Year Abroad: Highlights of the week 17th - 23rd March

Saturday 17^th – Long lie.  Watched some of The Tudors.

On the way home from Mercadona I saw a dog sitting perfectly in a tractor.  He looked as though he were the driver.  Ran home to fetch my camera and went and took a picture.  The dog looked right at me, perfectly posed.  Waved good bye to the doggie and headed home.


 

Concert time!  This concert was a warm-up for Semana Santa and we were playing marches taking you through the week starting with Palm Sunday ones, through the more funereal Good Friday ones and finishing with the happy Easter ones.  They are good fun to play and the concert went well.  I even heard my first Saeta – an unaccompanied solo part of traditional Andaluz marches where the singer/soloist sings directly to God.  They are very powerful and of course it was one of those wee old men that you think is about to die but actually has a massive set of lungs on him who sang them. 

 (I'm playing in all these videos...:D)

Then I came home and watched Star Wars Episode IV.

Sunday 18^th – Got up and decided that it was far too nice a day to spend it indoors.  So armed with my book I went up to the Mirador and sat in the glorious sunshine for a few hours.  It was so clear that you could look down over the valley, which is usually foggy, and listen to the birds singing. 

Monday 19^th – Read a ton of my book and finished off work for the following week.

Tuesday 20^th – First day of the working week.  Also the first day of Spring….ha!  We have been having lovely warm weather and glorious sunshine for about five weeks now, I was even at the point where I was considering switching to my ¾ length shorts.

 At 12.30 am it started to pour.  And it didn’t stop.  Had to go back to my heavy jacket with its hood.  All the Spanish teachers were excited that it was raining finally…I wasn’t. 

Then when I was in class and the teacher was explaining something in Spanish I was looking out of the window and it started to snow…yes snow…all the kids got really excited and Alejandra let them all rush to the windows to look at the snow.  It continued to snow for the rest of the afternoon and when I left the school I checked the thermometer…2 degrees Celsius…

Give me back winter if this is your idea of spring

Wednesday 21^st  – The weather took a turn for the good and the temperatures went back into the teens.  The classes were alright but I was super tired.  Gloria kept laughing at the way she was saying “take your sheet” because all she could think of was how it sounded like sh*t.    

Thursday 22^nd  – Got to sleep in as I had no class until after the break.  Turned out I didn’t have class with one of my teachers on the Friday but her class were going to watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 and would I like to join them…guess what one of Fridays highlights is…

Went out for tapas and it turned out to only be myself, Reyes and Chusa.  I got to speak Spanish for a slightly longer period of time but I ended up tongue tied.  Part of my problem is that whilst I don’t translate from English and sort of have a run at Spanish I lack enough vocabulary to allow this.  So my brain will just be searching and grabbing for words. 

After this we headed to Café Central for a little while and watched part of the live music.  The band were pretty good, but when they sang R.E.M’s We Put a Man on the Moon they kept singing Mon instead of moon…it was sort of jarring, but funny and understandable.  It reminded me of the Ken Lee woman from Bulgarian X-factor.

 

Friday 23^rd  - Went to school and watched HP.  Tried very hard not to get too emotional as the last film is pretty intense and upsetting…One of the kids in that class had never read nor seen a Harry Potter book/film…Spain truly is a strange place.

Had band rehearsal and the went to meet up with people in La Pena – the flamenco bar.  Listened to a young guy playing the guitar and a young woman singing.  Was falling asleep by the time they were done.  I do enjoy flamenco, but more the fast paced stuff and not so much the dirges that all eventually sound the same. 

After their concert we went upstairs and were treated to something a bit more lively.  Some old guy in a suit was playing guitar and the boys who work at La Pena were singing and clapping along.  Dave was so drunk that he joined in…

I went home and slept for ages.


Days until I finish at Santisima -  64

Year abroad: Highlights of the week 10th - 16th March

Saturday 10^th – Went to La Puerta de Segura for Matt’s birthday.  Presented him with a can of Irn-Bru, and explained what was meant by a fizzy drink/ginger.  Later on we went to a nearby town where there was supposed to be a good discoteca, epic fail.  We ended up paying for a taxi back and then sitting in a pub watching basketball and eating pipas.

La Puerta de Segura

The boys decided to go exploring...

We were so glad to be going down this hill instead of up

The police station.  

