Almost Stuck In Salamanca

This past weekend I went to Salamanca with an auxiliar in a nearby town, Sara and we met up with another, Henry, our second day there. Sara and I decided literally, Thursday night that we were going to Salamanca the next day. This was by far the most spontaneous trip I’ve ever gone on. But it was kind of exhilarating…

Friday morning I got up at 8am so I could go to the bus station and see what time the bus left for Palencia, the town where I would meet up with Sara and we would get the 3.00pm bus to Salamanca. The guy told me the bus didn’t leave Navalmoral until 12.30pm, so I had some time to kill. Instead of going home and going back to sleep, I stopped by the Mercadillo, the outdoor market that sets up across the street from my piso every Friday morning. I walked around for a bit before buying a new (p)leather jacket and deciding I wanted some fruit. Buying fruit and vegetables here is not as simple as saying, “I want 5 apples” or putting the stuff you want in a bag by yourself. You have to tell the vendor how many kilos of fruit/veggies/whatever you want and they load up the bag for you. Being a stupid American, I had no idea how many tangerines I would get it I ordered one kilo. So, I went ahead and did just that. As the man started filling the bag with handfuls of tangerines, I quickly realized that one-kilo was going to be waaaaay more than I wanted. But, I was too embarrassed to say, “Oh, sorry, I actually meant a quarter kilo” or whatever. So I watched in pain as I thought of lugging all of those tangerines home. I counted later. He gave me 27. I also bought some dried figs, tomatoes, and a pomegranate. So if anyone wants a tangerine, you know where to find me…

I got on the bus to Plasencia later that afternoon, met up with Sara once I was there, and we set off for Salamanca. The bus ride was fine. We slept for most of it and were being seriously judged by the Spanish when we were awake. We got into the city and started walking in search of a hostel for the night. We found one actually pretty easily, checked in, explored the city, and did some shopping. There were some seriously fashionable people in Salamanca, so we were in search of some European outfits. Sara ended up buying “slouchy pants” and I got some green skinny jeans. I really want to come home in June and people think I’m super stuck-up because I dress like a European. That’s definitely the goal for the year.

We had been sitting in the beautiful Plaza Mayor, when a Spanish man and woman walked up to us and said, “Sara??” Who was it but Sara’s mentor from her school! In a city of thousands of people, he just happened to walk by us. Not only that, but we saw him, his wife, and two daughters (who go to the university there) two more times that evening. Very strange. But he had told us some good places that weren’t very touristy to go to for dinner. We headed that way around 9.30pm and ate/drink so well. I had the best patatas bravas of my life, tried tripe (not a fan), and we split a bottle of Lambrusco. It was a wonderful night.

In the morning, we met up with Henry, who had gotten in that day and grabbed some lunch. After lunch, the sightseeing started. Salamanca has an incredible cathedral, gorgeous university buildings, convents, and so many more old and amazing sights. We hit up all of the big places and were completely exhausted after the day. After drinking 2 liters of water by myself in one sitting (it was ridiculous) and taking a little siesta in the hostel, we were ready for the night. We went back to the patatas bravas place, then tried some new places on the same street. After eating, we went to some bars (found one really classy one that only charged us 2.40 Euros for Bombay Sapphire martinis…must have been someone’s mistake) and discos. We got home around 6.00am and I set my alarm for 8.00am so I could be on time for the 9.30am bus out of Salamanca.

