The Pomegranate Life

Dali graffiti

Honesty time: Granada's pace is much less glamorous than the three week vacation I had in Sevilla. I’m finally getting to the nuts and bolts of life, making more mistakes, and taking on more responsibility.  

Last Saturday I moved into an apartment which I share with Clara and her thirteen year old daughter Carla.   Clara is a friend of some friends who have been living in Spain. I met her two years ago when I came to Spain with XA (Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship). The apartment is lovely and pretty spacious.  I have a little nook in my room where I read and learn to play guitar. I’m learning how to cook with a gas stove and I actually have an oven! Whether or not I’ll use it is a different matter.  I think my favorite thing kitchen wise is that the microwave has a built in toaster. That’s so efficient!

Living Room

My location is almost perfect.  I have my bank, the grocery store, church, the commercial center and a huge fountain with a walkway lined with trees all within a 5-10 minute walk of my apartment. The only thing that could be a better is my commute to my job. I haven’t completely timed it, but I think I need to take a 15-20 min city (red) bus ride to catch the pueblo (green) bus line that will take 20-30 minutes to get to Santa Fe where I work.  But considering I’ve already run into friends walking near my apartment, I’ll take an easier social life over an easier commute. 

View from the laundry room.

I visited my school on Wednesday and I really don’t know what to feel.  I’m nervous, but I guess that’s normal.  The tour was a little overwhelming; lots of rooms, teachers, and subjects to remember. Not to mention I haven’t even met the students yet, and from budgets cuts classrooms are around 30 students.  One of the things I’ve been rethinking is the age group I chose. I’ll be with 12-14 year olds. By that age I think they can tell when you don’t have a clue what you’re doing. Maybe primary kids would have been easier; you can’t feel them judging you.  The director gave me my tentative schedule (Fridays off!) which has me finished some days by noon and others by 3pm.  As for what I’ll be doing depends on the classroom. There are a couple different levels and different subjects. Some are straight up English classes where others are subjects taught in English like history or science.  The only thing I know for certain at this point is Monday I need to have conversation activities planned that use verbs in the simple continuous and food vocabulary.

Along with visiting my school I accomplished quite a bit this week, however that feeling might be due to the fact of how long it took to do some of those things or how many times I got lost trying to get to those places. I’m a little ashamed of how much money I ended up spending on taxis. When I was relating some of my travel stories to friends, one of the girls, Carolina, gaped at me and asked if I was missing part of my lung.  Meaning did I have a hard time breathing when I walked, why else would I pay the exorbitant amount they charge compared to the 1.20 € flat rate of a city bus.  That reason happens to be that I’m perpetually late which really means I have root problems with procrastination, a poor inner clock, distractions, and other forms of dawdling.

My nook and borrowed guitar!

That particular taxi ride was due to, after some bus confusion, realizing I had 15 minutes to take a 20 minute bus ride on a bus that wasn’t coming for another 10 minutes to make it to an appointment at the foreigner’s office to get my TIE (the thing that lets me stay in the country) which I did not want to try and reschedule.  So taxi it was. But if I had just left lunch earlier, I could have avoided that. 

However the taxi ride I took to Santa ,I feel, was unavoidable. I went to the wrong bus station and had people tell me three different places to get the bus, and after going to all of them I was nowhere closer to finding it.  I could either keep looking  (sans map) and try to catch the next bus time, which would leave me at least 40 minutes late to my appointment at my school, or take a taxi and be on time.  Then it started raining for the first time in a year. Taxi it was. I’m chalking it up as moving costs, albeit painful moving costs, especially since I’m accruing loads of them. My mistakes are running expensive. However in my defense, I don’t have internet access at my apartment yet to help me figure some of these things out. 

Cooking with gas

So my actual accomplishments! I moved into my apartment, opened a bank account, signed up for internet (which I won’t get installed for another week), got my TIE started (I pick it up in a month), got my Carné Joven (discount card), registered with the city which allowed me to order the Bonobús Joven (reduces transit from 1.20 € to .52 €), visited my school, found the actually bus stop,  bought my Green bus pass, plus did grocery shopping, laundry, and re-stringed a guitar. Oh and all in Spanish. BAM. Well crooked, broken, wandering Spanish, but still, I’m trying.