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.

Back in Spain...physically, anyway

I've been back in Spain for about 3 days by now. I've had to readjust to life here. It feels great to be back and get back into a routine, which includes incorporating certain New Year's Resolutions (however lame the idea may be).

Speaking Spanish again has been a bit of a struggle, but I think I'm getting back into the swing of things. When I was at the Málaga train station at a cafe, the guy at the counter had to point to his mouth to ask me if I wanted something to eat -- that's how disoriented I was. I guess I can blame some of that on jet lag, though, right? Right??

The trip, fortunately, was smooth sailing (flying?). British Airways officially has my thumbs up compared to their American counterparts. I decided to up the cheesy factor to ridiculous levels and watch Love Story on the plane, from a list of available movies ("Love means never having to say you're sorry" *cue piano riff for 200th time*) Afterwards, I was all excited to see that The Office was aired on the plane, too, but it turned out it was the British version, which is fine, except for the fact that I've seen most of those ep's before. But I watched it again, anyway.

Turns out Cassie, a girl in my program, was on the same flight that I was on the way from London to Málaga. We didn't realize that fact, however, until we saw each other waiting in the passport control line. We ended up taking a short train ride to the bus/train station and hung out there for a few hours. It was awesome to catch up again and have a sort of transition from American to Spanish life, instead of being tossed in the deep end immediately.

Going back to teaching is going well, so far -- yesterday I worked 3 on 1 with students and we worked on transportation vocabulary and present simple conjugation. I'm working on getting the kids to actually TALK more, in English, rather than giving me a puzzled look and immediately reverting to Spanish. A few of them have succeeded in driving me crazy with the constant inquiries in Spanish, so I'll put my hands palm-up, raise my shoulders/eyebrows and walk away. Sometimes I'll just say "I don't speak Spanish" or "no sale" or something along those lines.

Already I've had 2 requests for private English classes, and it's a bit ironic, seeing how I took my posters down (or others did) MONTHS ago. The thing is, now that the first semester is over and kids got crap grades, they decide to take lessons. After work today I'm meeting up with a 20 year old girl who is one of my student's older sisters. It would be awesome if she lives in Cabra and I could potentially add a Spanish friend to our little social circle here in Cabra...I may have mentioned it once or twice (or a thousand times): Cabra is filled with old people. The bracket of 18 to 30 year olds is nill, here. Frown Town.

Anyway, I have to get cracking on a poster which sums up all the activities that took place during the first semester, then I have to work on a project for next week's protest against violence. Hooray.

Still on break, stateside

Here I am in California, still -- my latest project is making a Spain scrapbook. Yesterday, while looking for photos to scan with my mom's new scanner (which she got from my dad, for xmas), I came across a ginormous stack on scrapbook materials. That got me to thinking that I would make a new scrapbook ~ one of my favorite pasttimes. Cheesy, I guess, but whatever. I guess I have a little bit of Martha Stewart in me or something.

Not much else to say...I've been reading El País, Spain's main newspaper, online, to keep up with my Spanish. I also just watched a Spanish movie on Netflix the other day, for kicks. I'm thinking I should keep up with that once I get back to Spain, or maybe just watch a bunch of Spanish TV, so I can acclimate my ear to Spanish more. Living with Americans and interacting with them more than anyone else really cuts down on my Spanish speaking practice, unfortunately.

I have my GRE test in a week and a half -- I feel really unprepared and a bit freaked out about it, but oh well. I might just take it twice, anyway. Right now I'm working on a couple grad school app's, but I'm not sure if they'll lead to anything. I'm not quite sure what I want to do with my life, still...stressful decision making, bleh.

it's the future: wireless internet in flight.

Was anyone previously aware that wireless internet is available in flight, these days? Bizarre.

