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.