I had to leave earlier than the others because there was only one bus from Plasencia to Navalmoral on Sunday and it was at 3pm and the 9.30am bus out of Salamanca was the only that would get me there in time. So I woke up in the morning, not to my alarm, but by myself. Looked at my phone….it was 9.40am!!! I had missed my bus and now I no way home. I tried to stay calm, but was freaking out a little bit. I could have caught a train to Madrid, then Madrid to Navalmoral, but that would have been like 6 hours of traveling (instead of 2) and 40 Euro (instead of 12)…so I didn’t want that. I ended up getting in touch with a teacher from my school who goes home to Salamanca every weekend and she said she could get me as far as Plasencia that evening. She thought there might be a train from Plasencia around 6pm to Navalmoral. That was good enough for me. I just needed to get at least in the same region as my home. From Plasencia, I knew I could get to Navalmoral. But, in the end, one of the teachers Sara works with got in touch with her and said he was driving back to her town from Salamanca that afternoon and she could ride with him. When he came to pick her up, I told him my sad story and he kindly offered to get me to Plasencia in time for the 3pm bus. So, after a more comfortable and shorter car ride than the bus, they dropped me at the Plasencia bus station at 2.40pm…just in time. I got back into Navalmoral about an hour later, came home, and did absolutely nothing for the rest of the night. I was so exhausted.

Overall, I think Salamanca is one of my favorite places I’ve visited in Spain. Not only is it beautiful and historic, but just the energy of the city is wonderful. I took over 200 photos in the 2 days there…look at Facebook to see a few of them.

In other news, school and tutoring is going well. Last week the dog of one family I teach had three puppies. I got to see them the next day and they were adorable. The mom offered to give me one, but I had to explain to her that I didn’t think my roommate would be too happy…or my landlord. If only though.

I got a box from my wonderful parents today! Filled with requests (make-up, Spanish books…) and surprises (Halloween candy, nail polish, socks…), I was so happy showing off all of the stuff to Mamen. I told two of my private lesson kids that I would bring them a piece of candy tomorrow and they freaked out. Thanks, Mom and Dad!!

Cats and Chants

People-watching is one of my favorite parts of being in Spain. In between private lessons, when I don’t want to go all the way (all of 10 minutes’ walk) home just to leave again in 45 minutes, I usually go to a café, order a Fanta or a café con leche and people watch. Today was, by far, the best people-watching day I’ve had yet.

I was sitting in my usual café (Oceanos), ordered my Fanta and was slightly disappointed when the waitress didn’t bring me my free tapas plate (I was counting on that for lunch). But whatever, I drank my Fanta and worked on lesson plans for my private classes. While I was sitting, I saw an older man walk towards the café. At first, I thought he had two cats in his arms. Then, I realized I was wrong. It was only one cat. One cat. Hanging out with him. The man went inside, ordered a bottle of beer and got his free plate of tapas (Discrimination? I think so). The whole time, the cat was in his arms, meowing and meowing. He sat down at a table across from mine, with his afternoon cigarette in his mouth, he fed the calico cat bites of his food to stop her whining. Once satisfied, the cat started exploring the patio of the café, only traveling as far as its red collar and leash would allow. Yes, I said collar and leash. On a cat.

The white-haired man kept eating, drinking, smoking, and people-watching, like I was. When I realized he was also people-watching, I had a terrible realization that I could be the lady version of this man. Were people looking at me, like I was looking at him? In judgment, watching someone sitting alone? Was I doomed to spend my days in Spain, being the subject of blog posts? But then I remembered the big difference between the elderly man and myself. The cat on a leash. Nope, no way people think I’m as weird as him.

Also, today I taught a private lesson to, let’s call him “José” (I guess I should keep some professionalism). “José” is twelve-years-old and while very intelligent, has some issues. He gets distracted, doesn’t want to work, and just does strange things. Today, I was quizzing him on his vocab and he was just saying completely random words. I started shooting back random words at him. Finally, he said, “Jamaica!” in response to asking what “pencil sharpener” is in Spanish. So, naturally, I retorted with the “Cool Runnings” chant, “'Nuff people say, you know they can't believe, Jamaica, we have a bobsled team.” He just said, “Qué???” and stared at me, unable to continue his little game. Rachel- 1, José-0.

First Week, Check!

I cannot believe that I’ve only been in Spain for less than 3 weeks. It truly feels like 3 months. Thinking of working at Clyde’s or sitting around with my parents watching TV at night seems like an eternity ago.

