Year Abroad: The Puente of Andalucia or the weekend I visited the Brussels Sprout

             Holidays!  Holidays!  Another long weekend, another big trip.  This time I was going to Brussels where one of my best friends is spending her year abroad.  Her time hasn’t been as smooth as mine, and I really wanted to make sure that she really was ok, as well as to explore another new place, and this time another country.  I flew out from Madrid to Charleroi on Friday evening, and returned the Tuesday morning.  This gave us three packed days in Brussels.

            I took the bus from Baeza to Madrid at half past nine on the Friday morning.  Bus travel is the most efficient way to get places from here, especially since I don’t have a car and the nearest train station is a 25 euro taxi away!  I met the first Baezan of the day here, Clemance (or Lemon to the Spanish), who was heading to meet her French friends in Madrid.  So I had company for the bus.  I don’t mind bus travel so much here, but I do get travel sick sometimesL.   We stopped after three hours for a fifteen minute bathroom break at a “service station”…not at all like the ones in the UK, these are bar/motels which look like something from the Old West.  Everyone piled of the bus, queued for the loos and some people bought a coffee, then we all piled back onto the bus and drove the last hour and half to Madrid.

            From the bus station to the airport didn’t take as long as the metro map said it would.  It had estimated an hour from Mendez Alvaro to T1, but in reality it took only around half an hour, including the transfer from Line 6 to 8.  So I got to the airport in plenty of time to walk the ridiculously long way to T1 from the metro station.  Blah, blah, airport stuff, blah…bumped into two more Baezanites who were off to London…blah.

           I got into Charleroi airport a little after 8, and as soon as I landed I sent a text to Chelsea.  But I didn’t tell her that I needed to wait for my baggage, so she ran to the arrivals, and then had to wait for ten minutes…sorry…when I got out she was pacing up and down the line.  We headed for the bus and she kept presenting different food items from her bag. 

Chelsea at the airport

                Charleroi is basically a room.  It reminded me of Standford airport in Florida, which opened its shops whenever there were passengers, and security takes all of three minutes…  Also it is miles and miles away from Brussels (essentially Prestwick).  The trip back to Chelsea’s house took about two hours and involved two buses, a train and the metro.  When we got back we were the only people in the house, and so we went straight up to her room.  On my bed were bottles of Belgian beer and chocolate...Thank you Chels!  We spent a while chatting, and then I learned that you never move violently in her room because if you do then you are bound to meet certain death when her empty beer bottles come crashing down onto your head.  

Beds, beer and chocolate :)

              

                On the Saturday morning we got up and breakfasted before heading out for, what turned out to be, a very busy day exploring Brussels.  Brussels is huge!  It just occupies so much space.  Spanish cities are much smaller, even in Madrid it only around an hour to walk from one side to the other.  That isn’t an option in Brussels.  Public transport is reasonable in Brussels…and it is easy to do it all for free…Chelsea has a card which gives her unlimited access to the city buses, trams and metro and it costs………102 euro a year!  My railcard is more than that for only ten weeks!  For a single ticket it is 2.50, which adds up but as I said before…you don’t really need one, if you’re sneaky. 

               We started off by going to the MIM – musical instrument museum.  This was literally the only thing, aside from the Manneken Pis (or as I thought my mum kept calling it The Man Who Can Piss) and the parliament which I knew about.  It cost four euro to get in and for me this was worth it.  You get given a headset which you plug in to hear the different music, or sounds created from all the different instruments from across the world.  Some of the noises were horrendous…juex de flutes I’m looking at you, and some were just strange.  Unfortunately the information was only given in French or Dutch (the two official languages of Brussels) instead of having the English (strange given that this is such an international city and that English is more likely to be someone’s second  language) but it wasn’t too hard to read, and when I got stuck, well I had Chelsea.  I found it interesting how various instruments, usually things like flutes and whistles, have been created by so many different cultures.  Even the most Scottish instrument, the bagpipes, has been discovered and exists in so many different cultures (I already knew about some of these, such as in Northern Spain).   We spent a while wandering around so by the time we were done, it was lunch time.  We headed to my first ever Greek restaurant.  This lunch was the only break we had the whole day.

