Yay España

Exciting news: one of the English teachers, Rosana, offered to take me to her town Baena to walk around and have lunch together. She is going to drive me to Baena on Thursday after work and we will probably meet up with her fianceé, if he has free time, or I will just have coffee with her and look around Baena. I'm really excited to get to spend time with profesores fuera de la escuela (teachers outside of school).

Another fun oportunidad -- next Monday, which is a free day for me, I will be going back to Córdoba, this time also with teachers and maybe a friend or two, if any of them are free. I'm going to see an art exhibit that raises awareness for a day in Spain that focuses on domestic violence. I think it should be pretty interesting, I'm always drawn to topics like that (I am the biggest Law & Order nerd on the planet).

I was in Álora this weekend to visit Cassie and it was great. Cassie, like I said, is a girl I met during orientation. She is probably the person most similar to me that I have met here in Spain, so far, because we are both share similar interests and we have similar personalities. It's rare that I meet someone as cynical as I am, but when I do, my cold black heart sings with joy. OK, maybe not so much, but whatever.
Anyway, I met up with Cassie on Friday afternoon, once I got to Málaga. She lives in a little town about 30 minutes away from Málaga, so we met up there, just as a meeting place and so we could shop in the city, since Álora is so small and doesn't have any places. I did some damage with my finances, especially since I just got paid, but also because I legitimately needed some stuff. I got rain boots, since it is raining all the time here, lately, and I bought new slippers, because the 2€ slippers I had bought here in Cabra were falling apart and literally busting at the seams. No good. I also bought a coat, because I didn't have a winter coat here with me. Good stuff. I also found a new wallet, because that, too, was falling apart on me. So yeah....did some damage. But at least they were all pretty practical things and not stuff I just wanted to buy.
We were having fun shopping around, and we managed to miss our train, though, so that was kind of a bummer, since we had to wait 2 hours for the next train to Álora. It wasn't too bad waiting, we just ended up eating Halloween candy that we got at a nearby store. The problem arrived once we got to Álora and there were no taxis and the number to get taxis there was busy, constantly. We finally got a taxi when Cassie called the local hotel and the hotel desk guy gave Cassie the HOME number of a taxi driver, who told her he'd come get us, but it would take him 20 minutes to pick us up. We said we would wait forever, because there was no way we were going to walk up the MOUNTAIN up to where she lives. Álora is seriously on top of a mountain, it is the hilliest city I have ever seen in my life. Well, it wasn't too bad. We got there in one piece.

That night, we met up with Nick, another language assistant who is in our program. Funny story -- Nick also went to school in Ithaca, except he was at Cornell and I was at Ithaca College. It's strange that we were both in such a small town in the USA and now we are meeting in a small town in Spain -- what are the odds? So yeah, we met up with him and we met his Spaniard friend, Paco. Paco turns out to speak fluent English, because he studied it at Málaga University. He was a nice guy. We went out with Nick and Paco to a couple bars and then went to the dance club, or discoteca, as they are called here in Spain. We ended up going home at 5 a.m., in typical Spanish style. Ridiculous to American standards, I know, but it's normal here to stay up even past sunrise and then sleep most of the day and do the whole thing again the next day. Big cultural difference, what can I say.

This weekend I'm planning to meet up with another girl in my program, Emily, who also lives in a small town, but in the Málaga province, and I'm in the Córdoba province. We are going to meet up in Málaga and spend the weekend there for her birthday. Should be a good time.

Ay, I've already written so much stuff, but I feel like there's so much more I could say. It's so different living in a foreign country in that my schedule is completely different and life doesn't feel as lather-rinse-repeat as it can be in the USA. Sometimes it can be a bit exhausting, trying to jam pack so many activities a short period of time and interact with so many people, especially for me -- I can be a bit of a home body and an introvert, so I feel like I expend a lot of mental energy trying to get everything done that I want to do. At the same time, I don't want to say that I wasted my time in Spain and didn't see as much of Spain that I could and do everything I want to do.
Apart from all the excitement of life here, sometimes it can be a drag with things like the weather or other small things like lack of consistent hot water and perpetually cold apartments. Every once in a while I get frustrated with the language barrier and I think of how much easier it would be if I could speak to my landlord in English about things like the washer being broken, or tell the guy off who delivers the mail that he is a jackass for ringing my doorbell a million times and then having the nerve to be rude to me when I was in the shower and not just igorning him ringing my doorbell 9 million times. Seriously, the machismo that is present in Spain can drive me crazy. There is definitely sexism here in Spain, and I don't really consider myself a hardcore feminist, but some of the things that happen here just rub me the wrong way. The sports section of the newspaper, for instance, has TONS of stuff about men's soccer, but the section with women's soccer was barely bigger than two postage stamps together. Ridiculous.

Anyway, not to leave on a Debbie Downer note, but I should probably get back to work. I leave school in about half an hour and then it's back to the grind in the morning. Adiós!