Finally some excitement!

Working as a language assistant in Spain, there are both good days and bad days, just like any job. Today, however, was a great day! I only work two hours on Wednesdays to begin with, and since I don't start until 10:30, I didn't even have to get up too early. When I first got to school, Sonia (our French teacher) introduced me to the new French language assistant from Belgium. Since we seemed to be busy talking, the teacher that I was supposed to have class with suggested that we skip class today, which is always fine by me!

Pretty soon, two other girls arrived and joined in the conversation (all in Spanish of course!) They are both Spanish and are doing their teaching practicum (to teach English) at our school for the next month. It's nice to finally have some people around that are closer to my age, since almost everyone we meet here is either a student (ie. under 18) or a teacher (ie. over 30).

Then for the next hour, since we have a new work schedule, I got to go to a different English class... with actual students. It was a welcome change from all of the one-on-one classes I have with the teachers. It was also nice as there were only about 7 students in the class, and it took place in the English department, which means they are all sat in a circle around a small table instead of in desks. So it was a very informal class and I really got to talk to the students.

Finally, as the perfect end to my day, I decided to finally talk to Cristina (the school secretary) to see if she could help me get some work translating. Here in Rota, the tourist industry is huge, and as a result there are tons of flyers and other materials floating around that are written in English. Well, someone tried to translate them into English anyways, they just didn't really succeed. Even though I am a native speaker of English, there are a lot of things I would rather read in Spanish because the English makes no sense at all, or is completely impossible to understand. So I thought that I could make myself useful and maybe get some translation experience by helping to fix these translations. Luckily, Cristina had a contact at the ayuntamiento (town hall) who she spoke to today, and in the next few days they are supposed to call me for an interview!

Visiting a Spanish friend

Today Erin, Rachael, and I we were invited to spend the afternoon at Sonia's house. Sonia is one of the teachers from my school that I teach English to. She lives in El Puerto, but had a friend that lives in Rota that was going to visit her, so we got a ride there and then back home as well. The five of us had coffee together at Sonia's and just hung out at her house for a few hours. It was a really good way to practice our Spanish as it was very informal and relaxing. I find it very difficult to speak and understand Spanish when there is a big group of people around, so it was really nice.

One interesting thing that I had already found out at school earlier, but Sonia brought up again, had to do with the coffee mug that I had brought to school today. Today at school every time a new teacher saw the mug, they felt the need to pick it up and try to figure out exactly what it was and what it was for! I brought it with me from home so that I could drink my coffee on the way to school in the mornings. Apparently this is NOT something Spaniards do. In fact, they never ever eat or drink while they are walking or driving. Sonia also brought up a bunch of stereotypes that Spaniards (and probably Europeans in general) have of Americans because of American media. She pointed out that in the movies and on television, teenagers are constantly leaving the house without eating breakfast at all, or they grab something to eat on the way as they run out of the house. To Spaniards this is a very strange thing to do. Yet another cultural learning experience here in Spain...

Back to school

Well, I didn't exactly go back to school yesterday... but I did get to go to Rachael's school, the other high school in Rota. They were having a presentation for the students about why it is important to learn other languages and they wanted me to be one of the speakers. I had to speak once in French, then once in English. Then after I got a tour of Rachael's school and met some of the teachers. It was an interesting presentation, and it was also nice not to have to go straight back to work my first day back in Spain.

Normally I would have had to go back to school Jan. 8, as the students here have pretty much the same Christmas holidays as back at home. Luckily, I was able to talk to the head of the bilingual program at our school and get a few extra days off to spend at home. They seemed pretty flexible, which was great. If only I would have thought of taking the days off BEFORE Christmas, maybe my flights home would have gone a lot more smoothly!

Christmas Holidays

Well, here I am back in Spain after a 2-week holiday in Canada (wow, saying it like that really makes me realize that I live in Spain.) As some of you might already know, it was a long and painful process just to get to Canada in the first place, but it was all worth it.

The trip started off well on Friday, December 21, as I managed to get to the airport in Jerez with plenty of time to spare to catch my flight. After that though, everything went downhill. Boarding for the flight from there to Madrid was delayed by about 45 minutes, which wasn't a big deal, since I wasn't actually supposed to fly out of Madrid until early the next morning. So although I was an hour late getting into Madrid, I just called my friend Princess (who I was going to hang out with in the city until I had to get back to the airport) and told her I would be a bit late. After finding the luggage storage (which is in a very inconvenient location outside the airport and across the road), and dragging my heavy bag over there, I hopped on the metro and met Princess. We did some shopping and just wandering, and just like in Rota, all the streets and many of the buildings were decorated with Christmas lights.

