I'll be home for Christmas...if only in my dreams

Two weeks ago, we had another puente(long weekend) here, which means a day off of school.  Lucia and I used it to go skiing in the Sierra Nevadas right outside Granada.  It was so much fun, and incredibly challenging.  I haven't been skiing in 4 years and even then I've only really been skiing at Swiss Valley in southern Michigan, which is great and all, but I don't think the terrain there qualifies as mountainous by a long shot.  It's the first time I've ever had to pop my ears multiple times while skiing down a slope.  We spent a wonderful day and a half riding ski lifts up the mountain and flying down the crystal white powder (and in some cases ice).  It was a great time.  I talked to a Spaniard on the bus up the mountain and he said that they'd never had as much snow as they did that weekend but that they ski year round in the Sierra Nevadas.  In the summer, they walk up the mountain to the very top and ski in shorts!  Crazy, eh?

Well, school is finished for the year here and for the next two weeks I have absolutely no responsibilities (job-wise) so there are endless possibilities for travel and general enjoyment of Spain.  I'm looking forward to the next couple weeks.  I leave tomorrow on the afternoon bus to Madrid to pick up my brother, Steve.  He's going to be here for 1 week and I get to show him around!  So I get a taste of home for Christmas which is nice otherwise I'm sure I'd get a bit homesick next week.  It'll be great to see him and spend some time with him before he takes off for Australia this coming semester.  This is also the first time that everyone in Baeza has split up since we got here in October.  We're all going different places with different people, although our paths will cross in the next few weeks as we explore on our own.  After Steve leaves, I'm meeting up with Ellen, my apartment- mate and we're going to Seville with her brother for New Year's Eve where we will partake of the traditional Spanish celebration which includes eating 12 grapes at midnight.  Apparently you have to eat all 12 grapes by the time the clock is finished striking midnight, and if you are successful you are rewarded with 12 months of prosperity and good luck.  If not....well, you get the picture...

This week was a lot of fun at school with all the activities and the festive air.  Papa Noel (Santa Claus) came to visit the classes and brought candy for everyone.  We sang Christmas carols in English.  I taught my kids "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" and they were all very excited about learning the song.  

A plate of holiday treats mysteriously appeared in the teacher's lounge at school and refilled every night.  I admit, I ate more than my fair share of cookies and chocolates.  Los tres reyes magos (the three kings) came to visit, bringing everyone gifts and scaring the youngest of the children so bad that they cried.  They brought me a beautiful bound agenda, which would be extremely useful if I had anything I had to write down, but since life is pretty simple here, I'm not sure how much use I'll get out of it.  Baeza is also looking pretty festive.  There are Christmas lights up all over town, a Christmas tree in the middle of the roundabout downtown, and a nativity scene you can visit.  All this is made better by the fact that the weather has been gorgeous and in the 40's all week.  

Well next time I update my blog, it's going to be 2009.  It's weird to think that a year has gone by again and that this time last year, I was finishing up exams at Hope and now I'm hanging out in Spain.  I'm trying to decide if I'm going to bother with the whole New Year's resolutions thing.  Most of the time I just ignore the whole tradition because I can never stick to my resolutions and I don't kid myself about being able to. Either that, or I can't really come up with any good ones that seem worth my time and effort.  However, I've recently decided to revisit the whole thing so I might come up with a resolution in the next couple of weeks.  Who knows...new country...I might be inspired.  Anyway, until next time everyone!  Happy holidays, Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!  Celebrate with style and enjoy time with the ones you love!

We FINALLY have HEAT!

after a week and a half without heating, someone finally showed up last night to fill our gasoline tank! Now I can walk around the apartment without wearing every last article of clothing i own.

Thanksgiving as an expat

Thanksgiving is weird in Spain because, unlike Halloween or Christmas, the people here have no idea what the holiday is about. So there are no festivities and no holiday spirit bursting out of people. I spent Thanksgiving day teaching all my little kidlins about the Pilgrims and how important Thanksgiving dinner is. The concept of Black Friday astounded them no end, not surprising since I think it's all pretty crazy and I've grown up with the event.

We managed to score a turkey for our dinner, which we held on Saturday. Dan, my apartment-mate has been tutoring for a pretty well-off family and he happened to ask where we could find a turkey in the fine country of Spain since they aren't all that common. Turns out the family has a farm, and offered to kill, butcher, and defeather a turkey just for us! So we had a very fresh bird for our dinner. So Saturday morning I woke up, stuck the turkey in the oven to slowly roast throughout the day, and made some brownies for dessert.