This week was pretty good. I officially started at the high school, but most of the teachers weren’t really ready for me, so I didn’t have to go to all of my classes. The ones I did go to were basically just the students interviewing me…”What’s your favorite movie?” (“Oh, I like all movies, I couldn’t possibly pick”), “Do you like Spanish food” (“Yes! Except for pig ear. Yuck”), “What do you miss from your country” (“Aw, my friends and family”)…but then there were some weird questions…”What is your favorite holiday resort?” (“Um, Disney World?”)“Do you want a Spanish romance?” (“No comment”) and finally “How old are you?” and when I said “22” they said “Woah!” as if I had just said I was 122. This is going to be an interesting year. I also had a one-on-one session with one of the P.E. teachers to help him plan out his lessons and to learn English vocab. Neither of us really know gym vocab words in our respective second languages though, so the hour consisted of us demonstrating squats, sit-ups, monkey bars, hopscotch, and countless other P.E. activities to each other in order to figure out what we were talking about. I think that is going to be one of my favorite classes of the week.

Private lessons are also going well. I’m only working 12 hours a week at the high school, but I’m also teaching 13 hours of private lessons a week. I like being busy and prefer it to sitting on my couch, watching TV all day…but 13 hours is going to be a lot. With most of the kids I either work with their school textbooks or make up some weird version of 20-questions or hangman to teach them vocab words. This week though, I started with one family where I teach a 9-year-old boy for 30 minutes and his 16-year-old sister for the other 30 minutes. Neither of them knows English very well at all. With the boy, we sat on the floor for half an hour, me speaking English to him and he responding in Spanish and not even coming close to answering any of my questions. We mainly talked about how strong Superman is and how Spiderman is super cool. Then with the girl, I couldn’t really have a 16-year-old playing tic-tac-toe with vocab words, so for the entire time we just sat and talked about movies, music, and boys. Again, me in English and she, for the most part, in Spanish. A lot of the parents here have a little bit of false hope when it comes to their kids. If your kids don’t know English, don’t expect them to succeed in a conversation class with a native speaker…

On the social side of things, this weekend was much calmer than the last (San Miguel). Thursday night, Mamen and I went out to dinner with two of her friends, and then she and I went to a bar called “El Abuelo.” While there, I met Navalmoral’s fourth auxiliar, a girl from Northern Ireland named Jessica. She and I made plans to hang out in the next day or two.

Saturday night, Jessica and I ended up getting tapas for dinner. Meeting at 9.00pm, we ate at the restaurant until 12.30am. I would say we’re getting used to the Spanish schedule and the sobremesa tradition. After that, we met up with two friends for botellón, then made our way to Boulevard (the closest thing to a disco here…but it’s still a long shot from actually being one). Boulevard was a sight to behold. It was about 75% men and of those men, about 75% of them were over the age of 35. It was a great people-watching place though. I definitely picked up some sweet dance moves from those grandpas. My favorite of the evening was the “driving the car” move. Classic.

So after a bit, we checked out to Boulevard and turned in for the night. It was about 5.30am when I got home, but I was pretty awake and didn’t end up sleeping until 6.30 or 7.00ish. I ended up sleeping until about 1.00pm today, which is huge for me. I usually hate sleeping that late, feeling like I’m wasting the day. But it’s pretty impossible to waste a Sunday here…everything is closed and no one is out on the streets. It’s now almost 5pm and I’m still in my glasses and pajamas. I’ve done a load of laundry, read my Kindle on my balcony, but mostly I’ve just been a bum all day. I’m looking forward to this week and getting into my full swing schedule. I so graciously volunteered to guest speak at a teacher’s class on Tuesday morning about the American revolution and American government (the kids are learning about it), so I should probably Wikipedia some things today so I know what I’m talking about. As long as they don’t ask me questions, it should be fine. I haven’t taken a history class (about America) since high school, so we’ll see how it goes…

