Imbolc, snow, fencing and Tenerife

It's been a snowy Imbolc here in Madrid, with two dumpings of snow during school (as if the kids need any further distractions from class.) At the moment it's sleet, sleet and more sleet and it feels like it's getting colder and colder by the week. Brrrr, roll on Spring.
Imbolc was a good deal better than last year (which hardly bears thinking about) and I went to Gredos for Imbolc for the first time in 2 and a half years. It's nicer in the summer but it was still beautiful this time of year, and we had a great ritual with faces old and new. See the Grandchildren of Gaia blog for pictures and the full post.
Jess and I have taken up fencing lessons with a Groupon voucher so we get them ridiculously cheap, and the guy talks slowly enough for us to follow it. It turns out I'm doing well, but then I've always been good at these ye olde type sports - I was good at archery as a kid and great at javelin in school so clearly I was born in the wrong century lol. With this, Zumba and all the walking we're doing at weekends on our trips we seem to be sticking to our New Year's resolution of more exercise.
Tenerife was as brilliant as expected but it feels like such a shame to fork out so much money for such a a brief trip (and a two and a half hour flight to get there.) The plan was to sit on the beach for 2 days but the weather wasn't really good enough for that (though we weren't complaining at 22/23). Instead we spent Friday afternoon wandering around the beaches on the north side of the island and went to a nice Italian for dinner. On Saturday we went up the volcano which made for breathtaking views high above the clouds for miles around. It took 2 hours to get up there on the bus and the cable car wasn't cheap but it was well worth it. Unfortunately there was only one bus a day and we were stranded there for about 3 hours afterwards, so we hit the gift shop (twice) and I bought a load of new Spanish books to amuse myself with. The place was a lot more international than I thought it would be (it didn't really feel like Spain at all, as of-course it isn't at all geographically), and it felt like there was a bit of every European country on the island. There were more Germans than you could shake a stick at (some of the signs were in just German, not Spanish or English), and for that I'd like to visit one of the smaller, less developed islands like El Hierro in future. Of-course though we had a good time and enjoyed the weather (I've even got a cooked nose to show for it), however painfully short our visit.
This week I've got a school trip to the archaeological museum in Madrid and Venice with my sweetheart for commercialised love day to look forward to!

From classroom Spanish to Practical Spanish

There's nothing like a year (or more) abroad to improve proficiency in a language and to make the leap into breaking into fluency. There are things I miss about classroom and lecture days, like being in a learning environment that's more about learning and less about class management (which is what it's largely been since October teaching English in a school), and being able to learn Spanish in a progressive and linear fashion rather than through the odd word clandestinely snatched from a conversation in a classroom (I'm not even allowed to tell them I've been learning Spanish since I was their age or to speak a word of it within earshot of them.) But I'll admit I was a lazy student in school and at Uni; I was interested in Spanish and enjoyed learning it, but if there was something I didn't understand, I just ignored it - something that needed to be learned by heart, I just didn't bother. No wonder then that progress was slow and that by last September I didn't have nearly as much to show for several years of Spanish as I should've done. Only since living here and being involved in a community of Spanish speakers who don't understand English have I begun to make a real effort, and here I want to show some tips about how to make good progress in a language while living in the country, and beyond.

1. Vocab tests. There's nothing more annoying than recognising a word and having to look it up for the umpteenth time. I've accumulated a very long list of new vocab from words overheard, words read in books and newspapers, things heard from films and videos. The ideal is to learn 10 words a day but in my vocab book there are 24 lines per page so I divide it in half for 12 words a day. I repeat these words again and again until they're memorised (10 times is a good standard), and at the end of the week have a weekly test of all the words from that week, and in this way it actually sticks. It's an even better idea to make a sentence from each word so that it can be remembered in a particular context, which also helps to revise verbs and tenses.

2. Reading books in Spanish. Kid's books are great and are generally much cheaper than these 'comprehension stories for Spanish learners' books. I began with Monsters University in a short, illustrated volume designed for children who are beginning to read independently, which meant it was simple enough to read fluently but still had plenty of words I didn't know. Now I'm working through a book about medicinal plants, something I know a fair amount about already, so I can pick up vocab about something I have a genuine interest in. Then I'll work though the Diary of Anne Frank and The Hobbit, books I've already read in English. It's a good idea to read about something you know about or have read before or you're likely to get lost and it won't be fun.

