Bit by Bit

It’s still weird for me to acknowledge the fact that I live in Spain. It’s almost November, so I’m approaching the two month mark. Part of it is my life here isn’t “permanent.” Even though I have a paying job, an apartment, and I cook for myself, all hallmarks of post-grad life, it doesn’t feel quite real. I think a large part is that since we were kids we’ve been told the script of our lives:

1.      Do well in school
(In order to)
2.      Get into a good university
(In order to)
3.      Get a good job
(So you can)
4.      Provide for your kids
(So they can)
5.      Repeat the cycle 
 

Maybe this isn’t the exact plan that everyone gets pressured to do, but I think so much of we do is based on delayed gratification, which I’m not necessarily against. I see wisdom in saving money, planning ahead, making sacrifices now to benefit in the future. It’s a solid principle (especially in lieu of the other extreme of “my way, right now”); however I’m definitely feeling the dissonance when that principle becomes so rigid. When everything you do is for a future that you may or may not ever reach, when you start defining worth and value based on a completion date. The whole, “I’ll finally be happy when I finish my degree, when I have this many kids, when I get this rank at my job.” You can start to see identity and worth get redefined by what you’ve done instead of who you are. 

Almuñecar

Anyways all that is to say, I’m starting to build my life here, which is why I haven’t been writing as much, I’ve just been focused on living.  Unfortunately I’ve slipped into living for future.  “When I finally get my internet, then I‘ll be settled. When I get paid then I can enjoy myself. When I can speak better Spanish then I’ll try to make more friends. When Raices starts then I’ll be more involved with the community.”  And while those things are important, I don’t need them to feel settled. I’m already here. 

 

So some things I have done. Two weeks ago I went to Almuñecar, 1.5 hrs from Granada, with some American girls from my church; super impromptu and completely worth it. The day started cloudy but by the time we reached the sea rays had broken through and unveiled the different shades of blue and teal of the Mediterranean.  We had 2^nd breakfast at this café on the boardwalk and then finally moseyed down to the beach. Instead of sand, the shore was made up of little pebbles. They were perfect for skipping stones; oval and flat.  We spent a good portion of our time climbing this large rock/cliff that overlooked the bay and hanging out on top just enjoying the view.  We wanted to cliff dive but the wind was a just bit much so we settled with a polar plunge by taking a running start from the beach.  It only took a minute or two for my body to go numb and then it felt glorious.  I swam watching the colors shift as I crossed depths. So so incredible and so much fun. 

Chelsi, Cathy, Lorena, and me

The next weekend amigos from my teaching program came and visited! Unfortunately it drizzled and rained most of the weekend so the beauty of Granada wasn’t quite on display.  But we met up with the other participants in town and went for tapas. It was surprisingly refreshing to be around so many familiar faces.  I think my favorite part of the weekend was when we ended up in this 50s/60s themed bar.  The illustrations on the wall were so fun: go-go girls, slicked hairstyles and winged sunglasses, old magazine covers with completely antiquated language.  I loved the break from passing bars that were blasting club songs to hearing music where dancing the twist was applicable. And dance we did.

As for during my weeks: I enrolled into a Spanish course, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6pm-9pm; long but worth it. My professor focuses a lot on how to sound like a native when constructing sentences and using colloquial phrases. She has this whole philosophy about how she doesn’t teach rules of language because people blindly follow them rather than thinking about how language works.  So she says she teaches the mechanisms of language instead, a bit Dead Poets Society but I think she’s onto something. Now I understand the grammar so much more even if I can’t produce it perfectly. Plus unlike my Spanish course at CLIC there’s only one other American in my class. We have students from Germany, France, Syria, Luxemburg, Canada, and Brazil. So our common language is Spanish, which helps deter me from resorting to English. 

Luismi, Sarah, and me

Wednesdays I tend to go to a bible study and Fridays are hang out/cultural nights. Yesterday we had an open mike night and people played instruments, rapped, sang, and recited poems in English, Spanish, and Romanian, plus some dancing. Another Friday we explored the area around the Alhambra (gorgeous at night) and hung out in a teteria (tea shop) afterwards. But don’t let me fool you, my weeks may sound filled, but I still find plenty of time to waste watching TV, wandering around the center window shopping,  laying in my bed, or on the more productive side find new places to hang out with Noemi (Jazz Café ftw!)

I may or may not be seriously considering renewing my contract for another year. Part of me says one year is enough then I need to start looking at “real” jobs, but then the other part of me says this is a “real” job.  Plus with two years of living here my Spanish will be better, I’ll have better friendships, and more life experience whether that’s teaching ESL, working with kids, or (hopefully) a better understanding of the direction/arc I want to pursue.  Just some thoughts. But for now I’m trying not to let my circumstances dictate my mood. If I’m waiting for something, I won’t hold my breath; there are other things to experience even with deadlines loom in the distance.

