Hello, I hope you have all had a wonderful Christmas and Father Christmas/The Three Kings/Olentzero was kind to you.
Christmas here was lovely, officially it was a white Christmas despite the distinct lack of snow but apparently ice will do and who am I to argue with the MET office? Few men dare, fewer still live to tell the tale. It's been a fairly normal Christmas. Nan and Grandad are here, and even my sisters boyfriend made a brief appearance for a few hours, Mum had even made him a little stocking. Due to that History degree business I normally get something History related, this time it was a World War 2 computer game thus I spent most of my Christmas day taking a pounding from the Nazis all over Northern France. Festive.
My Uncle flew in from Cincinnati on Boxing Day. Within the hour of him reaching the house he was in the car on the way to the Home of Football(TM). Despite the opposition being Swindon it was the right game to go to. Charlton went in at half time 1-0 up but with only nine men. Needless to say we went 2-1 down but fittingly the only Spaniard to ever play for Charlton dinked the keeper in the 94th minute and I completely lost it. Man Utd fans will never be able to understand the joy of a 2-2 draw with Swindon but games like that is why we put ourselves through it. My uncle is currently downstairs unwrapping a pair of thermal underwear, nan and grandad are nothing if not practical. Mum also managed to give him the exact same coat that she gave him last time he was here for Christmas.
Being home has been really good. Had a lovely meal with everyone who is home on Sunday we were almost like proper grown ups. The next day was spent playing board games, I taught Catherine, Alex and John a lesson at the Game of Life but came unstuck at Cluedo. If you don't know the Game of Life I'd recommend it, its ridiculous. John devised a strategy so complex at Cluedo it only managed to confuse him, bless.
I hope your Christmas was as lovely as puppies basking in sunbeams, talk soon
love love love x
Saturday, 26 December 2009
Thursday, 24 December 2009
Friday, 18 December 2009
Oh my Golly!
Despite the weather throwing everything it had at me, I just wouldn't be defeated, I made it home. The weather wasn't all bad, I missed my class at seven in the morning as the roads were too icy. The Spanish go to war when it snows, for a warm Mediterranean country they are damned prepared.
Managed to get the bus to Bilbao without too much difficulty but then did have to spend 6 hours in the airport. The time was filled with Soduku, which I am better at but still pretty terrible, and reading the Torygraph as it was the only newspaper in English. Apparently you get too choose how much tax you pay when you are rich, hmm. My flight was delayed for an hour and a half which was actually pretty good going. One flight to Santiago was facing a 23 hour delay, poor Chileans. My old next door neighbour gave us a lift as he has a 4x4 which I thought was excessive until I saw how much how snow there is in New Ash Green! It made me feel better about contributing to warming the planet after a flight and a ride in a 4x4. Doom. The neighbour enjoyed measuring out loud how many feet above sea level we were throughout the journey.
I'm really happy to be home, I've been looking forward to it all week and it was a relief to get home. As much as I like living in Spain and as much as sometimes England can utterly depress you I'm pretty sure it's where I'll settle in the long run.
Just a short post as it's now its quarter to three and I was up at six, somehow. Let's make plans!
love love love x
Managed to get the bus to Bilbao without too much difficulty but then did have to spend 6 hours in the airport. The time was filled with Soduku, which I am better at but still pretty terrible, and reading the Torygraph as it was the only newspaper in English. Apparently you get too choose how much tax you pay when you are rich, hmm. My flight was delayed for an hour and a half which was actually pretty good going. One flight to Santiago was facing a 23 hour delay, poor Chileans. My old next door neighbour gave us a lift as he has a 4x4 which I thought was excessive until I saw how much how snow there is in New Ash Green! It made me feel better about contributing to warming the planet after a flight and a ride in a 4x4. Doom. The neighbour enjoyed measuring out loud how many feet above sea level we were throughout the journey.
I'm really happy to be home, I've been looking forward to it all week and it was a relief to get home. As much as I like living in Spain and as much as sometimes England can utterly depress you I'm pretty sure it's where I'll settle in the long run.
Just a short post as it's now its quarter to three and I was up at six, somehow. Let's make plans!
love love love x
Sunday, 13 December 2009
A Little Less Sixteen Candles
Hola, how are you? I've just noticed that at the top of the screen Google rates a page's importance. This page is deemed 1/10 in terms of importance, who died and made Google king of the internet? Bastards.
Pettiness aside, things are good. Battled through a three day week to reach the weekend. We had the school's christmas meal on Friday which was nice. On the bus in Maria complained that its always duck, we told her to be more optimistic, two duck courses later we had to concede what we already knew, she's always right. Without any advanced warning a few us were chosen to sing a TEFL version of the 12 days of Christmas, the only bit I remember was that partridge in a pear tree was replaced by communicative methodology, never let it be said that English teachers don't know how to have fun. Spanish bars have no idea of capacity so the rest of the evening was spent pressed against a wall at the Spanish version of a cheese night. It was packed and I got annoyed when some guy was pushing his way through demanding more space than was possible to give before realising he was in a wheel chair.