3. Videos and films. Netflix has plenty of Spanish language films (quality iffy, granted, but then a lot of Spanish language films are.) However my favourites are El Orfanato, Mar Adentro, El Labyrinto del Fauno. I'd much rather watch a Spanish film than an English one dubbed into Spanish - they just look daft and fake, and watching Spanish films you pick up on idioms and cultural differences you otherwise wouldn't. Youtube has hundreds of documentaries and films in Spanish and I particularly enjoy National Geographic series in Spanish.

4. Make Spanish friends. The particular community I've latched onto don't really speak English and in any case I'm expected to speak Spanish. The Spanish Reclaiming group leader is German and speaks perfect Spanish, but slowly and clearly enough for me to understand most of what she says. When I'm with her I feel like if she can do it, so can I. I have conflicting thoughts about immersion:

Cons: A common mistake to make about moving to a country of your target language is thinking you can just let the language wash over you and you'll just soak it up like a sponge and it'll just sink into your brain by process of osmosis. That's how small children pick up other languages so easily, right? Well, no, they're working very hard to remember these words, and are also in a stage of life where rapid learning of large chunks of information is a normal part of daily life (we oldies are a bit out of practice.) The result is being bombarded with a lot of Spanish that you just don't understand, which is incredibly daunting. I've been laughed at, I've had people roll their eyes at me for asking them to repeat whatever it was they just machine gun fired at me, and on still not understanding, I just have to smile and nod and hope it wasn't a question, or else hope the ground opens up and swallows me. Expect people to be impatient that you're difficult to communicate with, that you don't seem to have much to say, and to completely forget how exhausting it is trying to keep up with what's being said for hours on end. That's the price to pay m'fraid!

Pros: But there are advantages to immersion once you have a good enough grasp of the language.You can pick up on words you recognise but wouldn't have been able to translate from English (but beware of false friends.) You can get a firm sense of how a sentence structure should sound and you can tell instantly when it's wrong, something you can't really learn from a book. It improves listening and speaking skills better than anything else and helps to make genuine connections with others.

5. Learning songs/ poems/ short texts. This is a good way to improve speaking skills and can be done at home on your own. Learning songs helps with your accent, widens vocab and is fun at the same time. I could for example learn a poem I love or a paragraph from a book that really speaks to me, and repeat it again and again until I can recite it from memory. The advantages are work on intonation and accent, and being able to speak fluently without tying your brain (or your tongue) in knots trying to get the words out, and speaking with confidence.

6. Study buddies or exchange partners. A few weeks ago a friend of a friend sent me a frantic email saying that he was going to the UK on his own in April to collaborate in putting together a workshop and needed me to teach him English in 4 months. It's doable if he works hard and the priority for him will be on being able to understand what's being said to him and on being able to make himself understood. We meet every Friday and I teach him practical things that he'll need to know and help him with grammar, pronunciation and appropriate vocab. He had a basic understanding already of English and he's working hard and learning quickly. I don't charge him because I need Spanish speaking practice and am learning how to explain English grammar in Spanish. Also because we have plenty in common we can have genuine conversations about what we love and about what's going on in our community rather than forced, abitrary exchanges about nothing that interests us. We really want to understand each other!

I have to be at a level of near fluency by September as a requirement of my course and if I don't hop to it I'll feel like I've been wasting my time here in Madrid. Put in place incentives for yourself like Spanish speaking friends with mutual interests, reading and watching things about topics that genuinely interest you, doing things that you'll enjoy and will actually make you want to learn are the way to go. Feel free to add any more suggestions in the comments below. :)
Happy learning!

