recreo at school

¿Qué tal, amigos? I'm at school on break, right now, so I figured I'd update this bad boy.

First, I would like to present *drumroll* the Spanish keyboard. It probably looks the same at first glance, but notice where the question mark key is, the @ symbol, the addition of an ñ, etc. Also, you have to push the space bar after an apostrophe. If you push the apostrophe key and then write a vowel directly afterwards, you'll get an accent over it. Even if you type a consonant, sometimes those will get accents, too. Which is just weird. Same thing goes for quotation marks, but they put umlauts over letters. Anyway, I just wanted everyone to feel my pain, for the moment.

In about 10ish minutes I'm going to art class to talk about the environment/maintaining cleanliness in the public space. The problem here is that a lot of the kids will just throw a half-eaten sandwich on the ground after eating it, or they throw trash out an open window like it's no big deal. So I am teaching stuff about reduce/recycle/reuse and we're going to make posters that say stuff about keeping the public space clean with cartoon drawings on them. Fun times, right?

Other stuff I've done this week is help the jefatura de estudios, or the second in command guy (like a vice principal, I think?) with his English classes. Yesterday we went over furniture vocab and talking about our families. Vocab is a bit difficult, since you just have to memorize it. Later today, I'll be practicing with the secretary guy. Part of my job description is these "conversation hours" with professors.
If nobody asks for me, then I just work on presentations or translation work for other classes. I have to translate a part of a chapter for the social studies class about layers of the earth and types of deserts, and I'm translating a short play for another class. Fun times. I also get to help cast the play, because I do small groups with the students, and I know who is the most confident and outgoing and can handle the pressure of speaking English in front of everybody. Yesterday, I had to go over the play and practice it with the professors in a meeting -- we went over 3 plays and they gave me the freakin' lead in all of them, "to practice my Spanish." Luckily for me, Spanish is an entirely phonetic language, so even if I have no idea what I'm saying, it's relatively easy just to rattle it off.

OK the bell just rang. Time for art class. Later today, I'm going to Lucena with Emiliy to get some errands and shopping done. Yay. :-D

yay $...actually €

I got my cheque today, yay! Here she be. Tomorrow, between the hours of 9:15 and 1:15, I'll open my new account and deposit that. Yes, those are the hours of the bank on weekdays. Insane, no? What the @#* do they do when they're not working, I wonder?

Hmmm...not too much else to report. I just thought I'd let everyone know I am now 700€ richer. And don't laugh at my perceived poverty, cuz I'm only paying 95€ monthly for rent. Which is incredible. Hooray.

mornin'

Ack, I absolutely hate waking up on cold, dark, rainy days. Also, November is the month with the highest average precipitation, so boo to that. I guess that's good as far as all the crops and whatnot are concerned, but bad for getting me out of bed motivated. Added bonus: I forgot that my cell phone doesn't automatically change times for DST, so I woke up an hour early. Laaaame. I could go back bed, I guess, but now I'm already up and hear the rain pounding. Blech. Displeased.


One thing to turn my frown upside-down is the flowers I got delivered yesterday - they are insanely large and in charge. Adam had flowers delivered to me, and they're too big for my room, so they are living out in the salón. Me gustan.








Birthday celebrations are over, now, until March. Yay. I have hit birthday fatigue, I think. Last night we all went out to eat for Emily's b'day, but I'm glad I had already basically had dinner before, since I knew I wouldn't be able to make it until 9:30, which would clearly turn into 10:30, because this is Spain and no one is ever on time for anything ever. Bleh. Yesterday was beautiful, so I'm glad I got in a big long bike ride and was able to dry my sheets up on the roof in the sun (see mom, 4 girls in one apt isn't that big of a deal, really, as far as laundry is concerned -- there are spats for getting in line for the shower, washer, and who has to do dishes/trash/cleaning/buying communal things).

Today all I have is music stuff, prep for tomorrow, and conversation time. I'll make some power point presentations during breaks and read my book. I'm guessing it would be poor form to faceplant into my papers in the teacher's lounge, so I'll have to resist that temptation. Rainy days make me tired.

Hopefully the rain will ease up for this weekend, because I'm planning on taking another trip. :-D This time, I'm flying solo (not literally) and I'm off to see my friend Cassie in Álora. I haven't seen her since orientation, so it should be a ton of fun. Also, Álora looks absolutely gorgeous if the photos I've seen on facebook are any indication.
This is Cassie, by the way -- look familiar? She is my female soulmate, obviously, since "ignorant slut" is our mutual pet name of choice, bahaha. We're not completely unhinged, it's a line from The Office, haha...

Now the time has come to reload on wake-up tea and get ready for today. Bleeechhhh unmotivated.

Ah, Monday

Oh Monday -- a day of such misery for the general public, but Mondays for me in Spain are fantastic, because I'm not working. I'll be working on the stuff I'll need for tomorrow by the end of the day, but for now, I'm being lazy. Well, I already hung out a load of laundry to dry (dryers don't exist here) and threw in my sheets to wash, but other than that I've been pretty lazy.

