I work with three teachers at my school. One is fabulous, Pilar. She speaks excellent English and is very creative and hardworking. Next is Marilo. She can be boring in class... isn't quite as creative and her English isn't as good as Pilar's but she makes an effort and every once in a while we do a game or something that relates to math and English with the kids. Then there is Pedro. I am supposed to help him with third year Chemistry and with a 4th year elective science class. During our planning periods for chem, we have been translating all of the chapter summaries in order to have the English supplement to the class, thus making it "bilingual". Most classes this semester I spent just working on the translation document. In 4th year science, the kids have individual projects that they work on during class on computers. So, they talk amongst themselves in Spanish. I was wondering what exactly I was doing in that class basically all semester until finally last week I took matters into my own hands. Within an hour, I had found a music video about the scientific method, typed the lyrics, translated them and written up comprehension questions. I came into class with speakers to play the audio and basically just took over.
The video was super campy and silly... but they liked it! Long story short: they paid attention and I think they actually learned something!!! Anyway, I was VERY pleased with myself. GO me :)
Here's the video:
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
TWO Thanksgivings?!
Yes, its true. to make up for being away from freinds and family, I gorged with Thanksgiving gusto not once but twice. On Thursday I made a pretty darn legit and authentic American Thanksgiving dinner for my Spanish roommates and freinds plus a few Americans. I had everything except for the turkey: mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, "Stuffing" (turned out to be weird, liquidy consistency, although they said they liked it....) and cranberry that my mom sent! I baked pumpkin pie and chocoalte chip cookies with the boys that I tutor for a funtional vocabulary exam. They passed with flying colors and now want to make cookies during class instead of doing homework.
The Thanksgiving dinner party and me and my roommates!
As if that amount of revelry wasnt enough, the next day I went down to Puerto to visit with my other American contingent. They had one up on my Thanksgiving spread: An actaul turkey! There is an American military base a few towns over and somehow they managed to smuggle one out. It was delish. We tried to go out that night but we were pretty sluggish. (We TRIED to explain to the Spaniard that you are not supposed to move after eating Thanksgiving dinner, but they wouldnt hear of staying in digesting on a Friday night).
All in all, a fabulous holiday. :)
The Thanksgiving dinner party and me and my roommates!
As if that amount of revelry wasnt enough, the next day I went down to Puerto to visit with my other American contingent. They had one up on my Thanksgiving spread: An actaul turkey! There is an American military base a few towns over and somehow they managed to smuggle one out. It was delish. We tried to go out that night but we were pretty sluggish. (We TRIED to explain to the Spaniard that you are not supposed to move after eating Thanksgiving dinner, but they wouldnt hear of staying in digesting on a Friday night).
All in all, a fabulous holiday. :)
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Toto.... I don't think we're tourists anymore....
Although I apparently still look like one. I don't know what to tell you, I try my darnedest to blend in with the hip-euro fashions. I wear the boots with the short dresses and tights, I tuck my jeans in, I have an ever-widening collection of pashminas... and I understand that once I open my mouth that of course people should think that I am at the very least not Spanish, but when clad in all Euro-bought clothing and all I utter is a quick "Hola" during dos besos... I am still instantly pegged. Sigh. Is it the freckles? The fact that I'm "clarita" (ie super white)? A girl last night said that Americans have really white teeth, and that mine are really white, so I look American. Thanks???
I was talking with Noelia the other day and she said that her impression of me and my friends last year is that we were basically glorified tourists, but that this year, I am really here, living the life of a true Sevilliana, and that by year's end it will as if I have lived here all my life. I seriously doubt that, although I am impatient for some means of measurable progress to this end. I have been making considerable efforts to get out and experience culture in an authentic way. (Yes, OTHER than drinking at authentic bars). Some of my more recent efforts include:
1. I went with my roommate Rocio last Friday to a "e-spectaculo" (yes, a spectacular!)which was a blend of theater and dance, flamenco in particular. It roughly followed the story of the Greek god Dionisus (Dionisio) and had quite a lot of interpretive dance breaks,(claro). After the show we chatted with other viewers about the performance. I nodded earnestly at all commentary and added "Si, bailaban muy bien " ("Yes, they danced very well.") What was the even more... interesting part of the cultural evening occurred on Rocio's and my walk home from downtown.
We were hungry and decided to stop in at a bar that purportedly offered "Italian tapas" this culinary cultural infusion sounded interesting so we decided to give it a try. Upon entering the almost empty bar, the waiter welcomes us excitedly with (translated):" Ahhh, you have come for the 'espectaculo'!!!!" We just laughed awkwardly and asked about the tapas, which turned out to be only 'montaditos' which are basically just tiny little sandwiches which you can find in any SPANISH bar, oh, and Spanish olives. We were disappointed of course, at the lack of Italian-ness of these tapas but were tired and hungry so we accepted. When we were getting ready to leave, a woman, one of the 3 other people in the bar, came to us and told us that we couldn't leave because the "espectaculo" was about to start! What espectaculo? Oh, there is a gay guy in the back putting his dress and makeup on, then he is going to come out and sing some Spanish songs for you!!! You can't leave yet!!! She proceeded to refill our drinks and force us out of sheer awkwardness to stay. We somewhat anxiously and uncomfortably sipped our drinks and tried to think of an escape route but there seemed to be none. I was fine with watching a little Spanish drag, but Rocio had to get up early for here Academy in the morning, and it was already late. Finally, the diva comes out. Gorgeous! ...But she doesn't seem to be planning on singing anytime soon. She comes over with redbull and cigarette and thanks us for staying. ("....For staying to see you drink in dress??" Is what I was thinking) FINALLY, another group of about 15 people came in, I assume to see the espectaculo, and Rocio and I slipped out. We laughed most of the rest of the way home at the surreal irony: We went into for Italian tapas, and we got sandwiches and a drag queen.
2. This past week I have been going to a European film festival here in Sevilla. Out of the 6 films I got to see, one I really liked, one was pretty ok, and the rest were slow, boring and pointless. I can do slow films, but I need there be some sort of purpose of sitting in a dark room with 300 strangers by the end. I'm bummed because most of the movies that I REALLY wanted to see are now sold out, so we went to see some random ones instead. Today (since all the other movies were sold out) we are going to see a series of shorts, should be interesting. I hope the subtitling is good!
I was talking with Noelia the other day and she said that her impression of me and my friends last year is that we were basically glorified tourists, but that this year, I am really here, living the life of a true Sevilliana, and that by year's end it will as if I have lived here all my life. I seriously doubt that, although I am impatient for some means of measurable progress to this end. I have been making considerable efforts to get out and experience culture in an authentic way. (Yes, OTHER than drinking at authentic bars). Some of my more recent efforts include:
1. I went with my roommate Rocio last Friday to a "e-spectaculo" (yes, a spectacular!)which was a blend of theater and dance, flamenco in particular. It roughly followed the story of the Greek god Dionisus (Dionisio) and had quite a lot of interpretive dance breaks,(claro). After the show we chatted with other viewers about the performance. I nodded earnestly at all commentary and added "Si, bailaban muy bien " ("Yes, they danced very well.") What was the even more... interesting part of the cultural evening occurred on Rocio's and my walk home from downtown.
We were hungry and decided to stop in at a bar that purportedly offered "Italian tapas" this culinary cultural infusion sounded interesting so we decided to give it a try. Upon entering the almost empty bar, the waiter welcomes us excitedly with (translated):" Ahhh, you have come for the 'espectaculo'!!!!" We just laughed awkwardly and asked about the tapas, which turned out to be only 'montaditos' which are basically just tiny little sandwiches which you can find in any SPANISH bar, oh, and Spanish olives. We were disappointed of course, at the lack of Italian-ness of these tapas but were tired and hungry so we accepted. When we were getting ready to leave, a woman, one of the 3 other people in the bar, came to us and told us that we couldn't leave because the "espectaculo" was about to start! What espectaculo? Oh, there is a gay guy in the back putting his dress and makeup on, then he is going to come out and sing some Spanish songs for you!!! You can't leave yet!!! She proceeded to refill our drinks and force us out of sheer awkwardness to stay. We somewhat anxiously and uncomfortably sipped our drinks and tried to think of an escape route but there seemed to be none. I was fine with watching a little Spanish drag, but Rocio had to get up early for here Academy in the morning, and it was already late. Finally, the diva comes out. Gorgeous! ...But she doesn't seem to be planning on singing anytime soon. She comes over with redbull and cigarette and thanks us for staying. ("....For staying to see you drink in dress??" Is what I was thinking) FINALLY, another group of about 15 people came in, I assume to see the espectaculo, and Rocio and I slipped out. We laughed most of the rest of the way home at the surreal irony: We went into for Italian tapas, and we got sandwiches and a drag queen.
2. This past week I have been going to a European film festival here in Sevilla. Out of the 6 films I got to see, one I really liked, one was pretty ok, and the rest were slow, boring and pointless. I can do slow films, but I need there be some sort of purpose of sitting in a dark room with 300 strangers by the end. I'm bummed because most of the movies that I REALLY wanted to see are now sold out, so we went to see some random ones instead. Today (since all the other movies were sold out) we are going to see a series of shorts, should be interesting. I hope the subtitling is good!
Saturday, November 8, 2008
America: Not so stupid after all...
I had been been building up anxiety about the elections so much that by Nov 4, all I could do was join a huge group of Americans at an Irish pub downtown and drink beer and watch CNN even though the results wouldn't be out Spain time until early morning. With somewhat relaxed nerves I left the bar at 1:30am only because I had to get up for work in the morning. Obama had been winning in Indiana, a normally Republican state. Could all the hype be true? Could he really be winning? I dared to hope.
My eyes burst open that morning at 8am and I reached to turn on my computer. "Obama wins!" reads the headline. I stared for a minute in disbelief, then read the whole article even though I had the information that I wanted. Then I had to get ready for school. Upon my arrival, one of the teachers that I work with presented me with flowers and told me "OBAMA! Felicidades! Congratulations!!!" I replied that I hadn't actually won anything, so I didn't deserve the flowers, but that I greatly appreciated the gesture. In the halls that day from other Spaniards I got big smiles and thumbs-up. "The Obama has win eh?? Que bien!"
Later that day in my Uni class I got similar responses, and had to explain a little about the American voting system, how the points work etc. (All in Spanish, of course. "Electoral college" in not yet in my Spanish vocabulary.) But needless to say, everyone was very supportive and very pleased.
On Nov. 5th 2008, I was not ashamed to admit I was an American in Europe. On the contrary, I was proud.
My eyes burst open that morning at 8am and I reached to turn on my computer. "Obama wins!" reads the headline. I stared for a minute in disbelief, then read the whole article even though I had the information that I wanted. Then I had to get ready for school. Upon my arrival, one of the teachers that I work with presented me with flowers and told me "OBAMA! Felicidades! Congratulations!!!" I replied that I hadn't actually won anything, so I didn't deserve the flowers, but that I greatly appreciated the gesture. In the halls that day from other Spaniards I got big smiles and thumbs-up. "The Obama has win eh?? Que bien!"
Later that day in my Uni class I got similar responses, and had to explain a little about the American voting system, how the points work etc. (All in Spanish, of course. "Electoral college" in not yet in my Spanish vocabulary.) But needless to say, everyone was very supportive and very pleased.
On Nov. 5th 2008, I was not ashamed to admit I was an American in Europe. On the contrary, I was proud.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Feliz Halloween!
Si, hoy es Halloween!
I'm in Puerto again, my little hide-away to the south. Hayley and I were debating which would be the best place to dress-up and run around like the weird Americans that we are , and finally Puerto seemed the better choice. It's raining, which will literally put a damper on our plans, but I have confidence that we will have fun anyway. I have put together a 4 euro pirata costume and H is borrowing some angel wings (the plan is the force her novio to be a devil so they are be a duo). There are more than double the amount of American assistants in Puerto this year and two of them are especially cool, and one is going to use my jacket to be Sarah Palin.... haha SCARRRRRRY!!!! She's got the creepy-Stepford-smile downpat. We will see if anyone gets the joke here.
Work continues to be ridiculously chill. I had a free hour last week so I looked online for Halloween word problems for my math classes. I printed out around 5 and showed them to one of my teachers and she about fainted she was so delighted! They are easy to please here.... its amazing, I do little work and am greatly appreciated, whereas last year I gave my literal blood sweat and tears to that place in exchange for 2 government-paid lunches a week and some light abuse. But hey, that was them, and this is now... Hurray!
......
The first half of this post while Hayley was taking a siesta on Friday. I am now back at home in Sevilla and I have photos!
La pirata, "Twiggy" and Sarah Palin:
Hayley, "Madame Butterfly":
Some of the girls had been invited to a purportedly huge house party in Puerto, but Hayley and I were skeptical because no one has house parties in Spain, mostly because people either 1. Don't have houses, they have flats. 2. Live with their parents until they are about 30. We eventually went to check it out because we were still feeling pretty silly being dressed up downtown because we were defiantly the little group of stupid dressed up Americans plus bartenders dressed to theme. We, or at least I, felt a little stupid. Well, we got to the party and it was CRAZY. There is appearently a MANSION disguised as a normal apartment building in Puerto. We walked in the huge castle-like doors into a huge entry hall, FULL of people, all dressed up, there was a DJ, and enormous bar, and chandeliers?! Imagine if you wanted to pick a set for a movie that involves a Halloween party, in Spain. The place was HUGE. It had a back yard (which also don't exist in Spain) and a POOL, complete with greek columns?! There were these huge paintings on the walls... the occasional religious statue... it was SURREAL. The inhabitants turned out to be some American Navy guys (there is a base one town over), who only pay about 1,200 euro a month to live in a Mansion that they could probably charge entry fees for tours.
I'm in Puerto again, my little hide-away to the south. Hayley and I were debating which would be the best place to dress-up and run around like the weird Americans that we are , and finally Puerto seemed the better choice. It's raining, which will literally put a damper on our plans, but I have confidence that we will have fun anyway. I have put together a 4 euro pirata costume and H is borrowing some angel wings (the plan is the force her novio to be a devil so they are be a duo). There are more than double the amount of American assistants in Puerto this year and two of them are especially cool, and one is going to use my jacket to be Sarah Palin.... haha SCARRRRRRY!!!! She's got the creepy-Stepford-smile downpat. We will see if anyone gets the joke here.