Me at the MIM with a bell.

The Greek dinner.  Kebab meat, chips served on bread...

                       

                      After our Greek lunch we headed to the Manneken Pis.  This is a small fountain that is shaped like a peeing boy.  They dress it up every day in different clothes, and there is even a museum dedicated to these outfits called the Manneken Pis’s Dressing Room…Oh Belgium!  After taking the obligatory photo of me and the fountain we wandered through the streets around the Grand Place.  These are full of chocolate shops and waffle stands.  The smells are amazing.  There was even a shop with chocolate statues of the Manneken Pis…a tad more impressive than the fountain…but we were saving waffles for another day.  We bought some postcards and one of these was “24 hours in Brussels” and showed a picture of an oriental pagoda.  We set off in search of this, at the other side of the city.  We ended up in the middle of a park, with no real idea about where we were going…but in the end we found it, and after some skilful crossing of the road manoeuvres, we got in…just as it was shutting.  We took some photos and then we headed back.

Mannekan Pis

Me at the Mannekan Pis

Chelsea and I in the Grand Place

Chocolate statues

Me at the Oriental palace

                     Our next stop was the Carrefour, to buy the chicken for the dinner and to buy…wait for it…IRN BRU!  I brought some back to Spain, and I’m sorry but none of you are touching it…you can watch me drink it, but until I find it somewhere in Spain…I need it.  Otherwise the little Scottish part of my blood will disappear.  It’s not even that much more expensive, although you could only buy cans.  We got home around half eight, after my first experience of impatient tram drivers…he drove straight past the main stop and then all the passengers got a bit annoyed.  The man next to us pulled the emergency stop and the driver mumbled some half-hearted apology.      

IRN - BRU

                Chelsea made our dinner, very nice I must say, and we spent the night chatting and drinking some of the beer.  I opened one, tried it, and thought it tasted of vomit…Chelsea enjoyed it…I’m not a beer person but Brussels has made me able to stomach it.  The fruit beers (more of that later) were my favourites.  If we’d had any energy left we probably would’ve went out, but we were shattered so a night in the lovely warmth of her bedroom was what the doctor ordered.  Chatting and hilarity ensued.

When we got downstairs for breakfast, Chelsea’s Iraqi room-mate Nazir was sitting in the kitchen.  I had now met the two people that she lives with, apart from the landlord, as Sabiha had arrived back the previous night.  They both seem like lovely people.  We ate our cereal and then headed to the market at the bottom of the hill in search of Neeps, we were having a very belated Burns supper.  This prompted an interesting dilemma…what on Earth is the English word for Neeps…Swede, Turnip?  Something different?  We bought navee, which is what it should translate as in French, but these neither looked nor tasted like Neeps…for a start it was white, and watery, not orange, and secondly both Chelsea and I hate Neeps, and yet liked this thing, whatever it may be.  

I love how these markets are a staple part of people’s routines.  They go and buy the vegetables, meat, fruit, and cheese etc. here often for the same or lower prices than in the stores.  And because of the area that this was in, there was no tacky tourist stuff just a different way of life.  While we were waiting for our number to be shouted a woman came and blatantly nicked a turnip, or rather the thing that the Belgians are claiming to be a turnip.   We dropped off the veggies and then we were off to the Parliamentarium.  That’s not easy to say.  

Parliamentarium

            The parliament was very interesting.  It’s safe to say that you could easily spend three or four hours reading everything and watching all the videos.  It was a little bit of an information overload.  The parliament is free to visit and worth going to.  In order to present the information in each of the twenty three official languages of the EU you are given a fancy-schmancy headset with a screen that when you pass it over certain things brings up audio, pictures and information about everything you are seeing.  The top floor is about the history of the EU, how all the countries joined and how the world wars, and civil wars influenced the need for pan-European legislation.  It moves you through the decades, and into the future, highlighting the most important/relevant events.  The downstairs part was mostly broken when we were there, but from what I can tell it is about the MEP’s.  The part that was open was an interactive map, you push a console around and over ‘hotspots’ which prompt videos about various things vaguely related to things that the EU are doing.  For example, the North Sea links you to a video about GPS…

When at the Parliamentarium...become James Joyce

Or Pablo Picasso...