Another fun weekend has come and passed. A bunch of guys came in to help us celebrate, so that was nice -- always good to get some testosterone in our group full of females. A guy from our program came from Baena on Becca's invite, 2 of Michelle's friends came from Seville, and Emily's boyfriend Antonio came from Granada.

We kicked off our weekend by going up to Via Verde (green path), which is a nature trail type thing that's directly behind my school. Since you have to walk up a ginormous hill in order to get to Via Verde -- the same one I go up to get to my school, which I mentioned in here -- it provides a nice view of Cabra. Cabra is small, but how many of you can say your town has a castle? That's right. Castle. A kind of weird dinky one that is more like a weird, huge rook chess piece, but whatever. Via Verde itself is dotted with olive/palm/fruit/other trees, bridges, some animals, and the view can't be overemphasized, it's awesome.




































We also hit up Fuente del Río (River Fountain), right next to it. It has a cute little bar next to some bridges over a little river thing. Me gusta mucho.






























The main event this weekend was Emily's b'day celebration. She's the skinny one with long blonde hair that I'm molesting in that picture. Her actual birthday is today, but we all put on our party hats on Saturday night. First we made food, and I experimented making some empanada, and it was delicioso. I've discovered my cooking skillz ain't half bad.




Apparently I didn't take a long enough siesta, though, because I couldn't bring myself to stay up past 2:30 a.m. and had to turn in before anyone even went out to the club. Woops. People don't show up to clubs until 3 a.m. and they don't leave until sunrise, it's insane. When I got back to my apartment, I had to go out on the balcony and ask a group of guys if they could move, so I could sleep. I find this amusing, especially because my bro put on his sassy pants when I contacted him at 1:30 a.m. one night (4:30 p.m. California time).

Also, the time changed this weekend, in Spain, so Emily was all excited that she'd have an extra hour to get some partying in, to which I responded time change or no, nothing would stop you from getting in an extra hour of partying.

Other stuff I fit in this weekend...I got a gym membership, started reading The Lovely Bones, which I love, so far, I ordered slippers online, because my 2 euro ones aren't workin out so well, I had a mini marathon of The Office with the roommates, I walked to the hospital (again) with Claire and Michelle...about that last thing: Claire was having stomach bug problems and had been feeling miserable, so we convinced her to go to get it checked out, since health care is basically free in Europe. The downside to this luxury is the fact that people milk it for all it's worth and will go in for virtually anything. Also, the health care providers sometimes act like they hate their jobs. Fortunately, Claire is feeling a lot better now, even though she couldn't go out with us to par-tay, which sucked. We are gearing up to go on our first run together some time in the near future ~ I don't usually jog faster than a 9-minute mile, so hopefully her tiny butt won't try to race ahead of me on Via Verde.

OK I'll leave everyone with some a video which I captured at Fuente del Río of a little boy feeding a duck. I love this:

whee stuff

Fact of the day: Spaniards have mullets. Yes, mullets. The mullet apparently never went out of style, here, and it's a bit weird whenever I see one. I think they think it's cool, in fact, to have a mullet and spike the hair on top.

I totally woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning and probably hit snooze a dozen times. I hit it without checking the time and had to haul booty to get out the door on time, which I didn't because I have a problem with punctuality.
When I left my apartment, I was all crestfallen because it was cold and rainy and miserable. Then, joy of joys, my bike pedals would NOT move. At all. Something was wrong with the chain, so I just walked it back to my apartment and left it in the lobby since I didn't have enough time to bring it up to my apartment, again. I was all agitated since I knew I was going to be even LATER because walking takes a good 10 minutes more. BAH. Also, I really need to figure out this !#%$(* shortcut, because the way I take is way too long, but it's the easiest route. I'm in a bit of a bind, though, because I have no sense of direction and I'll probably just get lost unless I really plan it out ahead of time. Oy.

When I got to school 15 minutes late, I apologized to my bilingual coordinator guy, forgetting that Spaniards aren't really sticklers about things like time. It didn't matter that much. I started conversation groups when I got there, and I felt much more organized this week with my powerpoint presentation and whatnot. I think the visuals really help the kids learn the vocabulary, too. I, for one, am a visual learner, so it would help me out a ton. It's also easier and faster to make a powerpoint than something concrete like a poster or flashcards. I showed Carlos (my bilingual coordinator) the powerpoint presentation, and he loved it. Yay.

Tomorrow the agenda includes art class and conversation time with one of the English teachers. I really wish I were utilized by the English teacher I'm speaking with, tomorrow, because she teaches the upper levels. I'm a bit of a grammar dork, so I want to get past this easy crap and delve into this like the conditional tense and passive voice. I'm pretty content with what I'm doing, though, especially because I'm not in any left-brained classes like math. I can't do math - I always hit up my dad for help with that, growing up. Also, I'm pretty sure the only reason I passed my freshman year math classes (in college) is because one of my friends helped me. This friend was a Pre-vet major and valedictorian of his high school class, so I was in good hands.