Work continues to be ridiculously chill. I had a free hour last week so I looked online for Halloween word problems for my math classes. I printed out around 5 and showed them to one of my teachers and she about fainted she was so delighted! They are easy to please here.... its amazing, I do little work and am greatly appreciated, whereas last year I gave my literal blood sweat and tears to that place in exchange for 2 government-paid lunches a week and some light abuse. But hey, that was them, and this is now... Hurray!
......
The first half of this post while Hayley was taking a siesta on Friday. I am now back at home in Sevilla and I have photos!
La pirata, "Twiggy" and Sarah Palin:
Hayley, "Madame Butterfly":
Some of the girls had been invited to a purportedly huge house party in Puerto, but Hayley and I were skeptical because no one has house parties in Spain, mostly because people either 1. Don't have houses, they have flats. 2. Live with their parents until they are about 30. We eventually went to check it out because we were still feeling pretty silly being dressed up downtown because we were defiantly the little group of stupid dressed up Americans plus bartenders dressed to theme. We, or at least I, felt a little stupid. Well, we got to the party and it was CRAZY. There is appearently a MANSION disguised as a normal apartment building in Puerto. We walked in the huge castle-like doors into a huge entry hall, FULL of people, all dressed up, there was a DJ, and enormous bar, and chandeliers?! Imagine if you wanted to pick a set for a movie that involves a Halloween party, in Spain. The place was HUGE. It had a back yard (which also don't exist in Spain) and a POOL, complete with greek columns?! There were these huge paintings on the walls... the occasional religious statue... it was SURREAL. The inhabitants turned out to be some American Navy guys (there is a base one town over), who only pay about 1,200 euro a month to live in a Mansion that they could probably charge entry fees for tours.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
A week of friends!
Last weekend I had the pleasure of visiting my amigita Hayley in Puerto, and the visit came just in time, because that morning I had to deal with probably the single worst thing about Spain.... spanish bureaucracy! I spent about three hours total trying to pick up an ID card, and ultimately FAILED. To give you a peek at what this all entails, it went a little something like this:
9:45 - arrive at Register's office, where in May, the man at the register's office had told us to come pick up our residency cards.
10:15 - arrive at "foreigner's" office. Turns out, man in May was either misinformed or a liar. I go to the dreaded window, to get a number, at which time, woman at window says to me that I do not need to take a number and wait forever, I can simply proceed to office 1 and talk to man A and get what I need. EXCELLENT!(I was a FOOL if I believed that even for a second) Man A of course sent me to Man B and both of these men looked at me as though I was asking for a life-sized gold plated elephant rather than the standard residency card that I assume over half of the people waiting in that office are looking for. So then, incredulous man B says I can just go to office 2, I go to office 2, am stopped by door man and repeat that I just need to pick up this card. It should be ready. I just need someone to give it to me, that's all. He is equally confused and tells me that I should go to office 1, NO I say, I was just at office 1! He sends me back to office 1. I go back, Man A and B are irritated to see me again and take me back to office 2, where man A asks who I talked to and I respond, the doorman, because I didn't get past him to talk to anyone of consequence because he didn't let me. WHAT? You just talked to the doorman?! GO take a number and WAIT like everyone else! What are you trying to do, cheat the system?!?!
11:30 - sitting in waiting room with my number. I have B-80. They are currently on 36.
11:55 - The number is now 39. They office closes at 2... Let's do the math...
12:00 - FUCK. THIS.
Luckily afterward I had the opportunity to flee Sevilla to Puerto and Hayley and I had a great weekend and I was able to put Spain on a brief time-out, which it sorely deserved. We spoke English, relaxed, it was great! By Saturday I had let Spain out of it's time-out and we went out for tapas :)
Then by Tuesday, my roommate from last year, Jennifer, was here!!! She brought her brother Johny to show him what was the "big deal" about Spain. I had work and uni, but every evening this past week I was able to go to dinner with them and visit which was splendid.
My weekend so far has been very quiet, a little too quiet. I basically live alone on the weekends... and well, I am just not used to it. The good part about being a little bored and lonely is that I go running when I have nothing better to do. I should be in marathon shape soon! Later today though, I am supposed to give a tour to the Swedish girl that has come to work at our school. I told her I would make her some typical fare, a tortilla Espanola! We'll see how that turns out...
Besos,
MC
9:45 - arrive at Register's office, where in May, the man at the register's office had told us to come pick up our residency cards.
10:15 - arrive at "foreigner's" office. Turns out, man in May was either misinformed or a liar. I go to the dreaded window, to get a number, at which time, woman at window says to me that I do not need to take a number and wait forever, I can simply proceed to office 1 and talk to man A and get what I need. EXCELLENT!(I was a FOOL if I believed that even for a second) Man A of course sent me to Man B and both of these men looked at me as though I was asking for a life-sized gold plated elephant rather than the standard residency card that I assume over half of the people waiting in that office are looking for. So then, incredulous man B says I can just go to office 2, I go to office 2, am stopped by door man and repeat that I just need to pick up this card. It should be ready. I just need someone to give it to me, that's all. He is equally confused and tells me that I should go to office 1, NO I say, I was just at office 1! He sends me back to office 1. I go back, Man A and B are irritated to see me again and take me back to office 2, where man A asks who I talked to and I respond, the doorman, because I didn't get past him to talk to anyone of consequence because he didn't let me. WHAT? You just talked to the doorman?! GO take a number and WAIT like everyone else! What are you trying to do, cheat the system?!?!
11:30 - sitting in waiting room with my number. I have B-80. They are currently on 36.
11:55 - The number is now 39. They office closes at 2... Let's do the math...
12:00 - FUCK. THIS.
Luckily afterward I had the opportunity to flee Sevilla to Puerto and Hayley and I had a great weekend and I was able to put Spain on a brief time-out, which it sorely deserved. We spoke English, relaxed, it was great! By Saturday I had let Spain out of it's time-out and we went out for tapas :)
Then by Tuesday, my roommate from last year, Jennifer, was here!!! She brought her brother Johny to show him what was the "big deal" about Spain. I had work and uni, but every evening this past week I was able to go to dinner with them and visit which was splendid.
My weekend so far has been very quiet, a little too quiet. I basically live alone on the weekends... and well, I am just not used to it. The good part about being a little bored and lonely is that I go running when I have nothing better to do. I should be in marathon shape soon! Later today though, I am supposed to give a tour to the Swedish girl that has come to work at our school. I told her I would make her some typical fare, a tortilla Espanola! We'll see how that turns out...
Besos,
MC
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Estoy malita!
Si... I woke up today with the worst cold. Not just the sniffles, but like head ache body ache, the effing works. I feel really crappy, so much so that when I got home from work today at 7 I literally got into bed. Upside for my faithful blog readers... haha that's maybe 3 people... is that I'm posting pics, yay. My room, or as I call is, "mi propio cajita de sevilla." Also pictured is my window and its inhabitants. Mis peces de plasico, Juan Jose and Maria Carmen, and my cactus, Pablo.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
The Lazy Spanish Sunday
I have managed to book up my weeks for the semester fairly well but my weekends are wiiiide open. On a Saturday this is fine because one can go shopping or get errands done around town and do useful things. Sundays in Spain however, are somewhat a forced day of rest because NOTHING is open. If you are between the ages of 15-65 this is fine as well because you probably need to sleep off a little bit of the night before. As I explained to my new co-worker, Sharita, Spanish nights out are as follows based on times you get home:
12pm-2am: you just went to dinner
2am-3:30am: you went and had a drink after dinner, nothing crazy
3:30am- 5:30am: pretty decent night. You had drinks at a few bars, maybe even did some dancing if you went to a place with good music.
5:30am-8am: Intensely-awesome night. Multiple bars plus you went the distance and hit the Discotecas! If you are smart you got some churros con chocolate ont he way home.
Saturday night I went out with Maca and her freinds. I got home at about 3:30, so as you can deduce from the time-table, it was a fun, chill night. So, today I slept in and proceeded with my Spanish Sunday when I got up around 1pm.
Sundays in Spain I have decided are best for lovers. You can see them, and evidence of this theory everywhere: they are making out on city streets, laying around in parks, passing the day with nothing to do but love each other. Yeah, I watched tv then eventually went for a jog in the park. Not a bad day all in all. Especially because I got to talk to both my mom and The Steph for equally long periods of time because I now have the internet en casa, YAY! All the better that I got a good deal on it because, although this may not seem like a big deal to you, when your are the only American that you know in a whole country.... talking to loved ones from home is like sanity crack. And today I got my fix :)
12pm-2am: you just went to dinner
2am-3:30am: you went and had a drink after dinner, nothing crazy
3:30am- 5:30am: pretty decent night. You had drinks at a few bars, maybe even did some dancing if you went to a place with good music.
5:30am-8am: Intensely-awesome night. Multiple bars plus you went the distance and hit the Discotecas! If you are smart you got some churros con chocolate ont he way home.
Saturday night I went out with Maca and her freinds. I got home at about 3:30, so as you can deduce from the time-table, it was a fun, chill night. So, today I slept in and proceeded with my Spanish Sunday when I got up around 1pm.
Sundays in Spain I have decided are best for lovers. You can see them, and evidence of this theory everywhere: they are making out on city streets, laying around in parks, passing the day with nothing to do but love each other. Yeah, I watched tv then eventually went for a jog in the park. Not a bad day all in all. Especially because I got to talk to both my mom and The Steph for equally long periods of time because I now have the internet en casa, YAY! All the better that I got a good deal on it because, although this may not seem like a big deal to you, when your are the only American that you know in a whole country.... talking to loved ones from home is like sanity crack. And today I got my fix :)
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
"I'll be 23...."
Hey kids, here is the REAL TIME update.... I had been writing those other posts at home, kind of as a mental dump/diary.
Monday was my birthday, as many of you know and it wasn't too bad for being away from everyone that I know and love. I went to Spanish class and organized myself/ got ready for school. Then that evening I went to tapas with all 3 people that I know in Spain: My good friend Macarena and her boyfriend Antonio, her sister and my former boss Noelia, and my new roomie Rocio, who is very nice! Maca and Noelia even brought me some presents :)
Tuesday I got to relax and finish getting my apartment settled and TODAY was my first day at school! I can already tell, it is going to be SO much better than last year. Now I am actaully an ASSISTANT, as I am supposed to be and not a mother/prison guard/english classroom teacher. I LOVE LOVE LOVE my boss Rocio... example: she COLOR CODED our schedules!!!!!! COLOR CODED THEM!!! I have all math and science classes because I requested to work 3 condensed days a week (which was aparently a huge pain for Rocio, but she did it anyway, LOVE HER!) And I am almost all set with all of my afternoon tutoring classes, which means I should actaully see a little bit of MONEY by the end of next week!
En fin, things are going really well.
I must go home and do my homework now :)
BESOS!
MC
Monday was my birthday, as many of you know and it wasn't too bad for being away from everyone that I know and love. I went to Spanish class and organized myself/ got ready for school. Then that evening I went to tapas with all 3 people that I know in Spain: My good friend Macarena and her boyfriend Antonio, her sister and my former boss Noelia, and my new roomie Rocio, who is very nice! Maca and Noelia even brought me some presents :)
Tuesday I got to relax and finish getting my apartment settled and TODAY was my first day at school! I can already tell, it is going to be SO much better than last year. Now I am actaully an ASSISTANT, as I am supposed to be and not a mother/prison guard/english classroom teacher. I LOVE LOVE LOVE my boss Rocio... example: she COLOR CODED our schedules!!!!!! COLOR CODED THEM!!! I have all math and science classes because I requested to work 3 condensed days a week (which was aparently a huge pain for Rocio, but she did it anyway, LOVE HER!) And I am almost all set with all of my afternoon tutoring classes, which means I should actaully see a little bit of MONEY by the end of next week!
En fin, things are going really well.
I must go home and do my homework now :)
BESOS!
MC
Short, and rather impromptu, trip to GERMANY
I had been talking to Garret about possibly meeting him and Dominic at Oktoberfest in Munich before I had to start work. I went back and forth because I wasn’t sure that the logistics were going to work out but finally I ended up booking to the day before I left CA. What made me do it on such late notice was my friend and co-worker from last year, Lydia, emailed be back and said that I could come and visit her for a couple of days before meeting up with the guys. She leaves only about an hour south of Munich so it seemed only too perfect. The trip was long and got off to a bit of a hectic start (I forgot my wallet at home on my way the airport, had to literally run home, back to bus stop, take a taxi…. So I was running, sweating and cursing myself for being such an idiot….all before 8am) but I finally got there and I was really glad to get to see Lydia. Unfortunately, she was still working on a final thesis paper due that next week. She had planned to have it all under control before I arrived, but as we all know, things happen, so most of the time I was staying with Lydia she was either upset about doing the paper or actually doing it. Oh, and MC-is-an-idiot item #2: I showed up to Germany in flip-flops in a tee-shirt… yeah it is definitely WINTER there already. I just didn’t think about it because basically from when I arrived in Spain until I got on the plane, I was sweating. Luckily, as an after thought, I brought closed to toed shoes. Anyway, while she was working at the library, I went shopping and spent entirely too much money… but hey that coat, jeans, scarf, socks and sweater (ok, fine, and cute top)were all necessities because I brought NO Germany-appropriate clothing!!!
Friday I left Lydia to go meet the guys in Munich. Dom and Floyd were dutifully at the train waiting for me. Dom told me that Garret wouldn’t be there until the next day and Floyd wasn’t feeling well so Dom and I headed to the ‘fest. We got into one of the big tents and ordered beers literally the size of infants. We made friends at our table and had a really good time. SUCH a good time in fact that we lost track of the fact that 3 LITERS of beer tends to go to one’s head after a while. So we decided to take the subway back to our hotel… well apparently Dom and I took a little nap and missed our stop… and ended up about 10 stops and 45 minutes outside of the city. All is well that ends well though; we made it back just fine after we woke up and realized our folly. I had to leave Saturday afternoon but we still had a chance to go down to Oktoberfest to get some lunch…. A half meter bratwurst! And a beer of course. Garret never showed up which was another bummer but, all in all, not a bad international jaunt.