After the Parliament we went to get a crepe for lunch.  I got one with chocolate and almonds and Chelsea got one with white chocolate.  They were lovely.  After the lunch Chelsea forgot her insulin so we had to run back to her house, forty minutes away, so that she could get it.  Ooops.  We chilled out in her house, tried to convince the cat that showing us her sore paw would be a good idea, and waited for the right time to cook our dinner.

Crepes are yummy

Chelsea told Sabiha to be home for seven so that she could try the haggis…she didn’t look that thrilled.  Although she later remarked that they eat worse things in Turkey.  So I was in charge of the haggis and peeling the tatties and navee (this is mainly because I don’t trust Chelsea with sharp objects, she is want to cut/stab herself).  We put on some Scottish tunes, and she donned her tartan skirt.  Smashing.  We washed this all down with our diet Irn-Bru and then finished off with shortbread and Tunnocks tea cakes :D.  Yum, a taste of hame.

Haggis

Irn-Bru for Scottish night

After filling up on haggis we headed back into town to go to Delerium, a big beer bar, where we spent both Sunday and Monday night tasting the different beers, and adding bottles to Chelsea’s collection.  The fruit flavoured beers are amazing.  They taste just like fruit juice.  My favourites though were the raspberry beer and the coconut beer.  Because these have low alcohol percentages they don’t have a strong ‘beer’ taste…unlike the cookie beer, or the Piraat.  The banana beer was something I had to try, mainly because it seems the most random.  Delirium has a world record for the most commercially available beers.  We spent ages looking through their giant book of beers, and mocking the pretentious descriptions…I’m pretty sure I could be a taster…umm yes, hints of apple and pencil shavings.  

Chelsea and her Ninkenberry beer

Me with my Raspberry beer

We headed for the last bus, stopping off to buy some chips (because Brussels is famous for them apparently) and ran to catch the bus…turned out we didn’t need to but better safe than sorry.  We sat chatting and munching and not paying any attention to the bus, which only did a half route, and only noticed the driver when he said for the third time “TERMINUS”…during the half hour walk home we discussed a multitude of things and I think we have decided what Chelsea’s kids will be called…

The next day Chelsea had to go to Uni, so I had a chance to explore, and get lost, on my own.  I went down to the Uni with her and then she put me on a bus to the centre…without telling me where to get off…and the only stop I recognised was the Parliament…and as soon as I got off, I remembered that we took that bus further into town the previous day…doh!  So I wandered around, found some embassies and eventually worked my way over to the Cathedral…just about everything else is shut on Mondays.  The outside of the Cathedral was impressive.  But inside, not so much.  I lit a candle at the British soldier memorial and went down to see the old foundations.  Then I went shopping.  Brussels has a lot of British high street stores, so I went to H&M and then to New Look.  How strange to be in a country, not speak the language but the shops to be laid out exactly the same, exact same clothes and the same music.  Odd.  I also wandered back up to see the Manneken Pis who was wearing this rather funky outfit.

Yup..I have no idea what that's supposed to be...

Chelsea and I reunited in the Grand Place at half seven, went to the Greek place for dinner then went for our waffles.  I may have slightly had one earlier that day just to make sure I’d get one…but the second stand was even better.  We both got melted white chocolate.  Then we sat in the Grand Place, in the miserable Belgian weather.  Good fun.  As I said before we spent this night in Delirium as well, it was packed…every Erasmus student seemed to be there.  We met Chelsea’s friend Luba there and listened to her outrageous stories…one time she got drunk and woke up in Amsterdam.  She was hilarious.  Beer highlights were the pineapple and of course I reprised the raspberry.  Luba made Chelsea buy Cactus beer…this tasted very much like limeade, but was too sickly.  We headed home at a more respectable hour since we had to get up very early (5am) to get me to the airport and to get Chelsea to her Italian test.

                       

Me at the Grand Place

                I was sad to leave Brussels, mainly because this was the trip I was looking forward to, and now that it has gone my time here is rapidly drawing to a close.  I would never have visited that city if Chelsea wasn’t living there, so I am glad to have seen somewhere new.  I want to visit other cities in Belgium in the future, but Brussels is done now, and unless I ever master French, I doubt I’ll be spending any time there in the future.


