"The butterfly counts not months, but moments and has time enough." - Rabindranath Tagore

The other night, I came home from Santiponce around 7:30pm.  I tried to turn on the light in the lobby.  Nothing.  Tried to push the button for the elevator.  Nothing.  This guy came down, passed me, said “hola”, but nothing about the elevators not working…weird.  So I walked up 9 flights of stairs to find that we had not only lost power, but also gas and water.  WHAT?!  I felt like we traveled back in time to the dark ages…except for the fact that I still had my laptop and phone working…but still.  It had stormed briefly earlier, but I definitely wasn’t expecting the power to be out.  Also, I was extremely annoyed that my lovely neighbor hadn’t mentioned anything when he saw me pushing all the buttons with a perplexed look, on my face, but that’s beside the point.  We only had a couple candles in the apartment, but they worked fine for lighting up the living room at least.  Now the issue was what I was going to eat for dinner.  I hadn’t been grocery shopping in a while, we couldn’t cook anything, and I wasn’t about to go down and come back up 9 flights of stairs to go get food.  So, my roommates and I compiled what we had…bread, crackers, cheese, jelly, olives, ham, chorizo, and salami.  It actually turned out to be a really nice dinner, better that whatever I could have come up with myself…and it was a candlelit dinner, even better.  That day, I had printed out some Halloween coloring pages.  So to keep busy, we colored and listened to music on my laptop, which was thankfully at full battery when I got home.  Without the TV, internet, kitchen, shower, or lights we ended up having a really fun night, but there wasn’t much else to do but go to sleep after a while, since none of us really wanted to go out in the rain.  Luckily when we woke up Friday morning, everything was restored back to normal.  

Cheers to crackers, jelly, and cheese!







Roomie pic in the candlelight.

Ok more fun things…since I haven’t taken any trips yet, I can keep updating you all on the random stuff I’m doing.  A couple weeks ago, one of the teacher’s at my school, Manuel, invited me to go to the climbing wall at one of the sports centers in Sevilla.  He had invited me many times last year but I was never able to go.  This time, I had no other plans so I said sure why not!  I invited Milena to come along too and she said yep.  Our plan was to meet at a bus stop near the train station because I had class in the evening and she would be coming from home.  When I got to the stop I couldn’t find her so I walked around a bit and still nothing.  As much as I hate spending the slightest bit of money by using my cell phone, I gave her a call. No answer. Uh oh.  Called her again…and again…and again…no answer.  I kept walking up and down the street thinking maybe she got off at and one of the other bus stops. I still couldn’t find her. Now it was getting close to the time we were supposed to get picked up so I had to give up my search and go.  Manuel picked me up and we drove the rest of the way to the sports center…which was actually really close to where I already was, but I had no idea.  On our walk in, we passed the football field and track and all of a sudden I hear “Dennis!” (That’s what Milena calls me, and all my other roommates for that matter.)  I looked around and saw her just chilling in one of the seats around the track.  What?? How?? When??  I couldn’t believe she was there.  She explained that when she didn’t see me at the bus stop, she looked around but couldn’t find me.  When she realized that she didn’t have her cell phone she started walking and asking people where the rock wall was. Apparently she had been waiting there the entire time I was looking for her.  Of course.  The good thing was that we all made it.  Now that were actually at the climbing wall, I began to wonder why the heck I agreed to this!  The last time I successfully climbed anything was in my high school adventure challenge class when I was 17.  I tried the climbing wall at Lifetime Fitness when I worked there last summer, and that was an epic fail.  I was really nervous, but I figured I would give it a try.  What was the worst that could happen?  Manuel’s friend Fran came to join us and the four of us suited up.  We started out on the easier walls and worked our way up to the harder ones.  I had so much fun!  It wasn’t easy, but I made it to the top every time…with lots of help and encouragement of course.  The last one we did was the hardest.  It might not have been a good idea to save the tallest wall for last, since I was already pretty tired, but we did it anyway!  I had to take a couple breaks and I thought I couldn’t make it, but the adrenaline kicked in and managed to squeeze out a few more steps and made it to the top.  It was really funny too because somewhere close, a band was practicing Semana Santa music so there were dramatic trumpets playing as I struggled to the top.  I’d post the video, but it’s embarrassing…and over 8 minutes long.  Milena did an awesome job too, I was really impressed.  And Manuel and Fran are pretty much pros, so they helped us a lot along the way.  This last sentence used to say, I hope we can go again soon, but since I first wrote this, we’ve gone again already!  This time Milena and I made it there together.  We had a blast again.  I feel like since we shook the cobwebs off last time, we were a lot more adventurous this time.  I have the scrapes and bruises to prove it.  Also this time, we climbed one of the harder walls, which is slanted outwards.  It’s a lot harder to hold on because it feels like the wall is trying to shake you off.  I barely made it to the top, but I did it! The way down was pretty funny too.  Since the wall is slanted outward you can’t really repel on your way down, so I curled up into an awkward ball and was just hanging from the rope.  Of course Milena starts taking pictures, and Manuel stopped lowering the rope about 15 feet off the ground.  And I was like ummm can you put me on the ground already?? And he says, “Sorry, it’s just too funny!”  I guess it was pretty funny now that I’ve seen the pictures. 

