Sheesh! September 29, 2007
Posted by Luke in Uncategorized.2 comments
I move into my room today…
And my team gets thrashed in the AFL Grand Final.
I don´t know whether to be pleased or not.
No hablo Español. No entiendes. No comprendo. September 28, 2007
Posted by Luke in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
So ten odd days have passed. I still haven´t moved into a place, but I think I have one. Unless something changes in the next day or so. It´s a bit more expensive than I wanted, but the location is good for my work, even if it´s not right on Puerta del Sol (although who would really want to live there). It´s with two Spanish kids, Santiago and Rocio, both speak English ok, which means I shouldn´t be totally isolated. I start learning Spanish next week, so hopefully I´ll pick it up pretty quickly.
I received my first timetables today. Only 16 hours, although I´m contracted for 18, so I get paid 18. I´m thinking about private classes, but am only ´thinking´about it at this stage. For two hours more a week, I could charge 25€ an hour and make and extra 200€ a month, taking me out of housing stress (see I do remember something from DFC, guys). But we´ll see. I think I´ll be a lot more calm, rational and comfortable once I´ve moved into my own place.
I headed to one of the schools I´ll be teaching at – San Agústin. Posh, fancy, Catholic, definitely Francoists. Well, I don´t know really. I´m sure they´re cool. My classes are all the advanced ones – us native speakers don´t seem to get the beginners. But that´s alright, because I´ll only have two or three students in a class.
Tomorrow night, I head to the Irish Rover for the AFL Grand Final. (Pooorts!) It´s delayed but better than not seeing it at all.
I promise I´ll put pictures up for friends and fam soon. BTW, I found the CNT in Tirsa de Molina. I was pretty excited. Once I learn a bit more Spanish, I´ll try and get in contact with them.
Missing people.
The streets are filled at night and sober… September 23, 2007
Posted by Luke in Madrid, Spain, Travel, Uncategorized.3 comments
It´s been five days here now. I haven´t written enough mainly because it´s difficult to find the time.
Friday I went to get my NIE, the residency number for foreigners. I lined up for two hours with about 200 odd other people. At about 10.30 the guy at the door came down to the 100 or so people left and said something in Spanish, which caused mass furore. I looked at a Dutch girl I had been talking to and said ¨this can´t be good.¨ It wasn´t. It turns out they only let 60 people in a day. We weren´t in that 60. Só it´s back there again tomorrow morning – this time at 7 to try again. I could try and make an appointment but apparently they do not answer the phone particularly regularly. A French guy had been trying to call for three months and no answer.
I met a Swedish guy and a couple of Northern Irish guys later that day and headed down to watch Ireland play France in the World Cup. Now that´s an experience. The pub was packed full of French and Irish trying to outsing each other. France won, by the way. After I grabbed a quick dinner at 11pm (after the game), we headed out for some more drinks. We found a bar quickly (there´s at least two every metre). Ordering a doble, I received the biggest beer I´d ever seen. See normally a doble is drinkable – about the same size as an Adelaide pint. This doble was a litre and a half of beer. I could barely hold it. At 12€, it was surely the first and last time I would drink a beer that size.
We left there and were promptly dragged into another club – there are people employed to approach people and escort them to the club. It wasn´t a bad place, but it must be said that Spanish rock music is terrible!!
Yesterday, I started looking for a flat, which brought on my first bout of homesickness. It was quite depressing staring at the newspaper and internet not knowing what on earth it said. I decided to give up, crashed out for siesta and then got up and headed to this English speaking café and bookstore, J&J´s. It´s a great little place hosting intercambio nights as well as having an excellent range of books and teaching resources. I stayed there for a while and then met the Irish for dinner at 10.30.
We headed to this Mexican place on a Calle de la Quinones or thereabouts. It was full so we headed around the corner to some restaurant. Not knowing what we´d ordered, we received some of the worst food I have ever tasted. It was racionés, which is basically tapas, but one was capsicum and cod and the other, morcella (i think – it´s a kind of meat>) with what I think was ICECREAM!! No good. Don´t try it. Absolutely not. Anyway, we thought we were doing something wrong because the locals were laughing at us, we thought. But I checked with one of the guys at J´s and he said we were eating it right.
Last night was La Noche en Blanco, a huge all night long arts festival. The Irish and I met Eduardo and Nieves (a Spanish woman who wanted to practise her English with me). We met them at just after midnight in Plaza Descalzes, which is just near Puerta de la Sol, the central point of Madrid. Then we proceeded to walk around for the next 4 hours. This was all well and good because everything is still new, but I did learn a few things.
The main thing is that Spaniards do not know how to hurry. Nieves turned to us and said ¨we must hurry now as we have a long way to go and it stops at 3am.¨ It was 1am at this point in time. A very long way to go was about 20 mins walk, but an hour later we got there. Every ten minutes we´d stop to talk to someone or look at something, and we got to where we needed with plenty of time to spare. That´s one thing about Spain, they don´t like to rush.