That would probably be the best thing that has happened to me today -- and that is a sad, sad statement about my day. To sum it up, I arrived from Madrid to NYC yesterday at 5:30 p.m. and sat on the runway for a solid hour after landing, just idle, doing nothing; then I missed my flight to LA because by the time I went through customs my flight had already taken off. Gone. No more flights left to LA all night, so I had to be put up in a hotel for the night and given a voucher ~ then I woke up this morning for my flight, but it turns out it took SO SO long to get through check in and security (not to mention the fact that I had to be randomly screened, for no reason), that I missed THAT flight, too. Aaaand then the whole day I had to keep waiting to be picked up from the standby list -- 6 times! And the agents who assist with the standby list were complete a-holes to me, until the time I was waiting for my 4th standby flight and I couldn't take it anymore and was near tears and the guy who was behind the counter managed to magically confirm a seat for me for a flight that was 2 hours out from that point in time.

Now I'm on said flight, but THIS flight, too, just sat on the god forsaken runway for TWO. HOURS. before we even took off. Now I have 5 hours left of my 6.5 hour flight....AHHHHHH.

/end of complaining.

I'm kind of sad to be out of Spain, even though I'll only be gone for 3 weeks. I had some sort of weird, reversed culture shock getting off the plane, yesterday, and looking at my American money, which also feels weird (texture) compared to euros. The FOOD, however, was something I had completely missed in the past 3 months I've been expatriated in España. Truth be told, I'm not the biggest fan of most Spanish food. I'm not a picky eater, or anything, but certain aspects of Spanish food freak me out (enormous pig legs always on display, fish with the heads always attached, everything bathed in olive oil because it's muy sano "very healthy," etc.).

While I'm home, I'm going to have to read El País, the newspaper, a lot while I'm home so I can keep up with my Spanish. Also, I'm planning on watching some Spanish movies -- I started watching some while I was waiting for my flight, today by the magic of netflix instant viewing. I did a bit of reading in Spanish on the flight, already, because for some reason there's a magazine in Spanish provided by the airline in the pocket thing in front of my seat.

Anyway...what did I do before I left Spain, since my last update? I went to the city of Córdoba, which is the capital of the province where I live, to get my NIE card. I've mentioned it before -- it's called NIE which means numero de identificación de extranjeros, or foreigner's number identification card. I also went to a Christmas dinner party with the faculty of my school, and got to witness a bunch of blitzed Spaniards, it was great. I, too, was feeling pretty piripi (tipsy) by the time I left. Unfortunately, I had to leave early in order to make it to Seville, since my flight was going to leave the next morning.

Cat, a girl I met in Seville during orientation, was my lovely hostess in Seville, and she was really generous about everything in her apartment and let me sleep in her bed and she went over to her boyfriend's apartment to sleep that night. I met her boyfriend, Kike (short for Enrique), and he is fluent in English, so that was cool. We spoke in Spanish almost the whole time, regardless, just because I want to practice it as much as I can.

Good news: some random guy named Pablo, who is my age, got in contact with the American girls in Cabra through his mom, who is an English teacher at one of the language academies, there. He met up with us the other night, and he, also, speaks pretty good English. I'm hoping when we get back that maybe he will hang out with us girls some more so I can get in more Spanish practice. Even though I'm living in Spain, I don't usually speak in Spanish for long periods of time, since I'm living with Americans. I am trying to speak Spanish a lot while I'm at school, more and more, and strike up conversations with the professors so I can get more experience. Hearing people speak and reading Spanish is all well and good, but speaking a foreign language often and perfecting it is the best way to actually learn it. I could read something in Italian right now and get the gist (I minored in Italian, fyi), but my speaking ability in Italian, at the moment, is abyssmal, unfortunately...don't use it, ya lose it, y'know.

I'll get back to España on January 12th. I'm not sure if I'll be traveling much in January, yet. Truth be told, I get a bit tired of the constant frenzy of deciding where to go every single weekend...sometimes I just enjoy being a bum at home and not having to pack and plan a commute and so on. Don't get me wrong, I love seeing new places, it's just the constant trip planning that can be a bit exhausting.