Now I am back in my apartment and I have spent the ENTIRE day resting…. I finally slept for though the night, 12 hours of unconsciousness never felt so good! Tomorrow I have more errands and things to do… oh yeah… and it’s my birthday. Hopefully I get Macarena and maybe her boyfriend to have dinner with me.
Other new roommate just walked in with her boyfriend….(and scared me to death because Rocio left and this chick wasn’t supposed to be here til next week)… they have turned on metal music in her room and are not talking to me…. Awkward…… ok well thinks that’s my cue to head of for a bit. Luckily I have a tapa-date with the other 50% of my friends in this city: Noelia!
Friday I left Lydia to go meet the guys in Munich. Dom and Floyd were dutifully at the train waiting for me. Dom told me that Garret wouldn’t be there until the next day and Floyd wasn’t feeling well so Dom and I headed to the ‘fest. We got into one of the big tents and ordered beers literally the size of infants. We made friends at our table and had a really good time. SUCH a good time in fact that we lost track of the fact that 3 LITERS of beer tends to go to one’s head after a while. So we decided to take the subway back to our hotel… well apparently Dom and I took a little nap and missed our stop… and ended up about 10 stops and 45 minutes outside of the city. All is well that ends well though; we made it back just fine after we woke up and realized our folly. I had to leave Saturday afternoon but we still had a chance to go down to Oktoberfest to get some lunch…. A half meter bratwurst! And a beer of course. Garret never showed up which was another bummer but, all in all, not a bad international jaunt.
Now I am back in my apartment and I have spent the ENTIRE day resting…. I finally slept for though the night, 12 hours of unconsciousness never felt so good! Tomorrow I have more errands and things to do… oh yeah… and it’s my birthday. Hopefully I get Macarena and maybe her boyfriend to have dinner with me.
Other new roommate just walked in with her boyfriend….(and scared me to death because Rocio left and this chick wasn’t supposed to be here til next week)… they have turned on metal music in her room and are not talking to me…. Awkward…… ok well thinks that’s my cue to head of for a bit. Luckily I have a tapa-date with the other 50% of my friends in this city: Noelia!
Oh Lord, here we go AGAIN!
OH LORD, here we go again…. First few days back in Sevilla
It hit me once when during the fiesta how incredibly fast time flies (yes, when you are having fun) and then it hit me again when I got to Boston to repeat the Alicante reunion we had on my way to Spain last year. Talk about déjà vu. It was just crazy to be doing exactly the same thing, one year later and to think about everything that can happen in a year… what changes, what stays the same.
I had an amazing time in Boston, needless to say. I stayed with Alycia and Kelly, we visited Rob and the usual shenanigans ensued. I also had the pleasure of going to see Boston-contingent of the fam, which was really nice. As oldest cousin, it never ceases to amaze me how the little ones grow in between the times I get to see them. “You feed those things they grow!” as mom would say. ALSO got to see my roommate from this past year, JENNIFER!!! Or, as they say in Bean-town, “Jen-a-FA”! She was amazing and did her very best to give me an authentic Bostonian experience. We picked apples for the love! Also went to Salem and had dinner with her fam, which was amazing.
I still hadn’t quite grasped the concept that I was going to Spain again, even in the airport…. Or during the excruciatingly long journey. It wasn’t until the cab ride from the airport to my apartment when I saw the twilight sky and smelled the Sevilla air that I realized that I was here, back in Spain. Back with an amazing second chance for an even better experience than my last one which set the bar pretty high.
Things are off to a pretty good start. I was successful in enrolling for my Spanish high level grammar class and I am going to meet my new boss tomorrow. I bought a fan so I don’t asphyxiate in my tiny bedroom and I have got a tiny start on unpacking.
….Upon awakening from much needed siesta I met up with Macarena and it was awesome to see a familiar face. She has big plans for being study- buddies and seeing as that she is my only really good friend in this entire country right now… I would probably rob a bank with her if that is what she wanted to do.
Tuesday I met my new boss Rocio (my new roommate’s name is ALSO Rocio… this could get confusing!) I am basically in love with her. She is SO nice. My very first impression was NOT showing up at the time I was supposed to meet her… jetlag overtook me I guess and I completely and literally missed the train. I finally went that afternoon though and she could not have been nicer. She bustled about showing me around and introducing me to whom she could since I showed up 2.5 hours later than expected. I had been pretty worried to say the least about this new school, it being in the same gypsy ghetto as the first and literally next door, but I am happy to say that I feel from only about one hour there that it will be a MUCH better work environment than last year. There are teachers that actually know my purpose and WANT me to be there! Hurray! And Rocio is just so cute I want to squeeze her! She is a little “gordita” and excitable woman who appears to be very open, warm and well organized. I am foreseeing a beautiful relationship.
It hit me once when during the fiesta how incredibly fast time flies (yes, when you are having fun) and then it hit me again when I got to Boston to repeat the Alicante reunion we had on my way to Spain last year. Talk about déjà vu. It was just crazy to be doing exactly the same thing, one year later and to think about everything that can happen in a year… what changes, what stays the same.
I had an amazing time in Boston, needless to say. I stayed with Alycia and Kelly, we visited Rob and the usual shenanigans ensued. I also had the pleasure of going to see Boston-contingent of the fam, which was really nice. As oldest cousin, it never ceases to amaze me how the little ones grow in between the times I get to see them. “You feed those things they grow!” as mom would say. ALSO got to see my roommate from this past year, JENNIFER!!! Or, as they say in Bean-town, “Jen-a-FA”! She was amazing and did her very best to give me an authentic Bostonian experience. We picked apples for the love! Also went to Salem and had dinner with her fam, which was amazing.
I still hadn’t quite grasped the concept that I was going to Spain again, even in the airport…. Or during the excruciatingly long journey. It wasn’t until the cab ride from the airport to my apartment when I saw the twilight sky and smelled the Sevilla air that I realized that I was here, back in Spain. Back with an amazing second chance for an even better experience than my last one which set the bar pretty high.
Things are off to a pretty good start. I was successful in enrolling for my Spanish high level grammar class and I am going to meet my new boss tomorrow. I bought a fan so I don’t asphyxiate in my tiny bedroom and I have got a tiny start on unpacking.
….Upon awakening from much needed siesta I met up with Macarena and it was awesome to see a familiar face. She has big plans for being study- buddies and seeing as that she is my only really good friend in this entire country right now… I would probably rob a bank with her if that is what she wanted to do.
Tuesday I met my new boss Rocio (my new roommate’s name is ALSO Rocio… this could get confusing!) I am basically in love with her. She is SO nice. My very first impression was NOT showing up at the time I was supposed to meet her… jetlag overtook me I guess and I completely and literally missed the train. I finally went that afternoon though and she could not have been nicer. She bustled about showing me around and introducing me to whom she could since I showed up 2.5 hours later than expected. I had been pretty worried to say the least about this new school, it being in the same gypsy ghetto as the first and literally next door, but I am happy to say that I feel from only about one hour there that it will be a MUCH better work environment than last year. There are teachers that actually know my purpose and WANT me to be there! Hurray! And Rocio is just so cute I want to squeeze her! She is a little “gordita” and excitable woman who appears to be very open, warm and well organized. I am foreseeing a beautiful relationship.
Summer lovin!
Summer blog-
My 22nd summer was defiantly one of my very best. One of the key factor to its awesomeness was the fact that I wasn’t officially employed, something that I haven’t done during the summer since I was 16. Believe it or not, I actually didn’t just lay around as a lady of leisure, on the contrary, I was very busy! “Soccer-moming”: not for the timid. It was great because I kept busy doing things for my mom but I also had plenty of time to run around and have fun with my friends and to hang with the fam.
Some highlights:
4th of july
Chows
Fam time
MDS youth camp! “meant to be”
Went to visit Holly!!! LOVE THAT LADY!!!
Cambria with my favorite women on the planet
Soul- Half adventures…..aaaaaamazing!
Spanish fiesta… part 3!
As you can see… it was a pretty amazing summer. I am so grateful for it and for basically everything the good Lord has thrown my way. Can’t complain ladies and gents, I just can’t.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
CASA DULCE CASA!!!!
Now, I am home!
Frist though, I flew from Madrid to Boston, where my wonderful freinds Rob and Kelly picked me up and took care of me til my flight to San Jose the next day. They picked me up pizza and beer which we enjoyed in front of Rob's huge tv... I was back in the USA and in heaven!!! It was so nice to break up the trip and to see mis amigos de Alicante! I am definatly stopping in Boston again on my way back out!
They dropped me at at airport, and after 6 hours of watching tv on JetBlue, I could see Mikey holding baloons that said "Welcome home!" The whole gang was there: Mom, Dad, Wem, Bug, Grammy and The Steph! I was SOOO HAPPY! We all piled into the van and headed home :)
Since then I have been readjusting to home just fine. Today is my first day on domestic duty. I dropped Em at work, came back and made myself and Mike some breakfast, did the dishes and now after blogging I think I will go do some jogging... haha.
Pues nada, es decir que, ME ENCANTA ESTAR EN CASA!
ie: I am loving being at home!
Frist though, I flew from Madrid to Boston, where my wonderful freinds Rob and Kelly picked me up and took care of me til my flight to San Jose the next day. They picked me up pizza and beer which we enjoyed in front of Rob's huge tv... I was back in the USA and in heaven!!! It was so nice to break up the trip and to see mis amigos de Alicante! I am definatly stopping in Boston again on my way back out!
They dropped me at at airport, and after 6 hours of watching tv on JetBlue, I could see Mikey holding baloons that said "Welcome home!" The whole gang was there: Mom, Dad, Wem, Bug, Grammy and The Steph! I was SOOO HAPPY! We all piled into the van and headed home :)
Since then I have been readjusting to home just fine. Today is my first day on domestic duty. I dropped Em at work, came back and made myself and Mike some breakfast, did the dishes and now after blogging I think I will go do some jogging... haha.
Pues nada, es decir que, ME ENCANTA ESTAR EN CASA!
ie: I am loving being at home!
My Euro-travels before coming home
I finished teaching at the end of May but I still kept a very busy schedule until I got home. (YES, I am writing this my from my home in CA, but I am going to keep the posts separate!)
First of all, I had to find an apartment for next year! This year finding housing was extremely stressful, and although it turned out well, our apartmentwas fairly expensive. Since I now have a years experience, I wanted to leave everything all set up. Following Macarena's advice, I used the somewhat archaic-seeming method of posting flyers around the neighborhoods I wanted to live in, saying that I wanted a room for rent. Much to my surprise, this worked amazingly well! Within the week a had a few good options and finally decided on one right next to the train station with 2 Spanish girl roommates. It is in a great location and the rent will be much cheaper next year. Check and check! Let's just hope my roommates what to be my best freinds for the final check.... well the one girl I met seemed really nice!
Then I was off to do some travelling! First I was off to London with mi amiga marvelosa Macarena! As I probably have mentioned before, this year Macarena has been helping me with my Spanish, taking me out with her freinds, and has just been generally awesome. SO, I thought it would be cool to go somewhere where I could be the one doing the guiding and helping. And that I did. Maca found a great guide with a little built-in itineray which we mostly followed to the letter since neither of us had been to London before. We found a moderatly priced B&B (NOTHING is "cheap" in London) that was right on one of the main tube lines, so we had the subway figured out in no time. We tubed everywhere and did a pretty good job seeing all of the sights by day and of course the pubs by night! Maca did a good job talking to locals too, crazy Brit accents and all :)
That Sunday Macarena had to head back to Sevilla for work on Monday but I had planned another leg of the trip for myself to go visit my freind Garret in Germany. My flight didn't leave until early Monday morning, so I went down to Sevenoaks to visit Lou, Mary and the girls. Eeeefs, Rosie, and Caitie are so cute it should be ILLEGAL. It was a lovely day so we played outside and had a great time. While winding down for bed time, I had both big-girls on my lap watching Finding Nemo. When I asked Rosie where the little fishies were going, she cleverly replied, in her charming gruff voice, " MAYBE THEY'RE GOING TO RONDON."
Thanks to Lou, I made it to Stansted in plenty of time and Garret met me in the airport in Stuttgart so I wouldn't have to say "No spreken duetch!". I had a great time with him and he showed me around his university, the towns around and also the bigger city of Stuttgart. I also really got into the Euro-cup! Nothing like sitting down at a bar or cafe with a truely enormous Kristal of Hefferweisen (sp?) and cheering on your favorite Euro football team!
NOTE: SPAIN historically beat the Italians and have FINALLY made it to the semi-finals! This is literally more than 80 years coming! You bet I will be watcing on ESPN! Spain plays this Thursday then the finals are on Sunday.
As always, pictures are the best way to explain:
http://picasaweb.google.com/mclauerman/LondresYAlemania
After that trip I had one weekend to fine-tune everything for my new apartment, pack up my old one, say GOODBYE to my roommates and have a final night out in Sevilla! Our landlord this year has an amazing summer terrace-bar that is really awesome, right on the river. It's beautiful. It's also rather shee-shee and pricey but luckily Pablo loves us and he invited us and our freinds for a few rounds of ron y colas! It was a pretty crazy-intense weekend but I managed to get everything done and have a fun last hurrah with my roommates.
Then I headed to Malaga to family-vaycay with mi amgia Hayley and her fam from Texas. We stayed in their grandma's time-share in Marbella which is a very beautful (although totally runined by rich, British tourists) beach town. From there we headed to Granada where Hayley and I were the tour-guides since we have both been there several times now. The high-light was definatly a flamenco show which Hayley and I breifly considered skipping since we have already seen a few. We were glad we opted to go because it was really awesome. (pictures to follow later)
From Granada I caught a train back to Sevilla to do some final packing and then head HOME!!!!
First of all, I had to find an apartment for next year! This year finding housing was extremely stressful, and although it turned out well, our apartmentwas fairly expensive. Since I now have a years experience, I wanted to leave everything all set up. Following Macarena's advice, I used the somewhat archaic-seeming method of posting flyers around the neighborhoods I wanted to live in, saying that I wanted a room for rent. Much to my surprise, this worked amazingly well! Within the week a had a few good options and finally decided on one right next to the train station with 2 Spanish girl roommates. It is in a great location and the rent will be much cheaper next year. Check and check! Let's just hope my roommates what to be my best freinds for the final check.... well the one girl I met seemed really nice!