Nor do they really drink alot. Sure, cerveza and vino are prolific but on a huge public occasion like la Noche en Blanco, you´d expect a fair display of public drinking. Nope! There was barely a drink to be seen. Well, the kids were but they always do, sitting on the steps drinking their bottelos.
I also saw my first protest and yes, it was anarquistas. I assume. They were protesting the rising prices of goods. It was peaceful, but it was also 2am.
Having had only a horrible dinner earlier, we decided to leave Nieves and Eduardo and headed to this cafe called ViPS. So at 4am we finally sat down to a dinner of hamburguesa – yep thats a burger, alright.
Still haven´t got around to loading pics off my camera yet. Will do soon.
Madrid First Impressions September 21, 2007
Posted by Luke in Uncategorized.2 comments
I´ve been here for 24 hours. It feels like a week, though. So what are my first impressions?
1. madrileños never sleep, except at siesta. Yesterday afternoon, as I wandered through the area near C/Fuencarral, all the shops closed their shutters and the people disappeared. I promptly decided to crash out for a while and woke up around 5ish. All the shops were open again and people were everywhere. At 9pm, there were still as many people on the street as at 2 that afternoon.
Then last night I heard other residents of my hostal come in regularly from about 5am – 7am.
2. It´s hot. Very hot. 36 degrees yesterday and easily the same today. Plus in some parts, it stinks a little of sewage. It´s not horrible, though.
3. I tried the Menu del Dia today, which is essentially a three course lunch for about 10€. Worst schnitzel ever, but I didn´t know what I was ordering. The paella was amazingly good, though. Much better than the one I make, and I like that.
Most people don´t speak English, even though there are a lot of tourists – more often they seem to be German or Italian than English. I met two Australians yesterday, heard the accent and decided to talk to them as I hadn´t spoken to anyone all day. Right now, I´m being pestered by an old American lady, who can´t work out how to use the Spanish keyboard. It´s fair enough though. It has all these weird letters like ñ and ç . Ít´s stuffing up my touch typing but I´ll get used to it.
Madrid September 19, 2007
Posted by Luke in Uncategorized.add a comment
I made it. 30 + hours of flying and I´m here. I´ve officially been on the soil of Singapore, Thailand, Switzerland and Spain in less than two days. I don´t know what I´m doing yet, and it´s all kind of surreal. I meet my Director on Friday. I don´t have the balls to catch the Metro yet, so I think I´ll foot it for the first few days. I´m realising that what little Spanish I have is flying out the window faster than I can look it up in a book. I think I got ripped off by a cabbie already but I don´t care. I´m in Spain ‘- and we´ll see what happens from here. I´ll start house hunting on the weekend I think and see what happens from there.
At least I know where an Internet cafe is now! and I think I should be able to upload photos from it.
Job offers and such September 5, 2007
Posted by Luke in Canterbury TEFL, Spain, Teaching English.1 comment so far
A few months ago, I worried that I’d started worrying too early about whether or not I’d get a job in Spain. As it turns out, I was right. In the last few weeks, I’ve received a couple of quite decent offers, even with limited experience in a classroom.
I had a phone interview a few nights ago. They’re quite a strange experience. It was very general and very conversational, but there were some odd questions. Well, one odd question.
”Can you spell?”
I was taken aback by that. I had no idea how to answer it. Maybe I could have said ‘do you want to test me?’ and then fired off correct spelling to supercalifragilistexpialadocious (i think that’s right). Or, if I was a bad speller, I could have lied. ‘yeah, i’m a fantastic speller, real tops, y’know!’ kinda thing. I didn’t do either of those. Just stated that it was an odd question and that I thought spelling would be fairly integral to an English teaching job. Apparently, the new ‘yoof’ can’t spell ‘reel good’. We use too many spell checks and mobile shorthands. It’s a worrying thought.
Anyway, I can’t have said anything too wrong as I got offered the job. I haven’t definitely accepted, and I don’t need to until I arrive in Spain, but I think I will. It means though that I’ll have to cancel Canterbury. It’s kind of relieving, though, because I wasn’t looking forward to a month without incoming pay. I’ll miss not having the camaraderie of other people in the same situation though. (Note: to the guys that commented who are heading to Canterbury for September course on a previous post, I’d still be well keen to meet up, have some drinks etc.) But I’m sure there’ll be quite a few new teachers at the school I’m heading to.
On a side note, I’ve also been offered an apartment in an awesome location (just near the El Retiro Parque) – only catch is it’s a young family with two kids – one and two years old. I’m a little worried I’ll end up babysitting. It would be an awesome way to learn Spanish though.
Two days left of bureaucracy! What a relief!