Sunday 11^th – Still in La Puerta.  La Puerta is a tiny wee town with around 2500 people living there.  It is literally one street.  We went to a café near Matt’s school for breakfast, then for a walk above the town.  The town is really pretty. 

Monday 12^th – Had a long lie.  Sunbathed a little.  Weather is now really lovely and warm (for me…).  Made fajitas.

Tuesday 13^th – School was good.  Classes seemed to enjoy the activities – crosswords, fill in the blanks etc. that I’d made.   

Got positive feedback from one of the teachers whom I work with saying how the kids all really liked me and that I was doing a good job.

Band like usual.  Found out that we had a concert on the Saturday to warm up for Semana Santa.  I’d only seen two or three of the pieces ONE time before.  Got Martin to photocopy them for me so that I could practice before the concert.  They were all processional marches.

Wednesday 14^th – Got some positive feedback about how I was doing in the art classes.    

Thursday  15^th – We did a class about homosexuality and famous lgb people in general.  Had to resist the urge to sing and dance along to the Beatles (Across the Universe uses I Wanna Hold Your Hand to show a lesbian teenager) and Queen (FREDDIE).  One of the more conservative boys was very shocked when he realised that the girl was singing to another girl and not to the quarterbacks. 

Got a text around 5 from Leah saying that she was out tapasing with some tecahers and people from Ubeda and would I like to join her since there was a man who had lived in Scotland for over thirty years.  Off I went and spent a few hours talking with a Spanish man who has a broader accent than me.  We talked about everything from The Big Yin to how he has met Sean Connery three times.  He works as a tour guide based in Edinburgh during the summer and works in Ubeda the rest of the year .

Tapas as always in Pedritos. 

Friday  16^th – Emotional times in the staff room.  More positive feedback.  I still don’t want to leave!  Just make the next few months a bit longer please, although I know they will fly in…L

Me and Geni...

 

Tapas with some of the teachers/my friends…Reyes, Geni, Paco, Gonzalo, Mercedes and Jenna.  We tried the tapas especial of El Trillo.  It was foie gras, some weird apple, potato and meat thing and coleslaw…a bit weird.  After this we went to a coffee shop and they drank coffee and we all ate some cake. 

Rehearsal in the teatro.  Nearly two hours without a break.  These pieces are big blowers and I was already so exhausted.  Was sort-of fun in a masochistic way, especially when Martin lost his temper at the trombones and we had to keep playing the same passage over and over.  

Then I met up with some friends in Torreon.  Had a drink there and then went to La Pena.  Poor Gonzalo got stuck with some guy who wouldn’t stop talking – habló por los codos.

So all in all another good week.  Roll on many more.

Days until I finish at Santisima - 76

Year Abroad: The first week back

                  It’s always hard to leave home.  I have now done this twice in the space of only a few months.  Christmas was great, and I will probably write a little about this at some other time.  I was so happy to be home and I did fall into the swing of it so it was another wrench to come back to Spain. 

                

                Following the hectic and unfortunate flight/delay/having to stay overnight in a random hostal in Barajas and shell out another 25 euro for a train ticket let’s just say I was not in the happiest of mind-sets.  I was at a low point with Spain, I didn’t want to be there and here were more problems that I had to overcome just to get back to the place where I was pretty sure I didn’t want to be (this was just the stress talking of course).  

                The hostal was actually really nice.  And it included transport to and from the airport.  The guy who drove the minibus started asking where I was from and all the usual stuff.  We ended up talking about the Loch Ness Monster and whether or not I believed it existed.  “Pues si, claro”…then I asked whether they had monsters in lochs in Spain, to which the answer is no but he told me about the “caras de Belmez”.  In a house in the small town of Belmez, about an hour from Baeza, faces have appeared and disappeared since the 1970’s.  The man told me that they were apparently the faces of souls trapped there who are screaming because they want to be free. 

                

                On the Tuesday I went back to the airport to get the train to Atotcha and from there the train to Linares-Baeza where Geni was waiting to pick me up.  I got back to my flat, unpacked, skyped and then slept because I had my 8.15 start. 

                Being back was a bit lonely.  Leaving a house of four people and coming back to my little flat was strange.  But thankfully on the Thursday I bumped into Anna, one of the Americans.  We went for some tapas and talked about our holidays and made arrangements for the weekend.  Mat was to come down from La Puerta and Leah and Adele from Ubeda.               