 

 Some shots of Milena and I climbing!

 

A couple Sundays ago, my roommates and I hosted a merienda, which is basically a designated snack time around 6pm where people drink tea or coffee and have some kind of snack. I got some of my friends here hooked on a certain brownie recipe and they were bugging me to make them again, so I decided to invite everyone over.  I was really excited to have people over to see our apartment and hang out.  We may have gone a little overboard with the desserts for a typical merienda which is usually just some cookies or crackers, but it turned out great.  I made brownies and Oreo cheesecake, Milena made a chocolate cake, Andrea made vanilla pudding, and Mary made cinnamon rolls.  In total I think we had about 15 people over, some Spanish, some German, some Italian, and some American. It was quite the international bunch.  We listened to music, played cards, and ate…a lot. There were hardly any leftovers, which is good because otherwise I would have kept eating them.

 Happy Halloween!

The last couple weeks we’ve been doing things at school to celebrate Halloween, and it’s been a lot of fun.  They decorate the whole school, play games, and bring treats just like at home.  A lot of the little kids dress up too. I gave myself a sweet paint job on my nails and dressed up like a black cat as I mentioned before.  It was a lot of fun.  I also made brownies, Oreo cheesecake cupcakes, and witch finger cookies.  Everything was a big hit.  I got a lot of requests for recipes so I’m going to have to work on translating them and converting the measurements to metric so they understand.  (They don’t use cups here, mostly grams.) One thing I got a huge kick out of was one day last week, I walked into a second grade class and they were just about to start a game. The teacher had written HALLOWEEN vertically on the chalkboard twice, once for each team.  The object of the game was to write words pertaining to Halloween, one for each letter so nine total.  Each word had to include one of the letters, so for example, they could have written “ghost” for the H.  I was a little skeptical because these kids are only like seven years old, and I thought it might be a little too hard for them.  Here’s what happens when you take two teams of seven year olds and pit them against each other in a spelling race:  they spell things wrong…very wrong.  They forget the worksheet that they just did that had all of the words written on them and they spell words the way they sound. Here’s a little lesson on linguistics to explain why some of the following bizarre word spellings happened.  Unlike English, Spanish is a phonetic language which means that letters are pronounced a certain way and words are spelled the way they sound with almost no exception.  English pronunciation is much more complicated.  So, if a student doesn’t know how to spell a word in English, they will more often than not spell it phonetically in Spanish.  Here are some of the words that were written on the board:  panquin, esqueleton, epaider, and halloguin.  If you know what all four of those words are supposed to be, give yourself a pat on the back and a gold star for the day.  If you guessed pumpkin, skeleton, spider, and Halloween, then you are correct. Here’s why this game was too hard for these kids.  First, they didn’t even realize that the word Halloween was already written on the board and all they had to do was copy it.  Second, they didn’t realize almost all of the words were in plain sight on a worksheet on all of their desks.  Thirdly, these kids are still learning Spanish, so it is very complicated for them to spell English words they just learned.  Needless to say, I got a kick out of it, especially pumpkin.  Pumpkin is a hard word for non-English speakers to pronounce correctly because of the vowel sound of the “u” and the combination of the “mpk.”  So, most Spanish people say something very similar to the word “punky” when they are really saying pumpkin…and for that reason, the student spelled it panquin.  Well that’s my fun anecdote for now, and my next update will be the awesome weekend I just had in Madrid with my roommate Mary!  