Christmas, travel nightmares ahoy and New Year

Greetings readers, super long time no write!
I´ll begin at the beginning, with my disastrous flight back to the UK just before Christmas. I was leaving late, the day before Christmas eve, because I was supposed to be doing a Yule do with Reclaiming types but it was cancelled at the last minute. I´d warned Gingy of bad weather forecast for my flight but she insisted it would be fine (lol). When I got to the airport we were delayed by about 2 hours, not told why, and when we got on the plane the pilot told us that we´d be on our way shortly, then 10 minutes later told us we´d be stuck there for at least another half hour. When we got to London we circled over Gatwick for some time before landing in what was described as ´the limits of what we can land in´ - it was so bumpy I thought I might chuck up. Nice. We were told to disembark one at a time and run to the terminal building in sideways rain and gale force winds ´cause the plane couldn´t make it to the tunnel (I thought we were still moving but turned out it was the wind rocking the plane.) I was even more annoyed when my roaming wasn´t working on my Spanish phone and couldn´t tell Gingy where I was or even if I was coming. To rub salt into the wound we then all sat by the baggage reclaim for 45 minutes before being told that no-one was getting their bags tonight (by which time it was Christmas eve). I was relieved just to be able to get the hell out of there and in tears I ran into arrivals where a tired looking Gingy mercifully had been waiting patiently. Not fun.
So we then spent Christmas eve running round 8 different pharmacies and surgeries to get an emergency prescription of the medication I stupidly hadn´t packed in my hand luggage. It was left til boxing day to phone Easyjet, who told me to phone Gatwick, who told me to phone Easyjet customer services, who told me to phone the baggage reclaim company, who told me to phone Easyjet baggage handling, who gave me an almost identical number to phone because "Yes I´ve talked to almost everyone on your flight but sorry I can´t help you." Finally I managed to talk to someone who had half an intention of helping me who told me that if they sent my bag I might not get it til after New year, and I might as well go to the airport to pick it up myself. So just hop on the Gatwick express, right?
Wrong.
There had been a landslide on the Gatwick express line so we had a merry time with various buses to get there, before finally, four days later (after a good deal of queuing at the Easyjet customer service desk and being given yet another phone number), someone appeared with my bag. Yoohoo! Fortunately during that period Ginger´s clothes had fit me reasonably well and dear gods that girl has the patience of a saint. It turned out later that the bags had been on the plane all along and they just hadn´t been offloaded ´cause the carousel was flooded. They didn´t tell us that at the time because.....?
Because reasons, obviously.
It later turned out that other Spanish flights had been diverted to other London airports, then up North, and then even to Amsterdam, and that I must've been on one of the last flights out of Europe and I was lucky to get to Gatwick at all.
Anywho Christmas day was a much more pleasant affair than usual, with a not dysfunctional family which is definitely a first. Ginger´s parents gave me more presents than I´d ever had in my life for Christmas and they stuffed me with more roast dinners, chocolate and booze than I knew what to do with. Not complaining folks. On one day between Christmas and New Year, as usual, I went to spend a day with my dad´s family, hoping to have a lift from Ipswich but my dad and stepmum were stuck in such hideous traffic I had to brave the bus to Felixstowe (which was an hour and a half late), and boy, was that an adventure and a half. I think I could´ve walked faster. Anywho it was all smiles and nods as usual but at least I had work to talk about til I was blue in the face should they press me with endless awkward questions about my life. Of-course I got plenty of questions about why I wasn´t going to visit my mum but it was almost with glee, I found, that I was answering those. Very rarely do I get on better with my dad and my mum and my grandparents are surprisingly cool about it.
I spent the second half of the holiday ill after spending the first half chasing this damned bag (lol), and I´d wanted to get Philippa down to London for her birthday and we all just sat there coughing and spluttering lol.
Leaving of-course was horrible but guess what, we´re going to Venice for Valentine´s Day! Didn´t think I´d ever look forward to Commercialised Love Day but we´re both spending a lot of money on this I guess to make up for lost time.
So, work´s getting more boring but my free time at least is getting better; at work we´ve got to drag a bunch of kids through some English Cambridge exams that no doubt half of them will fail, and one day there was a kid who halfway through a speaking mock said, with a look of utter despair, that he just didn't want to be there. Deja vu much as it wasn't so long ago I was sitting where they were wondering why everyone and their mother was being forced to do French, and here I am inflicting the same misery (although it turns out French is equally unpopular here lol.)
On our first week back we had another of those infernal orientation meetings that goes on and on for ages and consists of nothing that can't be put into an email, and in this one we were told in Spanish that we must speak English at all times. Oh the contradiction of it all. But on Fridays I´ve started meeting up with Saucco (someone I know through Spanish Reclaiming) for a Spanish-English exchange, and on Saturdays I´ve started zumba which I´ve always enjoyed (with the added perk of watching the instructor shake her booty of-course.)

Also over Christmas I finished the Price of Man, wooo! Now I´ve ordered a proof and am waiting for it to turn up. So I´ll leave you with these two slices of happiness:

Ginger's mum gave me a Battersea dogs and cats home calendar and the kitten on the January page is called....
GINGER.
Such cute.
Very fluff.
Much orange!
Wow!

and, quote of the month:

Quote of the week is from a kid in 2° ESO, who when asked to learn something by heart, replied:
"But I have fish memory! Like Dori!"
Everybody say 'ahhhh'.