                

                On the Friday I ended up going out with two of my teacher friends and some of their other friends to Da Vinci’s which is one of my favourite places because it is normally quiet enough to have a conversation and like most places here the drinks are cheap and the tapas is good.  Except I don’t understand the obsession with gambas, even if I didn’t have a really bad allergy.  I mean, you have to pull off their little legs and the shells.  And I thought that being hundreds of kilometres from the sea meant that I wouldn’t encounter seafood often, but it is so very Spanish and I am starting to like some of the fish that they serve, or at least I can eat it without gagging.  I have always liked salmon, I like proper fishy fish but it would never be my first, second or even third choice.  That night was really good, conversations were interesting and I got to bust out my Spanish which has, I feel, improved so much in the past few months.  I still lack vocabulary but it is coming, all part of the process.

                

                   

                And then it was Saturday.  Time to celebrate Dave’s birthday!  Mat had indeed made it down and brought his new room-mate, Candice from New Zealand although she has recently moved to Adelaide (where my Aussie relatives live).  She has just recently graduated and was pleased to find that she wasn’t the youngest person there (she is 21, most of the Americans are turning 23 or 24 this year, so I’m the baby at 20).   After the cake, which Candice brought with her, and the weird whiskey, gin and lemon cocktails…we went to our usual haunt, Café Najera.  I finally completed a time honoured tradition and drank part of (I won’t even say most of) a Jarra (1litre) of beer, I hate beer…a good time was had by all.

                

                

          After Najera we went to Café Central and danced…now this is an area where I’ve made a lot of progress…I still feel awkward dancing, but I can usually relax into it nowadays…I mean other than my friends I won’t see any of these people again so what does it matter if I look like a tube.  And sometimes it is even quite fun…I think my Scottish friends would be quite proud of me and hopefully I can transfer these skills to Glasgow.  Spain is so relaxed though, the atmosphere is one of “if you want to dance then dance”.  The UK has much more pressure.

                Anna and I were dancing the opening part of “strip the willow” to Rhinna’s “Love in a hopeless place”.  I think that was the most random part of the night.  On the way home we went into Rango, another club, but it was a bit dead. 

                

               All in all that first weekend served to remind me that whilst I love being at home with my family and my friends, most of whom I’ve known for years and years, I have good friends here.  People that I know for a fact I will miss like crazy when I go home.  I’m determined to travel back to Spain if they are still here next year, and eventually I will realise my dream of travelling the States and I now have a couch to stay on in a few of them.      

Year Abroad - The week I joined a band/ started work/ went to a feria/ went to Jaen and was mobbed by children

So here I am.  At the end of a very busy week.  So much has happened in such a small space of time that I can’t believe I only got here less than two weeks ago. 

This week’s main things are.  1) Saw la banda de Baeza, 2) I started work at the school, 3) We went to the feria in Ubeda, 4) The training course day in Jaen and 5) We saw a flamenco concert.

Last Sunday morning we went to see a concert by the local wind band.  They seemingly only play Spanish music, either by Spanish composers or about Spain.  It took us forever to find the park where the concert was being held.  After the concert was over I went and spoke to the conductor/director about whether or not I could join.  He said yes.  Mission 1 accomplished.  Once my trumpet gets here I can go to the rehearsals and start learning some very different music than what I’m used to.

On Monday night I cooked Megan and I a meal to celebrate the start of our actual jobs here in Baeza.  Luckily I have Mondays off, but it would be better if we had the same day off at the end of the week just so that if we chose to we could travel together.  It also makes it annoying because the other assistants that we know also have Friday off, so they all party on Thursdays.   Actually it seems that every night here is a cause for going to bars and getting our free tapas, so we aren’t complaining.  So I cooked the chicken and it was going to go with some potatoes.  But…and here is the kicker, it seems that my hob doesn’t get hot enough to boil water… and I still don’t have a kettle because every time I go to buy one, the shop is shut for siesta.  So I ended up cooking them in the microwave and serving slightly hard mash.  Interesting fact learned on Monday was that Americans don’t know what “ice lolly” means.  I literally had to take one out of the freezer and show Megan before she was like “oh a Popsicle”.  The culture shock doesn’t seem to be between me and the Spaniards, more like between me and the Americans!!