I couldn't think of a theme for which to choose my quote for this post so I chose a quote about quotes. Genius, right? "I always have a quotation for everything - it saves original thinking." - Dorothy L. Sayers.

Ok folks, this one’s going to be kind of random. Nothing major to report, but I’ll update you on what I’ve been up to…  

Back when we were still looking for apartments I witnessed one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen.  I had some time to kill between the errands I ran and the appointment we had so I went to the mall by the bus station.  It’s a really small mall so I was done looking in all the stores in about a half hour.   I sat down on a bench, pulled out my planner and started jotting some things down.  I was mostly just staring at the pages and pretending like I was writing down some really important stuff so that people walking by didn’t think I was just sitting in the mall by myself like a weirdo…even if that’s exactly what I was doing. After a few minutes a man came down and sat right next to me on a bench that was already kind of crowded, but people’s idea of personal space here is not really the same as it as at home so I didn’t think anything of it.  He pulled out a cup of coconut flavored yogurt and started eating it.  Ok, pretty normal except he did something that really grossed me out.  So you know sometimes yoghurt, sour cream, French onion dip and other things of that nature can develop a liquid on the top before you mix it up?  Well whereas most people would mix it up before eating it, he drank it. Eww.  That kind of think really turns my stomach.  Then as soon as he was done with that cup he opened another and did the same thing.  I still didn’t think anything of since two yoghurts as a snack isn’t farfetched.  But then he had a third…and a fourth.  All coconut flavored.  I also noticed he was crossing and uncrossing his legs, fidgeting with his pant leg, and looking at his watch a lot.  So, I deduced that this man has OCD and he must have some sort of compulsive yoghurt eating ritual.  But it doesn’t end there.  After finishing 5 yoghurts, he threw all the empty cups into one of the potted plants next to the bench! As much as I wanted to stay and see what happened next, I had to leave to go see that apartment.  After we finished with the appointment (that was the one with the used car salesmen lady, epic fail), Mary wanted to go to the supermarket that’s in the bottom level of the mall I was just at.  You’ll never believe who was still sitting there…the yoghurt guy!  I couldn’t believe it; I almost busted out laughing.  He was still eating yoghurt and there were empty yoghurt cups in three of the potted plants in the mall.  Soooo weird.  Ok enough about the yoghurt guy.

Now that I’ve been back at work a few weeks and can give you guys a break down. My first day back was so fun because everyone was really excited to see me.  The kids went berserk when I went into their classrooms.  All the teachers welcomed me back with huge grins and open arms.  It felt amazing!  Last year at my school, there were two other language assistants, so three in total.  This year I’m riding solo.  This has its advantages and disadvantages.  I’m making better connections with my teachers than I did last year because, well, I don’t really have a choice.  If I don’t talk to them, I don’t talk to anyone.  However, I’m much busier now because they want me in every classroom once a week.  I’m technically not doing more work, but it seems like it.  Here are some stats to put things in perspective.  Last year I worked with three different teachers and I saw 14 classes a week.  This year, I’m working with seven different teachers and I’m seeing 20 classes every week, which totals just under 500 students.  Needless to say I’m a little overwhelmed, but imagine what it would be like if this was my first year…yikes.  I’m working really hard to learn all the kids’ names.  I obviously know some from last year, but it’s still really hard especially when half of the kids are named some variation of Jose or Maria.  It’s really fun so far though. It’s a totally different ball game because I’m not the new girl anymore.  I’m still the foreigner that doesn’t talk that much and looks like a deer in headlights sometimes, but everyone treats me like one of the group and I feel really good about this year.  Some funny moments I’ve had so far… I was in a 4^th grade class and they were taking turns introducing themselves by saying their name and age.  After hearing about 15 of his classmates say “My name is______.  I’m nine years old,” he says, “My name is Carlos. I’m nine seven o’clock.”  What?!? Now, I’ve heard some bizarre things in English, but I was so caught off guard by this that I started laughing and couldn’t stop.  It was so random.  I felt really bad, but the kid was a good sport about it, I mean he knew what he said right away.  Another funny moment, for any of you that didn’t see me post this on my facebook.  I was with a group of 11-year-olds practicing conversation in a small classroom, and after doing all of the usual introductions (ya know, what’s your name, how old are you, etc.) I asked them, “Ok, what do you guys want to talk about; what are you guys studying in class?”  One of the boys said with a totally straight face, “We are studying sexual reproduction, and also Halloween.”  My response:  “Ok, Halloween it is.”  There was no way I was going to discuss sex with a group of Spanish adolescents.  Overall though, I’m having a blast already.  There are some new young teachers that I’m getting along with great in addition to the ones I already know from last year.   Consider yourselves warned, don’t be surprised if you see me on an episode of Locked Up Abroad for kidnapping some of my students.  They are just so cute!    