October 3, 2011

This weekend was so fun!  Finally, I was able to go out in Navalmoral and meet people and have fun.  Friday night, Whitney, one of the auxiliares here last year and Mamen’s former roommate, came back into town for San Miguel (she’s in Valladolid this year).  We had been talking on facebook for a while, so it was nice to finally meet her.  Mamen and I went out for dinner at a cheap tapas/bar and Whitney eventually joined us.  We hung out there for a while, then collected our stuff, and met a bunch of Mamen/Whitney’s friends for botellón.  Oh man, I’ve missed botellón.  The Spanish police actually make it legal to drink on the streets on holidays (which is like, every day in Spain).  We went to the big botellón place, called Ibiza (appropriate, no?) and hung out for a long time.  After a while, Whitney and I went to a bar/the closest thing to a disco here called Boulevard to meet up with a few of her friends.  When we got there, I was introduced to black vodka.  Thanks, Whitney, you’ve officially converted me to a vodka negro supporter.  After dancing at Boulevard, it just got so crowded, so we tried another place, only to find they had a 5 Euro cover (Really? In Navalmoral?), so we went to a bar called Canterville.  We half heartedly bought ourselves tinto de verano, but were just sort of over it and ended up abandoning the drinks and just chatting with more friends.  Around 5.30am we headed home.  After being in Cáceres, over the past 3 days I had not slept at all, and Friday night was no exception….I woke up around 10.00am to a ton of noise in the street.

The party began early on Saturday.  The fair that was set up directly across the street from my piso was taking shape, and people flooded the main street.  Waking up on Saturday,  I got dressed and headed straight to Mercadona.  Knowing Sunday it would be closed, I was desperate to buy some groceries (I was down to my last can of tuna).  After a magical trip to Mercadona and a hike with 50 pounds of groceries back to the piso, I ate some lunch, got ready for the day, and met Mamen/Whitney/friends at one of the best bars with a patio here, Zaragata.  The streets were seriously jammed with people. San Miguel is a big deal, Navalmoral is a small town, so it was definitely a bit crazy.  After drinks at Zaragata, we went to a tapas place for drinks and a TON of food. I definitely regretted even eating a lunch before going out for the day, because we ate so much food at this bar.  We started with typical potatoes with egg, sausages, a type of pork, and some other, definite Spanish, but normal foods.  Then it came out…la oreja! Ah!! After so much talk about it since my first day in Navalmoral when I tried morros (pig snout/cheeks/mouth/still not sure what) and chicken stomach, I was still not convinced to try the pig ear dish.  Knowing that in order to fully commit to my experience here, I  had to go for it...and I did….

I don’t regret eating it, but never again. The texture was the worst part. Ew. I can’t even think about it without feeling a bit nauseous.  So after the pig ear, I compensated by eating a ton of delicious calamari and other things.  After some café there, Mamen and I went to yet another bar, Final (the only café I’ve successfully connected to wi-fi in) to meet her friend, Julio.  We hung out there with Julio for a bit, then went back to Zaragata.  Writing all of this down definitely makes me realize just how many bars we were at this weekend.  After a bit more time at Zaragata, I was feeling a bit sick (too many different drinks, pig ear, little sleep), so I went home to siesta.  After a 30 minute sleep, water, some fruit, and general “me” time in the piso, I was ready for round two (or three if you count Friday night…). I dressed and went back to Zaragata to meet Mamen and her quasi-boyfriend, Oscár.  The three of us went to check out a concert that had, sadly, finished by time we got there. But nevermind that, we picked up our botellón stuff and met the gang to go back to Ibiza.  Once there, it was a lot like the night before, but more fun since I had gotten to know the group a bit more.  Around 3.00am some of us were going to go to Boulevard, but I was just too tired and opted to go to bed and get some sleep.

Sunday morning I woke up with a cough and sore throat….which didn’t surprise me after the week.  I remember after Fallas in Valencia (which was a million times more exhausting than San Miguel), I had the worst sinus infection of my life and was sick for about a month.  I spent the day recouping with tea until I went to give lessons to Minerva at 5.00pm.  After the lesson, I sat around talking with Paquita and her husband for a long time, then went home to the piso to mentally prepare myself for my first day of work on Monday (today).