:)

Volunteering, non-Thanksgiving and Gingy's grand return

Heyhey, long time no write!
A few weeks ago I found this website on a FB page:

http://www.servethecity.es/

And signed up for one of the projects with Jess. The projects are varied and last a day or just a few hours. Given that I work with kids for a living, I didn't sign up for a social one but for a building project. Beliefs, age, race and occupation aren't important, just that you're willing to volunteer a few hours of your time to a good cause. We went to Getafe for a day to help with building work on a community centre for Roma women. We didn't do a hell of a lot but they were grateful for our presence and help and it was a good opportunity to meet new people and do something proactive and useful with an otherwise dull weekend. The link above is for the Madrid section of the scheme, but Serve the City operates in many cities around the world.
The following week was Thanksgiving and though I had two opportunities to partake in Thanksgivingness, alas this year was the first year I didn't due to the darkness and the cold and the hideously early starts for work finally getting the better of me and keeping me in bed almost all week feeling like death warmed up. Not fun.
However I was well in time for Gingy's grand return! We did the pub quiz on Thursday night as usual, and on Friday we went to the lake and the park where Gingy got into her element and we took some stunning pictures. (Hers are better than mine because she has a posh shiny camera.)

Above: A wild photographing Ginger in her natural habitat.
We also went to the Templo de Debod at sunset (which is so awesome it's recommended on Tourist pamphlets) and I came up with these beauties:

This one looks like the Star Series book cover:

This last one was beautiful anyway but ermagherd look at her hair! The photo doesn't do justice to what orange light does to orange hair lol.
We spent an evening at the Gatoteca, Madrid's cat cafe where city types can go cuddle rescue kitties:

We also went out for a nice meal in Chueca, went on Madrid's Teleferico and the Rastro on Sunday. The kids at school all had exams last week so I didn't do a lot, so it was super sad when on Monday Gingy had to go and I was faced with a week of working doubly hard to make up for teacher's marking exhaustion. But hey, only just over a week now til I see her again! Wooo! Excellent stuff.

Madrid being disgusting, Salamanca, first private class and what happens when you get locked out with everything you need to go anywhere locked in

Over the weekend I took the bus with some friends to Salamanca, a very old and beautiful city. However it snowed/sleeted/ generally soaked us through to the bone and froze us solid.

As we came over the mountain the above view met our eyes and many nervous sideways glances were exchanged. Not nice, but some of my favourite quirks of the city were the astronaut carved into the old cathedral (left) and the miniscule thing that can barely be made out as a frog sitting on a skull that people go absolutely nuts over:

See my fb page for all the photos. I also had my first private English class yesterday, with a woman who's doing a Cambridge course and wants to prepare with listening and speaking practice before she goes to Cambridge for the exam, and the other is a 15 year old who fortunately uses one of the same textbooks in school as I use at work. Hopefully I'll be able to structure my teaching around their individual goals and take on more classes in future.
And oh dear, fiasco of the day, last time I left without my key I had my arse saved by sheer luck but this time, no, no. Dear gods, let the horror of this morning never, ever be repeated. I got locked out of my flat moments after closing the door and realising I´d left my purse in there with my keys, money, travel pass, bank cards, absolutely everything I needed to go anywhere, so I sat in the lobby for an hour waiting for the porter thinking I may well sit there all day, I coudn´t get in, I couldn´t go anywhere, couldn´t get anything to eat. An hour later a wild flatmate appeared, and I said, dude! I rang the doorbell 6 times!´ (I assumed he´d left already) and he informed me he sleeps with his headphones in. Yippee. If he hadn't turned up no doubt I'd still be sitting in that damned lobby. I can´t think of a way round this, if I leave things in different places I´ll lose them, I´ve never ever lost my purse, it´s the first thing I pack! Argh is all I can say after a weekend of SNOW and freezing my balls off with no heating. Then, as luck would have it, when at last Madrid seems to be defrosting is the day my heater arrives. Lol at my life.
Finally allow me to leave you with this image and accompanying quote of Jess for the Shitville the street sweeper strike has left the city in:

Ok so the tourists don't get what's going on the poor dears, but honestly we don't sit neck-high in our own shit voluntarily. But no worries, it's second nature to us, as Jessica commented in Salamanca:

"I'm just gonna stand here by this trash can so I feel right at home."

Right on sis.

November without Bonfire Night or Remembrance Day

*Sigh* well it was all very quiet Tuesday last week, eerily so and today was a normal school day. The clase de Marisol, while trying to teach the topic of Bonfire night, went thus:

Me: Ok, so what was Guy Fawkes trying to do?
Kid: Burn de President!
Me: errr...sort of....

Teacher (after explaining who Guy Fawkes is 6 times): we two teachers are here to help you!
Kid: Sofí, you are ticher?
Me: Errr.... did you think I was here to look pretty?

