointed out that journalists make crap pay, to begin with.

Sigh.

School is bueno. Yesterday in art class I was teaching the kids how to describe what's in an image, so it included a bunch of vocabulary drilling and preposition knowledge. Another odd thing was hardly anyone seemed capable of grasping the "there is/there are" concept, probably because in Spanish it's simply "hay" for both. Still, I said that "there is" is only for singular objects and the other is for plural. Another problem was remembering that in English, the adjective comes before the noun. Oh, and another kid asked me what "and" means, it took all my willpower to keep my palm from hitting my forehead...I think I just blinked.
Other stuff we're going over is the simple present tense and giving directions. Conjugation is considerably easier in English than in Spanish, so the kids are lucky on that front.


One other thing -- I got a potential translation gig with one of my student's dad's company. They want their web site to have translations in English, and I have to applaud the fact that they're hiring a native speaker rather than settling on some shoddy automatic translation that I see so often, over here. It's pretty hilarious, actually.

Last thing -- the pic's here were created by yours truly...they're screenshots from my powerpoint presentations. Fun stuff.

back in the blogging world

Hola a todos --

This weekend I went skiing for the first time ever, which was pretty bueno. If you haven't already seen on facebook, take a look at my skiing debut:



I'm hoping I can go back again soon, it was great. The worst part was getting up after falling -- I still haven't quite mastered how to do that, well. The other problem I had was turning right, which is harder than turning left. I figured out that the reason for that is because your dominant leg is the same as your dominant hand (usually), and that's the one you push off of while turning. So when I would turn right, I would have to push off my left leg and negotiate my weight in order to get 'er done. Another problem I had was I would have the mistaken notion that moving my butt back would somehow slow me down when I would end up just falling flat on my ass, in the end. Woops. My butt was in a constant state of snow covered-ness. Still can't wait to go back, though...!

Not too much new. This weekend my roommates and I might be going to Priego to a Chinese restaurant there. I miss Chinese food...there isn't any international food in Cabra, whatsoever. I think when I was home for winter break, I got Mexican food about 12 times. Yumtastic.

Other stuff -- the roommates and I are getting geared up for spring break. They have a whole itinerary planned to hit up Austria and Germany and somewhere else. I'm not sure about the whole shebang, yet.

Anyway that's about all that's new right now, really. Hasta pronto.