Tuesday was my first day of work.  I only have two classes on a Tuesday and a “material” meeting to sort out my stuff with Gloria.  I gave my PowerPoint in English and then the kids asked hundreds of questions.  They are very good at understanding English and the first years are really keen to speak out in English, which is always a good sign.  The main questions that I was asked was “Do you have a boyfriend?” and “What is your favourite…[insert something here]?”.  This was the pattern for the rest of the week, although I have also done some dictations for the art classes and read out some sheets for my other classes.  This role seems to be as a glorified tape recorder.  Not that it bothers me, it’s what they pay me to do.  And it’s fun.  The kids can even understand my accent.     

Tuesday after school we went straight to la Feria de San Miguel in Ubeda.  Ubeda is a town about 20 minutes away from Baeza.  It shares a lot of the same history as Baeza, but is a bigger town with around 100,000 people.  So we got there and headed straight into one of the restaurant tents.  We were presented with so much food and I tried everything that I could.  My favourite things were a) something which is essentially pizza but that isn’t cooked.  It is on a piece of bread and it cold tomato sauce and cheese, b) fried bread with rice and chorizo and chicken and c) the Spanish version of black pudding on ochio bread.  They wouldn’t tell me what was in the ochio until after I had tried it and even then they were like “you’d rather not know”…once I found out that it was blood pudding I just laughed…I’m Scottish…we eat this for breakfast…  After the food we went across to the tent where there was flamenco dancing.  It was really loud but it was amazing to watch the people doing their traditional dancing, all age groups and all professions (I was there with a bunch of school teachers).  There were even some women in the traditional dresses and a little boy in his traditional clothes, little boots and a suit with a red sash.  We only stayed until around half 6 as Megan and I were falling asleep where we stood.  In the car on the way home they were asking about if Scotland had a national anthem.  So I said that we didn’t really have an official one but that there are a few that fit the bill, including “Scots wha hae” and ended up giving a rendition.  They had never heard of Rabbie Burns…not even Geni who had studied in Stirling for a year…

Thursday morning we had to get up really early in order to get the bus to Jaen, the capital of the region, which is an hour away by bus.  The bus station is about 25/30 minutes’ walk from our building.  When we got there we found Dave trying to buy a ticket with no money.  We all got tickets and then got on the bus.  The bus was nice and modern and the route was pretty.  We just talked the whole way about random things.  We had a short walk to the Corte Ingles where we were to get another bus to the teaching centre which is up in the mountains near the castle.  We saw a large group of non-Spanish people, these were our lot.  We piled onto the buses and got chatting to other assistants from around the world.  The majority were Americans, in fact in Jaen region there are 75 Americans and only 16 British people, and it is only the British who have to do this for Uni so we are all 3 or 4 years younger than all the others.  It took me a while to find an accent from my country.  The only good thing to come from the meeting was the networking and finding the other assistants near us.  They also gave us a cracking good meal, which was far too much to eat.  It started off with some tapas, olives and nuts, and then we got paella (well actually I had beans with tomatoes and cucumber as I am terribly allergic to shellfish).  At this point we were all stuffed…but they brought out the main course, chicken and potatoes, most people ended up leaving it.  And after that a desert.  We are still all adjusting to the Spanish meal times. 

After the meeting we had an hour and a half to kill before our bus to Ubeda.  We had met some other assistants, Mat and Bekah, who were also getting our bus.  So we did what any self-respecting twenty something’s would do and went to the park.  We all got to know each other a bit better and Mat even ended up staying with Dave that night and us all going for tapas at the café Nejera.  Dave gave me one of his extra bottles of olive oil.  It is actually produce of Baeza.  And I can tell you that there will still be half this bottle left by the time I’m heading home, it’s that big.  Megan and I taught Dave how to boil an egg……………this is someone who has lived at college for the past four years…..

Last night, Friday night, it was time for a flamenco concert.  We were all to meet at the fountain in the plaza central, and as usual Megan and I were the first to arrive.  So we sit on the fountain.  Bad move.  We got swamped by all of our kids.  Literally mobbed my around 40 of them.  I kept thinking that they’d push us into the water, but they had more sense than that.  We went tapas-bar hopping.  Finally it was time to go and see flamenco.  The band started at midnight and it lasted until around 1am.  They were amazing!  The band members were all from Baeza, and Megan and I had actually witnessed their rehearsal as we were walking home on Thursday.  We heard music coming from a basement and peeped in.  They sang, played the music and they even did some dancing.  A lot of these songs are very old and represent the Gitana culture in Andalucia.  The rhythms are hypnotic and the pain and experience that the lead singer expressed was an absolute joy to hear. 

Well that’s all folks…tune in next time.                         

Feel free to leave a comment, if you want.