Speaking of upcoming travels, I do have one trip planned, already ~ I'll be heading to IRELAND in late February to meet my Irish relatives for the first time, and I'm thrilled. It should be a great experience. And I'll probably be heading to Italy in April for holy week, but other than that, no other plans yet.

Anyway, I'm gonna wrap it up for now...I'm fading. It's 5 a.m. in Spain right now and I'm all disoriented and exhausted after my long, ridiculous day. Well, two days, since I left yesterday morning, from Seville. Buenas noches.

Singin' "wonder do I ever cross your mind"

Christmas time is here. Spain is all about the belén presentations (nativity scene), and that includes massive, ridiculous displays. I was all confused about why there were bricklayers in front of the town hall in Cabra with a big tarp lying over a chain-link fence, but now I know...it was for this.
In the spirit of Navidad, I played "Feliz Navidad" and "Frosty the Snowman" approximately 12 billion times for the little kids that I tutor, and I'm pretty sure they loved that. We also are learning the alphabet, and so far we've gotten through F and then just "la la la."

I was told that the next town over one-upped us by having live animals at their belén.

Amusing: baby Jesus isn't at the nativity. He'll magically appear in a few weeks, I suppose, but for now Mary and Joseph still have wistful expressions on their plastic faces. Also missing are the wise men, but I guess they wouldn't show up before Jesus did, right?

Next week, the day before I leave, there will be a big "comida" for Christmas for everybody who works at my instituto. I already saw the menu, and it's typical Spanish fare with a few things I've never heard of but am afraid to try, such as murcillo. Essentially like chorizo, only with pig blood in it, or something...


My bilingual coordinator asked me to make a Christmas poster for my school, and the thing is huge. Not wanting to clip out pictures from magazines, I decided to print out pictures that are mostly all mine except for a few that show gaudy displays of Christmas lights on homes.

I have a photo of Pat and me on Santa's lap in 1988, another with me + Dan + Pat in 1992, a picture of the three of us in an actual Christmas card from 2001, the family in front of the Rockefeller Christmas tree in NYC, a turkey dinner picture that Marieta and Pat made, Sam and I in front of a Christmas tree in 2003, Mandy and I walking outside in the snow...that's mostly it. I also printed out a cartoon with a turkey holding a newspaper saying "Gee, I hate to read the obituaries after Christmas." I told Emily I told my kids about turkey dinners, and she said "What about ham?" and I said then I'd have to specify that Americans don't have "jamón" like their Spaniard counterparts (ham literally shaved off an enormous pig leg, hoof still attached -- creepy). I also made more than 20 paper snowflakes -- yes, I made all of those. Hooray for me. I also made the block letters.

I've also been filling up my time hanging out with my profesores and their kids. Good opportunity to practice Spanish and play with little kids. Yesterday, Claire and I went over to one of the English teacher/Gym teacher's house (they're married) and play with 3 year-old Anita, their daughter. Anita was like I was as a little kid, that is, really shy and leery of strangers. I had already met her once before, but she still was a bit hesitant to play. Next time, hopefully.
After that, Claire, Becca and I went over to our landlord's other work place -- they're dental technicians and make crowns/dentures/dental appliances, so that was cool to see. I mentioned I wanted an "abrigo blanco," and of course Europeans aren't like "gee isn't that cute," they actually go find one and put it on you. So we took pictures wearing them and "working." Then I watched my landlord, Juan de's, brother working. His name is Jose Luis, and his son Pablo was watching, too. I would pick up the instrument things and tell Pablo I would take out all his teeth -- he's so cute and travieso.

Today I might go back over to my bilingual coordinator's piso and hang out and maybe play with the dog, Canela. So cute. David and Elvira, the gym and English teacher (respectively), live directly above Carlos and Noelia, his girlfriend, who ALSO works at my school...follow?

back after a long derilection of duty.

Here I am in a hostel in Madrid at 2 a.m. and I realized I haven´t updated this bad boy in a long time (relatively speaking). My bad.