Kid: What is Gooi Fowkies? (after trying to look up Guy Fawkes in the dictionary)

There is no desk large enough upon which to headdesk.

And in the end they never really got it. Here I sit reading on FB the annual mix of uproar over poppies or lack thereof, and Wilfred Owen poems and beginning to really miss Britain and that surprisingly eventful bridge between Samhain and Yule, something that seems to be lacking here and you don't really miss it 'til you're gone. Still, Nano is keeping me occupied until Gingy makes her grand return, which really is only just around the corner.....

¡Huelga!

Ello ello.
Well the week began with the arrival of my dear orange-haired one, and despite my painfully early starts for work we were able to make the most of the afternoons and evenings with Cien Montaditos (nom), El Prado museum, the Reina Sofia museum (recommended), walks around town and around the Templo de Debod Park, and around the Retiro Park and stuffing our faces in a deserted gay bar in Chueca (we were there about 8ish - people here don't even start to think about dinner until 9.) I took her to the weekly pub quiz and I can't even tell you how we did, in the company of her loveliness I seemed to drink more than usual, and well, it was all a bit fuzzy. But hey, nice photos.

That day was also the day of the teacher's strike, and Gingy being the lefty banner-waving type that she is, bounced up and down with pride at the prospect (indeed, protesting issues that seem to be prominent in most European countries right now.) Class sizes, levels of bureaucracy, level of needless extra work, you name it, the Ministry of Education has ballsed it up, and indeed the topic of conversation among auxiliares rarely strayed from it (we'd be told to turn up on Thursday, assured by many teachers that we'd have classes, only for almost all of us to sit there for a couple hours 'cause no-one had turned up.) But hey, we saw this everywhere:

Go Spanish peoples! You sure know how to strike.
Finally at the end of the week I began Espiral, the Spanish Reclaiming course which was definately very hard to keep up with in Spanish but I think I had the course content nailed more than the rest of them which worked vaguely to my advantage. The weather on Sunday in the park was glorious and it was lovely to do practical work out there. More on this when I do the second weekend in December!

So finally, I leave you with this because it's adorable:

Quote of the week:
Ginger: I think the Gay district should really be in Casa de Campo 
Me: Errr, why?
Ginger: 'Cause it's camp! Campo! Camp!
Me: ........That's a field/countryside sweetheart....

But awww, the orangeness. *Squidge*

Long time no blog!
That's because my life seems to have begun to slip into a dull routine of work Monday to Thursday, quiz night Thursday night, drinking some sort of awful cheap booze with Jessica sometime over the weekend, trying to write, and doing it all over again the next week. Fortunately though I had Thursday off this week because of a local holiday. Woo go Villanueva del Pardillo!
I can't help but feel that school's beginning to feel a little bit like this.

Yes, you tell those little babbling ragamuffins.

I'm not allowed to admit I understand Spanish and must continue to bark at them in English, even at those with a very low level and those actually studying something other than English. Maps of the UK and US abound, ever reinforcing the fact that

all the time, no strange local tongues here, nono. Which is obviously good for them given that learning English may well make or break their little careers, but eh, that's a long way off so instead let's whack each other over the head and throw things at each other, or, if we're feeling well-behaved, gossip about this that or the other individual or compare our weekends.

In other news, we have Internet! Yay! Only took three weeks, my, my, Spain I will not miss your hideous inefficiency. I hear also on the grapevine that a new face will be arriving at the beginning of next month. Huzzah!

In happenings, last weekend I went to the Rastro market, an enormous outdoor flea market that happens every Sunday morning and looks like this:

Last night I went to a Spanish conversation evening in a friendly bar which attracted people of numerous nationalities and was very good fun! But the highlight of this entry is next week, drum roll please:

This gorgeous cartoonified creature will be arriving next week which makes Sophie feel both very excited, but also a lot like this also cartoonified specimen:

XXX

More following the kids

´Cause I totally don´t know my way around school yet, despite the awkwardness of looking like the older ones and occasionally being mistaken for one of them by a teacher not from the English department. Hmm. Yesterday consisted largely of doing a presentation about myself and where I´m from numerous times and being asked all sorts of weird and wonderful questions by the kids (many of which I´m really not supposed to answer), and one adorable little tyke who asked me if I like to have

and I said yes, that´s my favourite thing to do in Spain. At one point I freaked out a bit because we had a class of obnoxious 13 year olds being taken by a cover teacher so neither of us were being taken seriously. Total non-lesson lol. I´m having a better day today, and I´ve been paired up with the art teacher and we´ve been doing geometry which I´ve liked a lot. The kids at least now know all about me and weird goings on in my life and HOOOPEFULLY we´re getting Internet today and some new flatmates too, so I can skype ma Gingy because tis her birthday!!