What else...oh yeah, I finally got a key to a garage, so I can lock my bike up in a secluded area instead of carrying it up 3 flights of winding stairs, every day. The landlord walked up to my apartment this afternoon, and I answered the door wearing girl boxers, an Ithaca shirt, and knee-high socks rolled all the way up, because I'm awesome. So that was awkward, but he seemed completely unfazed. He told me in his thick Andaluz accent that he'd take me to the parking garage to lock up my bike. Yay! He also fixed my bike and I have no clue how he did it. Something to do with the chain being off the little wheel thing that it needs to be on in order to switch gears. Freakin' bike. Luckily, my bike has a year warranty, so if is ever unfixable, I'll just return that bad boy and get a new (pink) bike. Mental note: must get a bell for my bike. It would be absolutely crucial in a big city, here, but it's still pretty necessary here, too.

More things I have to do: sign up at the gym for yogalates, possibly sign up for dance classes, find a way to ride horses and potentially make money exercising somebody's horses, join the local choir...I think that's it. I need to join stuff here since I still don't really know many Spaniards other than my townmates' boyfriends and my coworkers. Lame. Boo, Meg.

OK I'm going to finish this rambling entry and work on stuff. Hasta mañana.

School stuff...

Back to the grind -- today I worked on a bunch of junk for school: learning music to sing for my class, brushing up on opera info to teach, making a powerpoint presentation about basic English grammar & vocab, finding a 10-minute one-act play, preparing stuff for "conversation hours" that I have with various teachers, and the like.

Today in music class, I went over songs to sing for my class. The music teacher found out I have a music background, so she asked if I'd be interested in singing for the class. I decided sure, why not, I already sing all the time in my apartment. So I'm in the process of learning the soprano solo in a Benjamin Britten song featured in his composition "Ceremony of Carols," and the song itself is called "Balulalow." I found a clip of it on youtube with an all-boy choir...it's kind of insane to hear a boy soprano, but apparently these treble boy choirs exist. Anyway, here it is:



Nifty, right?

For the powerpoint presentation I mentioned, I'm be reviewing "do you like?" , definite and indefinite articles, possessive adjectives, demonstrative pronouns, and junk like that. Here's a slide of my presentation:
I'm going to ask them if you use "a" or "an" and then the little phrase will show up on the screen during the presentation. Fun times. Really basic, like I said. I also made a slide that's really similar to one that's in the English textbook the kids read, except I plugged in a different person's information. Shoutout to the big bro, P@ --











Other than classes, life is starting to solidify more and more every day, here. I put more stuff up on my wall, like posters and birthday stuff, so my room is looking more lived-in, thank God. I finally got a hamper and all my hangers for my closet and other basic stuff for the kitchen, and whatnot. Yesterday my roommates and I had a little pow-wow to decide who would buy the stuff used by the entire group and when it would be done and when we would clean and all those fun things. The biggest pain, probably, would have to be the bombona. The bombona is what provides our hot water, and once the gas runs out, you have to buy a new bombona thing or it's sayonara to hot water. You have to call a certain number to get it delivered and it's the biggest headache imaginable. I hate it. And I'm beginning to hate our main bathroom here, too, because it's so small and everything is smashed together in there, as though constructing the bathroom in this apartment was an after thought. Luckily we have a second one, but no one uses the shower in there, since it's basically the size of a phone booth and really uncomfortable. BAH.
Other than that, my apartment is peachy. Oh, except I hate the cold tile floor, still, but it's like that everywhere in Spain. My 2 euro slippers and falling apart, too, so it'll be curtains for those, soon. What can you expect from 2 euro slippers, I guess?

OK, enough complaining -- good things, let's see...My roommates and I will be celebrating yet another birthday this weekend, Emily's. Emily lives in Cabra, too, and she's also turning 23. We'll be staying in Cabra this weekend, though. She can't travel because she's being observed this Thursday or Friday, can't remember. I might be traveling by myself, though, since I've received an invite from Carole to go back to Málaga, but I'm not sure if I'll go, yet. I want to, though.

Now I'm going to finish that powerpoint thing and attempt to sleep. Slept crappily last night, so I want to get to sleep earlier tonight and stay asleep since I have to get up earlier in the morning on Wednesdays. Bleh.
Oh, one more thing to complain about: every time I get to my school I am sweating from biking up the enormous hill and I take about half an hour to get back to normal, which sucks. It reminds me of The Office when Jim starts biking to work and is gross and sweaty, only hopefully I'm not that bad...It is seriously a 20-minute bike ride constantly going uphill. I don't even pedal 95% of the time on my way back home, I just coast. That's not an exaggeration -- I'm going to take a video of my trek to school, someday. Blech! At least my leg muscles are gonna be stronger.

back from sevilla

First off, I found this video on Youtube about the town where I'm living in Spain. Enjoy this vid about Cabra:


Sorry, it's narrated in Spanish. ;-)

Anywho, I was in Sevilla for the weekend with 5 other girls to get away and to celebrate my birthday. I'm 23, btw, eek. My mom got married at 23 years old and my grandma had already had 2 kids and number 3 was a bun in the oven by the time she was my age. Dang. I don't see marriage in next few years, though, so I'm going to assume that with each generation that age will get older and older.
Sorry, tangent...Sevilla was great. The morning of my birthday it was pretty miserable, weather-wise, but it cleared up and was gorgeous by the end of the day. We had a lot of fun seeing more of the stuff that we had missed during orientation.