Then I was off to do some travelling! First I was off to London with mi amiga marvelosa Macarena! As I probably have mentioned before, this year Macarena has been helping me with my Spanish, taking me out with her freinds, and has just been generally awesome. SO, I thought it would be cool to go somewhere where I could be the one doing the guiding and helping. And that I did. Maca found a great guide with a little built-in itineray which we mostly followed to the letter since neither of us had been to London before. We found a moderatly priced B&B (NOTHING is "cheap" in London) that was right on one of the main tube lines, so we had the subway figured out in no time. We tubed everywhere and did a pretty good job seeing all of the sights by day and of course the pubs by night! Maca did a good job talking to locals too, crazy Brit accents and all :)
That Sunday Macarena had to head back to Sevilla for work on Monday but I had planned another leg of the trip for myself to go visit my freind Garret in Germany. My flight didn't leave until early Monday morning, so I went down to Sevenoaks to visit Lou, Mary and the girls. Eeeefs, Rosie, and Caitie are so cute it should be ILLEGAL. It was a lovely day so we played outside and had a great time. While winding down for bed time, I had both big-girls on my lap watching Finding Nemo. When I asked Rosie where the little fishies were going, she cleverly replied, in her charming gruff voice, " MAYBE THEY'RE GOING TO RONDON."
Thanks to Lou, I made it to Stansted in plenty of time and Garret met me in the airport in Stuttgart so I wouldn't have to say "No spreken duetch!". I had a great time with him and he showed me around his university, the towns around and also the bigger city of Stuttgart. I also really got into the Euro-cup! Nothing like sitting down at a bar or cafe with a truely enormous Kristal of Hefferweisen (sp?) and cheering on your favorite Euro football team!
NOTE: SPAIN historically beat the Italians and have FINALLY made it to the semi-finals! This is literally more than 80 years coming! You bet I will be watcing on ESPN! Spain plays this Thursday then the finals are on Sunday.
As always, pictures are the best way to explain:
http://picasaweb.google.com/mclauerman/LondresYAlemania
After that trip I had one weekend to fine-tune everything for my new apartment, pack up my old one, say GOODBYE to my roommates and have a final night out in Sevilla! Our landlord this year has an amazing summer terrace-bar that is really awesome, right on the river. It's beautiful. It's also rather shee-shee and pricey but luckily Pablo loves us and he invited us and our freinds for a few rounds of ron y colas! It was a pretty crazy-intense weekend but I managed to get everything done and have a fun last hurrah with my roommates.
Then I headed to Malaga to family-vaycay with mi amgia Hayley and her fam from Texas. We stayed in their grandma's time-share in Marbella which is a very beautful (although totally runined by rich, British tourists) beach town. From there we headed to Granada where Hayley and I were the tour-guides since we have both been there several times now. The high-light was definatly a flamenco show which Hayley and I breifly considered skipping since we have already seen a few. We were glad we opted to go because it was really awesome. (pictures to follow later)
From Granada I caught a train back to Sevilla to do some final packing and then head HOME!!!!
Monday, June 2, 2008
Bueno... pues nada....
These past week getting ready to leave Spain has been a rollercoaster. I have a few leads on apartments, one that I LOVE. I have also seen some horrors. I really hope one in particular works out... it is on an adorable street, it is in a PERFECT location for me AND it would be with 3 Spanish universty students ie built in conversacion practice! If that doesn't work out though I have a few other options. I have also made a freind during the apartment-hunting process. She is an English teacher as well, at another school, next to mine, in Dos Hermanas. So that is awesome.
Bump in the psychy/emotional road today... I went to the delegacion today with Noelia to look into switching schools and I was polietely told to go take a flying leap. I KNEW that this was probably gong to be the case, that I was going to have to stay in orippo,and that they probably weren't going to care. But just being confronted with the fact that I will be in Orripo, alone, and that my only other option is to forget the whole damn thing and go home was upsetting. And THEN for the lady to be like in the office to be like "tu no preocupes, si tengas una problema el curso que viene, my llamas." I literally was like "ummm..... TENGO PROBLEMAS, me lo SE come es.... estoy aqui AHORA." and that lady knew the orippo situation perfectly well.
so basically the answer was: sorry. you don't like it, GO HOME. tough shit. y esta.
SO. I don't know... I mean I have been prepping myself for exactly this, I know it is only 12 hours a week, then I will have the universty, my private classes, I have some freinds here, I can travel, I want acheive my goal and finally get fluent in spanish and I feel like if I leave now and don't do another year, I won't ever get there. Plus now there is the possibilty of this fabuluos apartment, with young fun-seeming SPANISH SPEAKING roomates... I don't want to go home. I mean I DO, NOW, but you know what I mean. It just was a slap in the face. I'm like, oh by the way, you are fucking welcome spain for teaching your underprivalged dilinquent youth. Even though I am furstrated and more than a little nervous for next year, this hasn't changed my mind. I still want to come back next year. It just SUCKS. I feel like as far as the school hours go, I am going to ALONE and it is going to SUCK and I am going to have NO support. But perhaps all of this will be worth the other 146 hours a week. I don't know. The only thing I can do it wait and see.
I went shopping on the way home... probably a mistake... and I cooled off. It is going to be what it is. I know what am getting into. I have my options and I am chosing to stay.
I feel this illustration says it all:
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
El final dia en el colegio
Today is my LAST day of school here at Orippo. I have the last hour of the day free on Wednesdays and I am still trying to wrap my brain around the fact that I don't have to come back here on Monday. I have lived in Sevilla and taught in Dos Hermanas for a full eight months. Even though I have complained about my school (and I am not really THAT sad to go) everyone has been really nice and said how much they will miss me, especially my little niños. They had a party for me yesterday and alot of them brought me presents! The girls brought a vareity of fashion pastic jewlery and one boy brought me a little angel statue. I thought none of the teachers really even knew why I was there but today la directora (who as of last month couldn't remember my name) presented me with a gift from the whole staff and proceeded to serenade me with "Porque es una chica stupenda..." Turns out Noelia got the gift of course, but hey, I'll take whatever good juju I can get.
I have learned so much this year, but I as I continue travelling and learning, the more discover how little I have seen and how much there still is to learn. Since February I have been debating the idea of renewing my teaching contract and staying here in Spain for another year. It has taken me months to decide what I want to do because both lists of pros and cons are long. (And we know how I feel about lists.)
Cons:
1. Not exactly getting the whole career/money making thing off with a bang. I make enough to get by and to travel on the weekends but I can't really save anything... or pay those pesky student loans... love you mom and dad!
2. I MISS MY FAMILY
3. I MISS MY FREINDS
4. Although this blog may suggest otherwise, living and working in another country, even one as beautiful and wonderful as Spain, is not easy. You take for granted being able to handle problems that arrive in your own native language. Try arguing with Spaniards sometime; not for the timid. Plus, one always seems to forget appropriate vocabulary when under pressure, or at least I do.
5. It gets lonely sometimes.
6. Spanish buerocracy is the horror of the universe.
7. The big one:One of the main rules for renewal is that if you want to repeat, you must repeat in the SAME CENTER. Yes, another year with the gypsies, the shit administration, mi enemigo juan anontio, the terror directora, all of it. AND, Noelia is not coming back. I have been saved this year by essentialy being her classroom aide. That way I was able to get used to the kids, they got used to me, and WOW, they actually LEARNED a few things!!! On my own however, going from class to class for an hour at a time, would not only be horrible, but also completely pointless and fruitless. I have tried a little with the 6th grade this year and the results have been nil. They are freaking animals. They literally just scream and run around the whole time. How am I supposed to teach them if they are too busy beating the crap out of each other to listen?
Pros:
1. Spain is beautiful.
2. Sevilla is beautiful and a great place to live. It's a great city and I have had a wonderful time here.
3. Although my Spanish has improved a lot, I still have a LONG way to go toward fluency. Living with Americans this year has been great for freindships and moral support, but not so good for the Spanish. It's just easier to spend time with people that understand you and make you feel comfortable. Next year I want to live with Spanish speakers AND take Spanish language classes at the University of Sevilla.
4. I have the travel bug. I have seen this year that I can make it work moneywise and I have big ideas for next year. I want to take less trips, save up and go farther. Greece. Ireland. Brussels. Prague. Rome....
5. This year I have gotten the hang of life here. The city, the people, what to expect and what not to expect. For example, something that one would THINK would take 10 minutes..... try 40. etc. The restaurant opens at 8, .... well they don't actually serve food until 9, feel free to wait though. Stores open at 5.... so they may or may not come back from seista... maybe 5, maybe 5:30, 6... The conversation of the two dudes behind the desk at the train station is MUCH more important than the train you are missing as a result.
I have learned that you can't uptight here. It's pointless. You just need to go with the flow, and accept the fact that things you want to accomplish today, may very well not happen for reasons beyond your control. But there is always tommorow.
6.I also have a few freinds Here. Well... like 2.5 really. Maybe 3.5 but hey that is a start, and way more than I had coming in this year. My freind and language partner Macarena has been an amazing help to me. She has been helping not only with Spanish vocab, but also with whatever other questions I have. Last night, she went with me putting up flyers for apartments next year (all in her neighborhood which is of course the best one). AND next week we are going to London together! I have been helping her with her English so next week she is going to get to practice a LOT and for once I can be the one to guide her through a city. Not that I know my way around London whatsoever but hey, I do know the language! Also, my very good freind Hayley Salvo is staying in Puerto, which is only an hour train ride away. We have some big plans for next year. I am also going on family vaycay with her later this month! Hooray!
7. STILL have not found the Spanish boyfreind yet!!! I do not know WHAT the problem is. Last time I was here, I literally had more novios than I knew what to do with but this time.... I just dont know! What, am I used goods at 22?!! Well, I am not having it. Next year, it's on. You know, for the language practice ;)
7. I MAY still be able to switch schools. It's actually not looking particularly good for switching lately, but, they have told me that if it is bad next year that they will switch me then. What I am saying is that it I already KNOW the situation there, and that it isn't good.... pero bueno, vamos a ver....
8. ....Basically, I'm set. I have so much left to learn and do, I'm so young, an it's just too easy paperwork-wise and just because now I am used to things, I have jobs, freinds, etc. to pass up. I feel like I have made most of the mistakes this year so I hit the ground running next year. I have 10 hours a week of tutoring already from this year, I am going to get a bike, I know where I want to live, I am going to take a class.... I'm just set. I have the rest of my life to work at the career that I will have for the rest of my life. So it basically came down to......
WHY NOT???
But don't fret too much everyone. I will be home for a full 3 months this summer, Christmas, then I will be back next june, for good. (well, you know, most likely ;*) I figure 2 years of langauge acquisition, life experience, and general enjoyment of one's youth, has got be worth waiting until age 24 to start grad school and then a career. Yeah, I think it will be just fine.
Just in case you are still not convinced.... check out my pics from this past weekend:
My favorite americans in Spain at the beach! ...what can I say.... life is GOOD!!!
http://picasaweb.google.com/mclauerman/SurfSUpDude
I will be home in just about 3 weeks!
besos,
mc
I have learned so much this year, but I as I continue travelling and learning, the more discover how little I have seen and how much there still is to learn. Since February I have been debating the idea of renewing my teaching contract and staying here in Spain for another year. It has taken me months to decide what I want to do because both lists of pros and cons are long. (And we know how I feel about lists.)
Cons:
1. Not exactly getting the whole career/money making thing off with a bang. I make enough to get by and to travel on the weekends but I can't really save anything... or pay those pesky student loans... love you mom and dad!
2. I MISS MY FAMILY
3. I MISS MY FREINDS
4. Although this blog may suggest otherwise, living and working in another country, even one as beautiful and wonderful as Spain, is not easy. You take for granted being able to handle problems that arrive in your own native language. Try arguing with Spaniards sometime; not for the timid. Plus, one always seems to forget appropriate vocabulary when under pressure, or at least I do.
5. It gets lonely sometimes.
6. Spanish buerocracy is the horror of the universe.
7. The big one:One of the main rules for renewal is that if you want to repeat, you must repeat in the SAME CENTER. Yes, another year with the gypsies, the shit administration, mi enemigo juan anontio, the terror directora, all of it. AND, Noelia is not coming back. I have been saved this year by essentialy being her classroom aide. That way I was able to get used to the kids, they got used to me, and WOW, they actually LEARNED a few things!!! On my own however, going from class to class for an hour at a time, would not only be horrible, but also completely pointless and fruitless. I have tried a little with the 6th grade this year and the results have been nil. They are freaking animals. They literally just scream and run around the whole time. How am I supposed to teach them if they are too busy beating the crap out of each other to listen?
Pros:
1. Spain is beautiful.
2. Sevilla is beautiful and a great place to live. It's a great city and I have had a wonderful time here.
3. Although my Spanish has improved a lot, I still have a LONG way to go toward fluency. Living with Americans this year has been great for freindships and moral support, but not so good for the Spanish. It's just easier to spend time with people that understand you and make you feel comfortable. Next year I want to live with Spanish speakers AND take Spanish language classes at the University of Sevilla.
4. I have the travel bug. I have seen this year that I can make it work moneywise and I have big ideas for next year. I want to take less trips, save up and go farther. Greece. Ireland. Brussels. Prague. Rome....
5. This year I have gotten the hang of life here. The city, the people, what to expect and what not to expect. For example, something that one would THINK would take 10 minutes..... try 40. etc. The restaurant opens at 8, .... well they don't actually serve food until 9, feel free to wait though. Stores open at 5.... so they may or may not come back from seista... maybe 5, maybe 5:30, 6... The conversation of the two dudes behind the desk at the train station is MUCH more important than the train you are missing as a result.
I have learned that you can't uptight here. It's pointless. You just need to go with the flow, and accept the fact that things you want to accomplish today, may very well not happen for reasons beyond your control. But there is always tommorow.
