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.