Santa Fe

My School

Monday was my first day at my school, I.E.S Jimenez de Quesada. Much to my surprise I love my 1° ESO B (1st year bilingual) class. They are 12-13 year olds and they basically don’t know anything. It’s slightly adorable, but also hard because I never know if they are quiet because they are being respectful or because they don’t understand. There are about 30 of them, and I see them for English language class, Geography in English, and Science in English.  

Some of them have told me I’m a great teacher. Hah. That might be a culture difference or just a stress difference. The teachers here are thinly stretched; less resources, more students, more hours. However some teachers aren’t the best at making sure their directions are understood. Or they automatically assume a student is being rebellious and disrespectful when they are just confused. I’m still not sure how I feel about ring around some teachers give students when they make mistakes. 

Example: a girl was late to class after the door was closed. The teacher didn’t hear her knock before she came in and stopped the class to address her. He asked her if she knocked thought obviously he didn’t think so. A girl by the door came to her defense, but because he didn’t hear it she had to go back outside. She knocked and came in, but she didn’t wait for an answer. So she had to go back out and knock and say “May I come in?” wait for an answer and then come in.  All of this was also in English, and she was obviously having a hard time understanding and just wanted to go to her seat. 

Sympathy or not, I feel like the whole thing was disruptive and not the most beneficial to class. When there are that many students, I’m more inclined to let little things slide. But I guess they need the discipline? Still he could have just said “please knock and wait before you come in;” aka directly instructing and slightly less humiliating.

A nice touch of green

In general I’ll be helping in those three subjects but with three different levels: 1° Eso B, 2° Eso B, and 3° Eso B.  Plus I’ll be doing the occasional rotation with a Bachillerato class and the Education modular (future kindergarten teachers). We don’t really have the Bachillerato in the US, but it’s a post-high school education and pre-university track. The students are 16-17 years old, maybe 18 years old.

 I visited one with only eight students and it was like pulling teeth. I’m actually not sure what the point of the class was since we did Q&A for a bit. But it also could be that the teacher seems to be all about breaking down the walls of the “box,” or if not getting outside it, at least sitting on top of it. Supposedly one of these days the class will take me to get piononos, a sweet sponge cake emblematic of the town. She also asked them to write a couple sentences about the history of Santa Fe, and told them they could make it up if they wanted.  Their questions, though recalcitrant, were on the more imaginative side. One girl asked me how I felt about unicorns and a guy asked me if I received my letter to Hogwarts (he’s a Gryffindor).They get points for originality even if they stared at their papers to avoid eye contact. 

So far I’ve caught the 7:45am bus to Santa Fe and get into town around 8:05. Other days I’ll come an hour later, or not until noon. That being said some days I may leave at 1pm others at 3pm (+ the commute home). My looser schedule is prompting me to learn how to walk slower and enjoy my surroundings. I take cues from the old Spanish men. Old Spanish men walk only slightly quicker than the old Spanish women who hobble in their heels hanging onto each other with the air of sharing secrets.  The men have their hands clasped behind their backs, heads tall and straight, with the occasional pipe cocked askew. I don’t sport the pipe, but I’m picking up the idea of walking and absorbing rather than walking and going. 

Plaza de Epaña Santa Fe style

Santa Fe is…symmetrical. Well not actually, but the streets, houses, movement and feel of this town is a bit more in order. The streets are clean(er); I still see the occasional dog droppings, unfortunately, squashed by a passerby.  I almost wish I lived here. Especially when I see my kids go home. They yell across the street, “Angela, Hi!! Bye!!” It makes me want to hang out, play futbol with them, and find out about their lives. But I feel the idyllic town life would wear off quick. I do hope though they’ll have some field trips or extracurricular stuff with which I can help. Reading materials aloud doesn’t give a lot of time to find out who these kids are.

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.

Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow

This is it. I'm on the bus to Granada, my last move for the year, and it has wifi! My heart is still racing from narrowly making it on board, but a little Swedish xylophone music (Detekivbryan) will take care of that.

My last night in Sevilla was just what I needed it to be. My nueva amiga Courtney and I went to the Teatro de la Maestranza and listened to seville's symphonic orchestra, a 100 person chorus from Malaga, and 4 lovely opera singers perform Verdi's Misa de Réquiem.

It was like water to my soul; cleansing, calming, refreshing. A pure pleasure. For 2 hours I could unwind and process everything that's been happening or just sit and be. Nothing begging my attention except the beauty that filled the room.

After the concert, we went and had tapas near la Plaza de los Vírgenes and had some good ol' fashion conversations: dreams, goals, pasts. Deep conversations are my love language.

Unfortunately I wore the wrong shoes to gallivant on cobblestones at night so I went home around 1 am instead of meeting up with everyone at Alfalfa. While I do wish I got to spend more time with people, I'm glad I went to bed at a decent hour, considering my narrow escape this morning.

Now I'm watching stretches of rolling hills covered with olive groves grow more frequent and spotting the occasional vestige of history in the form of churches, ruins, castles/monasteries which crop out of white washed pueblos. I even see some windmills churning (Don Quixote lives!)