Countdown: 90 days until I finish at Santisima...no quiero dejar...I don't want my bubble to burst.

Year Abroad: How to live like a "real" Spaniard, according to my 5th years

        One of my kids sat and explained this to me today when we were talking about budgeting - how to live like a "true" Spaniard...

       Firstly, parents pay for everything...from uni fees, to accommodation, to food.  If you want to go to uni far away make sure you have relatives who you will stay with and they will pay for your food.  One of the other boys said to just phone your mum for some cash but the other boys were like "no, we have too much honour."

       Secondly, only fools pay for electricity and wi-fi...Why not just "borrow" some from your neighbours.  One of the girls said that this was just like borrowing sugar and if the wi-fi is locked?  Well then you bribe the children with 20 euros to give you the code.

       Third, if you have an old beat-up car that you couldn't sell to a Spaniard then you sell it to one of the Moroccans who will pay 500 euro for it.  The father of this kid sells 3 or 4 a year.  

       And then on an unrelated note: people laugh at the telemarketers because they are all from Latin America and have funny accents.   The father of one of the girls tells the telemarketer that whoever they are looking for has died.  He even does it when they are looking for him...

        The kids also had no idea how much stuff costs.  No idea how much rent would be, how much your bills would be.  And none of them have jobs.  It just isn't done.  That makes a change from every student looking for jobs in the UK.  

        Reyes, the teacher, started laughing saying how I was going to think that they were a third world country...

Year Abroad: The weekend where I went to La Alhambra, a Bohemian Jazz Café and Almuñécar

              I’d decided a few weeks ago that I was just going to go to Granada.  I have wanted to go for so long and it isn’t too far from here.  Hostals were really cheap and if I didn’t hurry up and go then I could miss my chance to see La Alhambra this year and that would have been a bit daft.  So I started to look at when I could go.  Then last week at our Burns/Jenna’s birthday party I was chatting with Candice about going and she said that she wanted to come and that Todd and Matt probably would like to as well.  So by last Sunday we had booked the hostal and the tickets for La Alhambra.  And that was that.  Off to Granada we were to go. 

            I was going down straight after school on Friday and had booked my tickets beforehand, an open return proved the most economic and gave the most freedom, which as it turned out was need since we ended up going on a day-trip to the coast and if I’d booked any of the earlier buses I would have missed either them or the chance to sit on the beach in February drinking sangria and eating some good tapas. 

            Fridays are always long since it is my day with the most classes and I start at 8.15.  So I took my bag down with me and did my days work with the excitement of getting to Granada pushed back in my mind.  I left school slightly early to make sure I caught my bus.  This was a shame actually because the kids were properly engaging with the activities but better safe than sorry.  I got onto the bus and luckily I had the front seat which helps with my travel sickness.  I arrived into Granada around five o’clock and got to the pension shortly afterwards.  The rooms were basic but warm.  I had barely enough time to stick my bag in my room before we were off to get Matt and Candice and then head up to the San Nicolas mirador for the sunset. 

            The mirador is on top of the hill which faces La Alhambra.  I read somewhere that Bill Clinton said it was the best sunset in the world…I also read that he says that about everywhere and really I don’t know much about the man anyway…  We dragged ourselves up the steep hills, which reminded me of horrible Friday afternoon lectures in the Adam Smith building in the middle of winter climbing up what is essentially a river…do I really have to come home and go back there?  You sure I can’t stay here living the life of Riley?  Anyway…we arrived just before the sunset and elbowed our way through some tourists in order to take pictures and to see La Alhambra in all her glory. 

Candice and I 

Todd, Matt, Candice and I at the mirador

            Afterwards, since we were just about in that area we wandered around the Albayzin area of Granada.  This is the old Moorish part of the city and it is a maze of narrow winding streets and there are lots of spice shops and fountains.  We wandered around up there for a while trying to decide if we were going to go see a flamenco show or not.  We bought a drink from a shop…Sports Bebidaaa!  After some more wandering and Matt sort-of, kind-of a getting us maybe just a little but lost we ended up in the first tapas bar of the night.  It was not very good.  Too expensive and quite rubbishy tapas so we left after one drink.  We walked back towards the area where Candice had been told there was a good flamenco show.  We went into one place who were advertising a show but 22 euro for an hour’s show is not quite within our budget. 