Happy birthday beautiful lady :D xxxxx

Laugh and the world laughs with you....

Or at you, is how it feels on one's year abroad because really, I didn't get pretty much anything of what you just said, and no snorting and rolling your eyes at me won't make me understand more, it'll just perpetuate my general sense of panic and isolation. Yay. Hopeless lack of understanding aside, here's the lowdown of the last couple of days:
On Thursday night I went to a pub quiz in La Latina run by some American dudes in a cute little Mexican themed bar and hey we came second! Despite some weird freaky questions that surely no-one was going to get...
Yesterday evening I went to the Templo de Debod, since I may as well do touristy things despite living here, and caved in and bought knitting needles and wool (which I didn't bring as I figured I could go without.) Alas I go crazy without knitting. Mmm!

I also did the scary bank openy thing yesterday where I also got eye rolled at but hey, it's done. I've signed up for Spanish Reclaiming training so hey, I'm integrating! Woo!

Today I was happy as I had a super productive day; having no Internet is making me write more so I'm now finally approaching throwing distance of the finish line of Price of Man, but it's also pretty annoying that we won't have Internet til at least Tuesday (I must Skype my Gingy on her birthday!) Sadface. Alas school will get going properly next week so at least I'll be sufficiently distracted :D

Just follow the kids....like a creep....

Heyhey!
The first few days at school have not been terribly taxing. On the first day the teacher gave me the wrong bus information (he said bay 2, which was not the right bus, so I spent 15 mins running around trying to find the right one which turned out to be 27, on a different floor.) Hence I was late but alas not the last to arrive, and when I thought I was lost and not in the right place a whole load of kids got off the bus I just thought, follow the kids....oh yes, like the creep that I am.
There are four English language assistants which is nice, one from near where I'm from, one who was here last year and one American. She's in a dodgy living situation right now reminiscent of how I lived last year so I showed her round my flat as an option. On the first day we were introduced to the teachers, shown round the school, then sat in the cafeteria and chatted for a few hours. Yesterday we had an English dept. staff meeting and today we're just putting together presentations for when we're in classes next week. We'll be working with lots of different classes of different ages (within the secondary school), and half our classes will be English and the other half different subjects in English (I've been paired up with the art teacher which will be fun.)
And now I've got a flat, attention turn to figuring out how to do boring stuff like the abono (travel pass), opening a bank account, getting an NIE, working out bus timetables etc. All fun and games. Never mind eh, I'll get into the swing of things when work starts properly. :)
Laters xx

Bedrooms, meetings with friends, and waste of time orientation days

Heyhey!

I spent yesterday with friends from Reclaiming Spain and people I met at the goddess conference in Glastonbury last July, who were in Madrid to complete their Iberian priest/ess training, taking part in ritual with them then going out for Chinese afterwards. They talked a tad too fast but it was nice to see some familiar faces at last :). 

Today I got up at daft o'clock to travel the length of the city to sit through a total waste of time orientation day. It got to the point where they were about to give an hour long lecture about a pack I've got downloaded on my desktop and have already read, (the rest of the day consisting of a 'my experiences of the year abroad' talk, also the equivalent of which I've already sat through, and the distribution of documents I can get elsewhere anywho), so I just gave up and went home.

Still, first day of work tomorrow, but in true Spanish style it's more like a 'meet and greet', and I was told by the teacher 'not to worry because we've got a few days preparation before we go into the classroom.' Oook. Sounds piss easy :P.

Bedroom photos, as promised:

The rain in Spain does not stay mainly on the plane

Today it fell mostly on me, and apparently will continue to do so for the rest of the week. I didn't come to Madrid for this weather! Oh well.
I'm sorry folks, no pictures yet (I forgot, also I've only just finished furnishing the room.) I'm in a flat with a guy from Reading also doing the British Council program, but we haven't got Internet until the other two rooms are filled. The last few days have comprised of an Ikea adventure (it really is an all-day trip), nothing but tumbleweed that far out of the city, I shit thee not, and sorting out the deposit and rent and buying other things for the communal areas. Last night I went out with a group of British council people all living in Argüelles/ Moncloa, then ended up joining a huge group of about 60 on an all-night bar crawl. I discovered that clubbing with people I don't know is really no fun at all, and needless to say going to straight bars with people I met a couple hours before is incredibly outside my comfort zone, but these things must be done if I want to make some friends around here. It was very loud and overcrowded and hard to hear myself/ other people, and when we got to the club at half 2 I got ID'd and didn't have ID so just took a taxi home (I'd kinda had enough by that point anywho.) Still I can't be a hermit as much as I'd prefer to, and the good news is I met a nice guy who happened to live on the 2nd floor of my block.
Today I got caught in the middle of this during torrential rain while on the way to my friend's house to use her Internet:

http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2013/09/28/actualidad/1380385253_107089.html