Even though i'm transitioning yet again, peace guards my feet and praise rests on my lips.

Day to Day

Top of Las Setas

I have two days left in Seville! Thankfully I feel like I got to enjoy the pace of life a bit more these past two weeks. In the mornings I walk 20 minutes to CLIC where my Spanish class is held.  In the 5 minutes it takes to walk from my apartment to the bridge I see about 70 kids, parents in tow, migrating towards the primary school on the block. It’s slightly sickening how adorable it can be, especially the dads carrying their kids on their shoulders.  The bridge, el Puente de Isabel, is probably my favorite part of my walk. The river usually has a congregation of ducks or kayackers in the early morning set against a skyline that includes the Torre de Oro (tower of gold), Teatro de Maestranza (an opera house), the towers of the la Plaza de España, and the Cathedral.  It’s pretty common to have a “this is my life!” moment walking across the bridge. After a few winding streets and several sets of stairs, I join nine other participants for our Spanish class

Graffiti is everywhere

Let me just tell you, we are hilarious (por supuesto, no me digas!) We’re convinced Manolo (our teacher) thinks we’re hilarious too. He’s definitely let out some unintentional man giggles. The class is actually pretty cool. Most of it is conversation based with the actual grammar lessons more after the fact. Like on one of our loudest days, he put two model shots on the board and told us to make up personalities for them. We got entirely ridiculous with Javier Alfonso y Jacques. Then he told us they were roommates and we had to think of all the different conflicts they would have. Insert the subjunctive and there you have it. Afterwards he’ll write things we said incorrectly on the board and we have to figure out what’s wrong with them. Then today one person sat with their back facing the class while Manolo would write a problem on the board. The class had to give the person advice on what to do, aka use condicional tenses, while they guessed what the problem was. The cherry on top was that he worked in several of our class jokes (cats, fanta limon, and having a boyfriend who’s 6 years old) into it. 

Pelusa, the precious bunny at my homestay

After class and after signing up for activities CLIC organizes, I walk home and host padres and I have lunch between 2-3pm.  I think I’ve mentioned it, but my señora can cookkkkk. Plus I’m pretty sure she’s a pescatarian so I get tons of delicious vegetable based meals (I’m not a fan of the fish). Yay healthy food! Not everyone is so fortunate. From sal morejo, ropa vieja, solomillo al whisky, plums, yogurt, fresh cheese, and this crazy delicious lasagna-like recipe that’s made with potatoes instead of pasta she has got me covered concerning flavor. I tend to have to turn down food. She tries to put 4 plates in front of me everyday plus offers dessert even though she barely eats anything.  However dinner tends to be just yogurt and fruit around 9 or 10pm.

That’s the other thing; meals are my major source of interaction. I’ll tell them about where I’m going that evening, and they’ll tell me stories about past participants and other random things from the day. I listened to Paco talk about “the perfection” that is Don Quixote for 20 minutes. Apparently if you read a translation, it’s no good. Also you need to learn Latin so you can enjoy it the best. Hah. Meal times really are family times and family dynamics are my favorite. There’s a sense of consistency and familiarity that host parents give that perhaps living with friends or just people your own age doesn’t quite capture.

Matalascañas

Afternoon/evenings have run the gamut so far.  The new additions to my sight-seeing list include Las Setas(the mushrooms) during the day and night, Museo de Bellas Artes and  the Modern Art Museum, a Flamenco class, Casa de Pilatos, the Catedral and Giralda, a day trip to Matalascañas’ beach. Then tomorrow there’s Italica (Roman Ruins) and Friday I plan on going to listen to Seville’s Symphonic Orchestra perform Verdi at the Teatro de la Maestranza.  In between I make time to write emails, upload pictures, watch Doctor Who and Boy Meets World, or to go out to watch a Fútbol game at a bar (you eat breakfast at bars too) and grab tapas with some nueva CIEE amigas. Thankfully Spain has a built in nap time during the hottest part of the day and that provides a guilt free reprieve.

Casa de Pilatos

Aside from the plot of my days I'm also going through some character development.  Nothing the new and uncertain to show you what you cling to or what personality traits rear their hidden heads, like small groups+lots of alone time=Happy Angela. True Confession: I googled "how to make friends as an adult" today, and that's not the first time I've done that either.I just needed a refresher course. At first I thought I was a little apprehensive because I haven't really encountered anyone with a similar core belief system. But after this weekend and hanging out with some lovely people that have completely different views than me, I once again realized what I often say but never quite believe:  I am a (moderate) introvert. It just takes longer for me to trust people, plus the post-college time table for things to develop is also slower.

Anyways, things are feeling mostly easy, breezy and beautiful covergirl. However this Saturday I make the move to Granada, which I am so excited about, but it also means I have to start over/extend my transition state to an entire month. Still, I'm looking forward to it.

Plaza de Epana