Madrid has been awesome, I´ve met a bunch of new people, too. Turns out all those British conversation assistants are swarming about Madrid, since I met a ton of them. Today I also got the chance to travel outside of Madrid and hit up a little city of 55K people in the Castilla y León region called Ávila with a group of Brits. It´s also a province and the capital of its own province. It is most famous for its enormous medieval fortress and it´s been preserved since it was built in 900 AD. Impressive, right? It´s a mile long and pretty tall, too, and offers a great view of the town and the mountains in the distance. The weather was pretty crappy and cold, but oh well.

One of the best parts about going to Ávila was getting to travel with the Brits I met at my hostel the other night. I was downstairs in the hostel bar and we struck up a conversation with a group of Brits, an Aussie and an Irish guy. Yesterday I met up with a bigger group of them and we went out for drinks and tapas -- the best part of that was the fact that the tapas were free with the cheap drinks. The catch to that was the fact that the bar was loud and extremely crowded. Also smoky, but that goes without saying in Spain. I really hate it when my clothes and hair reek of smoke after being in a bar here, but what can ya do.

Other things I´ve seen since I´ve been here...I hit up the Museo Reina Sofia with Carole and her sister and saw the Guernica by Picasso. It depicts the Spanish civil war and if it weren´t for the cubistic surrealism, it would pack a bit more punch, IMO. It was pretty impressive, not to mention huge. We all had to stand pretty far away from it. Luckily, I spent 3€ in order to have a headset, so that increased my appreciation for the painting. That would probably be the highlight of the Reina Sofia. Tomorrow my goal is to hit up the Prado Museum before I leave Madrid at 2 pm...the bus ride back to my pueblo is 6 hours and change, since I have to change buses in Córdoba on the way.

Speaking of Córdoba, next week or the week after I´ll have to pick up my foreigners card thing, which is essentially Spain´s equivalent of the green card. It´s been really obnoxious getting around without it, at times, but I just show my passport with my Spanish visa and usually that´s good enough. But it´s been a huge pain getting into the health clinic without it.

That brings me to something else - this past week I was getting over strep which I caught from Carole in Scotland. I came down hard with a massive headache right when I got back from Scotland, and then another the night of Thanksgiving. The morning after, my throat looked like a red and white golf ball and I was sweating profusely. So I went with Emily to the health clinic and managed to sputter out a few horribly grammatically incorrect sentences about how I felt miserable and achy and I ended up with Paracetamol and Erythromycin. I went back in 3 days and ended up getting stronger antibiotics (500 mg of zithromax) and another kind of painkiller and chloroseptic spray. The chloroseptic spray nearly made me yak, but it was also a lifesaver. Anyway, enough of that grossness.

I don´t have any pic´s for this post, my bad. I´ll have pic´s in the near future when I swipe them from Luke and the Brits who I was with. It turns out I left my camera in Cabra, oh well. I realized this as I was on the way to the Cabra bus station, but I didn´t think I´d have time to turn around and get it and still make it. Sucks, but oh well.

Next week I´m going to have to get ready to teach the Spanish kids about American Christmas traditions, so I´m going to teach them about how we put Christmas lights on our houses and have turkey dinners and whatnot...it took me awhile to think of some American things that they don´t do in Spain, too. We also have songs that they´re not familiar with, so I´m going to play those for them. I plan on playing the ¨Feliz Navidad¨ song (I wanna wish you a merry xmas from the bottom of my heart) since I teach kids who are in their first year of English and those dozenish words will be enough for them to digest, no doubt. Maybe I´ll do Feliz Navidad and one other song. I just really need to get my kids to SPEAK more, since they freeze up and don´t want to say anything in English to me or will just say ¨¿eso qué es?¨ or related BS when I ask a question. Drives me crazy.