We had a 2-day celebration, basically, since we went out the first night for when I turned 23 at midnight and then the next day when it was more-officially my birthday. It was fun. We hit up the swankier bars, since I enjoy that atmosphere more than a bar filled with ridiculously drunk 19 and 20 year-old Americans here to study abroad.

The Plaza de España was probably my favorite part, as far as sight-seeing goes -- it is the most ostentatious display of architecture that I have ever seen in my LIFE. Walking around the plaza is serious sensory overload, and it makes sense why Seville went into serious debt when it was constructed in 1929. I took approximately 9 billion pictures while in the Plaza because of the amount of stuff, there. It's a huge semicircle loaded with fountains, tall buildings, bridges, a moat, towers, painted tiles and spotted with greenery and horse-drawn carriages.
















For birthday dinner, we went to an Italian restaurant near the center -- it was pretty swanky. They heard us speaking English or just could see that we were American by looking at us, so they mainly spoke English to us, which was fine. I appreciate having menus in English because I don't know all the food vocabulary yet, especially if it's something weird like braised duck with whatever kind of sauce. Jessica, a girl in our group, told the waiter that it was my birthday, so he brought out helado (the ice cream they have here) with "23" candles in it. It was cute. He also sang the Spanish version of happy birthday, which was really funny. He looked like Derek Jeter, it was really weird. We invited him to hang out with us after he was done at work and he actually did call us, but I had no idea how to tell him where to meet us -- I have enough problems with directions in English, let alone my 2nd language. I gave the phone to another Spanish guy who was with us (a friend of Michelle's), and I guess the fact that more guys in the group scared him away because he never showed up, haha. Oh well!

After dinner, we all went back to our hostel to change into our party attire and go back out on the town. We ended up going back out at 12:30 a.m. Yes, people go out here that late in Spain, that's why the entire country takes a siesta for 2-3 hours, daily. We hit up center Sevilla again and got 2 pitchers of sangría and just chatted. The girls asked me what I wanted to do, specifically, and my stipulations for a fun birthday were 1) I didn't want a ridiculous amount of smoke surrounding me, I already got a damn eye infection from that, 2) no dancing, because going to the dancing spots here generally consists of ugly guys coming up and grinding on you without any sort of invitation, 3) not so loud I couldn't talk to anybody. That makes me sound like a grandma, doesn't it? Whatever. I enjoy all those things besides the smoke, sometimes, I just don't want some ugly guy in a loud dance bar grinding on me on my birthday, sorry. So I thought sangría outdoors would be fun, and I think it was. Michelle invited a group of her guy friends, so they showed up, too. It was pretty fun.

Sunday was just more sight-seeing and relaxing by the big bridge where there's a lot of grass and ducks swimming, and the like. I asked several random Spaniards on the street if they would take pictures of me with the girls.

To be honest, in the past 5-ish years, my birthday was completely unmemorable and blah, usually (with the exception of my 21st, probably...). My birthday ALWAYS fell during finals week, so hardly anybody was up for a big party of anything along those lines. But birthday time in Sevilla definitely made up for that, I'd say. :-D

mi escuela

This is where I teach -- it's IES Dionosio Alcalá Galiano. "IES" stands for "Instituto de Educación Secundaria," or Insitute of Secondary Education. I'm going to assume the rest of the school's name is somebody else's actual name, but who knows. The outside of the building is nothing to write home about (ironic, since that's technicially what I'm doing right now, but whatever).

That is my schedule. A bit hard to read, probably, especially since it's in Spanish...haha. Well, it shows Lunes through Viernes, which is Monday through Friday. Anything that has an "x" or words in a box is an hour that I will br occupied with one of the following: music class, meetings, conversation hours, English class, Social Studies class, or Art class. Want to know how many hours I work per week? Twelve. I'm not sure if I mentioned that before, but it's true. I make a lot of money, for the amount of hours I work, if we want to be honest. 700 euro a month for 12 hours of work = 58.33 euros per hour. Obviously I plug in more hours than that outside of the school itself, but yikes. That is cushy. I think more people should be aware of this opportunity and sieze it! Looks great on a resume to work long-term in a foreign country, you get to broaden your horizons and all those cliché phrases, and it's a chance to solidify Spanish language. It really is pretty incredible.
I'm just really happy that I like my town and the people, especially the Americans here. Obviously I'm hanging out with Americans more than anybody else, even though that's somewhat lame seeing how I'm living here. I'm trying to get involved with the local choir and riding horses -- I have some leads and I'm going to pursue those, so that will help with social life with locals.