Then I went to the bus station to pick up my friend Baxter, who came over from Granada to visit for a bit. I took him downtown to the medieval festival that was going on. There were lots of craft booths, homemade food booths, and a couple restaurant stands where we grabbed some drinks. A medieval festival in Spain has overtones of the Arabic culture though since the country was occupied by Muslims from 700 AD to almost the end of the 1400s. So there were musicians playing Arabic music walking the streets. I was going to give Baxter the big tour of Baeza, but it was freezing and then it started to rain so we headed back to the apartment to hang out.

Later that evening we gathered up all our food and headed over to our friends' apartment where the celebration was to take place. It was an international Thanksgiving and I think all the Europeans involved began to understand why we enjoy the holiday so much. I mean, who wouldn't be excited about a holiday dedicated to eating lots of great food. We had turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, apple cobbler, mashed potatos, pasta, corn, and green beans. We stuffed ourselves silly and went back for more. All in all, there were 16 of us there for Thanksgiving, 10 of which were from somewhere in Europe and 6 of us from the United States so we were way outnumbered. My new family had a blast though and we rounded out the night by watching Love Actually, ringing in the Christmas season.

On a somewhat related topic, but not continuing the above story: we got our Christmas tree yesterday! We had to order it and were a bit worried that it would turn out to be an olive tree (the only tree that you see when you ride the bus anywhere around here), but it's a genuine pine tree that smells exactly like Christmas! yay!

heeeeey there....

i am absolutely horrible at keeping this thing up to date. Even though I have plenty of time to write everything down, somehow this just doesn't get done as often as it should. And now there's a lot to report so i'm probably not going to do it the justice it deserves. Since I last wrote, we've had two birthday celebrations, gone to Córdoba, had a wonderfully international Thanksgiving celebration, and experienced our first Spanish snowfall. See what I mean? A lot has happened.

We had two birthdays in November and as we need little excuse to celebrate and have a party, we planned some fun things to do for each birthday. Both Lucia and Ellen turned 23 here in Spain. For Lucia's birthday we checked out the nightlife in Baeza, staying out until 6 in the morning, presenting gifts, and having a great dinner at a nice restaurant that gave us free dessert (always a good thing) because we were with the birthday girl. Now the interesting part of the story. The night of Lucia's birthday there was a city-wide blackout in Baeza so we had to make preparations by the light of our computer screens and cell phones. Being newcomers to the country, we, of course, didn't have a single flashlight or candle. So when the batteries on our computers began to die, Ellen and I trekked across town through perilously dark winding streets in the pitch black to the only place in town that seemed to have power, the supermarket! There we loaded up on matches, candles, and birthday cake. The power outage didn't really put much of a hitch in our plans, just made the search for a restaurant that was actually open a bit tricky, but we prevailed and the festivities continued.

For Ellen's big day we decided to move the fun times to Córdoba, a city about three hours away by bus (much closer by car) that is famous for the Mesquita, an old Moorish temple that was converted to a Christian church when the Catholics drove the Muslims out of southern Spain in the late 1400's. We have some fellow auxiliares there teaching english that had some free floor space where we set up our air mattress and crashed for the weekend. We got there Friday night, went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner ( believe you me, good Mexican food is hard to find here) and then I went to my first movie in the theater in Spain! We saw Quantum of Solace, the new James Bond movie dubbed in Spanish. It was definitely an experience. I understood most of what was going on throughout the movie, but didn't catch those smart one liners Bond is always throwing around. Most of the group who went to the movies ended up taking a nap in the theater since it was all in Spanish, but I stuck it out, amazingly. The next day, we walked around the city, saw the Mesquita and toured the surrounding neighborhood. That night we had a family dinner of spaghetti and homemade birthday cake. Sunday morning we got up early and made our way to the Arab baths, one of the most relaxing experiences of my life. For an hour and a half, we wandered between the sauna, a warm pool, a cold pool, and a hot pool, followed by a massage (my first ever!) and by the end of the time I felt like a limp noodle. Then, we leisurely made our way to Bar Santo, a restaurant known for their potato tortilla (like a potato omelet) which is delicious. Then we walked down by the river and took a nap in the grass, enjoying the magnificent weather and getting stared at by all the passers-by. Eventually we mustered up enough energy to move, met some friends of friends, and then walked to the bus station to catch the last bus back to Baeza. It was the perfect weekend!

