I figure since my last post was about highlights, I might as
well balance it out by recounting a few of the more bothersome moments:
-The school I work at twice a week in Cáceres is a half hour
walk from me, which is fine when the weather is nice, but not so ideal when it’s
raining, as it often is. Both days I worked there last week it rained, and on
one of the mornings, it was pouring to the point that the streets were flooded.
So when a bus passed me, I was the lucky recipient of a tidal wave that caused
my jeans to cling to my legs and smell like mildew the rest of the day.
-One of the teachers I work with at my school in Miajadas
consistently talks in unison with me while I’m trying to teach kids new English
words, and as her voice is much louder than mine, all the kids can hear is her
strong Spanish accent, which completely defeats the purpose of my being there.
I’ll point to a red stuffed cat and try to say “red cat” before she can, but
she always manages to shout it out at the same time, so all the kids can hear
is “rrrrred (with a rolled ‘r’) cahhhht (with the ‘a’ sound of ‘almond’)”. She’s a very nice person, though, so
hopefully it won’t be too hard to work up the courage to tell her I’d like to
speak on my own.
-The guys I live with are all good people, and the apartment
itself is quite nice, but day by day it gets messier and messier. And since I
don’t want to be the only person who really cleans, I must say, I’ve started to
somewhat neglect the cleaning, as well. I wash my dishes after eating no matter
what because it takes a second and it’s rude not to, and I wipe down the
kitchen counters and floors and take out the garbage. But I lose motivation to go
beyond the basic when no one else seems to care about the plate palaces in the
sink, the cigarette ash coating the furniture, the cigarette butts in the
toilet, the dog poop on the terrace, the nine toilet paper rolls on one of the
bathroom floors that no one has bothered to throw away (I avoid that bathroom),
the inches of grime that somehow creep onto the stove minutes after I clean it,
the uncooked hamburger patties that are left on the counter for days on end
(why?!), and the plate of dead birds (complete with feathers and all) that sits
on top of the fridge (no joke). What’s more, I didn’t realize before I moved in
that the sentence “no one smokes” (which is what it said in the ad for my
apartment) actually means “everyone living here smokes.” I’ve gotten the
privilege of waking up to the hour-long mucous-coughing episodes that only a
smoker can provide. I’ve tolerated a permanently scratchy throat at the expense
of sitting in the living room and socializing with my roommates rather than
hiding from the smoke all day. But I can’t say that the idea of spending the
next eight months with three “human chimneys” (as my dad calls smokers) appeals
to me much. So I’ve had enough, and in a few days I’m moving to a relatively
smoke-free apartment (I think only one of the roommates smokes but only does so
in his room, which is really the best you can expect here in Lung Cancer-Lovin’
Spain). My new bed and room will be half
the size of my current bed and room, but apartment is cute and sunny with a
beautiful view, so I think all should be fine in the end. I must say, I will
miss my current roommates, despite their flaws, but we’ll pretty much be next
door neighbors, so it’s alright.
-Shortly after informing my landlords of my decision and
receiving a somewhat passive aggressive response about how it’s so hard to find
new tenants in November and that the place is an apartment, not a hotel, who do
I run into at a bar but one of the landlords herself. Not exactly the person I
felt like spending my Friday night with. But she must have felt bad about her
husband’s message because she was in fact quite friendly to me and told me to
save her phone number and call her any time I had a problem or needed help with
anything. She’s probably not the first person I’d turn to for help, but I
appreciated the offer.
Now that I’ve gotten out some angst, I must add a few
highlights to the post because for the most part, everything here continues to
be wonderful and it wouldn’t be fair to ignore the good parts:
-I saw The Butler dubbed
in Spanish. Despite the absolute absurdity of seeing a movie about American civil
rights in Spanish, I quite enjoyed it. Also, my friend Caroline and I had
previously tried and failed to go to the movies twice (we got lost the first
time, and they were sold out the second time) so the success of actually seeing
a movie in theaters was part of the reason for my enjoyment.
-My friend, Jacob, who in fact studied with me in Granada
back in the day and is currently teaching in Badajoz, a city south of Cáceres,
came to visit with his friend, Tom on Friday. On Saturday, Jacob’s friend,
Pedro, a Cáceres local, gave us a proper tour of the ancient part of Cáceres. I
hadn´t spent much time wandering around the winding, cobblestone streets, and I
hadn´t yet seen the Aljibe, the Arab water house, so the tour was a plus. I
then got to be a tourist in Badajoz Saturday night and Sunday. Badajoz is
bigger than Cáceres so there was definitely more nightlife, and it has some pretty
plazas, but the old part of Cáceres is much prettier than that of Badajoz. A
main highlight of Badajoz was buying peanut butter, which I´m trying to refrain
from eating all at once since I don’t think they sell any in Cáceres.
 |
| Badajoz |
-I might be learning just as many British-isms as Spanish
words, as I’ve spent quite a bit of time recently with Caroline and Tom, both
British. Apparently “fancy dress” means “costume,” (so you’d say “what fancy
dress will you be wearing for Halloween?”), “push chair” is stroller, “pissed”
is “drunk,” “stupid “ is “large” (“I’m learning a stupid number of British
phrases”), and the word “brilliant” or
more often, simply “brill” is thrown into speech as much as humanly possible. It’s
definitely been rubbing off on me. Instead of saying “I’ll meet you at your
apartment at 8:30” I’ll find myself saying “I’ll meet you at your flat at half
8” or simply “I’ll meet you at yours at half 8.” I should probably try to
resist this and stay true to my American roots or I’ll return in 8 months speaking an odd mixture of European dialects
and forgetting my true identity. The English that’s taught in schools here is
also British, which sometimes really throws me off. The students learn phrases
such as “She has got brown hair/She’s got brown hair” (which seems so silly to
me…why not just say “she has brown hair”?!). When something is correct, you
mark it with a “tick,” not a “check.” And the letter “z” is pronounced “zed.”
What?!
-My private, afternoon classes are the best. After spending
the mornings trying to get the kids in my primary school classes to stop
jumping around and giggling, working one-on-one with eager learners in the
afternoons is quite satisfying. I had no idea just how many people were looking
to learn English until I started these classes. I made the mistake of giving
out my number a while back, and now I get calls nearly every day from desperate
parents. I’ve capped it at five kids because I think more would be just too
many different lessons to plan. But the satisfaction of seeing the kids improve
and get more confident has made me consider some sort of future career in which
I’d help people one-on-one. That’s quite vague, I know, but I don’t have more
of an idea than that just yet…
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