Speaking of locals -- and this is insane -- today I got interviewed by the local news station. I was just downstairs in the cafeteria eating a bocadillo (little sandwhich thing), and then the director guy walks up to me and tells me the whole thing -- in Spanish, claro. OK, so then the big camera and boom equipment come down to the cafeteria to get footage of me freakin' EATING...lovely. And for those who know me, I don't hide my emotions as far as my facial expressions are concerned. There was some awkward lip pursing and looking to the side with a half-smile, in those moments. Then I was swooped aside 10 minutes after I had been blindsided with the news I would be on TV for my interview. They told me I'd be with the director and one of the English teachers for my interview, which I was, but the purpose of having the English teacher was so she would translate what I would say in English. Sigh. Well, she ended up saying to the reporter, off-the-cuff, that I speak Spanish. Damnit. So of course the reporter is all excited, since hardly anyone living in Cabra understands English, so they just decided to fire away the questions in Spanish. I'm comfortable using Spanish, but it's a bit nervewracking to know that tens of thousands of people are going to be judging my accent, pronunciation and grammar. Luckily, the questions weren't anything that challenging for me to answer: have you been to Spain before, what is your job like, how has your experience been in Cabra, what are the differences between the United States and Spain. That last question made me raise an eyebrow and want to say "what are the similarities???" I just said that the history is richer in Spain and everything is bigger in America, and rambled about some junk and kept thinking in my head, "don't screw up feminine and masculine adjectives, conjugate your verbs correctly, don't use vocabulary that Spaniards don't use, speak with a lisp so they understand you," YIKES. Funny that I can do all that junk at once, but I can't do something like, say, math, to save my life. Or figure out a map. Or a ton of other things...haha.

My Spanish TV debut will air for WEEKS, so it's only a matter of time before I get stopped or pointed at in the street. What am I saying, that ALREADY happens. Spaniards are very open about straight up staring at people in the street, giving piropos in the street to strangers, having no personal space, whatever. VERY different cultural norms here as far as American standards go. All part of the experience, right? Pretty much. Anyway, I'm off to sleep. Adiós.

things going on, weekend, etc.

This weekend a group of friends and I are planning on going to Cádiz. Keyword: planning. Ugh. The planning is pretty hectic, and I wouldn't be planning a destination party in the first place, but when I brought up my birthday to people, everybody mentioned taking a trip. I don't flatter myself into thinking it's just because of my birthday, I know people want to travel. I just think it's a ton of work setting this up! I was just working with Emily, who is also in my town, to set up the hostel or hotel accommodations and we were trying to figure out the transportation to get there and how to get around the city of Cádiz, itself. Takes a lot of work. And I always get nervous when I'm about to make a phone call to a hostel in Spanish, but it turns out to be pretty easy. It's just weird to know I'm going to communicate with someone in a foreign language with something that's hard for me to navigate using my first language. Plus, I have a weird phobia about calling people I've never met, on the phone, which is ironic since I've done so many phone interviews, being a journalist and whatnot...

So yeah, a group of girls and I are hopefully going to Cádiz this weekend. Originally, my roommate Claire suggested Lagos, Portugal, as our destination. Well, it's taking a ton of work to figure out the logistics and getting to and from Portugal, so I said hey, why don't we just cut our losses and go to a place in Spain? Cheaper, easier to figure out, still fun, and Portugal ain't goin' nowhere. Ugh. So that's what we're working on. I'm hoping it will work. So far, we definitely have on board the following people: me, Claire, Becca, Michelle, Emily, Lauren, and probably Jessica. Carole can't come because her sister will be in town, Kim can't come because she has a wedding, and Cassie decided not to come because she doesn't know the group of friends that well and because she only just settled down in her apartment and just met Spaniards who invited her to a party this weekend and wants to get to know them. She said she felt really guilty, since we got along really well at orientation, but whatever. No pase nada, as the Spaniards say all the time, which means "it's no big deal," more or less. I'll see Cassie in the near future. Doesn't mean I can't be bummed, though. Booooo.

Another fun thing: Kim is going to give me Dutch lessons! She is the girl who lives here in Cabra and is from Zelem, Belgium. Like I mentioned once before, I have a bunch of Belgian relatives, and I'm definitely planning on meeting up with them in Belgium at some point while I'm living my expatriate life here in Spain. This time when I visit, which will be my third time in Belgium, I want to be able to do more than just count from one to ten in Dutch and say "that's good" and "thank you." Blah. I know that mostly all Belgians speak English, but I want to impress my relatives when I visit. Also, and I am def tootin' my own horn here, by I'm really quick at picking up languages. I know I will feel overwhelmed learning Dutch, though, since it isn't in the Romance language family a la Spanish and Italian. Bleh. I will enjoy the classes with Kim, though, because she seems like a fun girl and I want to get to know her better, especially since I'll probably be taking a train back to Belgium with her, at some point, while I'm here.