6.I also have a few freinds Here. Well... like 2.5 really. Maybe 3.5 but hey that is a start, and way more than I had coming in this year. My freind and language partner Macarena has been an amazing help to me. She has been helping not only with Spanish vocab, but also with whatever other questions I have. Last night, she went with me putting up flyers for apartments next year (all in her neighborhood which is of course the best one). AND next week we are going to London together! I have been helping her with her English so next week she is going to get to practice a LOT and for once I can be the one to guide her through a city. Not that I know my way around London whatsoever but hey, I do know the language! Also, my very good freind Hayley Salvo is staying in Puerto, which is only an hour train ride away. We have some big plans for next year. I am also going on family vaycay with her later this month! Hooray!
7. STILL have not found the Spanish boyfreind yet!!! I do not know WHAT the problem is. Last time I was here, I literally had more novios than I knew what to do with but this time.... I just dont know! What, am I used goods at 22?!! Well, I am not having it. Next year, it's on. You know, for the language practice ;)
7. I MAY still be able to switch schools. It's actually not looking particularly good for switching lately, but, they have told me that if it is bad next year that they will switch me then. What I am saying is that it I already KNOW the situation there, and that it isn't good.... pero bueno, vamos a ver....
8. ....Basically, I'm set. I have so much left to learn and do, I'm so young, an it's just too easy paperwork-wise and just because now I am used to things, I have jobs, freinds, etc. to pass up. I feel like I have made most of the mistakes this year so I hit the ground running next year. I have 10 hours a week of tutoring already from this year, I am going to get a bike, I know where I want to live, I am going to take a class.... I'm just set. I have the rest of my life to work at the career that I will have for the rest of my life. So it basically came down to......
WHY NOT???
But don't fret too much everyone. I will be home for a full 3 months this summer, Christmas, then I will be back next june, for good. (well, you know, most likely ;*) I figure 2 years of langauge acquisition, life experience, and general enjoyment of one's youth, has got be worth waiting until age 24 to start grad school and then a career. Yeah, I think it will be just fine.
Just in case you are still not convinced.... check out my pics from this past weekend:
My favorite americans in Spain at the beach! ...what can I say.... life is GOOD!!!
http://picasaweb.google.com/mclauerman/SurfSUpDude
I will be home in just about 3 weeks!
besos,
mc
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Alycia came to visit!
Hello all,
My how time flies when you are having fun! I can NOT beleive it is May already! Time flew especially fast the past two weeks because Alycia came to vist! We went out in Sevilla some, then we went to the feria in El Puerto so that Alycia could experience probably the most typical Spanish thing that there is, with the flamenca dresses, the tapas, el rebujito, dancing sevillanas and general revelry por todas partes.
Then had to come back to work, and I brought her in to meet my little gypsy darlings. Haha and she survived, although after 20 minutes we were literally running out the gate to catch the train back to Sevilla.
On Friday we caught a bus to Lagos, Portugal! It was BEAUTIFUL!!! The most gorgous beaches have ever seen. It was a wonderfully relaxing weekend. We went to the beach traquilamente, went to delicious dining establishments, we partook of the culture via the local pubs. Actually, there is nothing to be found of actual Portugese people or culture in the bars or restaurants n Lagos, since they are all filled with European tourist, mostly British, with the occasional aussie surfer thrown in. Even most of the people that work there are not locals. But we still enjoyed ourselves very much, none the less. We actaully ran into some other teachers from Sevilla there, without even planning on it, thus showing that Lagos is quite the place to be.
All in all, Alycia said that her trip was perfect because she got to do the authentic Spanish thing, but also got to go to an entirely new country. I'm good, what can I say.
As always, pictures are much better at explaining than words : http://picasaweb.google.com/mclauerman/ALYCIA
Hope all is well at home!
I will be back in SIX WEEKS! Get your party shoes on!!!
Besos,
Mary Claire
My how time flies when you are having fun! I can NOT beleive it is May already! Time flew especially fast the past two weeks because Alycia came to vist! We went out in Sevilla some, then we went to the feria in El Puerto so that Alycia could experience probably the most typical Spanish thing that there is, with the flamenca dresses, the tapas, el rebujito, dancing sevillanas and general revelry por todas partes.
Then had to come back to work, and I brought her in to meet my little gypsy darlings. Haha and she survived, although after 20 minutes we were literally running out the gate to catch the train back to Sevilla.
On Friday we caught a bus to Lagos, Portugal! It was BEAUTIFUL!!! The most gorgous beaches have ever seen. It was a wonderfully relaxing weekend. We went to the beach traquilamente, went to delicious dining establishments, we partook of the culture via the local pubs. Actually, there is nothing to be found of actual Portugese people or culture in the bars or restaurants n Lagos, since they are all filled with European tourist, mostly British, with the occasional aussie surfer thrown in. Even most of the people that work there are not locals. But we still enjoyed ourselves very much, none the less. We actaully ran into some other teachers from Sevilla there, without even planning on it, thus showing that Lagos is quite the place to be.
All in all, Alycia said that her trip was perfect because she got to do the authentic Spanish thing, but also got to go to an entirely new country. I'm good, what can I say.
As always, pictures are much better at explaining than words : http://picasaweb.google.com/mclauerman/ALYCIA
Hope all is well at home!
I will be back in SIX WEEKS! Get your party shoes on!!!
Besos,
Mary Claire
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Feria and since...
Ok, finally, here are my pictures from Feria:
http://picasaweb.google.com/mclauerman/FeriaDeAbril
Not entirely my fault, my computer screen recently decided to die, so I have been using maggie's computer.. don't know if I will have time to fix mine before it is time to come home... oh yeah! I am coming home slightly earlier than expected for the summer, JUNE 21st! basically because I am going to travel to london and germany early in the month and after that I will be out of money with nothing to do adn no one to do it with. soooo I figured rather than chilling in my apartment in Sevilla (which will be unbearably hot by then) why not just hang out at home?!!
ANYway, feria, as you can see from the pictures, was pretty sweet. Sevilla has the biggest and most famous feria in the south of Spain so it was pretty cool that we got to go. The only problem for most extranjeros, or anyone who hasn't been in Sevilla very long, is that most of the casetas (party tents that make up most of the feria) are private, so you need to know someone to get in. There are a few public ones but they are, of course, crowded. Luckily, we are super cool and popular so we always had somewhere to go. AND, we are SO cool and important that in one of our freind's casetas we met the President of Andalucia!!! NEEEEAT!!! iIt would be like if you randomly met Aaaarnold downtown.... uhhh sweet!! He happens to be a mutual freind's uncle.... yeah.... we are kind of a big deal. I don't have the picture yet because it is on someone else's camera but when I do I will post it here!
Since then I have mostly just been working, it rained through feria and has been kind of yucky sincethen but this week it has started to clear up. Just in time, because my old 'pareja en crimen' Alycia will be arriving at the train station in just a few hours!!! This weekend we are going to go see a smaller feria in El Puerto de Santa Maria and stay at Hayley's. So, I will have to lend Alycia some of my feria gear: big earrings, flower to match the outfit, etc. Then I am planning on bringing her into school one day so someone from my life will get to see what my little gypsies are really like! After that is another puente (they do love thier long weekends here, God bless Spain) and we are going to Lagos, Portugal! It is only a short 4 hour bus ride away, I am excited!
After that there will only be one short month left of school, I can not beleive it!
Home all is well with everyone,
MC
http://picasaweb.google.com/mclauerman/FeriaDeAbril
Not entirely my fault, my computer screen recently decided to die, so I have been using maggie's computer.. don't know if I will have time to fix mine before it is time to come home... oh yeah! I am coming home slightly earlier than expected for the summer, JUNE 21st! basically because I am going to travel to london and germany early in the month and after that I will be out of money with nothing to do adn no one to do it with. soooo I figured rather than chilling in my apartment in Sevilla (which will be unbearably hot by then) why not just hang out at home?!!
ANYway, feria, as you can see from the pictures, was pretty sweet. Sevilla has the biggest and most famous feria in the south of Spain so it was pretty cool that we got to go. The only problem for most extranjeros, or anyone who hasn't been in Sevilla very long, is that most of the casetas (party tents that make up most of the feria) are private, so you need to know someone to get in. There are a few public ones but they are, of course, crowded. Luckily, we are super cool and popular so we always had somewhere to go. AND, we are SO cool and important that in one of our freind's casetas we met the President of Andalucia!!! NEEEEAT!!! iIt would be like if you randomly met Aaaarnold downtown.... uhhh sweet!! He happens to be a mutual freind's uncle.... yeah.... we are kind of a big deal. I don't have the picture yet because it is on someone else's camera but when I do I will post it here!
Since then I have mostly just been working, it rained through feria and has been kind of yucky sincethen but this week it has started to clear up. Just in time, because my old 'pareja en crimen' Alycia will be arriving at the train station in just a few hours!!! This weekend we are going to go see a smaller feria in El Puerto de Santa Maria and stay at Hayley's. So, I will have to lend Alycia some of my feria gear: big earrings, flower to match the outfit, etc. Then I am planning on bringing her into school one day so someone from my life will get to see what my little gypsies are really like! After that is another puente (they do love thier long weekends here, God bless Spain) and we are going to Lagos, Portugal! It is only a short 4 hour bus ride away, I am excited!
After that there will only be one short month left of school, I can not beleive it!
Home all is well with everyone,
MC
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
We went to Barcelona... and now its Feria!
hey hey,
I have been slacking with the blogs!
OK to sum up Barcelona:
I had been there before but neither of my roommates had so we did the must see touristy places, most having something to do with Gaudi. We went to the Scrada Familia which wascool because when I went 2 years ago I only saw the outside.The we went to see some of Gaudi's buildings and went inside La Casa Mila which was also very cool. Gaudi has a kind of Dr. Seuss style which I dig. WE stayed in a rather crappy hostel but it had a really cool location, right in El Barrio Gotico. Lots of cool shops and tapas places. Like Granada, Barcelona has a cool, hippy vibe but it is also very modern. It also feels like you have gone to a totally different country since the regional language is Catalan, not Spanish. We also stopped by the Picasso museum and of course we went to the Parque Guell.
Pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/mclauerman/Barcelona
Now were are in the week of Feria here in Sevilla. Feria, which literally means "fair", is NOT a couple of cow stables, a hot dog eating contest and a Ferris wheel Although there is a wheel there somewhere, Feria is mosly made up of tents where people have parties all week along. A lot of them are private parties but others are basically bars that people can go in, dance, drink manzanilla (a strong wine tpical of the region), eat tapas and repeat.
Last night I went over to out friend Mati's house to celebrate the "alumbrado" or turning on of the lights which signifies the official start of Feria. We ate the traditional fried fish and drank manzanilla of course and then marched over to the Feria to watch them switch on all the lights at midnight. Once the lights were turned on everyone cheered and kissed each other, just like new years. We went in for a little and managed to get away by 2am, pretty good for a school night. Getting up at seven was rough this morning though, I must admit. I have to work one more day this week, even though my lucky roommates who teach in Sevilla proper do not! I was supposed to go to the Feria today but since it was POURING RAIN plans got canceled for today. It is supposed to keep raining all week long. The sevillanos say it never fails, it always rains during Feria. You couldn't really tell last night, the rain did not stop anyone from coming out, it was FULL of people, all dresses to the nines of course. I am definitely going either tomorrow or Thursday though, rain or shine!
Hasta Luego,
MC
I have been slacking with the blogs!
OK to sum up Barcelona:
I had been there before but neither of my roommates had so we did the must see touristy places, most having something to do with Gaudi. We went to the Scrada Familia which wascool because when I went 2 years ago I only saw the outside.The we went to see some of Gaudi's buildings and went inside La Casa Mila which was also very cool. Gaudi has a kind of Dr. Seuss style which I dig. WE stayed in a rather crappy hostel but it had a really cool location, right in El Barrio Gotico. Lots of cool shops and tapas places. Like Granada, Barcelona has a cool, hippy vibe but it is also very modern. It also feels like you have gone to a totally different country since the regional language is Catalan, not Spanish. We also stopped by the Picasso museum and of course we went to the Parque Guell.
Pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/mclauerman/Barcelona
Now were are in the week of Feria here in Sevilla. Feria, which literally means "fair", is NOT a couple of cow stables, a hot dog eating contest and a Ferris wheel Although there is a wheel there somewhere, Feria is mosly made up of tents where people have parties all week along. A lot of them are private parties but others are basically bars that people can go in, dance, drink manzanilla (a strong wine tpical of the region), eat tapas and repeat.
Last night I went over to out friend Mati's house to celebrate the "alumbrado" or turning on of the lights which signifies the official start of Feria. We ate the traditional fried fish and drank manzanilla of course and then marched over to the Feria to watch them switch on all the lights at midnight. Once the lights were turned on everyone cheered and kissed each other, just like new years. We went in for a little and managed to get away by 2am, pretty good for a school night. Getting up at seven was rough this morning though, I must admit. I have to work one more day this week, even though my lucky roommates who teach in Sevilla proper do not! I was supposed to go to the Feria today but since it was POURING RAIN plans got canceled for today. It is supposed to keep raining all week long. The sevillanos say it never fails, it always rains during Feria. You couldn't really tell last night, the rain did not stop anyone from coming out, it was FULL of people, all dresses to the nines of course. I am definitely going either tomorrow or Thursday though, rain or shine!
Hasta Luego,
MC
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Semana Santa was 2 weeks ago... and it was awesome
Some of you still may have spring break, some have may have already (or long since) delved into the work world which does not cordially provide a week-long hiatus, but as for me, working as a teacher does have its perks! Yes, even though I have graduated from 17 years of organized schooling I still got to enjoy a spring break, although not like any I have had before. In spain it is not called ´spring break´of course, but, it being a dominantly catholic country, ´Semana Santa´, or Holy Week. In Sevilla especially, it is a very big to do.
The week before easter is actaully a bigger event than easter itself. All week long different churches around the city process with relgious ´floats´if you will, depicting different scenes of the passion of christ. And, if the church organization is really fancy, the have the jesus float AND a virgin mary one too. I went out to see many of these porcessions on Palm Sunday which was the most important day and it was quite impressive and unlike anything else I have ever seen. Luckily, my roommate Jennifer went with our native sevilla freind Mati, who has attended around 30 Semana Santa´s in sevilla, and she was more than happy to tell us all of the relative information and history of every procession that we saw. She also knew where to stand and how to get all of the best camera angels. Pays to know people. Monday we all went out with Mati again and hit some of the most popular processions, which meant TONS of people, stacked like sardins, waiting for an hour to watch a Jesús y la Virgín pass by. It was an experience.