            After a little bit more wandering and more objectionable walking up hills we ended up in what, from the outside, looked like a scummy bar but they said that a guy would be playing some flamenco at some point so we went there.  This place was a brilliant find.  It was like a cavern with white washed walls and the tables were in little cubby holes in the walls.  The tapas was pretty good and we also ordered a plate of meat and beans in sauce which came with freshly baked bread.  I can safely say we finished the entire plate including mopping up all the sauce with the bread.  While we were eating a man started to play his guitar and it was just something special.  I’m not a huge fan of flamenco but I do appreciate talent and in a setting like this it just works.  As we were leaving the bar tender gave us free Carmel vodka and honey rum shots.  Carmel vodka is good… 

Todd, Matt and I in the bar

            We were ridiculously tired after this bar but we realised that it was only like 10 pm and we couldn’t go home yet.  So one more bar was in order and we headed to one of the streets in Granada that is just filled with tapas bars.  At the top of the street they were all full but as we walked down we found an empty bar.  We laughed that maybe this was because it was just not good, and really the tapas was only a quarter sandwich and a ton of crisps, but it had a good atmosphere.  Before long it was full and we were lucky that we had grabbed one of the last tables.  It was just an example of how the Spanish go tapeando-ing, like we bar-crawl, down a street.  The talk soon turned into a serious discussion over politics, Israel and whether or not the US should be funding things like that and the wars they are fighting.  We tried to get into a club after this but the boys didn’t have the correct shoes…trainers will not do…so we went and played pool and each team won one…

            On the Saturday it was time to go sightseeing.  But before this it was breakfast time.  We jumped into a café next to the pension and ordered our enteras…Matt and I actually swapped since he got one with pate to try it and hated it, whereas I love it.  We had time to kill before La Alhambra so we went to the Cathedral…I mean we are in Spain…The Cathedral in Granada is called the Cathedral of the Incarnation.  It took 181 years to build and it contains Baroque and Gothic designs (thanks wiki J).  I always have mixed feelings in Cathedrals, and whilst this one isn’t as grandiose as the one in Seville, it still took up a lot of Church resources while people were starving on the streets.  But at the same time it is a beautiful place and symbol of devotion.  I don’t know.

Todd, Matt and I in the Cathedral

            Then it was finally time to go the La Alhambra.  I did a project last year on Moorish architecture and my building was La Alhambra so I have been wanting to go for so long.  It is just a shame that the patio with the lion fountain, one of my favourite bits, is all but closed off while they restore it to being functional.  I wandered around just thinking about all the history that has happened here, and marvelling at how much work it must have taken to make something so beautiful.  I mean I know what it symbolises and why it looks so different to Western design but to see it in person and not on a page of a book adds another level.      

 It was ridiculously cold this weekend in Granada and the temperature was around 3 or 4 degrees so I didn’t get to properly appreciate being there.  My hands are all raw from the wind.  The building itself is so beautiful and intricate and I can’t wait to visit again when the weather is better.  Also the gardens were barren and I’m sure they will look spectacular in the summer.  One of the teachers said that I could maybe go with them here for a proper tour so I hope that happens.

Me standing near to the fuente de los leones.  

The roof

I think this looks like a monster's face :O

               We headed back to the centre afterwards to see about buses to the coast for the following day and to try and decide what we were going to do that night, apart from hopefully meeting up with my Czech friend from Uni.  There was still uncertainty as to whether or not Todd was getting a lift to La Puerta or whether he would have to take the only bus from Granada to Siles at 7.45 am.  The woman in the tourist office advised us that the best place to go to the coast in the province of Granada was Almuñécar and that there were loads of buses every day from Granada and back again.  There was a market in one of the squares and Candice and I went looking whilst the boys got out their maps once again.  We were sorely tempted by the pastries but we had just had a decent sized lunch and we decided against it.  Candice got herself an alpaca wool scarf because the poor Kiwi is freezing.