Anyway, I´m thinking I should get off this computer so I don´t get told to get the eff out of this room like I was last night while I was reading. I´m so happy that tonight I´m in a room of only 8 people -- so nice. You may think ¨wtf¨ to that, but the first night I was in a room of 16, at least 3 of which were snoring. Absolutely obnoxious.
All right, I´m off. Hasta pronto

back in españa

Today I walked into the teacher's lounge and I was a bit shocked at what I saw on the front page. The headline for the main story is "An average of 100 women report abuse every month in Córdoba." But that wasn't the shocking part.

Look at the women to the left. Notice anything strange? Well, apparently if you're Spanish, you won't notice anything in particular. I was a bit shocked to see half-naked women on the front page of a newspaper, then I remembered oh yeah, I'm in Europe. Still, isn't it kind of ironic that the women are protesting domestic violence but they're just out there lettin' it all hang out?

By the way, yesterday was the National Day Against Domestic Violence here in Spain. Apparently that involves outdoor interpretative dance in the nude?






Anyway, I'm back from my trip to Edinburgh, or in Spanish, Edimburgo. We got there on Thursday night and drove on the left side of the road (hooray UK) to our hostel to check in, then get food. We went to a traditional Scottish place and got some fish and chips or shepherd's pie or whatnot. Scottish food isn't really all that exciting, in my opinion. Two of the other girls really wanted to try haggis, but I wasn't all that thrilled about the prospect of eating sheep intestines, so I passed on that. We went to bed a bit early because Carole was still recovering from strep -- yes, strep. Two of the other girls, Corey and Steph, went out to see more of Grassmarket plaza, which was right by our hostel. I, for one, was ready to get out of the cold since it felt like the windchill would make the temp somewhere under freezing. Horrible.

We did our guided tour in the a.m. and went around the tacky tourist shops in central Edinburgh, too. The tour was helpful in teaching me about Scottish history, which I knew almost nothing about. It turns out that Edinburgh has a whole bunch of morbid stories from torture and witch trials and war prisons to serial killers who sold their victims to the medical college for money. Who knew? I also got to go on a nifty, nighttime underground tour of the creepy Edinburgh vaults. So creepy. Apparently there's paranormal activity down there, too, if you happen to believe in that hoohah. Either way, it was creepy to be down in some cold, wet, dark vault where there used to be rampant crime and death. The vaults were unknown for 150 years because they were boarded up. More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_vaults . Creepy.

Other stuff we did there was sample some real Scotch whiskey, see the Scottish parliament, see the Edinburgh castle, and do some general shopping. I managed to find a bookstore which was a welcome discovery. There are no English language bookstores near where I live, so it was nice to find some books to take back with me. Today I'm going to start reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, the same guy who wrote Blink, which I suggest you read if you haven't already. Last night I just finished Running With Scissors and that is a ridiculously weird book. I would recommend you read it if you have a strong stomach and aren't grossed out by some vulgar stuff. Pretty funny, too, though.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. It's kind of weird that I'll be spending the day in another country, but them's the breaks. I'm in charge of making apple pie for tomorrow, so I have to jump on buying those ingredients and looking up translations for the ingredients in Spanish. Fun stuff.

Other than that -- not much is new. Life is back to the grind for the next couple weeks until I go home for Christmas. I am going to Madrid with a couple girls in a few weeks, so that will be fun. Not much else to report.

OK I'm gonna go down to the little cafeteria and get some espresso (they just say café, but no, it is ESPRESSO to our American standards, thank you very much).

Back to school, back to school, to prove to dad that I'm not a fool...

...I guess song that doesn't exactly apply when I'm the profesora. Vale, no me importa.

Random observation: I find it a little strange that students here don't address the teachers at "Mrs." or "Mr." whatever, they just say "Maestr@" (teacher). Another thing: the "@" symbol denotes a masculine or feminine adjective or noun. I just thought about that because a student walked into the teacher's lounge and said that...

Today I don't have all that much to do other than conversation hours with teachers. I'm not going to the music class today because they have a test, so I'm just hanging out in the teacher's lounge. I'm lucky to have internet and a little café at my school, too, so I can relax while I'm not doing anything in particular. Today I've been looking at El País online, which is one of Spain's biggest newspapers. I have an enormous list of vocab just from reading up online.

