
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.

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.
2 comments:
sounds like a sweet gig with the whole website dealie
I agree with Pat! and dad said the same thing - maybe an entreprenurial thing!
Your days sound good. And just to let you and your roommates know, American students here are frantic about what to do next year, too.
Love you.
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