By Tuesday I felt that I had absorbed a great deal of culture and history and felt it was time to do as many of the Sevillanos do and get the heck out of town to escape the literally thundering hoards of people that come in to see Semana Santa in Sevilla. So, I caught a bus down to Barbate in Cadiz to see my dear amiga Julia. We had big plans for going to the beach and surfing since she has an AMAZINGLY situated apartment, right on the beach with an amazing veiw. (She can SEE africa from her balcony. no joke.) I arrived late Tuesday afternoon, we can a cerveza byt he beach, some delicious tapas and observed the beach. Unfortunatly, by Wednesday mroning the weather had changed and it RAINED for the remainder of our beach weekend. sigh. we managed to entertain ourselves but we were getting a little stir crazy by the end.
Saturday Julia and Hayley came back up with me to Sevilla to attend Lydia´s going-away party as she had to back to Germany last week, sad!!! We will miss Lydia :(
As usual, photos are better at explaining than words, so here you go:
http://picasaweb.google.es/mclauerman/MiSemanaSanta
Take care!
Beso,
mary claire
The week before easter is actaully a bigger event than easter itself. All week long different churches around the city process with relgious ´floats´if you will, depicting different scenes of the passion of christ. And, if the church organization is really fancy, the have the jesus float AND a virgin mary one too. I went out to see many of these porcessions on Palm Sunday which was the most important day and it was quite impressive and unlike anything else I have ever seen. Luckily, my roommate Jennifer went with our native sevilla freind Mati, who has attended around 30 Semana Santa´s in sevilla, and she was more than happy to tell us all of the relative information and history of every procession that we saw. She also knew where to stand and how to get all of the best camera angels. Pays to know people. Monday we all went out with Mati again and hit some of the most popular processions, which meant TONS of people, stacked like sardins, waiting for an hour to watch a Jesús y la Virgín pass by. It was an experience.
By Tuesday I felt that I had absorbed a great deal of culture and history and felt it was time to do as many of the Sevillanos do and get the heck out of town to escape the literally thundering hoards of people that come in to see Semana Santa in Sevilla. So, I caught a bus down to Barbate in Cadiz to see my dear amiga Julia. We had big plans for going to the beach and surfing since she has an AMAZINGLY situated apartment, right on the beach with an amazing veiw. (She can SEE africa from her balcony. no joke.) I arrived late Tuesday afternoon, we can a cerveza byt he beach, some delicious tapas and observed the beach. Unfortunatly, by Wednesday mroning the weather had changed and it RAINED for the remainder of our beach weekend. sigh. we managed to entertain ourselves but we were getting a little stir crazy by the end.
Saturday Julia and Hayley came back up with me to Sevilla to attend Lydia´s going-away party as she had to back to Germany last week, sad!!! We will miss Lydia :(
As usual, photos are better at explaining than words, so here you go:
http://picasaweb.google.es/mclauerman/MiSemanaSanta
Take care!
Beso,
mary claire
Monday, March 17, 2008
England and since
Well I am sitting here with my cafe con leche and my torilla having breakfast, its 9:00am and I do not not technically need to be up this early. MY GOD WHY you ask? Because today I have to delve into the horrific world of (dun dun) Spanish buerocracy!! Yeah I have to run around town to collect some paperwork, and already there is a delay. SO, why not take this opportunity to catch on the bloggings...
England
On March 6th I actually boarded a flight and affectually flew from Sevilla to Gatwick airport, a grand sucess. (I now approve on the use of ClicAir airlines if anyone was looking for recommendations and/or my permission.) I had a lovely weekend relaxing and visiting with my family! Since I had basically been working since I got back from Morocco and then essentially boarded a plan to England, I was very tired so relaxing in Sevenoakes was a lovely change of pace. Papa made sure there were locally brewed ales in the house for me to try I had a great time catching up with Nana, Papa Lou and Mary. I also had the great pleasure of meeting Caitlin and visiting with her predocessors Rosie and missus Eeeefs! I even had the pleasure of witnessing a magicalfairyprincess dance performance, of which I have pics:
http://picasaweb.google.com/mclauerman/Primas
Nana and Papa showed me around the town and on the way back from a Pub visit with Papa I also got a cornish pasty; one mission accomplished! With all of the visiting and relaxing I didn't have a chance to take the train into Lodon but I think I may do that in June when I will basically be hanging around Europe with no idea what to do with myself. I am sure I will figure something out.
Since...
Today's date being March 17th, it is St. Patrick's Day! One of my favorite days at home, we are going to try to remember it here. Should be interesting though, since we are in the midst of Sevilla's famous Semana Santa, or Holy Week. I went out and saw several of the "pasos" yesterday which are tradtional relagious processions from individual churches in town that process to the cathedral and back again. Yesterday's Palm Sunday performance was very impressive. It relaly is like nothing else you have ever seen before. Today we will surely see some more, because to go anywhere in Sevilla during Semana Santa is to see pasos and to be surrounded by TONS of people because people come in from all around to see it. Today we will be of course immersing ourselves in Spanish culture but also remembering a bit of our own with St. Patty's. Basically we are going to stop in for a Guiness between pasos. I think that's more than fair.
During Semana Santa, the truely typcial Sevillano (or person that lives in Sevilla) thing to do is to take a vacation and get the heck out of town before all of the droves of people get in. So, after a few days of pasos I an going to take their example and head down to my friend Julia's place in Barbate, which happens o be right on the beach! It is spring break, after all.
I got a lot of really awesome pictures yesterday and I am sure I will get more today and I will post those soon!
Take care everone and HAPPY EASTER!!!
<3,
mc
England
On March 6th I actually boarded a flight and affectually flew from Sevilla to Gatwick airport, a grand sucess. (I now approve on the use of ClicAir airlines if anyone was looking for recommendations and/or my permission.) I had a lovely weekend relaxing and visiting with my family! Since I had basically been working since I got back from Morocco and then essentially boarded a plan to England, I was very tired so relaxing in Sevenoakes was a lovely change of pace. Papa made sure there were locally brewed ales in the house for me to try I had a great time catching up with Nana, Papa Lou and Mary. I also had the great pleasure of meeting Caitlin and visiting with her predocessors Rosie and missus Eeeefs! I even had the pleasure of witnessing a magicalfairyprincess dance performance, of which I have pics:
http://picasaweb.google.com/mclauerman/Primas
Nana and Papa showed me around the town and on the way back from a Pub visit with Papa I also got a cornish pasty; one mission accomplished! With all of the visiting and relaxing I didn't have a chance to take the train into Lodon but I think I may do that in June when I will basically be hanging around Europe with no idea what to do with myself. I am sure I will figure something out.
Since...
Today's date being March 17th, it is St. Patrick's Day! One of my favorite days at home, we are going to try to remember it here. Should be interesting though, since we are in the midst of Sevilla's famous Semana Santa, or Holy Week. I went out and saw several of the "pasos" yesterday which are tradtional relagious processions from individual churches in town that process to the cathedral and back again. Yesterday's Palm Sunday performance was very impressive. It relaly is like nothing else you have ever seen before. Today we will surely see some more, because to go anywhere in Sevilla during Semana Santa is to see pasos and to be surrounded by TONS of people because people come in from all around to see it. Today we will be of course immersing ourselves in Spanish culture but also remembering a bit of our own with St. Patty's. Basically we are going to stop in for a Guiness between pasos. I think that's more than fair.
During Semana Santa, the truely typcial Sevillano (or person that lives in Sevilla) thing to do is to take a vacation and get the heck out of town before all of the droves of people get in. So, after a few days of pasos I an going to take their example and head down to my friend Julia's place in Barbate, which happens o be right on the beach! It is spring break, after all.
I got a lot of really awesome pictures yesterday and I am sure I will get more today and I will post those soon!
Take care everone and HAPPY EASTER!!!
<3,
mc
Thursday, March 13, 2008
The Morocco post (events of Fabruary 28-March 2)
*I have been quite a busy lady for the past 2-3 weeks, so, as a result, I am quite behind with my bloggings! I am going to break it up by major events, so don't be confused by conflicting dates. Today ( March 13th, the actaul date) is by first day of "spring break" or Semana Santa as they call it here. But I will update on more current events in a later post, as to stay in cronological order.*
Morocco
We set out to explore a new continent on Thursday and althought Morocco is a relative hopskip from Spain, it was still a pretty long journey. First we (my roommates Maggie and Jennifer, Lydia and myself) caught about a 3 hour bus from Sevilla to Algeciras and met up with our other travel companions to catch the 1 hour fast ferry to Tangier, Morocco.
Now let's pause for a moment to talk about preconceptions. Pretty much everyone we talked to warned us about the dangers of Morocco and told to keep our wits about us, make sure to use the buddy system, not to go out at night, etc. We were also told that between Spanish and English, we should have been able to communicate with everyone there. The latter statement turned out to be highly untrue (the population of Morocco mostly speaking Arabic and the only Western European language being French... by the way which none of us speak), so between these two factors we were a little jumpy when we first arrived. For example: After we discovered that we would not be able to lock our bags and would thus have to lug them around all day thus making us stick our even more as stupid tourists, we decided to take the proverbial bull by the horns and take a taxi to some point in the city that our tiny guidebook said was sightworthy and go explore. Six of us piled into one taxi (they do not seem to be very uptight about seatbelts in Morocco) and we pointed on our map(our driver only knew french) to the written out place where we wanted to go. Now in HINDSIGHT we were very unnecissarily silly... but as the taxi approached a dark, narrow ally, with no tourists in sight and children started jumping on the trunk of the car (which didnt close, they could have snatched our bags) and then the alley ended in a dead end with a huge pile or particularly jagged looking rocks... and as the taxi pulled up there were about 20 men outside staring at us... we basically freaked out. Now, the poor taxi guy- he took us exactly where we said we wanted to go, we only had to walk around and there was an opening to the beach where we wanted to go to take scenic pictures. But, in that moment of panic, we lost sight of calm reasoning. I think it was Lydia, who only knew a few words of French that took charge of telling the man to keep driving and that our journey would NOT be ending in a dead end ally with a huge pile of rocks. We all started making motions wanting to go to a restaurant to eat something (ie somewhere populated where no one could stone us to death). Finally we found the common word sandwich, and we all started desperatly saying "WEI, WEI, SAN-WISH!!!!!" He was very confused but indulged us and took us to hi sfavorite sandwich shop, all the way back in the center of town. We all payed him double what we orginally agreed on and practically fell into this sandwich place.
There, in our sandwich haven, we took a deep breath collected ourselves, and laughed at how silly we had been. From that point on, half of the group decided to relax in the train station with the bags and Lydia, Hayley and I decided to explore Tangier a little bit. We found the market, which was very cool. Hayley flexed haggling muscles and bought herself a carpet!!! I was so proud, for the rest of the weekend she was our haggling, ball-bustin secret weapon. At 9pm it was time to board the night train for Marakesh! I had never taken a sleeper train before, it was fun! There are these teeny rooms with 2 bunk beds each. there were six of us so we split up 3 and 3 and in our little cabin we had an interesting character. She was an Irish artist that decided to move to a town ourside Marakesh to inspire her painting. She calmed alot of our nerves about Morocco and laughed at our taxi story. She said that it was actaully much safer in Morocco then in a lot of places in the US or in Europe. I always seem to be the one that the crazies like to keep talking to (haha, christ, what does that say about me...) and let's just say by the time that I pretended to have fallen asleep so she would stop talking I figured it was best to take any of her advice with a grain of salt.
We arrived in Marakesh about 8am, and set out to finish of riad (hostal). This proved to be a little challenging, considering our cabbie kinda knew where it was sort of, but not exactly. We found it, even though it was labeled as a restuarant and not as a hotel. A genius undercover operative, Jennifer pointed out. By the afternoon we all all figured out the showers and were ready to see the sights of Marakesh. Let's note here that Lydia picked up two stray Germans on the way that were having some bad luck (ie didn't plan ahead ie didnt book anywhere to stay... how very un-german of them) and luckily for them, even though our hostal was technically our place was booked, they let them stay on a few couches. So then there were 8 of us. The Americans decided to go check out the Souks market (proportedly the largest market in all of Africa) and the Germans took a bus tour. The market was really cool, complete with snake charmers, carpet sellers, spices, pick-pockets, aladdin-style shoes and pants... the wonders went on and on. That night we decided to error on the side of caution and went to eat at a place right next to our hostal (which was REALLY nice, a little out of our bidget but we figured what the hell) and then hung out on the rooftop terrace of our riad for the remainder of the evening.
The next day we went on a excursion outside of town which was SO AWESOME. Hayley signed us up and the deal was 45 euro for an all day trip which included a camel ride, a trip to a typica-berber (a nomadic people, or which many have settled outside of marakesh and still live in a very tradictional way) house, a hike up the atlas mountains to see waterfalls, and lunch. The drive itself was made it worht it, the scenery was amazing. I think the best way to describe this day is just to show the pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/mclauerman/Morocco
Basically after than we started out long journey back to Sevilla.
Ok, I will continue blogging later!
beso,
mc
Morocco
We set out to explore a new continent on Thursday and althought Morocco is a relative hopskip from Spain, it was still a pretty long journey. First we (my roommates Maggie and Jennifer, Lydia and myself) caught about a 3 hour bus from Sevilla to Algeciras and met up with our other travel companions to catch the 1 hour fast ferry to Tangier, Morocco.