The most helpful resource to improve my Spanish is chatting with the professors, especially the ones who are bilingual. Usually they will speak to me in Spanish, though, but that's good for me. I keep freezing up every so often and I can't think of even one sentence in Spanish...so frustrating. Good to know I studied Spanish for years on end and I still stress out about subjunctive verbs, especially when they're irregular or in any tense other than present. I really need to review subjunctive...I should have brought my Spanish grammar books with me to Spain. I'll have to get those when I go back to the US. Not to mention I'll have to bring a bunch of English books with me in order to teach it better for my tutoring classes.

Speaking of tutoring, yesterday I got two calls from the fliers I have been putting up. One call was from a lady who teaches at one of the language institutes here, and she was p.o.'ed that I put up a flyer for classes near her school. OK, lady, it's a public place and it wasn't like it was right on the door of the school or something really brash like that. Another call was from a lady who wants classes for her 8 year old daughter, but I was really distracted by the music playing at Mercadona (grocery store), so I have to call her back to talk about today. Tonight I'm going back to teach Marta and Paco, at seven.

I met other professors' children last weekend -- Beatriz invited me to go out with her and Daniela in the parque, and we ended up seeing Elvira and David with their daughter, Ana. So I got to play with little kids, which was a lot of fun.















I learned some new vocab words there, too, such as columpio, which means "swing." Tobogán is "slide." And the little rocks (roquitas) on the playground, which Daniela wanted to put in her mouth, are "caca." Clearly.

What else is going on...oh yeah, big news in Spain today: two of the leaders of ETA ("Euzkadi ta Azkatasuna," which is the terrorist group in the Basque country here in Spain), were captured and put in prison in France. The main guy's name is Txeroki, which is pronounced like "Cherokee." The Basque Country is a small part of Spain where they speak Basque and Spanish, but some of them want to secede. Basque, by the way, is a completely different language from Spanish. Unlike Catalan, Valencian or Galician, which are all separate languages spoken in regions of Spain, Basque doesn't derive from Latin. In fact, it doesn't have a known parent language. I don't know much about it, yet, but I've seen the terrorists doing their...terrorism (?) on the news. It's weird, too, because a lot of the things they show on the news here would never be played in the US. And when they show the terrorists being arrested, it's the cops who wear ski masks so they won't be recognized and hunted down by other ETA members. Loco.

Y ya está por ahora. Or...that's it for now.

keep on keepin' on

Hopefully today will mark the end of having to do official stuff foreigners have to do to live here. Well, that's not true, because I still need to set up a bank account. Lameeee. Today I had to go to Córdoba (before the sun came up) in order to do more junk to get my NIE card: numero de identificación por extranjeros which is more or less Spain's version of the green card. I left on the 6:30 a.m. bus here in Cabra to get to Córdoba for an appointment at the police department to turn in even more paperwork and get fingerprinted. Joy of joys. I got the actual number of my NIE card, but I won't get the actual card for another month and then I'll have to go back to Córdoba AGAIN to pick it up. Rahhhhh, curses.

Other stuff ~ this evening I did my first tutoring class, ever. I worked with Marta and Paco, who are brother and sister. Marta is 7 and Paco is 4, and their mother is Carmen, a teacher at my school. They were adorable, but I'm going to have to figure out methods that work to teach young children, because it's clearly different from middle/high school-aged kids. The attention-span issue is frustrating for me, but it's hard to get angry at a 4 year-old, especially when s/he's so cute. I started as a language TA for 101 classes in college, now I just keep going down in age...eek.
This weekend I'm doing another private tutoring class for a college student who comes home during the weekends. She originally was going to be taught by Emily, but Emily is already doing so many classes that she is offering to give a bunch of her people to the rest of us girls since she feels swamped. Must be nice, though, since she's making an extra 300 euro a month for her efforts. If we were in a bigger city, we'd be able to make almost twice that, but the cost of living would eat up all the extra cash, so it's the same in the end.

