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.