Now let's pause for a moment to talk about preconceptions. Pretty much everyone we talked to warned us about the dangers of Morocco and told to keep our wits about us, make sure to use the buddy system, not to go out at night, etc. We were also told that between Spanish and English, we should have been able to communicate with everyone there. The latter statement turned out to be highly untrue (the population of Morocco mostly speaking Arabic and the only Western European language being French... by the way which none of us speak), so between these two factors we were a little jumpy when we first arrived. For example: After we discovered that we would not be able to lock our bags and would thus have to lug them around all day thus making us stick our even more as stupid tourists, we decided to take the proverbial bull by the horns and take a taxi to some point in the city that our tiny guidebook said was sightworthy and go explore. Six of us piled into one taxi (they do not seem to be very uptight about seatbelts in Morocco) and we pointed on our map(our driver only knew french) to the written out place where we wanted to go. Now in HINDSIGHT we were very unnecissarily silly... but as the taxi approached a dark, narrow ally, with no tourists in sight and children started jumping on the trunk of the car (which didnt close, they could have snatched our bags) and then the alley ended in a dead end with a huge pile or particularly jagged looking rocks... and as the taxi pulled up there were about 20 men outside staring at us... we basically freaked out. Now, the poor taxi guy- he took us exactly where we said we wanted to go, we only had to walk around and there was an opening to the beach where we wanted to go to take scenic pictures. But, in that moment of panic, we lost sight of calm reasoning. I think it was Lydia, who only knew a few words of French that took charge of telling the man to keep driving and that our journey would NOT be ending in a dead end ally with a huge pile of rocks. We all started making motions wanting to go to a restaurant to eat something (ie somewhere populated where no one could stone us to death). Finally we found the common word sandwich, and we all started desperatly saying "WEI, WEI, SAN-WISH!!!!!" He was very confused but indulged us and took us to hi sfavorite sandwich shop, all the way back in the center of town. We all payed him double what we orginally agreed on and practically fell into this sandwich place.
There, in our sandwich haven, we took a deep breath collected ourselves, and laughed at how silly we had been. From that point on, half of the group decided to relax in the train station with the bags and Lydia, Hayley and I decided to explore Tangier a little bit. We found the market, which was very cool. Hayley flexed haggling muscles and bought herself a carpet!!! I was so proud, for the rest of the weekend she was our haggling, ball-bustin secret weapon. At 9pm it was time to board the night train for Marakesh! I had never taken a sleeper train before, it was fun! There are these teeny rooms with 2 bunk beds each. there were six of us so we split up 3 and 3 and in our little cabin we had an interesting character. She was an Irish artist that decided to move to a town ourside Marakesh to inspire her painting. She calmed alot of our nerves about Morocco and laughed at our taxi story. She said that it was actaully much safer in Morocco then in a lot of places in the US or in Europe. I always seem to be the one that the crazies like to keep talking to (haha, christ, what does that say about me...) and let's just say by the time that I pretended to have fallen asleep so she would stop talking I figured it was best to take any of her advice with a grain of salt.
We arrived in Marakesh about 8am, and set out to finish of riad (hostal). This proved to be a little challenging, considering our cabbie kinda knew where it was sort of, but not exactly. We found it, even though it was labeled as a restuarant and not as a hotel. A genius undercover operative, Jennifer pointed out. By the afternoon we all all figured out the showers and were ready to see the sights of Marakesh. Let's note here that Lydia picked up two stray Germans on the way that were having some bad luck (ie didn't plan ahead ie didnt book anywhere to stay... how very un-german of them) and luckily for them, even though our hostal was technically our place was booked, they let them stay on a few couches. So then there were 8 of us. The Americans decided to go check out the Souks market (proportedly the largest market in all of Africa) and the Germans took a bus tour. The market was really cool, complete with snake charmers, carpet sellers, spices, pick-pockets, aladdin-style shoes and pants... the wonders went on and on. That night we decided to error on the side of caution and went to eat at a place right next to our hostal (which was REALLY nice, a little out of our bidget but we figured what the hell) and then hung out on the rooftop terrace of our riad for the remainder of the evening.
The next day we went on a excursion outside of town which was SO AWESOME. Hayley signed us up and the deal was 45 euro for an all day trip which included a camel ride, a trip to a typica-berber (a nomadic people, or which many have settled outside of marakesh and still live in a very tradictional way) house, a hike up the atlas mountains to see waterfalls, and lunch. The drive itself was made it worht it, the scenery was amazing. I think the best way to describe this day is just to show the pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/mclauerman/Morocco
Basically after than we started out long journey back to Sevilla.
Ok, I will continue blogging later!
beso,
mc
Thursday, February 21, 2008
NEVER FLY RYAN AIR .... and other news
Hello all,
Let's see in the last week and a half or so... I worked Mon-Wed as usually then last Thursday the plan was to go visit my Uncle Lou and his family outside London, and also my grandparents who are there now visiting them. Well, that didn't happen , because I foolishly booked with Ryan Air. Friends, do yourselves a favor and NEVER fly (or I should say, buy tickets with...) Ryan Air. I don't feel like telling the story in great detail again but basically here is what happened: Maggie and I booked online with ryan air and decided to do "online check-in" (since they charge you money to check-in at the desk for your flight...) and it said that do do online check-in one would need a european government issued identity card. we have cards that identify us, given to us directly by the spanish government. we put in our information, it cleared, we were allowed to print our boarding passes. so we thought we were set. but no, but government issued identity cards, that meant we had to be european CITIZENS to check-in online.... they failed to mention that little detail soooo.... maggie and we very rudely REFUSED to be allowed onto our flight for which we paid and checked-in.... because... as the ryan air lady screamed at us after we had been ripped off: "YOU ARE NOT SPANISH!!!!"... yes, thank you, mi corazon, i actually realized that on my own. i asked for customer service, i asked for a manager... these are are things that only exist in the US, appearently.
moral of the story: Ryan Air are lying liars that tell lies. They steal your money, and they do not feel bad about it. In fact, they are incredibly rude about it.
So anyway, after I called Uncle Lou and told him my sob (wah, literally) story Maggie and I concluded that the only way to really make those bastards at the airport sorry was to go out and get drunk. THAT would teach 'em.... haha well, we did forget our sorrows for a while! I met up with my intercambio Macarena and her friends from work and I told my story in Spanish with perfect usage and accent of every Spanish palabrota (bad word) that i know and Macarena was very proud of her new little Andaluza. The next day the only people really sorry about what happened to us was us.... big surprise.
Saturday, since we were in town, we were able to go to a Matanza (which literally means killing or massacre) put on by my our organization. Don't worry, they just killed two huge pigs, and it was their time anyway. We were invited to watch the slaughter, but I opted to walk down to the town to find a cafe con leche instead. The Matanza was at a huge country home of the big boss of our program who is an american lady that has been living her in spain for about 20 years now with her spanish husband. they built this huge house out in the country that they someday want to turn into a hotel. now though, it is just a huge place well suited for having about 150 people over for lunch. An afternoon of really good free food and drink and a chance to catch up with a lot of our fellow teachers that we hadn't seen in a while took a little of the sting of our stolen weekend. That night I met up with Macarena and a different group of her freinds and had a great time. They also wanted to make sure that I was well equipped for any argument i might have in spain, so the latter portion of the evening was spent translating various foul andalucian phrases literally into english. oh, fun with language. one thing about these andalusians... they are creative!! The next day we had planned to go to the beach but since I had been out with spaniards and therefore didn't get home until 6am, that was fine with me.
This week we wrote a very strongly worded letter to Ryan Air demanding a refund. We got a response very quickly. It basically said: Too bad. So, my only alternative is slander. I intend to send out quite a few emails warning my fellow participants here not to use Ryan Air.
This weekend we are planning on taking it easy because in March we intend to travel alot! Morocco, London (hopefully for real this time...) Semana Santa here in Seville, Barcelona... I shall update of course.
Take care!
Beso,
MC
Let's see in the last week and a half or so... I worked Mon-Wed as usually then last Thursday the plan was to go visit my Uncle Lou and his family outside London, and also my grandparents who are there now visiting them. Well, that didn't happen , because I foolishly booked with Ryan Air. Friends, do yourselves a favor and NEVER fly (or I should say, buy tickets with...) Ryan Air. I don't feel like telling the story in great detail again but basically here is what happened: Maggie and I booked online with ryan air and decided to do "online check-in" (since they charge you money to check-in at the desk for your flight...) and it said that do do online check-in one would need a european government issued identity card. we have cards that identify us, given to us directly by the spanish government. we put in our information, it cleared, we were allowed to print our boarding passes. so we thought we were set. but no, but government issued identity cards, that meant we had to be european CITIZENS to check-in online.... they failed to mention that little detail soooo.... maggie and we very rudely REFUSED to be allowed onto our flight for which we paid and checked-in.... because... as the ryan air lady screamed at us after we had been ripped off: "YOU ARE NOT SPANISH!!!!"... yes, thank you, mi corazon, i actually realized that on my own. i asked for customer service, i asked for a manager... these are are things that only exist in the US, appearently.
moral of the story: Ryan Air are lying liars that tell lies. They steal your money, and they do not feel bad about it. In fact, they are incredibly rude about it.
So anyway, after I called Uncle Lou and told him my sob (wah, literally) story Maggie and I concluded that the only way to really make those bastards at the airport sorry was to go out and get drunk. THAT would teach 'em.... haha well, we did forget our sorrows for a while! I met up with my intercambio Macarena and her friends from work and I told my story in Spanish with perfect usage and accent of every Spanish palabrota (bad word) that i know and Macarena was very proud of her new little Andaluza. The next day the only people really sorry about what happened to us was us.... big surprise.
Saturday, since we were in town, we were able to go to a Matanza (which literally means killing or massacre) put on by my our organization. Don't worry, they just killed two huge pigs, and it was their time anyway. We were invited to watch the slaughter, but I opted to walk down to the town to find a cafe con leche instead. The Matanza was at a huge country home of the big boss of our program who is an american lady that has been living her in spain for about 20 years now with her spanish husband. they built this huge house out in the country that they someday want to turn into a hotel. now though, it is just a huge place well suited for having about 150 people over for lunch. An afternoon of really good free food and drink and a chance to catch up with a lot of our fellow teachers that we hadn't seen in a while took a little of the sting of our stolen weekend. That night I met up with Macarena and a different group of her freinds and had a great time. They also wanted to make sure that I was well equipped for any argument i might have in spain, so the latter portion of the evening was spent translating various foul andalucian phrases literally into english. oh, fun with language. one thing about these andalusians... they are creative!! The next day we had planned to go to the beach but since I had been out with spaniards and therefore didn't get home until 6am, that was fine with me.
This week we wrote a very strongly worded letter to Ryan Air demanding a refund. We got a response very quickly. It basically said: Too bad. So, my only alternative is slander. I intend to send out quite a few emails warning my fellow participants here not to use Ryan Air.
This weekend we are planning on taking it easy because in March we intend to travel alot! Morocco, London (hopefully for real this time...) Semana Santa here in Seville, Barcelona... I shall update of course.
Take care!
Beso,
MC
Thursday, February 7, 2008
A brief peek at carnaval in Cadiz
This past weekend we went down to check out the week long madri-gras-esque celebration of Carnaval in Cadiz. Cadiz appearently has the biggest and the best celebration in Andalucia, thus the logical place to go. There was some confusion as to when would be the best time for us to go and after getting advice from many different spanish sources we ended up going sunday afternoon because that was the best day to go see the "cultural stuff". (My intercambio Macarena had recommended that we go instead on Saturday night because that is when all the young people go out dresses up and party until the next morning, but this particular weekend calmer heads prevailed. haha i know, booo...)
Sunday evidently was the more family-orientated day of carnaval, as we were surrounded by so many adorable little babies in costume! (Mags managed to get a few pictures of the more adorable ones, they are linked to my picassa!) More family-oriented day, does in no way mean that partying of the grown-ups really stops. There was evidence everywhere that the partiers from the night before had done the event proud, and many of them at 2pm were crawling off to bed to rest for a few hours before doing it all again, but many were still going strong! Sundays main even was "Los coros", or choruses that compete before carnaval in a big 'theatrical espectacular'. The winners get to ride on floats pulled by tractors and sing their songs for the crowd. I was thinking alot about my dad watching the coros because although i did not understand all of the words, the coros basically sing very silly songs with light-hearted and low brow humor. Certian gestures were frequent and children and grandmas sang right along to silly songs about the follies of the town-idiot and this encounter with the town whore. All around good family fun. There was one group of old people in particular, i would say well into their 70s,about 10 of them, stinking DRUNK by 3pm, in these incredible matching go-go dancer costumes, singing, clapping and marching toward the festivities in a congo line. now THAT is the way to age.
We unfortunately did not have time to stay for the big parade and fireworks that night because they weren't until late and we needed to make the last train back to seville for work the next day, boo. on the train though, sitting righr behind us was a group of coro singers (all quite inebriated) who proceeded to sing all of their songs to the whole car. One of the pre-recs for being a member of a coro is you have to be a HUGE HAM so needless to say, they were QUITE amusing and we had literally a front-row seat. Mags has some video , which I will try to post here!
Here are some pics from Carnaval:
http://picasaweb.google.com/mclauerman/CarnavalCadiz
It is now Thursday, almost the weekend again! My weeks fly by now because of all of my classes I am pretty busy! I have also been trying to not get sick because nearly all of my fellow teachers are. I was thinking about going down to Cadiz again for another round of carnaval but I think my sinuses may prevent me from doing so.
also big news: JENNIFER GETS BACK TOMORROW!!! hooooray!
haha and because of that fact... we need to clean up the apartment!
hope everyone is well at home.
beso,
mc
Sunday evidently was the more family-orientated day of carnaval, as we were surrounded by so many adorable little babies in costume! (Mags managed to get a few pictures of the more adorable ones, they are linked to my picassa!) More family-oriented day, does in no way mean that partying of the grown-ups really stops. There was evidence everywhere that the partiers from the night before had done the event proud, and many of them at 2pm were crawling off to bed to rest for a few hours before doing it all again, but many were still going strong! Sundays main even was "Los coros", or choruses that compete before carnaval in a big 'theatrical espectacular'. The winners get to ride on floats pulled by tractors and sing their songs for the crowd. I was thinking alot about my dad watching the coros because although i did not understand all of the words, the coros basically sing very silly songs with light-hearted and low brow humor. Certian gestures were frequent and children and grandmas sang right along to silly songs about the follies of the town-idiot and this encounter with the town whore. All around good family fun. There was one group of old people in particular, i would say well into their 70s,about 10 of them, stinking DRUNK by 3pm, in these incredible matching go-go dancer costumes, singing, clapping and marching toward the festivities in a congo line. now THAT is the way to age.