OK, subject change time (I know, abrupt...whatever): there are still a bunch of things I miss, from home. Not to be Debbie Downer, but every once in a while I get really bummed out and just stare at a wall for about 15 minutes and daydream about the things I miss, which include my college life, which is still a recent memory. College life is completely different from working-in-Spain life. Another thing I miss is riding horses. I feel like there's a huge void in my life that can only be filled by feeling the wind rush faster while on the back of a horse. There's nothing like the feeling of riding, for me, I just have a sense of contentment and freedom that nothing else brings, including writing, which I obviously love to do. I'm looking for a place to ride, still, and I'm determined to find one! And I'm determined to work really hard, too, so eventually I'll have enough money in order to finance my equestrian endeavours in the future, since it's the most expensive sport on earth, most likely.
Other things I miss? Food. The food is good here, but I would kill for a bagel....or, to add to the list: In 'N Out burger/fries/milkshake, Golden Spoon, Panera, soy milk, Whole Foods, Lean Cuisine, microwaveable cuisine in general, ahhhhhh I'm going to cry. I miss my bed. I miss my CATS. Oh my God, I'm going through total withdrawal from my cats. I am a crazy cat lady a la the character Angela in The Office, and I freely admit it. And, I miss THE OFFICE! And Law & Order SVU!!! And American TV in general. I miss the shower from my house. I miss CARPET! Every home in Spain has cold, cold COLD tile floors and I'm beginning to hate it.

Most of all, I miss the accessiblity of my friends and family and being within 3 hours of the time zone stuff of my friends, too.

OK, there are more things, but I don't want to sound ungrateful. I just have reached the end of what people call the honeymoon phase of living in a new country and I'm starting to realize the things I really miss from home.

Now I'm going to go to bed because as usual, I stayed up too late and have far too few hours to sleep. Sucks to be an insomniac, I guess. OK, buenas noches.

back from my weekend trip

Random observation of the day: whenever I see people speaking foreign languages to animals, I want to say "no, no! They don't understand ___, what are you doing?!" Reminds me of Anchorman when Ron Burgundy tells his dog to speak in English...

So I'm back from Málaga. We had a helluva time trying to get the whole getting-back-to-Cabra thing figured out, too. We ended up missing our train by literally 30 seconds -- we watched it pulling away from the terminal (?) and some colorful phrases were spouted by yours truly as it happened. Whattaya gonna do, I guess? So we walked over in an attempt to exchange or return it, but there would be a 20% markup on the ticket price to exchange it and the next train we could catch would be 5 hours later. Eek. We ended up walking across the street to the bus station, even though I'm pretty sure Claire and Becca didn't really want to walk over there, but I basically decided whatever, what do we have to lose in the potentially 5 hours we would be waiting? We walked over and eventually found out that a bus was going to be leaving in half an hour and it would be direct to Cabra -- well, there were a few stops, but we wouldn't have to change buses. Sweeeeet. We barely made it on THAT bus, too, because we found out about it 5 minutes before it departed. We were a bit annoyed about losing the money on the train ticket and having to shell out money for a bus on top of it, but w/e, it worked out.

Anyway...woops on that tangent, but I needed to vent. The weekend was awesome. In fact, I couldn't figure out why I was all bummed out, a little while ago, but I think it's just because all the exciting stuff came to an end and reality set in about how I have so much junk to do, still. So many papers to file, STILL, not to mention stuff to get together for my jay oh bee (job). Also, I feel like I've expended more mental - and sometimes physical -energy since I've been in Spain that I have in a long time. The language alone can be taxing and sometimes I just freeze and can't speak a single sentence in Spanish if I'm too stressed. Overall, though, I've felt really pleased with how well I feel I'm doing understanding and speaking Spanish, here.

Back to the trip ~ our reason for going, which I said in the last post, was to get our residency cards, in Córdoba. We had to drop off our información on Friday morning. This is actually just the first step to getting our residency cards -- we will have to go BACK to Córdoba to pick them up and pay 10 euro for them. Blech. I don't even know what we need them for, I guess the Spanish gov't just wants the info on us and the money or whatever. All the stuff I turned in was basically already submitted to the Spanish consulate before we got here, to get our visas - the only new thing was providing them with our Spanish address and contact numbers. By the way, to get these residency cards (and visas, but we already have those), we turned in our applications, certificates from the Junta de Andalucía (they employ us here), copies of our passport, visa, criminal record, medical clearance letter...I think that's it. Talk about a pain in the @(#.
After that, we hung out in Córdoba and met up with our friend Pat. We stayed at his apartment for the night before we left for Málaga to meet up with more people and just chill for a couple days.

When we got to Málaga, we relaxed at Jessica and Alan's apartment -- they were our fabulous hosts for the weekend. Seriously, best hosts ever. That's them on the left of the photo. I'm standing between Luke and Pat. They gave us great food/coffee/wine and made sure we had enough pillows/blankets and knew where we were going -- also, they are just really down to earth and fun.
We all went to the Picasso museum after we chilled at their place. I enjoyed it, I just wished they gave us a guided tour rather than a little pamphlet that didn't even describe all the pieces, because I'm pretty ignorant about art. I took an Renaissance art history course when I studied abroad in Florence, but that's probably the extent of my art knowledge other than what I learned back in elementary school and junior high. When we left the museum, we went back to Jessica and Alan's apartment with groceries we bought to make dinner ourselves. We made salad and noodles and drank tinto verano. Tinto verano is just red wine mixed with fanta and it's fantastic.

