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.