7 days later, it snowed for the first time since I got to Spain. One weekend I was walking around in a T-shirt and the next I was bundled up in my winter coat with gloves and a hat. Talk about a drastic change. It was good practice because Monday morning I woke up and discovered that during the night we had run out of gasoline to power our heating so it was freezing. Now it's Wednesday and we still don't have any heat because the gas man hasn't been able to come. Fingers crossed he comes today otherwise i'm going to freeze to death soon. I have a thermometer on my clock and it is currently 52 degrees inside our apartment and 41 outside! Ridiculous!

You Know You're Living in Spain When...

...you have at least one bottle of olive oil in your kitchen cupboard at all times.

...everything except restaurants close from 2-5 for siesta.

...you go to the store every day for freshly baked bread.

...most of the boys have both a faux hawk and a mullet and they think it's cool.

...all children under age 12 have at least 1 tracksuit they wear to school a week and they have a backpack on wheels.

...you walk in the middle of the street instead of on the sidewalk because it's only 2 feet wide.

...you're not worried about getting run over while you're out walking. You're worried about stepping in dog poop.

...people regularly stay out until 7 in the morning.

...you don't eat lunch until 2 pm or dinner until 10 pm. Ever.

...there are three basic food groups: ham, bread, and wine.

...you don't turn on the heat, you huddle around the brasero instead. (a brasero is like a space heater you put under a table)

...most television programs are American programs dubbed in Spanish.

...people don't say "shhhh" when they want you to be quiet, they say "chhh"

...a small jar of peanut butter costs about 4 euro (that's 5 dollars).

...you can get pretty much anywhere you want to go by bus.

...you've been to a BOTELLÓN.

...carpet is hard to come by.

...you greet people by kissing them on each cheek.

...you leave your apartment at 8:45 because you had to be somewhere at 8:30 and you want to be early.

Pizza and Pasta Done Right: Milan, Italy

Last Monday, the schools in Spain had a national holiday so there wasn't any school. Like any good traveler, Dan, Lucia, Ellen, and I took advantage of our free day, taking a long weekend trip to Milan, Italy to see what we could see. However, the story of our trip to Milan actually starts in Madrid on Thursday afternoon/night. Highlights of Madrid include: becoming intimately acquainted with a metro station trashcan when I got sick and then watching a man pull a newspaper out of the same trashcan right after I puked in it. Hanging out with Enrique, a 29 year old Spanish consultant Lucia and I met through Couchsurfing.com, a website where people from around the world offer their couches to people who are traveling and need a cheap place to stay. Only getting 3 and a half hours of sleep before our early morning flight to Milan.

We got to the Malpensa airport outside Milan before noon and discovered that it is VERY far outside the city and we had to take an hour bus ride to the center of town, during which I appeared as if I was suffering from narcolepsy due to my lack of sleep from the night before. I could not, for the life of me, keep my eyes open the entire time. We made our way through the city on the Metro system and finally found out hostel, Hotel Piola, located near one of the best pizza joints I’ve been to in a while, and home to Loki, the cutest white Boxer in the world.

It rained all Friday night as we trekked through the city to the Natural History Museum, and of course, I left my umbrella, which I was smart enough to pack, in our hotel room. The Natural History Museum was really neat and it had one of the best collections I have seen, especially a great collection of dinosaur skeletons and some rocking animal dioramas. Then we made our way back toward the hotel and had dinner at a nice little restaurant where we sampled delicious Italian pasta and risotto.

The next day we went into Milan with a battle plan since we had so much we wanted to see and not a lot of time to see it in. First on the agenda was a visit to Castello Sforzesco, a castle built in 1368 which now houses various museums and archives. After seeing the Castello and marveling at how incredibly old it is, we took the metro to Piazza del Duomo, one of the signature sights in Milan. It is a major tourist attraction with the cathedral Duomo and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuale II flanking it. I also believe that the piazza is the hang out of nearly every pigeon in northern Italy because you couldn’t walk five steps without almost smashing at least 3 pigeons.