By the time midnight came around, we left for botellón. My least favorite part of Málaga, you may ask? Going to the botellón. Botellón is a popular Spanish party, it happens all over Spain. Basically, it's an outdoor party which happens in the street and is BYOB. People just stand around and drink, smoke, and urinate publicly. Not that I'm opposed to some of those things, but bleh (well, not the public relieving of oneself -- gross). I think I would be content to skip botellón the next time my friends here decide to go. Also, we didn't leave for the party until midnight and we stayed until 2:30, and I was feeling spent after a long day traveling.

The most enjoyable thing for me, by far, was spending a day at the beach. It was fantastic. I swam in the Mediterranean, relaxed in the sun + palm trees, drank sangría, and hung out with fun people.















I feel pretty blessed to have met such a chill group of people, I was completely worried about not finding people I would mesh with. The girls in the pic, from right to left: Carole, me, Becca (roommate of mine), Jessica, Claire (another roommate), Lauren...and I don't know the other two girls! Woops. They're roommates of a girl I only just met. OK I'm gonna go to bed. Definitely exhausted. Night night!

More official stuff @#$(%&)#

Yesterday, after I took a massive detour to get to my school because I am an idiot, I got more official paperwork I need to file with the Junta de Andalucía, or in English, The Andalusian Autonomous Government. Yikes. Carlos (bilingual coordinator) showed me an email written by the provincial coordinator of Córdoba, and it had a massive list of all the things we'll need to turn in for our identity cards that foreigners need to carry around, in Spanish. Yiiiiikes. The whole thing appeared to have come out of nowhere, so I flipped out and thought I was going to spontaneously combust from frustration. The cold sweat was already taken care of, though, because I had biked up and down the same hill approximately 3000 times before finally getting to the school.

Anyway, all is well in the world, especially after I found out that ALL language assistants in the Córdoba province as in the same proverbial boat. Right after Carlos showed me that email, I emailed the coordinator of the CIEE program and she, in turn, emailed all the language assistants in the province. Clarified everything but the frustration.
Today, I'm going with Becca and Claire to turn in various papers and photos. We're taking the 3 p.m. bus to Córdoba and staying in a hostel there, tonight. I called about 5 hostels last night from a book that CIEE gave us all about Andalucía which has proven to be a god-send. All of them were full and I was going crazy, but then Hostal Séneca has space, hooray! I spoke in Spanish almost the whole time, on the phone, I felt so proud, jaja. I'm relieved we got a room with just the 3 of us in it, because sharing a room with random strangers freaks me out, slightly.

Tonight will be our only night in Córdoba, at least for now, and then we're off to Málaga Friday morning. We still don't know where we'll be staying, but last night I called a friend of a friend of mine who I just met a couple weeks ago, and she said she'll be on the lookout for us. If she can't find anything, then it will be search-for-a-hostel round #2. Málaga is about one and a half times the size of Córdoba, so hopefully that means the number of accomodations will increase accordingly, but stayed tuned.

My roommates and I have been going back and forth from various stages of exhilaration to being frustrated and annoyed, but overall the experience has been positive, so far. I'd be lying if I said I'm used to the Spanish way of life, 100% yet, but it definitely suits me better than a lot of other Americans. Then again, I've lived in so many states that I'm used to being told that my way of life is weird and I have to change or be shunned, what have you. It's strange, of course, to think that I'm the one who is looking STRANGE, and to everybody else, what they're doing is normal. Ay. Most of the people here are eager to help, though, and I seriously doubt the Americans are like that to foreigners in our country, even though the entire population derived from immigrants.

New venture: I'm trying to get a translation job. I've heard of people doing translation work and they make the most money compared with the people who take up teaching gigs, if their level of Spanish is high enough. I consider myself to have a fairly high comprehension level, so I'm gonna go for it. Booyah! The flyer right there is what I'm working on. Some of the verb conjugations are contradictory with the tú and usted forms...woops. I'll fix it before I post it. It also need my name, number and email contact info, but that will be at the bottom in those tear-off strips that people do sometimes. Let's see how that goes for me. I'm going to go door to door, too, because that seems to work better than just putting ad's up.

OK I'm gonna finish up junk here at "home" -- don't know when I'll have internet access again, but I'll have more than enough pictures to make up for the lack of entries, by the time I get back. Adiós.

workin' hard! hardly workin'!

That's my apartment in videos, below, and narrated by my roommate, Michelle. She is living here for her second year.Those videos were made before the rest of us left the USA, so that's why it's empty/dead.



By the way, CIEE allows you to extend your contract twice, if you choose.

Yesterday was my first day assisting in the class, so that was fun. I went with Monica to the music class filled with 12-ish year old kids. They were a lot of fun, I thought, but Monica told me when the class was over (I had left mid-way through), that they had been kinda bad. Woops. I guess rowdy or something, but who knows. She gave me some pretty funny exasperated looks after I introduced myself, because everyone was going crazy. What can I say, I have that effect on people. Bahaha.
In the class, they're practicing singing "Rock My Soul" - it's a pretty familiar song for me, in fact, I think we did it was a warm up in one or two choruses I've been a part of. My job was to get them to pronounce the words correctly and not just plow on through. The eighth notes are when they just bulldoze through the words without thinking, sometimes. Overall, they seemed really enthusiastic, but who knows. For today, I transcribed something online about Antonio Vivaldi -- it's in English, and a bunch of the words aren't exactly 12-year old 2nd language speaker friendly, so I've making everything present tense. That can be a bit awkward sometimes, e.g. Vivaldi is born in ___, he composes his first concerto in ____, he dies because he jumps off a cliff, or what have you.