School was good this morning!  I usually will have four classes to teach on Mondays, but the teachers aren’t all ready for me yet, so I just had one today.  I helped teach math to 12-year-olds.  They were learning how to read and write numbers, like 3,435,562.  What I learned about myself is that I’m not that great at reading big numbers in English…looks like I’ll learn some things this year.  Also, cutest thing is just about every single kid mixes up 14/40, 15/50, 16/60…Almost none of them can differentiate them.  After class, I hung in the teachers’ lounge using the computer until Isabel was done with her classes and could go with me to the bank to help me open an account.  I was indeed able to open it today, so that’s one step closer to internet!  Then again, I hung out until private lessons, came home, read with the bestie (Kindle) and ate a delicious salad while watching “Pasapalabra.” 

Tomorrow I don’t have any classes, so Mamen is going to help me with internet stuff in the afternoon before I have more private lessons.  My schedule is slowly, but surely filling up with these “clases particulares.”  So far I have about 11.5 hours of them in the week and I know I’ll probably get another 5 hours in before I stop agreeing to do them. 

Also, exciting news…I’m going to start planning my return trip to Valencia for sometime in November!  More news to come on that though.

September 30, 2011

I just got back to Navalmoral from a few days spent in the main city of the region, Cáceres. Before I left, Monday and Tuesday were pretty normal. Tuesday I got to see the school I’ll be working at all year and meet a lot of the teachers. Everyone seems very nice and welcoming and the cafeteria has a coffee and bocadillo bar…so I’ll definitely like it there. Wednesday I got on the bus for Cáceres around noon, witnessed some old people fighting very passionately over who would sit in what seat, listened to a lot of music on my ipod, and two hours later, I was in the city. I went to check into my hostel, but it wasn’t ready yet, to I went to check out the Plaza Mayor and meet up with a few other auxiliaries from the program. After the awkward “I-think-you-look-American-and-like-the-person-I’ve-been-stalking-through-our-facebook-group” stare down, a few of us had some drinks and got to know each other. It was two auxiliaries’ birthdays that night, so a bunch of people had planned (through facebook of course) to meet up later for dinner and to go out.

I went back to my hostel, rested for a bit, talked to AppleCare for over an hour about my persistent internet troubles, and was back out in the Plaza Mayor by about 8.30pm. Again, meeting up with people was a huge guessing game because none of us had ever met before, but once we had our group together, we headed to 100 Montaditos (!), ate dinner, hung out, and then later a group of about six (as opposed to the 20 of us in the restaurant) went out dancing. It was definitely really nice to be out and be social. Until then, I hadn’t gone out in Spain since being back and it was really refreshing to be around people my age and making friends.

In the morning, I had to go apply for my N.I.E./T.I.E (Número/Identidad de identificacción extranjera) at the official foreginers’ office. It was just as time consuming and full of going to the office, leaving to make copies of stuff, going back to the office, leaving to go pay taxes, going back to the office…as everyone had told me it would be. But, at least that’s done and now I can open a bank account this week, then I’ll be able to finally get internet for my apartment.
After that excursion, I was in desperate need of a café con leche, so I headed over to the Plaza Mayor, had some breakfast and skyped my parents (free Wi-Fi in the plaza!). Some other auxiliaries met up with me and since we all had had to check out of our hostels early and didn’t have orientation until 5.00pm, we passed the time and bummed around the city for the rest of the afternoon. We toured the old part of Cáceres (cathedral, beautiful stone walls…), ate lunch in a park (I ordered a salad and received a bowl of salad dressing with a few lettuce leaves thrown in), and then took the bus over to the (huge) high school that our orientation was at. In typical non-Spanish style, we had arrived at 4.30pm, thinking we would be the first of the 80-some auxiliaries to show up…oh were we wrong. We were some of the last ones. Everyone was just standing around and since we were all basically there, the people in charge told us to get in groups of 5 and go find a room to sleep in (yes, dorms inside of the high school). It worked out perfectly that a group of 5 of us had been hanging out all day, so after some searching, we found a room, dumped our stuff, then were set loose in the main lobby to mingle with people for about an hour. It definitely takes a certain kind of person to do this program, so everyone was super out-going and we all made fast friends.