We were going to meet Martin at one of the plazas quite close to our pension because he also lives near there.  On the phone he made some cryptic remark that it would only be a good place to meet if all the birds were asleep.  It wasn’t until the end of the night that we understood what he was saying.  This square is where ALL the birds in Granada go to sleep and all the trees are covered in sleeping birds…really creepy…especially since I have a phobia of birds flying into me….urgh.  Once we met him we headed to a tapas bar that he likes, the main street was full because of football but he told us that there was another branch a little further up which was always empty because people can’t be bothered to go that far.  The place was great.  The drinks were cheap enough for a city and the tapas was huge…it never hurts to have a local. 

After sitting here for a while and catching up with Martin and the gossip about the Glasgow Spanish department…apparently all the teachers have left and no-one knows what the honours courses are going to be…we headed to one of Granada’s many teterias, a Moroccan tea shop, an example of the multiculturalism which exists in Andalucía and Granada especially.  We chilled out completely in the tea shop as a result of the combination of Arabic music, comfy seats and warm tea.  Apparently it is traditional to have apple tea so Candice and I shared a pot of this.  Adding a lot of sugar made it taste like warm apple juice.  We didn’t do the hubbly jubbly pipe…but I really didn’t want to and anyways my dad was gifted one of these from Jordan…

Martin had to leave early because one of the downsides of studying abroad is that you have to study and he is in the middle of his exams.  I was glad to see him even if it was for a short time, and he has offered that I can stay with him one weekend.  I might take him up on that when the weather is better.

We decided that we should head in the general direction of our pension instead of heading further away and we were going to look for a bar.  We ended up going into what looked like nothing special from the outside but as soon as we in the door I fell in love.  The Bohemian Jazz Café…well the name says it all…the walls were lined with bookshelves and random tattered books.  There was an old man playing the standards on the piano, I like to imagine that he opened this place in order to perform daily…  The whole menu was themed but they seemed to do a lot of milkshakes, and alcoholic drinks with ice cream.  I got a turron milkshake…it was so yummy.  It had bits of turron through it and it wasn’t sickly like I thought it might be.  I could live in this bar.  If I can’t make up my mind about what to do after uni then I’m opening this place in Glasgow…GU Big Band members get 10% discount :P.  We had some ridiculous conversations in this place and stumbled across a perfect pronunciation…tiny teddies (in a New Zealand accent). 

Old man playing brilliant piano - Can I live here, please?

Turron milkshake in the Jazz cafe :D

We had a little bit of a sleep on the Sunday morning but we eventually roused and headed to the coast.  The bus took only an hour and a half and we left the cold Granada and replaced it with the quite warm, 17/18, Almuñécar.  The Americans got really excited to see the Mediterranean Sea and we rushed to the beach.  We spent a while throwing rocks into the sea, trying to skip stones and simply enjoying being close to the ocean.  There is an old Arabic castle on the hill and after the beach we spent like an hour trying to work out how we could get up there.  The maps were useless and we wandered through the tiny, winding streets.  There must be a big British population there because all the street signs were in the two languages…e.g.  Calle de la conception and underneath Conception Street…

Eventually we got up the hill and enjoyed a wonderful view across the bay.  Unfortunately, the castle was shut on Sunday afternoons and poor Todd was denied access to another place…he spent the weekend lamenting that he couldn’t climb on battlements or up towers.  So we cut our losses and went to drink Sangria in a café on the sea front.  The tapas was paella…but it had the deadly shellfish so even though it looked absolutely lovely I could not take one bite.  We decided to order some food, chicken meatballs in sauce with wedges…beautiful.  They also brought me another tapas because we told them I couldn’t have shellfish…they were essentially fish nuggets…and they were also amazing.  Food tastes so much better in the sun and sea breeze. 

I see the sea!  I see the sea!

          

Plotting...

We were trying to break into the Castle...ssshhhh

"Let me in!  I just wanna climb one little tower!"