Afterwards we went for dinner and back to Princess' house, and then at half past midnight I left to catch the last train to the airport. Unfortunately, because my flight left at 6:30 am, that meant I had to spend the night in the Madrid airport. I managed to find some comfortable chairs to sleep on for about an hour, and soon enough it was time to get in the massive line up to check in for my next flight to Frankfurt, Germany. Supposedly as a result of this long line up, our flight was delayed for 2 hours. Since my connection time in Germany was less than 2 hours, I had to run to catch my next flight to London. And the only reason I caught that flight was that it too was delayed for about an hour leaving Frankfurt. Later it was also delayed as there was a lot of fog in London and we had to wait for another hour before we could land.

By the time I got to London, I was 4 hours later arriving than expected, and the flight to Calgary had already left without me an hour earlier! There were many other people who had missed flights due to the fog, so Air Canada started putting people on standby flights to Toronto. Since I had booked my flight with Aeroplan Miles though, they told me that my ticket was the lowest priority. I didn't catch the first flight, but they did manage to put me on the second flight to Toronto later that night. So I ended up spending another night in yet another airport... although at least I was in Canada. Especially since I heard later that the next day hundreds of flights out of London were not just delayed, but cancelled due to the fog! I flew to Calgary early the next morning, after spending the night with some people I had met in the London airport in the same situation as me.

All in all, the trip home took me 80 hours from start to finish and made me hate airports with a passion. I highly recommend NOT travelling on December 22 as it is one of the busiest travel days of the year.

My time at home was really great (though not long enough), as I got to spend time with friends and family, and I got the chance to bring back lots of things I'd been missing the last 3 months! The trip back to Spain was a lot less exciting, but still took about 17 hours, so I'm pretty tired. The best news about being back in Spain is that when I left Canada, it was -20 degrees Celsius, and here in Spain it is +15 degrees!

Staff Christmas Party

This afternoon after school was our Christmas party at the school. Erin and I went to dinner with about 25 other teachers, and were served a big Spanish meal at a restaurant near our house. We had 4 different entrees (most of which were seafood) a main course, and dessert. In true Spanish style, the party continued long into the night, as when lunch ended later that evening, we continued on to one of our favourite bars in Rota - El Torito ("little bull").

Porto

On Saturday morning, we woke up in a new Portuguese city: Porto. Porto is the second biggest city in Portugal, and is famous for its Port wine. We had all day Saturday to explore this new city, and luckily Jodie knew a girl from Porto (Filippa) who spent all day showing us around. My favourite part of Porto was the Douro river, which runs through the middle of the city. There were many beautiful views to be found around the river, especially once the sun started to set.

A group picture in front of the Douro River: Ellen, Jodie, Bea, me, Grace, Rebecca, and Eilidh.

The city streets were also very pretty as there are Christmas decorations, especially Christmas lights, everywhere! We also got to see the biggest Christmas tree in Europe, and it was huge! By the end of the day, we were again so tired from all the walking we had done that we just ended up going out for dinner at the typical Portuguese restaurant that Filippa brought us to, then going back to the hostel to bed.

The biggest Christmas tree in Europe.

Sightseeing in Lisbon

On Saturday we spent most of the day sightseeing Lisbon as it was our only day to get it all done! We woke up somewhat early and had breakfast (it was actually free at the amazing hostel we stayed at called "Hostel Lemon Lisbon"). We mostly just wandered around the city all day, as we didn't know what the big sights to see were. We did find lots of great views of the city though, as the city is built almost entirely on very steep hills. This also made for a lot of walking and exhaustion, so by noon we had to stop for a coffee break and relax. Afterwards we took a tram back up into the hills to finish exploring.

A pretty view of Lisbon.

The rest of the day passed by quickly, and after lunch, we decided it would be fun to go ice skating in one of the squares we had passed. We did our best, but almost everyone fell down at least once. Most of the other girls are from places where ice skating is not very popular, and the ice skates were very awkward anyways (they were more like ski boots than ice skates!) Since we had worn ourselves out from all the skating, we decided to head straight to our next destination, which was good since we didn't make it to Porto until midnight that night!