Over the weekend I put up a ton of flyers advertising tutoring, but I was frustrated to see that a lot of them were removed. I guess they were either in places were posters frequently get removed, but I'm still annoyed. I'm going to copy more flyers tomorrow at school and put up more around town on lamp posts and big bulletin boards I see in town. I'm confused why my flyers were pulled off the bulletin boards, too. How irritating. I have a feeling that word of mouth advertising is much more effective than the flyers, but I'm going to do both and see where it gets me.

Other than official stuff -- life's not bad. Emily was here for the weekend and I showed her around my little pueblo and had some fun. This weekend will probably be low key and I'll just be hanging out in Cabra, but the weekend after this one I'll be in Edinburgh, Scotland with Carole, who lives in Málaga, and two other girls from Málaga who I've never met. I'm super psyched, yay!

Anyway, I'm wiped from getting up at 5-something this morning, so I'm going to faceplant in my pillows. Buenas noches.

Fin de semana que viene aquí en Cabra

More fun stuff -- Emily is on her way from Canillas de Aceituno! That is the name of her town, by the way, and it only has 2500 people. When she told me how small it was, I asked her if it was some kind of tribal village where they live in teepees or something. I forgot that some of the people in my program are in SUCH small towns. Like I said in here once before, my high school had more people than that. Loco. But it should be a lot of fun, I'm totally excited.

Yesterday after school, I went to Baena with Rosana, one of the English teachers. She is great. We went out to get lunch, first. I should add that we got lunch at 4 p.m. which is completely normal here -- remember that Spaniards eat at weird times: breakfast is usually at 11 a.m. and it consists of a something light like toast with olive oil and an espresso or café con leche, then lunch is between 2 to 4 p.m. and that is the biggest meal, there is a snack somewhere in between, and then there is a light dinner which can be anytime between 8 p.m. (at the earliest) and midnight.
Anyway, woops on that tangent -- after we ate, Rosana and I shopped around town, walked through the park and saw the sights of Baena, we went to Carrefour, which is the equivalent of Target here in Spain, and I met her grandmother and her mom, briefly. It was fun, and I should also add that I spoke Spanish almost continuously with few lapses into English. I speak Spanish here every day, but never for hours at a time, so I definitely got a mental workout. It's normal for me to think "crap, what is the third person past tense of 'to bring'" and "what preposition should I use in this sentence" ? Also, if I don't know how to say a phrase, sometimes I'll just use the direct English to Spanish translation, and usually that doesn't work so well for me. Woops.

Other things coming up this weekend include hanging out with Carlos and Noelia, who are my bilingual coordinator and his girlfriend/one of the professors I work with, too, respectively. We'll be going out to the country to "tomar algo" (eat/get some drinks) and just hang out. Also, Raul, the Chief of Studies will be coming, too (not sure what his exact job description is, but that's his title at my school). I haven't asked Carlos if Emily can come with us yet, because he just told me about this plan to go out and get drinks in the country after I had invited Emily to visit me in Cabra, but I'm pretty sure it will be fine. We'll see!

One other thing I haven't mentioned in here, yet -- I have a private tutoring class planned for next Tuesday! Yay! I'm going to teach two children of one of the teachers at my school. They are 4 and 7 years old, so I am going to have to rack my brain for what to teach little kids who have virtually no knowledge of English. This will be completely new territory for me, but I'm still excited. Their names are Marta and Paco, by the way -- Marta is 7 and Paco is 4. I'm sure they'll be adorable. Carmen, their mother, told me that they're super excited to meet me. Yay.

Yay for fun things in Spain. Hasta luego.

O-BA-MA!!!!!

Tangent from my usual musings about my life here in Spain....