Candice and I after Sangria sitting beside the sea :)

Heading back to the bus station :(

After another lively discussion, this time about religion, it was time to head back to the bus station and head for home, two buses for me and a bus then a lift for the others (I’m still not sure how Todd got from La Puerta to Siles).  I arrived back in Baeza just before midnight and headed for my leckie blanket and bed.

Such a brilliant weekend with great people and I look forward to many more trips either with them or with other people and to just continue having new experiences which, after all, is what this year is all about…

Countdown until my (current) flight home is 133 days…              

          

        

                                       

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: Burns, Booze and Birthdays

             I'm going back through my old posts and trying to complete my chronological year.  This stuff tends to be something I wrote about a specific day and then had too much other stuff to get done so they fell to the sidelines.  Also I feel like I may have published this before (please tell me if I have).

              January 25^th, Burns night, a day to celebrate the poet and all this Scottish.  Except I was in Spain, a long way away from the nearest Scot (I think).  There are some here in Jaen I just haven’t met them.  Instead of grey skies and rain, there was sunshine and heat.  The Sunday beforehand had been 23 degrees…in January!  Now that was a day when I loved Spain, give me sun and I’m a happy bunny.  But anyways, what I’m trying to say is that Burns night, one of my favourite celebrations at home, was just another day here, and an uneventful day at that.               

            On the Thursday we all went out for our normal tapas night and this was the first time I’d seen Jenna since she’d gotten engaged.  It had also recently been here birthday.  We got talking about the “gathering” and she volunteered her flat as it is much bigger than mine, and she said that she’d do some cooking as well.  I volunteered to get the birthday cake and some crisps and it was bring your own booze, so now we had a plan.  And we were all set to have a pretty unconventional Burns night…

            Friday night was a time to meet two new friends.  Candice from New Zealand, although her family recently moved to Adelaide…so when I finally go visit my Aussie family, I can visit her as well, she lives with Mat in La Puerta, and Todd from Washington State, who had actually just met every person in the room that day.  He is in a tiny tiny town called Siles.  If Baeza is Coatbridge, the Siles is Annithill (this only works for people who know the area where I’m from) – Siles is in the middle of nowhere and doesn’t have that many people living there, it’s just cruel to put someone out there so isolated.  Mat and Candice are the closest assistants and they are 20 km away.  Once again I count my blessings for being put in Baeza.

             The Friday night was fun, wine and whiskey at Dave and Anna’s, then to La Pena for some impromptu flamenco – I think this was Candice’s first experience of live flamenco in Spain, and she loved it.  They even played a sort-of Blues guitar mixed with flamenco song at one point, that was my favourite.  I spent the night chatting with Candice about the TV programmes that the UK and New Zealand share.  She told me that Coronation Street or Corro is huge over there and that just about everybody watches it.  Then we went to 11 del 11 and danced for a bit, but everyone was exhausted so we went home relatively early.

            Then it was Saturday and time to organise the party.  I went and bought the cake and candles, then went down to Jenna’s to “decorate”…I put up my two Scotland flags.  Meanwhile she had prepared so much food.  And it was all brilliant.  I stood chatting to her in the kitchen whilst she prepared quesadillas, and almost everyone else was sat around her dining table cracking on with the wine and beer.  Jenna and I lamented about the state of Spanish cheese…it’s too mild…and she was glad to hear that we have good strong cheese in the UK. 

Jenna preparing some food.

The wine table

            A traditional part of a Burns night is the “toast to the lassies”…there was only one person who we needed to toast, and that was Jenna.  She had allowed us to use her flat, and had spent ages making food for us.  Thanks Jenna!  Shortly after this we did the birthday cake.  The cake was a sort-of ice cream cake but very chocolaty…when Leah was handing me a piece it fell, and surprising all apart from myself, I caught it before it hit the cream couch…I’m on a lucky streak of catching things just before disaster…a beer glass in Torreon, a box of vodka bottles in ASDA and now the chocolate cake. 

            Then it was time to try and attempt to teach them how to Ceilidh dance.  Of course I picked the easiest one “The Gay Gordons” because it is simply just walking with a few spins thrown in…it should be perfectly simple to learn, right?  Not so much.             

             

Year Abroad: What am I doing here? Why? (part 2)

This post is a follow up to Year Abroad: The post in which I explain what I’m doing here and where I’m doing it (part 1).

