¡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.

Back in Spain...physically, anyway

I've been back in Spain for about 3 days by now. I've had to readjust to life here. It feels great to be back and get back into a routine, which includes incorporating certain New Year's Resolutions (however lame the idea may be).

Speaking Spanish again has been a bit of a struggle, but I think I'm getting back into the swing of things. When I was at the Málaga train station at a cafe, the guy at the counter had to point to his mouth to ask me if I wanted something to eat -- that's how disoriented I was. I guess I can blame some of that on jet lag, though, right? Right??

The trip, fortunately, was smooth sailing (flying?). British Airways officially has my thumbs up compared to their American counterparts. I decided to up the cheesy factor to ridiculous levels and watch Love Story on the plane, from a list of available movies ("Love means never having to say you're sorry" *cue piano riff for 200th time*) Afterwards, I was all excited to see that The Office was aired on the plane, too, but it turned out it was the British version, which is fine, except for the fact that I've seen most of those ep's before. But I watched it again, anyway.

Turns out Cassie, a girl in my program, was on the same flight that I was on the way from London to Málaga. We didn't realize that fact, however, until we saw each other waiting in the passport control line. We ended up taking a short train ride to the bus/train station and hung out there for a few hours. It was awesome to catch up again and have a sort of transition from American to Spanish life, instead of being tossed in the deep end immediately.

Going back to teaching is going well, so far -- yesterday I worked 3 on 1 with students and we worked on transportation vocabulary and present simple conjugation. I'm working on getting the kids to actually TALK more, in English, rather than giving me a puzzled look and immediately reverting to Spanish. A few of them have succeeded in driving me crazy with the constant inquiries in Spanish, so I'll put my hands palm-up, raise my shoulders/eyebrows and walk away. Sometimes I'll just say "I don't speak Spanish" or "no sale" or something along those lines.

Already I've had 2 requests for private English classes, and it's a bit ironic, seeing how I took my posters down (or others did) MONTHS ago. The thing is, now that the first semester is over and kids got crap grades, they decide to take lessons. After work today I'm meeting up with a 20 year old girl who is one of my student's older sisters. It would be awesome if she lives in Cabra and I could potentially add a Spanish friend to our little social circle here in Cabra...I may have mentioned it once or twice (or a thousand times): Cabra is filled with old people. The bracket of 18 to 30 year olds is nill, here. Frown Town.

Anyway, I have to get cracking on a poster which sums up all the activities that took place during the first semester, then I have to work on a project for next week's protest against violence. Hooray.

Still on break, stateside

Here I am in California, still -- my latest project is making a Spain scrapbook. Yesterday, while looking for photos to scan with my mom's new scanner (which she got from my dad, for xmas), I came across a ginormous stack on scrapbook materials. That got me to thinking that I would make a new scrapbook ~ one of my favorite pasttimes. Cheesy, I guess, but whatever. I guess I have a little bit of Martha Stewart in me or something.

Not much else to say...I've been reading El País, Spain's main newspaper, online, to keep up with my Spanish. I also just watched a Spanish movie on Netflix the other day, for kicks. I'm thinking I should keep up with that once I get back to Spain, or maybe just watch a bunch of Spanish TV, so I can acclimate my ear to Spanish more. Living with Americans and interacting with them more than anyone else really cuts down on my Spanish speaking practice, unfortunately.

I have my GRE test in a week and a half -- I feel really unprepared and a bit freaked out about it, but oh well. I might just take it twice, anyway. Right now I'm working on a couple grad school app's, but I'm not sure if they'll lead to anything. I'm not quite sure what I want to do with my life, still...stressful decision making, bleh.

it's the future: wireless internet in flight.

Was anyone previously aware that wireless internet is available in flight, these days? Bizarre.