We then walked to the Santa Maria delle Grazie, the church which houses Leonardo da Vinci’s famous mural The Last Supper. The set up for visiting the painting was very high tech. You buy a ticket for a 15 minute time slot and when you arrive you are shepherded through a series of rooms which are closed off by timed automatic doors. You have to go through two rooms before you even reach the room with the mural in it. Being able to stand in front of the painting, knowing that someone painted it hundreds of years ago, left me a bit awestruck and then the only thing I could think about was the movie “The Da Vinci Code” and what it said about the painting.
So after visiting the mural, we walked back to the Piazza del Duomo to take a closer look at the cathedral. We wandered around inside for about a half hour before we discovered the fact that you could climb about a billion stairs up a tower to get to the roof of the cathedral. After climbing for 10 minutes at an amazingly fast pace up a cramped spiral staircase in which you had to plaster yourself against the wall to get past people coming down the stairs, I arrived that the coolest gathering place in Milan, 90 meters in the air. You could see the entire city of Milan from the rooftop and the Alps in the far distance to the north. Then we walked over to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, a glass covered shopping arcade housing prestigious stores such as Prada, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and McDonalds…seriously, not kidding here…McDonalds was right there alongside some of the top fashion names in the world.

We spent the rest of the night walking around, looking at shops, eating dinner, perusing a really neat sidewalk exhibition about the universe, and helping Dan find the perfect winter coat…cough cough, excuse me, coats. He got two so now he’s set for a lifetime of winters.


Sunday, we checked out of our hostel, dropped our bags in storage at the train station and took the early afternoon train to the city of Como on Lake Como, one hour outside Milan. The city was founded in its current location by Julius Ceaser and the ruins of the old city walls along with a castle are good sights to see. If I spoke Italian and had enough money, I would move to Como in a heartbeat. The town is gorgeous, on the water and surrounded by mountains. It has a lot of shops, great gelato, and many celebrities have homes there like George Clooney, Madonna, and Sylvester Stallone.

We spent the day touring Como and discovering its hidden secrets before we took the train back to Milan, where we picked up our bags, stopped in at a sports exhibit that was open until 10:30 pm, then found a café for some late night snacks and drinks before we went back to the train station to wait out the night. Our flight back to Madrid left at 6:30 am Monday morning and we didn’t want to spend the money for another night in the hostel so we spent the night in the train station waiting room with the homeless and other travelers playing cards and talking to people there. We met a group of American students studying abroad in Italy who were coming back from Greece. We caught the 4:15 bus to the airport and thus began a solid 14 hours of travel from Milan back to Baeza via one plane and three different buses.

To top the whole journey off I accidentally left my passport on the bus from Granada to Baeza, so I spent Monday night freaking out and worrying. However, I am extremely blessed because the next day the director at my school went with me to the bus station and asked about it. Turns out my passport only made it to the next town over and they had a bus driver bring it to Baeza with the next bus, so I was missing my passport for less than 12 hours. Life is extremely good sometimes.

I’m putting a link on here to my Facebook photo album of Milan for everyone to see, so enjoy!





http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2045423&l=44cc8&id=11400089

Now I know why People Siesta in Spain

This weekend was a marathon of fun. Thursday everyone in Baeza took the early bus to Jaen, the capital of our province to apply for our NIE, the national identity card that means we can stay past the 3 months we get with our student visa. So we spent the morning in a government office, talking to officials and running to a store nearby that had a copier when we found out we needed to copy literally every official document we had. We had to copy every last page of our passports. Even the empty ones. Don’t ask me why. That’s just the rule. Anyway, the paperwork is all in and in a month, I should be officially offical.

Friday began the festivities. This last week, Jaen hosted a feria, or fair, the likes of which we have never seen in the United States. Maybe Mardi Gras comes close. It’s basically a week full of good food, late nights, and lots of fun times. Dan, Lucia, Ellen, Meg, and I caught the bus to Jaen Friday afternoon loaded down with our backpacks. We met up with some auxiliaries who are teaching and living in Jaen and were kind enough to let us sleep on their couches and floor for the weekend. The night didn’t even start until 9 when we went out for tapas, something I have grown to love here. Basically tapas are great appetizer food, but in the best places you get a free tapa with each drink you buy, whether it’s alcoholic or not. It’s a good way to get free food along with a refreshing beverage. After tapas we headed to Botellon, which consisted of a large open plaza area where hundreds of people gather with drinks, whiling away the hours talking and meeting new people. Botellon was right next to a concert area, so of course we had to stop by when a concert started up. Did I mention that this concert didn’t start until 1 in the morning? No? Well it did. Crazy, eh? After the concert we went back to Botellon, which was nice because I got to meet some more auxiliaries who had come to town for feria.