The police cordoned off her entire street and I had to say I lived here/ beg them to let me through. I hope they don't give me gip trying to get home! This country takes their protesting pretty seriously I must say, and no doubt I'll miss a good deal of work/ get stranded a few times what with all the manifestaciones and huelgas that go on.
I didn't think that going clubbing without my girly would be so crappy, nor that I could miss anyone so much. I might even ask her to send some hairs in the post so I can stick them to my clothes so I can pick them out....how I miss picking orange hairs out of my clothes. :( :( :(. I look forward to seeing her soon! But hey, I start work next week and I have a date with some locals for Pagan fun tomorrow! Woohoo.
xxx

Not so easypiso.com

Well, well, well. What a tale to tell.
I spent Saturday ill and Sunday lounging around in the park not doing a whole lot, apart from a flat viewing that was in a perfect location but was a bit grotty. The landlord was trying to advertise his room to me (with all his stuff in it), but it's ok, he was moving out this week to go record a CD in Argentina....but yesterday I started getting super antsy to find a place and yesterday the pressure was on. I got an email from the guy saying to phone him asap because someone else was interested and 'had something important to ask me.' So I spent the morning running round like a headless chicken trying to find a cash machine that would actually let me take cash out so I could buy a phone to phone him. When I did he told me that someone else was about to sign. Like a fool, I said this other guy could have it because I was about to go look somewhere else....
And when I got there, it was, well.... very, very cosy. And in the basement. The guy was nice, but errr...he was charging 350 a month for a dingy, dark shoebox to share with him. Not cool. Sorry mate, busy day, another appointment....
Which was even more disastrous. I got lost trying to find the place, and in the advert it said no.16 of this street advertised at 360 a month, so there I was buzzing no.16, and when he didn't pick up I phoned him and he asked me where I was. "Oh 18!" he said. Err, ok...off I went to 18. I told him it said 16 in the advert, and he said, "Oh yeah I've got lots of flats" (or I think that's what he said. His accent was horrible and he talked way too fast.) He showed me around and I was rather impressed, it looked much nicer than the last 2 places. "So what is your price range?" he asked. "About 300-400," I said, as I'd stated in my advert and was within his price advertised. He then looked at me like I'd sprouted another 5 or so heads. It then dawned on me with crushing horror that somehow he thought I was looking to buy the entire flat. Only then did he tell me the room at no.16 advertised had already gone.Oh language barriers. Aren't they fun.
Awkward was not the word. I smiled politely and backed away slowly, then ran, and would've just sat down in the middle of Latina and cried if I didn't have another appointment to go to that a friend in the hostel had found advertised on Facebook, and was already late for.
I met this last guy outside Moncloa who mercifully spoke English, and specialised in finding student accommodation for the local university. He showed me a flat that was 5 minutes walk from where I needed to be, it was clean, not overcrowded as it was only 3 bedrooms. It was slightly above my price range but by that point I really would've cried if I'd gone through all that and not had a result. I took it instantly, ignoring the fact that I was advised it might have a 'party atmosphere'.... but as a local British expat told me this morning on the subject of flat hunting, you really can't have it all....
But hey. It's something. You couldn't pay me a million to repeat the stress and horror that was yesterday, but I celebrated my success at the end of it by joining in with the hostel's drinking games and going out for tapas and beers with a couple of Londoner inter-railers, and today I plan to do very little.  Pictures of the flat to come when I move in tomorrow.

Tapas, Madrid style - not quite what you were expecting....

Well,

day 2 and 3 have been reasonably less panicked than day 1, possibly owed to coming down with a stonking cold due to being run down and it being rather too toasty to sleep at night. Not fun. However yesterday I made the excellent decision to do the free walking tour of the centre of Madrid offered by the hostel, and ended up having a meal and a wander with a few of them afterwards, around the beautiful Retiro park and to the museums (which I almost went for then felt like I was about to conk out.)