That would probably be the best thing that has happened to me today -- and that is a sad, sad statement about my day. To sum it up, I arrived from Madrid to NYC yesterday at 5:30 p.m. and sat on the runway for a solid hour after landing, just idle, doing nothing; then I missed my flight to LA because by the time I went through customs my flight had already taken off. Gone. No more flights left to LA all night, so I had to be put up in a hotel for the night and given a voucher ~ then I woke up this morning for my flight, but it turns out it took SO SO long to get through check in and security (not to mention the fact that I had to be randomly screened, for no reason), that I missed THAT flight, too. Aaaand then the whole day I had to keep waiting to be picked up from the standby list -- 6 times! And the agents who assist with the standby list were complete a-holes to me, until the time I was waiting for my 4th standby flight and I couldn't take it anymore and was near tears and the guy who was behind the counter managed to magically confirm a seat for me for a flight that was 2 hours out from that point in time.

Now I'm on said flight, but THIS flight, too, just sat on the god forsaken runway for TWO. HOURS. before we even took off. Now I have 5 hours left of my 6.5 hour flight....AHHHHHH.

/end of complaining.

I'm kind of sad to be out of Spain, even though I'll only be gone for 3 weeks. I had some sort of weird, reversed culture shock getting off the plane, yesterday, and looking at my American money, which also feels weird (texture) compared to euros. The FOOD, however, was something I had completely missed in the past 3 months I've been expatriated in España. Truth be told, I'm not the biggest fan of most Spanish food. I'm not a picky eater, or anything, but certain aspects of Spanish food freak me out (enormous pig legs always on display, fish with the heads always attached, everything bathed in olive oil because it's muy sano "very healthy," etc.).

While I'm home, I'm going to have to read El País, the newspaper, a lot while I'm home so I can keep up with my Spanish. Also, I'm planning on watching some Spanish movies -- I started watching some while I was waiting for my flight, today by the magic of netflix instant viewing. I did a bit of reading in Spanish on the flight, already, because for some reason there's a magazine in Spanish provided by the airline in the pocket thing in front of my seat.

Anyway...what did I do before I left Spain, since my last update? I went to the city of Córdoba, which is the capital of the province where I live, to get my NIE card. I've mentioned it before -- it's called NIE which means numero de identificación de extranjeros, or foreigner's number identification card. I also went to a Christmas dinner party with the faculty of my school, and got to witness a bunch of blitzed Spaniards, it was great. I, too, was feeling pretty piripi (tipsy) by the time I left. Unfortunately, I had to leave early in order to make it to Seville, since my flight was going to leave the next morning.

Cat, a girl I met in Seville during orientation, was my lovely hostess in Seville, and she was really generous about everything in her apartment and let me sleep in her bed and she went over to her boyfriend's apartment to sleep that night. I met her boyfriend, Kike (short for Enrique), and he is fluent in English, so that was cool. We spoke in Spanish almost the whole time, regardless, just because I want to practice it as much as I can.

Good news: some random guy named Pablo, who is my age, got in contact with the American girls in Cabra through his mom, who is an English teacher at one of the language academies, there. He met up with us the other night, and he, also, speaks pretty good English. I'm hoping when we get back that maybe he will hang out with us girls some more so I can get in more Spanish practice. Even though I'm living in Spain, I don't usually speak in Spanish for long periods of time, since I'm living with Americans. I am trying to speak Spanish a lot while I'm at school, more and more, and strike up conversations with the professors so I can get more experience. Hearing people speak and reading Spanish is all well and good, but speaking a foreign language often and perfecting it is the best way to actually learn it. I could read something in Italian right now and get the gist (I minored in Italian, fyi), but my speaking ability in Italian, at the moment, is abyssmal, unfortunately...don't use it, ya lose it, y'know.

I'll get back to España on January 12th. I'm not sure if I'll be traveling much in January, yet. Truth be told, I get a bit tired of the constant frenzy of deciding where to go every single weekend...sometimes I just enjoy being a bum at home and not having to pack and plan a commute and so on. Don't get me wrong, I love seeing new places, it's just the constant trip planning that can be a bit exhausting.