Now, we didn’t actually make it to the feria until 4 am. And this is why Spaniards love their siestas. The feria is like the local fair multiplied by infinity. There are food tents when you walk in, and then you are surrounded by huge tents with dance floors blasting every type of music you could imagine. The next couple of hours were spent migrating from tent to tent, sampling music and dancing our feet off. I have never seen that many people out and about and having fun at 6 in the morning. There were three levels to the feria but we didn't make it past the first one before the night was over. We crashed for the day, the day mind you, at 7 in the morning and slept until 2, got up, took showers, fed ourselves, rested some more and then started the whole process again on Saturday night. We had a get together with auxiliaries, hit up botellon, got to the feria at 4 and danced till 7:30 am when we tore ourselves away to get some delicious gofres con chocolate (waffles with cholocate sauce drizzled on them), swung back by the apartment, picked up our backpacks and caught the 9:30 bus back to Baeza. Needless to say, everyone was running on empty by then. Here’s a great picture of Dan and Caroline at the bus station while we were waiting for the bus to arrive. It pretty much illustrates how unbearably tired we all were.

I got to recover a bit more today since I don’t work on Mondays until 4:30 at another school called Perez de Valdivia Formadores, where I teach a class of 12 kids who are in the equivelant of middle school in the States. There’s really no curriculum I’m supposed to follow, I just have to help them speak English, so I’ve been having fun with them, and they’ve been pretty cooperative so far. Although none of them actually seem to want to speak English and I end up speaking more Spanish there while I’m “teaching English” than I do anywhere else.

Today I finally went to the bank and opened up a bank account. I should get my debit card in about a week so when I get a check from work I can actually do something with it. I should be getting my medical insurance information soon too. So after I get that stuff, I think all the important things are taken care of here. Cell phone: check, job: check, NIE: check, bank account: check, Spanish friends to hang out with: working on that one.

Gallivanting through Granada

About 10 o’clock Saturday night, my friends and I decided for sure that we wanted to head to Granada Sunday for a quick visit. We're a little last minute, but hey, we have fun. We left Baeza on the 8:15 bus and spent the day walking around the city and visiting all the sights.

We arrived at the bus station around 10 and made our way to the Parque de Ciencias or the Science Park, which is a museum complex. It is one of the top tourist attractions in Granada with a planetarium, an animal exhibit, and a whole bunch of hands on exhibits about energy and motion. It reminded me a lot of the Children’s Museum in Indianapolis, one of my favorite places, so I had a lot of fun. This picture is of the tower at the Museum. After checking out everything at the Museum we hopped on the tourist bus, you know, those double-decker buses that take you around cities with a guided commentary. Of course we sat on top, getting a much better view of our surroundings and being periodically attacked by renegade tree branches if we didn’t move out of the way fast enough. They’re brutal. I know. I got hit in the face twice. Apparently I just don’t pay close enough attention to my surroundings and/or my reflexes suck.

We got off the bus around the Cathedral and discovered that there was a Renaissance fair going on. The streets were lined with booths selling pottery, jewelry, and knickknacks galore. There were also performers on the streets, making the whole place feel like a big festival. The gypsies were also out in force, trying to sell fortunes and asking for money insistently. You quickly learn to say no loudly and firmly and then ignore them even when they keep harassing you. Lucia got cussed out using this method, but it worked. We got doner kabobs for lunch (meat wrapped in a tortilla with whatever other ingredients you want with it) and sat on the steps of the Cathedral (in the picture) waiting for it to open at 4.

Spent some time wandering around the Cathedral, and then stopped by the Capilla Real, or Royal Chapel, right next door. Now the Capilla was pretty cool. It houses the tombs of Ferdinand and Isabel, the King and Queen of Spain around the time of Christopher Columbus. They ruled the country when the Christians recaptured the majority of Spain from the Moors. Ok, history lesson is finished for the day. Just needed to explain why it’s an important place.