     So.  We know where I am, and roughly what I am doing.

     I am working here as a language assistant.  This job is one a lot of people want for their year abroad for the simple reason that you are getting paid for your time, are less likely to fall into debt and you may indeed be able to save up some cash while your here.  Also the schools are usually in towns and it is a chance to experience authentic culture, whether you want to or not.  Luckily I do....mostly.

The school..from the 16th century

     As previously mentioned I am working in a state run high school, Santisima Trinidad.  This is a bilingual school meaning that children in the lower school can opt, or most likely their parents opt for them, to learn in both English and Spanish.  And this means that instead of me being in English classes, I "assist" in subjects such as Geography, Natural Science, Plastica (a mix of art, technical drawing and geometry), Civics and I have one English class which is for an optional exam.  I haven't done most of these subjects since I was the same age as the children I have in my classes.  I cannot draw to save my life!  Fair enough, I have Higher Physics but that is not the same as being able to teach concepts such as matter and elements etc to children who don't even seem, sometimes to have the basics in their own language.

     I do enjoy what I am doing here although sometimes the language barrier can be difficult to break through in subjects such as science where small words, such as "consists" or "taste" which I didn't know in Spanish and the kids didn't know in English can distract from the lesson as we have to go through miming and confused looks before we agree on the translated word...my favourite class (and yes I do have favourites) have to be the class I have for Geography.  This is one of the first year classes that I see as part of a larger set but for some reason they are only a small group for the Geography lessons.  They are a bunch of characters.  They carry on a lot in this class but for the most part do their work and are always good natured.  One of the little boys seems to have an excess of energy and will randomly get up, run around the desks and then sit back down...then answer all the questions correctly.  One time when the teacher went out a phone went off...if the teacher was there then she'd have to confiscate it...but I just told them to keep it zipped and instant kudos points to me for that...

     So the basic whys I have covered in the last post...basically that this year is compulsory.  But I have realised that that is only the underpinning reason for doing this year.
     Already I have learned a lot not only in terms of language but also about myself and my ability to exist as an individual.  Before this year I lived in the security of the family home with my parents and sister.  I didn't have to worry about money for rent, for food, for electricity, for any extras and trips that I wanted to do...I mean I didn't have unlimited resources before and there is still a back-up should there be an emergency but I seem to be a good budgeter and whilst I don't have to look after anyone else but me it has been a good lesson to have learned.  I have also learned how to be more confident and that I do have the ability to stand in front of a classroom of weans and impart knowledge...for me this was a huge mental block since I have always been very very shy...now look at me!  I can do anything...I mean I joined a band in Spain!  I have also made good friendships with people from across the globe.  The Americans are good fun and they have been a good support and a good laugh.  I now also have French, Australian, the other token Brit and of course Spanish friends and it has been fun getting to learn aspects of other cultures from them...the Australian girl is probably the only, along with the Welsh one to know who Rolf Harris is, what I'm a Celeb is and  other such important cultural icons...the rest of them didn't even know what the Snowman was...I weep for humanity...

A pic from Halloween with a lot of people I hardly knew then, who are now some of my good friends

Christmas party.  

Megan, Reyes and I after the Christmas lunch

     Also my language has improved a lot...I didn't quite realise this until just before the Christmas break.  I had had such a boost the day of the Santa Cecilia lunch and then at the school's Christmas lunch was another chance for me to prove it to myself.  Then over the Christmas holidays at my cousin's wedding there was a Spanish woman (married to my uncle's best friend, she is called Maria...Spain, you need to think of some new names...it's too predictable) and being one of the few Spanish speakers (along with my mum, her sister and probably a few other guests) I was presented...here talk Spanish...so I did.  I may even have gotten a Summer job from it, and a house to live in whilst I'm working.  
 
     So am I enjoying this experience so far...I'd have to say that the majority of the time yes I enjoy it, slightly less of the time I am absolutely loving it and only a small amount of time, usually when I am really tired or not feeling great then I hate it...but back I go and I am determined to make the most of it.  Summer will be here soon and then my time will be over and I will be crying about having to go back home.