Here's a picture of most of my teachers and me at the Feria of Santiponce:

 

I’ve also started up my after school tutoring.  This is one of my favorite things about working here.  I get to know some of my students and their parents really well plus I make A LOT of extra money.  Also, the kids that are in extra English classes are typically kids who really want to learn and really like English, so the classes are really fun.  Also, I have total control over what I do instead worrying about what the other teacher is doing. That’s one of the more challenging things about working with so many different teachers this year.  They all have their own routines and styles of teaching and I have to adapt to each one.  I could go to three different first grade classes taught by three different teachers and although the subject matter is the same, the class is completely different.  Right now I’m having way too much fun planning things for Halloween.  I’m going to dress as a black cat (boring, I know, but I’m on a budget here!) and I’m going to make a bunch of desserts (pictures to follow of course).  While I was coloring pictures and decorating the apartment my roommate Mary said to me, “It’s moments like this when I wonder if you should be an elementary school teacher…”  She didn’t really mean anything by it, but it kind of threw me through a loop.  As if I wasn’t already deep in my quarter life crisis, let’s add another idea to the mix.  Maybe she’s right?  We’ll see!!

I don't have many pictures to go with this post, so I'll give ya some that my roommate Milena took of me.  I like to call her paparazzi because not only is she always taking pictures, documenting things, she will snap them right in your face and when you're not looking.  It makes for some pretty great pictures and I love that she does it!

She came out and snapped a picture of me eating cereal in my sweet Spongebob shirt, so I started laughing and attempted to look away...then she took this one. 

On our way out downtown one night.  Great view!

My new address!

P.S. If anyone wants to send me some love while I'm here, this is my new address:

C/ San Vicente de Paul 10

Casa I    9A

Sevilla  41010

España

(that's a capital "i" after Casa)

"Human beings are the only creatures on earth that allow their children to come back home." - Bill Cosby

In the past three weeks I turned 25, had my best friend pluck out my first gray hair (thanks Bridget), packed up my life and headed back to Spain, stayed out til 6:30 am with some French guys I just met, and found a new apartment.  This past week, I started back up at school,  gave a presentation about my experiences last year to this year’s group of new teachers at orientation, and have been bombarded by teachers who want private classes for their kids.  So needless to say it’s been a little crazy, but nothing that I can’t handle. So let’s fill you all in on what I’ve been up to.  Before I left for Spain I had planned to stay with a teacher from my school until I found an apartment, but I couldn’t get a hold of her.  So Mary asked Rafa if I could stay the night at his place with them to give me a night to make arrangements.  He happily obliged, so we made the long trek back to his apartment after they came and met me at the bus station.  I was finally able to get a hold of me teacher and she said she would be more than happy to have me stay with her until I found a place.  So now that I had that settled I really just wanted to sleep.  I took a nap for a couple hours until Mary woke me up pretty much just to see if I wanted to eat dinner or keep sleeping.  Well, actually Rafa woke me up by tickling my nose with a feather, but that’s beside the point.  I didn’t want to sleep for 18 hours straight like I did last time I got here, so I dragged my butt out of bed and Mary and I went for a walk.  We ended up sitting down for a drink then ordering Chinese take-out.  Yes, I travelled across the Atlantic Ocean just to order Chinese food in Spain.  Anyways, we ate our dinner, watched some TV and then went back to sleep.  I made arrangements to take all my stuff over to my teacher’s house the next evening, so during the day, Mary and I continued our hunt for apartments.  