Speaking of upcoming travels, I do have one trip planned, already ~ I'll be heading to IRELAND in late February to meet my Irish relatives for the first time, and I'm thrilled. It should be a great experience. And I'll probably be heading to Italy in April for holy week, but other than that, no other plans yet.

Anyway, I'm gonna wrap it up for now...I'm fading. It's 5 a.m. in Spain right now and I'm all disoriented and exhausted after my long, ridiculous day. Well, two days, since I left yesterday morning, from Seville. Buenas noches.

Singin' "wonder do I ever cross your mind"

Christmas time is here. Spain is all about the belén presentations (nativity scene), and that includes massive, ridiculous displays. I was all confused about why there were bricklayers in front of the town hall in Cabra with a big tarp lying over a chain-link fence, but now I know...it was for this.
In the spirit of Navidad, I played "Feliz Navidad" and "Frosty the Snowman" approximately 12 billion times for the little kids that I tutor, and I'm pretty sure they loved that. We also are learning the alphabet, and so far we've gotten through F and then just "la la la."

I was told that the next town over one-upped us by having live animals at their belén.

Amusing: baby Jesus isn't at the nativity. He'll magically appear in a few weeks, I suppose, but for now Mary and Joseph still have wistful expressions on their plastic faces. Also missing are the wise men, but I guess they wouldn't show up before Jesus did, right?

Next week, the day before I leave, there will be a big "comida" for Christmas for everybody who works at my instituto. I already saw the menu, and it's typical Spanish fare with a few things I've never heard of but am afraid to try, such as murcillo. Essentially like chorizo, only with pig blood in it, or something...


My bilingual coordinator asked me to make a Christmas poster for my school, and the thing is huge. Not wanting to clip out pictures from magazines, I decided to print out pictures that are mostly all mine except for a few that show gaudy displays of Christmas lights on homes.

I have a photo of Pat and me on Santa's lap in 1988, another with me + Dan + Pat in 1992, a picture of the three of us in an actual Christmas card from 2001, the family in front of the Rockefeller Christmas tree in NYC, a turkey dinner picture that Marieta and Pat made, Sam and I in front of a Christmas tree in 2003, Mandy and I walking outside in the snow...that's mostly it. I also printed out a cartoon with a turkey holding a newspaper saying "Gee, I hate to read the obituaries after Christmas." I told Emily I told my kids about turkey dinners, and she said "What about ham?" and I said then I'd have to specify that Americans don't have "jamón" like their Spaniard counterparts (ham literally shaved off an enormous pig leg, hoof still attached -- creepy). I also made more than 20 paper snowflakes -- yes, I made all of those. Hooray for me. I also made the block letters.

I've also been filling up my time hanging out with my profesores and their kids. Good opportunity to practice Spanish and play with little kids. Yesterday, Claire and I went over to one of the English teacher/Gym teacher's house (they're married) and play with 3 year-old Anita, their daughter. Anita was like I was as a little kid, that is, really shy and leery of strangers. I had already met her once before, but she still was a bit hesitant to play. Next time, hopefully.
After that, Claire, Becca and I went over to our landlord's other work place -- they're dental technicians and make crowns/dentures/dental appliances, so that was cool to see. I mentioned I wanted an "abrigo blanco," and of course Europeans aren't like "gee isn't that cute," they actually go find one and put it on you. So we took pictures wearing them and "working." Then I watched my landlord, Juan de's, brother working. His name is Jose Luis, and his son Pablo was watching, too. I would pick up the instrument things and tell Pablo I would take out all his teeth -- he's so cute and travieso.

Today I might go back over to my bilingual coordinator's piso and hang out and maybe play with the dog, Canela. So cute. David and Elvira, the gym and English teacher (respectively), live directly above Carlos and Noelia, his girlfriend, who ALSO works at my school...follow?