We unfortunately did not have time to stay for the big parade and fireworks that night because they weren't until late and we needed to make the last train back to seville for work the next day, boo. on the train though, sitting righr behind us was a group of coro singers (all quite inebriated) who proceeded to sing all of their songs to the whole car. One of the pre-recs for being a member of a coro is you have to be a HUGE HAM so needless to say, they were QUITE amusing and we had literally a front-row seat. Mags has some video , which I will try to post here!
Here are some pics from Carnaval:
http://picasaweb.google.com/mclauerman/CarnavalCadiz
It is now Thursday, almost the weekend again! My weeks fly by now because of all of my classes I am pretty busy! I have also been trying to not get sick because nearly all of my fellow teachers are. I was thinking about going down to Cadiz again for another round of carnaval but I think my sinuses may prevent me from doing so.
also big news: JENNIFER GETS BACK TOMORROW!!! hooooray!
haha and because of that fact... we need to clean up the apartment!
hope everyone is well at home.
beso,
mc
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
back to the "real" world
since returning from peurto over a week ago, i have been quite a busy lady. (most fervent apologies for not keeping up with the blog as a result. i know many of you have jobs you don't want to do!!!) first of all, i have set up 2 more private classes for myself, putting my hours outside of school to just about 10 hours a week! it took some major engineering of my schedule but luckily one of the moms was cool and was willing to work with me so it is going to work out. i will meet one of my new students today in fact. it's kind of like im working for a living now or soemthing. my schedule is starting to look like it did before, full of apointments and to-do lists. wednesdays for example i am literally booked from 8am until 9pm.
i have been worrying a bit lately that with all of this work teaching english, and thus speaking english all the time, that i am not speaking enough spanish. this was getting frustrating because improving my spanish is my whole point in being here. to help remedy this though, i have set up and intercambio, or basically a language exchange with noelia's sister who needs to use english for her job. Macarena is really great and we are not meeting twice a week. she is great to practice with because not only is she patient, but my spanish kicks her english's ass so i feel much more comfortable and less embarressed of the state of my spanish.
Macarena is so sweet that she even texted me to go meet her and a few of her freinds for a beer on saturday night but i was already in route to a party with some other freinds. the party was put on my 2 girls at are in my same teaching program and it was mostly americans, spackled with varied europeans and of course a healthy dose of spaniards. that night we acgtually ended up adopting a little passle of euros because a guy in our program that we are freinds with had brought 8 freinds and had NOT made an sort of hostal reservation, assuming they would just stya out all night. although that plan does often work, by 5am at a club well across town from where they were theoretically planning to crach on the floor, the few that had managed to stay out that late were getting pretty tired, so maggie and i kindly offered our futon. i beleive we had a scottish girl, an irish guy and a belgian as well. they all teach in san lucar and have invitied us to visit anytime.
what else... well of course my little gypsies... they are doing fairly well! we have moved into making actual sentences in english now, instead of just learning vocab. we are currently working on prepositions and pronouns , ex: "where is juan? HE is ON the table." also, i am putting the ol' psychology major and experience working with ABA to good use by creating a token economy system for reinforcing learning and good behavior!!! i even set up a special adapted version for my oh-so-special juan herredia. (thats my 11 year old with the extreme ADD, and meriad other behavioral issues who also can't read. he's a treat.) but yeah, juan go his first sticker today, i was stoked. he chose the one that said "super!" for his token sheet, and one that said "great!" for himself.
ok, if i am going to get my essential tuesday afternoon siesta in i'd better get to it.
i hope you are all happy healthy and generally doing fabulous.
beso fuerte,
MC
i have been worrying a bit lately that with all of this work teaching english, and thus speaking english all the time, that i am not speaking enough spanish. this was getting frustrating because improving my spanish is my whole point in being here. to help remedy this though, i have set up and intercambio, or basically a language exchange with noelia's sister who needs to use english for her job. Macarena is really great and we are not meeting twice a week. she is great to practice with because not only is she patient, but my spanish kicks her english's ass so i feel much more comfortable and less embarressed of the state of my spanish.
Macarena is so sweet that she even texted me to go meet her and a few of her freinds for a beer on saturday night but i was already in route to a party with some other freinds. the party was put on my 2 girls at are in my same teaching program and it was mostly americans, spackled with varied europeans and of course a healthy dose of spaniards. that night we acgtually ended up adopting a little passle of euros because a guy in our program that we are freinds with had brought 8 freinds and had NOT made an sort of hostal reservation, assuming they would just stya out all night. although that plan does often work, by 5am at a club well across town from where they were theoretically planning to crach on the floor, the few that had managed to stay out that late were getting pretty tired, so maggie and i kindly offered our futon. i beleive we had a scottish girl, an irish guy and a belgian as well. they all teach in san lucar and have invitied us to visit anytime.
what else... well of course my little gypsies... they are doing fairly well! we have moved into making actual sentences in english now, instead of just learning vocab. we are currently working on prepositions and pronouns , ex: "where is juan? HE is ON the table." also, i am putting the ol' psychology major and experience working with ABA to good use by creating a token economy system for reinforcing learning and good behavior!!! i even set up a special adapted version for my oh-so-special juan herredia. (thats my 11 year old with the extreme ADD, and meriad other behavioral issues who also can't read. he's a treat.) but yeah, juan go his first sticker today, i was stoked. he chose the one that said "super!" for his token sheet, and one that said "great!" for himself.
ok, if i am going to get my essential tuesday afternoon siesta in i'd better get to it.
i hope you are all happy healthy and generally doing fabulous.
beso fuerte,
MC
Sunday, January 20, 2008
first week back at school and a most excellent weekend..... (this post has been in draft form for over a week!!!)
after more or less getting over jet lag i had my first day back with my little darlings about a week ago now. they were only mild to medium badly-behaved. last week i started working with them on questions and answers such as what is your name, how old are you, where are you from, and what is your favorite color, food etc. copying and studying these things was not terribly interesting for them, so i said that they better study because a special person was coming to interveiw them and was only going ask in english. after a while i realized that i HAD no special person, other than myself. so, i told them that my "twin sister", a famous interviewer in the united states, with her own television program (that can only be viewed in the US, haha). i fabricated a story about having to go to the airport to pick up said twin sister and after recess noelia brought them to a different room where i had changed my clothes and tried to make myself look as much like a glamorous famous interviewer as possible. at first they were veeeery skeptical, but after a while of trying to ask me questions in spanish, they bought it! well some of them did, the others are clever enough to tell that i am a horrible liar and could see that my not being able to keep a straight face meant that was indeed not my famous twin. wether they fell for my rouse or not, the goal was definitly accomplished, they asked and answered the questions we learned in english. hoooray.
link to my Orripo album where you can see all of my little darlings:
http://picasaweb.google.com/mclauerman/Orripo
This weekend we went down to El Puerto to visit our dear freind Hayley and to celebrate her birthday! We arrived Friday and went over to her freind fernando´s house ( amgio essspecial.... weeeee! jeje me mates? bueno, no importa!) who has a an oven to bake her a proper american birthday cake. the two of them attempted this the night before but the foam-like discs that resulted had a taste very reminicent of glue. evidently they were in desperate need of a clever and domestically inclinded (HAHA) woman such as myself. anyway after a while of eyeballing and making meteric conversions in our heads, the second time around the cake turned out to be lovely.
much to lydia´s schegrin, (Germans do NOT celebrate birthdays, or even say happy birthday on days OTHER than the actual birthday. none of this stretching it out for 3 weeks business, no. so strict, the germans) we started celebrating on saturday (her bithday was on sunday) first with a lovely breakfast at a cafe right on the beach. maggie said she wanted to take my picture and send it to all of her freinds because i was wearing a tank top, on the beach, in january. (she is from wisconsin, its evidently like 20 below there or something.) we continued the revelry with a tradional spanish lunch wih food typical of the region -- all manners of fried fish. so good! there were 10 of us, a feat to sit a one table, and we had not only good food and cerveza but also good company. and later of course we had the tradtional american birthday party at hayley's apartment. (by tradtional i only mean that there was a cake with candles and the american happy birthday song accompanying the booze.) we did the spanish proud and danced the night away in el puerto well into the light of the next day. we returned to sevilla tired and happy :)
link to my Orripo album where you can see all of my little darlings:
http://picasaweb.google.com/mclauerman/Orripo
This weekend we went down to El Puerto to visit our dear freind Hayley and to celebrate her birthday! We arrived Friday and went over to her freind fernando´s house ( amgio essspecial.... weeeee! jeje me mates? bueno, no importa!) who has a an oven to bake her a proper american birthday cake. the two of them attempted this the night before but the foam-like discs that resulted had a taste very reminicent of glue. evidently they were in desperate need of a clever and domestically inclinded (HAHA) woman such as myself. anyway after a while of eyeballing and making meteric conversions in our heads, the second time around the cake turned out to be lovely.
much to lydia´s schegrin, (Germans do NOT celebrate birthdays, or even say happy birthday on days OTHER than the actual birthday. none of this stretching it out for 3 weeks business, no. so strict, the germans) we started celebrating on saturday (her bithday was on sunday) first with a lovely breakfast at a cafe right on the beach. maggie said she wanted to take my picture and send it to all of her freinds because i was wearing a tank top, on the beach, in january. (she is from wisconsin, its evidently like 20 below there or something.) we continued the revelry with a tradional spanish lunch wih food typical of the region -- all manners of fried fish. so good! there were 10 of us, a feat to sit a one table, and we had not only good food and cerveza but also good company. and later of course we had the tradtional american birthday party at hayley's apartment. (by tradtional i only mean that there was a cake with candles and the american happy birthday song accompanying the booze.) we did the spanish proud and danced the night away in el puerto well into the light of the next day. we returned to sevilla tired and happy :)
Friday, January 11, 2008
ella ha vuelto
si, estoy en España otra vez!
it took me a little longer than expected to get here... there was a little hurricane at SFO on Friday which but a bit of a crimp in my travel plans. Luckily, once I figured out that there was no way I was making my connection I managed to convince the nice airport lady that I did NOT want to spend any night in Philidelphia, so the next available flight out of SFO was not until Monday. This was a slight bummer for a few reasons: 1) my suitcase was checked to Madrid so even though I was tapping out of travelling for the weekend, it was going to Madrid without me. 2) I wanted to be back in Spain before Jan. 6 because it is Reyes Magos, the day that Spaniards exchange presents, have a parade and really party for Christmas. 3) My freinds Maggie and Hayley were waiting for me with Magos party plans. BUT the pros were obvious: another weekend with my beloved family! and I just did not have the physical strenghth to battle a very angry airport chuck-full with frustrated people.
So I set out o Monday for real, it had stopped raining, and all went about as smoothly as possible. I arrived on Tuesday and basically slept until Wednesday evening, only leaving the house to pick up a pollo asado for dinner. Thursday I managed to be more useful, did errands, cleaned the house and went to tutor my high school boys. The older one, Miguel, who is 16, won a scholarship to go study in London for two weeks this spring! I am so proud of him! We spent our whole class talking about the kind of guitar he wanted to find in London. ( He is VERY into guitars, has his own band, etc. ) So I got a lesson about every different kind of guitar and the differences between each, only having to occasionally correct his grammar and give him new vocabulary. A win-win. I also went jogging again, I beleive for the first time since the hambuger incident. I was a little nervous, and I still felt like people were looking at me funny but I arrived back home, unscathed. When I consulted Javi, the younger boy that I tutor, he confirmed that people are looking at me because it IS weird to go jogging in Spain, so if I was going to run around like a weirdo, I was just going to have to deal with the stares, so there.
Today I still have not gotten over this pesky jet-lag! Mags and I went out last night, and I have been sleeping all day long! I need to force myself to stay up during the day to finally get back on this schedule. I just had some breakfast at 6pm, on California time! It's ok, I still have the weekend to get over it.
Ok, just wanted to update to let everyone know that I have made it back, safe and sound.
Beso,
MC
it took me a little longer than expected to get here... there was a little hurricane at SFO on Friday which but a bit of a crimp in my travel plans. Luckily, once I figured out that there was no way I was making my connection I managed to convince the nice airport lady that I did NOT want to spend any night in Philidelphia, so the next available flight out of SFO was not until Monday. This was a slight bummer for a few reasons: 1) my suitcase was checked to Madrid so even though I was tapping out of travelling for the weekend, it was going to Madrid without me. 2) I wanted to be back in Spain before Jan. 6 because it is Reyes Magos, the day that Spaniards exchange presents, have a parade and really party for Christmas. 3) My freinds Maggie and Hayley were waiting for me with Magos party plans. BUT the pros were obvious: another weekend with my beloved family! and I just did not have the physical strenghth to battle a very angry airport chuck-full with frustrated people.
So I set out o Monday for real, it had stopped raining, and all went about as smoothly as possible. I arrived on Tuesday and basically slept until Wednesday evening, only leaving the house to pick up a pollo asado for dinner. Thursday I managed to be more useful, did errands, cleaned the house and went to tutor my high school boys. The older one, Miguel, who is 16, won a scholarship to go study in London for two weeks this spring! I am so proud of him! We spent our whole class talking about the kind of guitar he wanted to find in London. ( He is VERY into guitars, has his own band, etc. ) So I got a lesson about every different kind of guitar and the differences between each, only having to occasionally correct his grammar and give him new vocabulary. A win-win. I also went jogging again, I beleive for the first time since the hambuger incident. I was a little nervous, and I still felt like people were looking at me funny but I arrived back home, unscathed. When I consulted Javi, the younger boy that I tutor, he confirmed that people are looking at me because it IS weird to go jogging in Spain, so if I was going to run around like a weirdo, I was just going to have to deal with the stares, so there.
Today I still have not gotten over this pesky jet-lag! Mags and I went out last night, and I have been sleeping all day long! I need to force myself to stay up during the day to finally get back on this schedule. I just had some breakfast at 6pm, on California time! It's ok, I still have the weekend to get over it.
Ok, just wanted to update to let everyone know that I have made it back, safe and sound.
Beso,
MC
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