Ellen (left), Eilidh (right), and I showing off our ice skating skills.

Road Trip to Portugal

Since we had a Thursday and Friday off this past weekend, I went on a road trip to Portugal with our language assistant friends from Utrera (Eilidh and Ellen) and Córdoba (Jodie, Grace, and Rebecca) and an English teacher from Córdoba named Bea.

The trip began when we all met in Seville on Thursday morning. The girls from Córdoba had rented a 7-person van, but with all of our luggage it was still a bit of a tight squeeze. It was a long trip to Lisbon (about 4.5 hours), but it was definitely worth it. Lisbon is the capital city of Portugal, and the largest in the country (approx. 2.8 million inhabitants). The city is very hilly, with some beautiful views.

Our van

Once we were finally in the city we drove around for another hour trying to navigate through the city streets to find our hostel. We had to stop and ask for directions several times, and it was strange to hear people speaking Portuguese instead of Spanish. The really strange part was that I found I could understand most of what they were saying. It was like a weird mix of Spanish and Italian words, with a few different sounds thrown in for good measure. This was lucky though, since we needed all the help we could get to make it to our hostel.

Since it had taken so long to get to the hostel and get settled in, we were all pretty hungry by te time we got there, so we decided to go find some dinner. We ended up in a little side street where we found a cute little Portuguese restaurant. The owner recommended the special, and brought us two gigantic platters of pork and steak, along with French fries and salads. It was all delicious!

Our first Portuguese meal: Bea, me, Jodie, Rebecca, Eilidh, and Grace.

My Birthday in Spain

Yesterday was my 22nd birthday, and I had a great day! I woke up to my phone ringing early in the morning... it was my mom and my sister calling to sing "Happy Birthday" to me! Then I called a friend from home and we ended up talking for an hour and a half, until the credit on my phone ran out. By then it was quarter past nine, so I had to quickly get ready and rush off to school! Then when I finally got to school, I found out that both of the teachers that I have one-on-one conversation classes with on Tuesdays couldn't have class, so I basically had a free day. I couldn't go home though, because after school I was going to Victoria's house to tutor her daughters. When I got there, they all surprised me with a birthday present (a nice, soft blanket), cards (written in English of course!) and even a birthday cake with candles. What sweet kids!

Teresa and Maria (they only had one '2' candle, so they improvised!)

Then later that night, Rachael, Erin, Nuria, Jerry and I went out for dinner at an Italian restaurant in Rota, which I hadn't even realized existed! We finished the night off with some drinking, pool, and hanging out in an almost empty bar (it was Tuesday night after all) called "Los Arcos" until 2:00 am. Good thing I only had an hour of work today!

Utrera

Since my birthday is coming up next week, Rachael, Erin and I decided to pre-celebrate by going to hang out in Utrera with a big group of language assistants (we seem to congregate here as we are all in similar situations and have a lot in common). We started out on Saturday morning by meeting our friend Ellen in Seville for an entire day of shopping! I love the stores here... specifically H&M, Zara, Mango, Sfera... there are just too many to name! Plus I just got paid on Friday, so I ended up buying a ton of new clothes.

After our shopping spree, we met up with Nuria and some of her friends, and Brian, a friend of Ellen's for lunch. Then we went to Utrera, about 20 minutes outside of Seville, where Ellen lives with our other friend Eilidh (although she was away for the weekend). Utrera is a cute town, and it is a lot bigger than Rota (about twice the size). It even has a train station with a train that goes right into the big city of Seville, so we were slightly jealous! For dinner Erin, who is a cook back home in Michigan, whipped us up some delicious pasta with chicken. Afterwards we went to Evan and Amanda's apartment (more language assistants who live in Utrera) and met even more language assistants! This brought our total to 9 girls and 1 guy, with a whole lot of alcohol, so got a little crazy! After a couple hours of predrinking there, we headed to the first bar, where Amanda bought me a birthday shot! We went to one other bar, and then it was late enough, we headed to the disco. Since discos in Spain don't get busy or sometimes don't even open until 2:00 or 3:00 am, we ended up having a late night. I finally got back to Ellen's at 5:30 am, which means that today I am doing absolutely nothing!

Random Spaniard, Amanda, Rachael, Sam, and me... doing a birthday shot!