Also, I think I'm going to be going to the art class either today or tomorrow. And the day after that, I'm helping out with English classes. Yay! I'm so relieved I won't be needed for the math or science classes. You're talking to a girl who failed Algebra in 8th grade, so I am probably the worst candidate ever for that. I aced it in 9th grade though, woooo! And I got up to precalculus by the time I was done with high school. Don't judge. ;-)

OK I'm gonna get my butt in gear. Later. Oh wait...adiós.

Primer día en la escuela donde estaré

This morning I woke up and got ready for my first day at the school where I'll be a language assistant. It took me awhile to find it, in fact, I ended up having to call a cab, because this school is on the opposite side of Cabra. I was completely confused, but that's easy for me. I have no sense of direction, really, until I've lived somewhere for a long time (sometimes not even then -- I need better short-term memory!).

When I got there, I wasn't sure what kind of impression I would make on the rest of the professors, but they made me feel completely at ease. Every once in awhile I would slip into my Spanglish because I was confused about whether I should speak in English to get them acclimated or if I should acclimate MYSELF to everyone else. What to do, what to do -- ? ¡Combinación, por supuesto! I gave them all my blog URL, so if any of you are reading this, I hope you are enjoying practicing your English! Es oportunidad perfecta, ¿de verdad?

During a break, I went to a bike shop with the P.E. teacher, David. So many people have been offering to take me, but I was not-so-secretly thinking "thanks, but no thanks." This guy seemed like the perfect candidate, though, so off we went in his coche para mirar las biciletas. It took me a long time to figure out what was the best opción, but I finally decided to buy a pink bike for 140 euro. That may sound expensive, but at first they offered me a 660 euro mountain bike! Hell no! I told him look, I'm a foreigner and I just need something to get me from point A to point B, thank you, and it needs to have a bunch of speeds and good brakes so I can get up and down those Ithaca-sized hills!!! I'm really pleased with it, though, and I think that because it's pink it is less likely to be thieved, but we'll see...yikes. I got a lock for it and I also can remove the seat, if need be. I feel like my dad riding a bike, it's fun, though. I just hate it when guys roll down their windows and stare at me. Yes, I'm a foreigner, leave me alone!!!! ¡Ay, por Dios!

After school, I hit up a fruit store and got some fresh produce and ate lunch. Rice cakes with jam, mushrooms, and a fiber bar thing. Weird combo? Whatever. For breakfast I had my dried fruit and some kind of flake cereal in my strawberry banana yogurt. It was so good. Tonight, I'm not sure what we're doing, but hopefully something cheap. I'm not in the hole or anything, but close. My roommates and I are only paying 90 euro a month a piece for our apartment, which is unheard of, it's SO SO cheap. We're lucky, what can I say? We just went out shopping and I got a pair of brown ankle boots and a purple jacket. I don't like purple so much, but whatever. I have too much blue and neutral colors in my closet.

Tomorrow I wake up at the same time and go to school and meet more of the students. Correction: I haven't met ANY of the students, they just stare at me and think extranjera. Gracias a Dios I'm not blonde, because they get stared at like they have two heads! I'll just have to get used to it.

Also, when I got back to my apartment, I contacted some of my Belgian relatives. Did I mention there is a Belgian girl living in Spain, in our program? It was so nice to meet her, she sounds like my relatives when she speaks English. I almost gave her tres besos because that's what the Belgians do. Hopefully Kim will teach me some Dutch so I won't have to be wide-eyed with raised eyebrows everywhere I go. Luckily, all the Belgians speak about half a dozen languages, so it's not really THAT difficult to get around, I just feel like I impose upon everyone all the time, when I interact with them. They're great, I can't wait to see them -- there's a huge list of people I need to see: Dirk, Marlene, Stephanie, Sven, Sophie, Marie, Victor, Sophie, Eddy, Rita, Sebastiaan, Louis, Annalene, Burt, Lotte, Darlene, Hans, Sylvie, the Schaubroeck family, the Noppe family, the Adam family, etc! Soooo much extended family there, and they're all my Grandma Boberg's cousins descendents. We share the same great-great grandmother. My Belgian relatives emigrated in 1918, I believe, right after World War I. Their plan was to get rich and go back, but uhhh, that didn't happen. Woops. By the way, in the pic, Kim is on the right. I think that was taken in Holland?

Back to my Spanish experience ~ we're about to go out again, but I'm not sure. Probably to get tapas and vino. I'll post more pictures tomorrow, my camera is being testy right now. It's the battery, actually -- I can convert my battery charger, but it's so big that it won't fit in many of the sockets which is so obnoxious. Some of the outlets have extensions, and I have to use those in order to charge it. Ay. I'm going to check if it's charged again and take it with me.

That's all for today, adiós.