 We had an appointment to go see one right in our old neighborhood.  It was an apartment of four rooms, with two available so we went to go check it out.  It turns out that they had just rented out one of the rooms and there was actually only one available.  Good to know.  What we didn’t know then, was that this was only the beginning of a series of mishaps and bad luck until we actually found a place that worked for us. I could seriously write page after page about this, but instead I’ll try and give a quick run down

1.        We showed up at the first place and there was actually only one room available. No go.

2.       We saw a really nice place with three bedrooms.  No oven or dishwasher. Also, we both decided that the location wasn’t ideal for either of us.

3.       We saw a place with two rooms available out of three.  Cool girl, but the place was pretty beat up.  Also, no TV.  Anyone who knows me should know that this is pretty much deal breaker.  Oh, and did I mention the cat?  Now I am an animal lover, but not a huge fan of cats. Especially ones that look like part of their ear was bitten off possibly by another cat.

4.       We saw a place in a perfect location for me, near the bus station. It had five bedrooms, so it would have been a little hectic, but possibly a lot of fun.  Unfortunately it was a dump, and overpriced for the quality of the room. We also didn’t get the best impression of the lady showing the place.  She seemed really nice, but in a used car salesman kind of way. 

5.       I went to go see a place owned by a friend of the teacher I was staying with, but honestly it was just to humor her and show her that I appreciated her helping me look.  The location was way too far from anywhere we needed to be.  The place was kind of cool though, very retro.

6.       The next one is a real doozy.  We went to see a place with two rooms available out of four.  Awesome location right between the bus station and the center and really just close to everything.  We walked in, and the building was really nice.  The girl greeted us and explained that while there are four rooms it would normally just be us two and one other Spanish girl because she only came back and used her room for holidays. The place seemed great.  Not the best looking rooms and not really spectacular in any way, but it worked for us.  Also it had a great balcony with awesome views of the river.  We were sold.  Then, the girl, who was married but couldn’t be more than 30ish starts talking about “keeping the peace” because there were lots of families in the building.  We said that was no problem because we lived in a building with lots of families last year and didn’t have a problem.  Then she starts saying things like for the first few months we can’t have anyone staying over there, but maybe after a while if we had friends visit we could ask her permission to have them stay over, oh and absolutely no boys are allowed to sleep over.  Ummm what?  She didn’t even care if they were just friends, there were absolutely no boys allowed.  I wonder if she applied that rule to her and her husband, or just to us unwed heathens of the world.  We were so shocked and turned off by that we just left and never went back.   I was utterly disappointed after that and thought all hope was lost for finding an apartment.

7.       This next one I think is my favorite.  Mary read an ad for a place with four bedrooms, two available in the same building as the dump with the 5 bedrooms.  Then she saw the number and it was the same lady. I insisted that we give it a try because the ad was different and maybe this place would be a little nicer.  At least, I hoped it would be nicer because I really loved the location. So we get there and she recognizes us, and we say oh yeah we saw the other place with you but we thought that place would have too many people for us.  What I really wanted to say was yeah, your other place is a dump and we’re really curious to see this apartment.  So we get off the elevator and she unlocks the door to the same exact apartment. She’s like oh, you guys already know this apartment, and we were like uhhh yeah we didn’t realize we were coming to see the same one.  I was seriously so deflated.  I was thinking to myself, could this seriously get any worse.  And she continues to try and sell it to us all over again, turning on that car salesman charm, using the word “quality” over and over again.  After about ten minutes of blah blah blah she basically told us to name our price to get us to live there.  Unfortunately neither of us was assertive enough to say that we just flat out didn’t want to live there.  The price was the least of our worries.  So we told her we would think about it and call her.