Next stop on our route was the Alhambra, the Moorish palace and fort that Granada is famous for, located up the mountain right on the edge of town. We spent about 2 and a half hours walking around the gardens that surround the Alhambra and then trekking through the different parts of the Alhambra. It was gorgeous to see. The architecture was incredibly intricate and I can’t imagine how long it took to create these buildings with their fountains, walkways, and detailed stone carvings.

When we made it down the mountain we discovered that there had been a parade through town celebrating the national holiday. The buses weren’t running and Dan and I needed to make it all the way across town to the bus station to catch the last bus back to Baeza. We parted ways with Ellen and Lucia with only a bus route map in hand, hoping that the buses would start running soon so we could make it in time. We walked for quite a long time, around an hour, steadily making our way toward our destination. After a bit, it looked like the buses were running again so we decided to wait for the bus that would take us straight to the station; however, the bus never came. With twenty five minutes left before we would be stuck in Granada for the night, we took off speed walking through town. Our map didn’t have street names, and I don’t know how we did it, but we didn’t get lost at all. All I know is that I was following Dan through the streets of Granada in the dark at a run, hoping beyond all hope that we wouldn’t miss the bus. Now, you all know how much I exercise, so I hope you appreciate the sheer hilariousness of this picture. We raced into the bus station, bought our tickets, and dropped into our seats exhausted and out of breath.

I start back to school tomorrow, and it’s my first day teaching in the afternoons at another school. Wish me luck!

This is inside the Cathedral

Thoughts on being a World away from Home

So by the end of week two I feel a whole lot more comfortable here in Spain. I can understand people when she speak to me in Spanish and I only have to ask them to repeat themselves a couple times now as opposed to half a billion. Plus, I've been reading the newspaper in Spanish everyday so that's helping, reading about the banking crisis in another language is really confusing, let me tell you.

I finally got my teaching schedule and I ended up having a four day weekend every week, so I'm planning on doing quite a bit of traveling this year if the finances hold up. Lucia and I already booked a flight to Milan for the end of the month to celebrate her birthday, so that should be a blast.

I also fell into another teaching job on monday-wednesday afternoons. Dan, one of my apartment-mates told me about the opportunity and said that if I was interested I could walk over to the place with him one evening to hear details. We got there, the woman in charge sat us down for about 10 minutes and then got up, took us to a classroom, and told us to get started! It was a little unexpected, but I only had one student to work with so I managed to bs my way through it pretty easily.

I really like teaching at the primary school here and the kids make it so much fun. True, they rarely listen and hardly ever behave when you want them to, but they are so excited about life. I assist with classes ranging from 2nd year all the way to 6th year so I have a broad spectrum of ages and ability. Right now, they're all fascinated with me, waving whenever I walk by them, saying hi and bye bye. In almost every class, they tend to ask questions about the piercing in my ear since it's not common over here. When I catch them staring at me in the middle of class, it's usually because I've tucked my hair behind my ear and they can see the bar in my ear. It's really funny to see their looks of shock.

I finally got some pictures of Baeza for you all to look at. I put them in a Facebook album since it takes forever to upload them on this blog. You should be able to see them at this link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2043968&l=40bce&id=11400089

and just so everyone knows, it's not warm here even though it's near the Mediterranean. It gets down to the 50s at night and tile floors really don't help keep the piso warm. This week we figured out how to turn on the warm water, so I had my first warm shower a couple days ago. It felt wonderful! If there's one thing I can't live without, it's a warm shower.

My first day at school was two days ago and for not having any idea what was going to happen, things worked out perfectly. I showed up at San Juan de la Cruz (my school) a little before 9, which is when class starts over here. I hung out outside with the kids for a bit before I saw the teachers entering the building and decided I couldn't be a creeper any longer. In a matter of five minutes I met a dizzying array of teachers and I feel horrible admitting this, but I don't remember a single one of their names. I'm pretty bad with names to begin with and meeting so many people at once really just compounded my naturally defective memory.

Anyway, I got a tour of the school, which is pretty big and situated in this really old building with tall ceilings and stuccoed walls. I sat in on English classes with a professor who is 23. It was really quite entertaining when the kids walked into the classroom, saw me, and asked their crazy questions such as whether I was his wife. The kids are really fun, have tons of energy, and really don't seem to focus on their studies too much :) In one class the only thing they had to do was copy down 7 sentences in 45 minutes from the chalkboard and the majority of them didn't even get that finished.