We then went into a small lecture room and after a very inefficient roll call/room number documentation (this is Spain, of course it was inefficient), we were given a crash course on everything Extremadura. Okay, see, a slideshow such as the one they gave us (all about the region, cities, food, people, agriculture…) would have been so helpful back in April when we were all assigned to Extremadura… However, we’re all products of the Wikipedia/Google generation and the one hour presentation didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. All of us were tired, hungry, and just wanted to be done with the meeting.

When the end was finally announced, we had about an hour to chill out in our rooms before dinner in the cafeteria. And oh, was dinner special. All of us gathered, lunch line style, and were served Dannon yogurt drinks, cold Spanish tortilla, two slices of tomato, some ham wrapped chorizo (didn’t even try this), and a piece of bread. It was basically prison food. Gross.
After dinner, we all got ready for the evening and a bunch of us took the 30 minute walk back into the center of town. Once there, we walked for a while before coming to a group decision to just go to any bar for a few drinks. That was a really fun time, as a few of us stayed inside (others were on the patio) and were served a bunch of free tapas with our drinks (made up for dinner, or the lack thereof). Some people left from there, but there was a HUGE botellón that night for Novetadas (pretty much hazing of the first year university students in Cáceres) a 10 minute bus ride outside of the center of town that some of us wanted to try to go to. Since it was already past 11.00pm and stores were closed, we went on a trip to try and find a Chino still open so we could get botellón materials. Once we did, it was almost midnight. We went to the bus stop, since the city government had extended the bus hours just to get people to this botellón, and were floored to see hundreds of Spanish students trying to get on the buses. The seven of us had a lot of debate as to if the botellón was worth all of the trouble and after a bit of discussion, decided just to sit in the park and chat with each other before we had to be back to the dorms before the doors were locked at 2.00am. Sitting and just getting to know each other was definitely the best decision. When we were ready to go, we ended up bumping into 3 other groups of auxiliaries and our group of seven turned into 20 or so again, and we started the walk back to our beds.

When my alarms went off at 8.00am, I didn’t want to get up at all. The night before in the hostel, I had slept maybe an hour and a half total (so many noises, awful bed), so all I wanted to do was sleep…but we had breakfast at 8.30am. We all got ready, went to breakfast, and after the last night’s dinner, I was in no way shocked to have cold churros, sickly sweet café con leche, and little crackers waiting for us. Again, we were all so tired and hungry still that the morning’s lectures/presentations were totally lost of us. After a lot of talk about what an auxiliar does (again, at this stage in the game, we know all of this), our mentors from our schools arrived. Oh my god, again with the inefficiency. I’ve been lucky enough to already know my mentor (Isabel), but a lot of people didn’t even know the name of theirs. Eighty-some of us were set loose among eighty-some mentors and told “just to find each other.” It was a mess. I didn’t see Isabel right away and knew she would probably be late, so just took a seat on a bench with another girl and waited. Ten minutes later, Isabel came in and she had a “let’s blow this joint” attitude, so we went to the cafeteria, also complete with coffee bar, and had a café con leche.

For the last hour, the mentors sat with us as there was a final presentation on how to get your N.I.E/T.I.E, open a bank account, and about medical insurance. Again, I was pretty zoned out, as I had already done/started most of that stuff. Isabel was kind enough to drive me back to Navalmoral with her. I just counted my 8 Euro loss on my roundtrip bus ticket, as she saved me an hour on the road.

I got back to my piso and completely crashed. Now, I’m just hanging out until the Fiesta de San Miguel activities start for the weekend. Apparently a ton of people are going to come here from other towns, it’s going to be really loud, and super crazy. Looks like I won’t be sleeping much tonight…