8.       Home sweet home. The same day of the disastrous second time seeing that apartment, I got a call from Mary saying she just walked by a place for rent, called, and we had an appointment to see it at 7:30.  At this point I was so ready to just get settled, but I really didn’t have high hopes for this place. I mean how could I after the previous debacles.  We got there a few minutes late because I misjudged how long it would take me to get there, but upon arrival I found that the location was perfect and the grounds of the place were really nice. It was in the same neighborhood I live in last year, but a totally different part, and it was really close to the bus stop I use to get to work.  So far so good.  We met the owner’s son Jose and he took us up to the apartment on the 9^th floor.  As soon as we walked in, it felt really good.  Nice spacious living and dining area, two bathrooms, four bedrooms – one double bed and three twin bed rooms.  Kitchen was a little small, but at least there was an oven and microwave. No dishwasher, but that was something I was willing to compromise on.  It also reminded me a bit of our last apartment which is probably why I liked it. It had great views of the city from our windows, a nice balcony, and access to the roof.  As soon as we were done with the tour I was ready to sign on the dotted line.  The only problem was we were only two people, and the place was four bedrooms.  So, we made a deal.  The total rent of the place is 900 euros, which comes out to 225 a person, and that includes water and community utilities – electricity, gas, and internet would be separate.  So he decided that we could rent the place, just the two of us, but we would have to pay 250 each until we found two other roommates.  This sounded fair to us, especially since even with the increase, that was still less that we paid last year.  Another thing I was worried about was that it was only September 23^rd, and we were going to draw the contract up for October to June.  But Jose was really accommodating and said we could move in whenever we wanted, but we didn’t have to pay until October.  Perfect!  So we were sold. 

      I’ll fast forward to now because we’ve already found our other two roommates, so the increase of rent never even applied and we’ll all pay the 225 right off the bat.  I really like the two girls that moved in too.  They’re both studying here.  One of the girls, Milena, is an Italian girl who was born in and lives in Germany and speaks like 20 different languages.  She’s really fun and goofy and I already love hanging out with her.  The other girl Andrea is also Italian, and pretty much only speaks Italian and limited Spanish.  It’s ok for her because Milena speaks Italian, but communicating with us has been pretty comical.  She’s really nice though, a little more reserved, but cool.  Oh, and she cleans a lot, so that’s works for me haha. 

So anyways, everything’s going great so far in the apartment, we had to buy new sheets and comforters and things like that because they were either not here or they were hideous.  We also had to buy a few things for the kitchen and bathrooms, but other than that we pretty much had everything ready to go.  Here are some pictures of the new place!

 This was my bed before I went shopping.  If my memory serves me well, which it usually does, this is what my parents' bed looked like in the 90s.  Needless to say I bought a new comforter.

 My bed now!  I love it.  Take a good look, because I only make my bed about once a month haha. Since Mary and I took first choice of the bedrooms, I took the big one.  We decided it was fair because I had the smallest room last year. 

Mirror, mirror on the wall.  My cool, kind of creepy old mirror decorated with pictures from home.

My giant desk.  You'll never see it this organized again!

                     

 Here's the view from my room. Not too bad, huh?

The bathroom

The kitchen

Our little semi indoor semi outdoor laundry room.  No dryer of course because they don't exist here.  Still something I'll never get over.

Dining/living room area.  Note the GIANT mirror on the wall.  It's really funny when we're sitting on the couch and you accidentally look at each other in the mirror.

 Living room consisting almost entirely of Ikea furniture.  What you can't see is that you can slide out the bottom part of the coffee table to display things from the glass.  There's a really old school landscape puzzle in there currently. 

Balcony!

View of the Cathedral from up on the roof.  AWESOME!

Mary and I enjoyed some tinto de verano and olives up on the roof and watched the sunset.  If you can't already tell, I pretty much love my life here!