OBAMA WON!!! I'm really happy, too. Also, I still can't believe that the USA decided to put that racial pish posh BS aside, for this. It's not like it's the end of racism in the United States, but it's definitely a huge leap towards more acceptance. I just hope that Obama can steer the USA back to the great country it is supposed to be, on the international playing field, and less of an economic flop of doom and a war monger that we can include among George W. Bush's accomplishments in the past 8 years. I can't believe that I'll always have to say that Bush was the president for the majority of my high school and ALL of my college years -- he is just such an embarrassment.

Last night, the girls in my apartment had a mini fiesta for the election. We played some games and had some bebidas (drinks), but the election results were finalized after we were long asleep -- at about 5 or 6 a.m.

It's funny to me, too, that all the profesores are asking me a) who I voted for and b) all my opinions and then they will also throw something in about un político negro (black politician) and how they can't believe he was elected -- but they are happy, because they overwhelmingly support Obama in Spain. When most Spaniards brought up the American presidential election, they would ask in the same breath if I would vote for Obama. Amusing...

Anyway....phew. I'm sure I'll bring up politics in this blog again at some point, but back to the rest of the junk I usually talk about in this blog.

I'm going on a trip to Edinburgh, Scotland, in a few weeks! :-D I'm really excited, too, because I've been to England, but never to anywhere else in the UK. I'd like to make it to Ireland at some point, since I'm part Irish, but who knows when that will happen. But yeah, I'm going with Carole and 2 of the people she knows in Málaga. Originally we wanted to go to Rome, but the flights were ridiculously cheap to Edinburgh, so we booked that instead. I'd love to go to Rome, but I've already been there. Scotland should be a lot of fun.

As for THIS weekend, I changed my plans -- I'm not going to Málaga anymore, but Emily F. is coming to Cabra. A couple of Michelle's friends from Seville, who I have seen twice already, will be coming to Cabra, too. Emily B. and Kim will also be here. I figured, if all these people will be here, maybe it would be better to ask if Emily F. just to come here. I love to travel, but I'm getting a little bit of travel fatigue, because I'm definitely a homebody and I think traveling takes a bit more energy, planning and €s!!! I want to save a bit of €s because it seems like I've been blowing through a lot of money lately, and it would be nice to have some finances left over by the time I leave Spain! Ay ay ay. So yeah, it should be just as fun to be here in Cabra, even though it's a dinky town and there's not as much to do here as there is in Málaga. I'm definitely excited to see Emily again, too, since I haven't seen her since orientation. The fun thing about being abroad in groups like this is that social life for everyone is like potpourri -- so many different types of people that you would never interact with if you were in your comfort zone/social bubble that most people rarely leave when living in their hometown.

Speaking of random social events -- this weekend, I'll probably be going out just to hang out with my bilingual coordinator and his girlfriend, who also works at the school here, so I see her every day I'm working. They're both really relaxed and fun. They have 2 dogs and when I mentioned I wanted to see them again and offered to walk them if they ever need someone, she said that maybe we could all go out this weekend. Carlos and Noelia (those are their names) already have my number, so they can contact me whenever. Should be fun. It's definitely a completely different experience to hang out with people from another culture, but in a way, I'm used to being a fish out of water after moving so many times. But this is a whole different thing, too. Exciting.

OK, gonna get some work done...unfortunately, my bilingual coordinator, Carlos, isn't here today. I would be in an hour long meeting right now and actually being productive, but today I can't. Usually Carlos heads a weekly meeting that I sit in on and receive assignments from the teachers I work with: Mónica, the music teacher; Beatriz, the art teacher; and Victor, the French teacher.
So yeah, right now I'm kind of aburrida (bored). I don't have much work to do, either... I really wish that they used the language assistants for 24 instead of 12 hours and we made twice as much money -- that would be so much better. But I guess the average teacher 30-something hours in a school a week, but they're not constantly in class, so...I don't know how many hours teachers work on average. I just wish I could work MORE and get paid MORE. That would be sweet. Oh well. I just know that if I were in the USA working at a newspaper, right now, I'd probably be working 2-3 times as many hours in order to make the same money, which is ridiculous.

On that note, I return to being bored. Hasta luego.

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!