I hope all is good in your particuliar hood. Things here are beginning to pick up pace. I received my timetable today a document with more codes than America´s nuclear arsenal. So puzzling is it that we have to have indivdual sessions tomorrow morning to make sense of it all. What I do know is that I´m back with the business men with the added terror of a few classes of teenagers.
I´ve also had the chance to meet everyone. Cormac and I managed to find our way to the building to be shuffled into a room by the finance guy, a man by the name of Alfonso who by the look of his underarms was a lot more nervous than we were. The building is incredible. It´s actually a Doctor´s college, its a beautiful old building that looks like its got lost on the way to Paris. We were told no to get used to it, the normal building is a much more modest affair. Everyone is lovely, I would feel a little bad listing them all as they dont know their names would be appearing on a tenth rate blog. However one guy does deserve a mentoin, the teaching, tour guiding, financial advising, career planning, contract supervising, technology loving, Spanish translating, bus getting, lady pulling wingman machine that is Nick. He has a vocabulary like nothing you have ever heard, he also bears resemblence to the guy who used to present the crystal maze, you know the one.
We spent our first days filling out paper work which is as tedious here as it is at home. We were taken to get our NIE numbers which is like the national insurance number. We were sat in a cafe while Alfonso locked horns with the bureaucratic jugguarnaut, thats how paperwork should be done.
However the best thing was next. In Spain they have the funny notion that to be employed in Spain first you must have been unemployed in Spain. So we were taken to sign on. So until the grand contract signing (which I´m imagining to be like Bismarck signing a peace treaty at Versailles) on Friday, I´m on the Spanish dole. The Spanish tabloids will be furious. Needless to say the job office in Pamplona is a lot nicer than Dartford. They also called me Don Peirson which made me reach levels of happiness that I hadn´t reached since they announced that Atomic Kitten had broken up.
We then had "a little tour" which knackered everyone, but give us all a chance to move around and talk to everyone. We were then back at the Doctors school where they revealed there was a resturaunt downstairs. Not my usual sort of resturaunt, the sort where the menu is encased in plastic on the wall or is in a service station, but a good one. We were again told not to get used to it, it was a concession to the school. We weren´t paying so we all cashed in. Topic of conversation ranged from the feasibility of an independent Basque state, the Euro, Spanish culture and that Des Walker was actually class for Sampdoria in the 1990s. I also had to ride to the defence of the noble art form that is Test cricket, Spaniards just don´t understand, cretins.
After lunch we were free to go, we had some drinks in a bar obsessed with Pearl Jam We managed to attract some singing attention from a gypsy, who got annoyed and shouting at a few of us who tried to join in. We learnt about each others interests some of which include an absurd amount of football trivia (who is the only man to play in the Milan, Mersyside, North London and North East derbies? answers on a postcard), the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, is Cat Stevens really Youseff Islam and fantasy roleplaying. Pretending to fight dressed as eleves and dwarves, not what you were thinking.
Once the internet in the flat is up and running I´ll put some pictures up. Buenas noches.
love love love x
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