In the evening we went to a 'famous tapas bar where the locals go,' and were promised an authentic local experience rather than a cheesy tourist trap. This involved being crammed into a room like sardines, getting a seat was a luxury reserved for the lucky few (not me lol), and waiters who weaved around flocks of people, stacked plates and glasses in hand, like an acrobat, as if the incredible maneuvers he put on show came part of the price. We were told, "In other places, you choose what you want to eat, but here they'll bring you lots of food and they'll keep bringing it until we tell them to stop!". All you can eat tapas wasn't bad for €10 even if it did involve 10 people huddling around each little table. Afterwards we were encouraged to go on the bar crawl, which sounds like fun only here it´s the cultural norm to head out about 1:30/ 2am and finish around 6, and given I could feel my sinuses clogging up at the mere thought, I gave it a miss (but still felt rubbish today - poo!). Still I managed to drag myself to the park in this beautiful 29 degree sunshine and feel like I achieved something through my coughing, spluttering, sniffling and hapless flathunting.

To say I've been thrown in in the deep end is quite an understatement, and to say I've never felt so lost in my life is no exaggeration. But now I'm here to stay, and I'm learning fast so all I can say is... bring it on!

Life on Mars

Remember that TV show about a dude who ends up in a bizarre (might as well be) Martian environment? That's me. I'm him. It's not like I haven't been to Spain before....it's not like I haven't been to some really weird corners of the planet....
But then I've made an arse of myself a fair few times in just a few hours (even though I was advised many times that this was the best way to roll.) I had a warm welcome of a greasy, overpriced dish served by the grouchiest waiter I've ever met (I thought the Madrileños were friendly!), but then this was balanced out by Ryanair not losing my bag and not charging me a fortune for having a 15.2kg bag on a 15kg allowance (which was a shock indeed! Oh the horror stories I've heard...). I also managed, just a few hours ago, to do a bold supermarket shop only to not turn up with a bag and not be offered one, so I then attempted to stagger back to the hostel; I then put said items down to stuff as much as I could in my hoodie to carry it that way, only for someone to ask if I'd fallen over. Silly sausage is me, daft yet resourceful.
Then there's this country's ghastly lack of English Breakfast tea.... I had to settle for peppermint. Dear me....
....Well I'll get there. Maybe the French supermarket down the road is a good bet...

Last minute jitters

Now dawns the last minute terror at T-5 days - not running out of money, making sure everything's done on time and the right order (scary things involving police stations, bank accounts, endless red tape and paperwork and phone tarriffs), not losing things, not getting lost myself, not looking like a tourist and making sure I can scrape by when things go horribly wrong and the only help I may get is from Spaniards who bark angrily like machine guns. Then there's finding somewhere to live that's not filled with cockroaches and loud Erasmus students from hell, run by dodgy landlords armed with hidden costs. Let's also try not to end up in a 'party hostel' the week we're trying to sort this all out without losing the plot, huh....
And how will I leave my dear darling Gingy? (pictured).

The funny thing is that on Monday she thinks that she's having a dissertation handing-in party, when actually she's throwing me a two day leaving party. I'm sneaky like that.

But hey what is there to worry about! I'll be teaching kiddies here:

And living here (somewhere):

I'm apparently supposed to be doing a lot of this:

Which on a regular basis is not really my idea of fun but that's ok, because it means that within a week we'll all be homies like this:

or....something. I suppose it'll probably end up looking more like this:

Hey, I might get all local and start beginning to think about warming to this stuff:

All of the nom! Hey, I'll have a great time.

I'll not often be without this little groovy dude, will I? :D

xxx

Bienvenidos :D

Greetings friends :D.
My other two blogs have been horribly neglected this summer, which will be rectified once I stop picking fruit for 35 hours a week. As many of you know I'm jetting off to Spain to teach English in a school in Madrid for 9 months in the freakishly near future, and not wanting to leave you lovely peoples out of the loop, I have a new blog to fill with pictures, strange goings on, mishaps and wonderful new experiences. So you know now, the name of this blog translates as 'The diary of the little witch', 'brujita' being the adorable nickname I managed to attain the last time I spent time with Pagans in Spain two years ago. I hope to be much more active in the Spanish Pagan community than I have been able to in the next year, somewhere modern Paganism has taken off like a rocket (as in many European countries.) Acting as a bridge in the gap between the majority anglophone resources and famous faces, and an eager Spanish audience hungry to learn, is a very exciting place to be indeed.
This will probably end up becoming bilingual as I go along, so please bear with me anglophones! Google translate is your friend. In all honesty I've no idea what will happen and little introverted Sophie who likes lists and plans and neat timetables and not too much fun in one day is quite terrified. But hey, if we don't adventure we don't learn nearly as much, so..... speak soon :)
XxX