I haven't really gotten to do much with the students so far. I've just been observing class and taking it all in. I should get my schedule for work on Monday so hopefully then someone will tell me what I can do with the students so I feel like I'm doing something productive. It's actually quite boring sitting at the front of the classroom for 4 and a half hours listening to someone else teach.

Lucia, Dan, and I have been on a mission the last couple of days to get mobile phones so we can stay in touch with each other and our schools. So we've been traisping around town, comparing prices at the different shops, but the place we want to get phones from don't have any in stock and don't know when they'll have more, so when we're in Jaen (the capital of the province) for orientation tomorrow, we're hoping we can find a store that will actually set us up.

Eating here is so different from the States. At school we have a break from 12 to 12:30 where people usually have a snack of some kind, but lunch doesn't take place until the work day is over at 2. So I usually have bread, meat, and cheese for lunch at 2, then take a siesta from 2-5 because most of the stores around town shut down for "midday." Then when things open again at 5, we go do errands and shopping, and dinner usually doesn't happen until after 9 pm. Totally different from at home where I ate at 5 or 6.

And yes, I know, you want to see pictures of Baeza and my piso. I'm working on it. Don't you worry.

Whirlwind Travel

Changing time zones really messes with your system. By the time I fell into bed my first night in Madrid, I felt like I could sleep forever. Unfortunately, sleeping in a mixed dorm room at a hostel really doesn't lend itself to a good night's sleep. But gradually I'm getting used to Spanish time and the fact that they don't eat lunch until 2, right before siesta, and then dinner happens after 8 o'clock pm. Last night, we didn't finish dinner until 10:30. Crazy, eh?


This picture is from our teeny tiny balcony at the hostel. Anyway, I'm going to backtrack to Madrid. I flew into Barajas airport and met up with Lucia, another girl in my program who is living in Baeza, where we're both teaching. We made our way to our hostel via the metro, which I now think of as dangerous ground since I got all my Euros stolen while we were en route to our stop. The hostel was really nice, although my interesting luck continued when I, mind fuzzy from traveling and looking desperately for a bathroom, barged into the first one I found, not knowing it was the guy's bathroom, walked in on a guy who had just come out of the shower. Needless to say, we were both surprised, but luckily I didn't see anything that would embarrass either one of us, but it was close.


So after getting settled into our hostel, Lucia and I went for a walk through Madrid, which she says is like a Spanish New York City. It's certainly a bustling city center and really walkable. We saw the Plaza Mayor, which is the picture directly to your right. Then we wandered until we came across the Palacio Real which is literally so big everyone from Hope College could live there and still more people could fit in it. The picture below is the Palacio.





So Monday, Lucia and I barely made it to the bus from Madrid to Baeza at 9 in the morning. Riding to Baeza, it was really neat to see the countryside. We went through the mountains and as we went, we saw field after field from horizon to horizon filled with olive trees. If you didn't know, olive oil is one of Jaen's (the province where I live) biggest products. So we saw thousands of olive trees with a few scattered houses and the odd crumbling ruin sprinkled amongst them.



Ellen, one of my apartment mates met us at the bus station and we met Dan, my other apartment mate at our piso (apartment). I must say, it's a whole lot bigger than I thought it would be and by some twist of fate, I ended up with the biggest bedroom which has a armoire that could easily fit the entire contents of my closet at home inside it. It's a bit of an overkill since I came to Spain with one suitcase and a backpack.



We went grocery shopping today at Maxi Dia, about a 10-15 minute walk from our piso. It was a challenge to bargain shop in Euros for four people but we managed. The thing I forgot about while shopping was the fact that we didn't have a car as we do in the States where you can conveniently stow all your groceries as you drive home. Oh no, all four of us were loaded down with 3 to 4 bags filled with milk, juice, laundry detergent, water, and all the other necessities. So from now on, I think we're going to subscribe to the European way of shopping and only get a little at a time. It will be a whole lot easier on our arms.

Tomorrow I start teaching at my school, San Juan de la Cruz, a preschool and primary school. We passed it on our way home from the grocery store and I saw all the little 5 year olds coming out of the gates. They look so cute. Anyway, I'll let everyone know how it goes tomorrow. I haven't heard anything from my supervisor there so I'm just going to show up at 9 am and see what happens. I'm going on faith, something I've been doing a lot of since coming to Spain three days ago. Tune in next time for the ongoing misadventures of yours truly...