Last night two teachers from last year came back to visit. One of them lived in our flat and its strange talking to a virtual stranger about how bad the electrics are and how nice the care taker is. She found it strange that we still have her over sized get well soon card in the flat. We found out that on their last day there was a fire in the flat, a proper one with doors kicked down and that the building is the favorite choice for suicide in Pamplona. It's hard to imagine why the care taker is so happy. The other used to live in south London I asked where and she said it was a quiet part of London by "some crappy football team" where she complained that she could never park and it got busy and noisy. The "crappy" team she spoke of was Charlton so after hyperventilating I took the only sensible option and threw her over a bridge.
The hightlight of the evening was getting into a biney (thats not hows its spelt but its how it sounds). They are Basque social clubs but are very secretive. Its difficult to gain membership and can take ages to get off the waiting list but lucky someone got us in. It was weird. It was lucky a wedding reception/butlins disco mixed together. The music was one guy on a keyboard. He would use the set tunes already on the keyboard and play a sort of polka over the top while everyone else indulged in some heavily choreographed dance routines, like Basque line dancing.
We went to another bar whose big finisher was an epic 12 minute harvest song, played on a shriller version of the bag pipes.
This week is Christmas themed. Which means for adults watching some Christmas TV and listening to "Do They Know it's Christmas?" While for children it means colouring, its hard to explain the joy young children have colouring, until I saw this:
static.funnyjunk.com/pictures/fucking_love_coloring.jpg
Whenever I give a sheet to my young class, the first thing I hear regardless of what it is, is one of them in his nicest English voice, "Mark, Colour?" Saying no makes you feel like you've told him that Christmas is canceled or that theres no such thing as Spongebob.
Home on Friday, see you soon. love love love x
Pettiness aside, things are good. Battled through a three day week to reach the weekend. We had the school's christmas meal on Friday which was nice. On the bus in Maria complained that its always duck, we told her to be more optimistic, two duck courses later we had to concede what we already knew, she's always right. Without any advanced warning a few us were chosen to sing a TEFL version of the 12 days of Christmas, the only bit I remember was that partridge in a pear tree was replaced by communicative methodology, never let it be said that English teachers don't know how to have fun. Spanish bars have no idea of capacity so the rest of the evening was spent pressed against a wall at the Spanish version of a cheese night. It was packed and I got annoyed when some guy was pushing his way through demanding more space than was possible to give before realising he was in a wheel chair.
Last night two teachers from last year came back to visit. One of them lived in our flat and its strange talking to a virtual stranger about how bad the electrics are and how nice the care taker is. She found it strange that we still have her over sized get well soon card in the flat. We found out that on their last day there was a fire in the flat, a proper one with doors kicked down and that the building is the favorite choice for suicide in Pamplona. It's hard to imagine why the care taker is so happy. The other used to live in south London I asked where and she said it was a quiet part of London by "some crappy football team" where she complained that she could never park and it got busy and noisy. The "crappy" team she spoke of was Charlton so after hyperventilating I took the only sensible option and threw her over a bridge.
The hightlight of the evening was getting into a biney (thats not hows its spelt but its how it sounds). They are Basque social clubs but are very secretive. Its difficult to gain membership and can take ages to get off the waiting list but lucky someone got us in. It was weird. It was lucky a wedding reception/butlins disco mixed together. The music was one guy on a keyboard. He would use the set tunes already on the keyboard and play a sort of polka over the top while everyone else indulged in some heavily choreographed dance routines, like Basque line dancing.
We went to another bar whose big finisher was an epic 12 minute harvest song, played on a shriller version of the bag pipes.
This week is Christmas themed. Which means for adults watching some Christmas TV and listening to "Do They Know it's Christmas?" While for children it means colouring, its hard to explain the joy young children have colouring, until I saw this:
static.funnyjunk.com/pictures/fucking_love_coloring.jpg
Whenever I give a sheet to my young class, the first thing I hear regardless of what it is, is one of them in his nicest English voice, "Mark, Colour?" Saying no makes you feel like you've told him that Christmas is canceled or that theres no such thing as Spongebob.
Home on Friday, see you soon. love love love x
Friday, 4 December 2009
The Chemistry of Common Life
Holidays are good. Rather than spend this holiday the way I spent most of other holidays, sitting around in shorts watching diagnosis murder (which they show in Spain more than at home), I've actually been active! Now I need a sit down.
I woke up on Thursday, stumbled out off my room to be told to get myself sorted out. Within fifteen minutes I was showered, partly dressed, sitting in Cormacs car on the way to San Sebastian, not completely sure what was going on. I'm glad for the quick around. San Sebastian is a glamorous sea side resort. Everything is five star and all the normal Spanish shops are replaced with expensive Italian versions. Everyone is young, rich and beautiful. Obviously, these are my people, so I mingled with ease, dazzling with my wit and charm. The truth is that the only place we could afford to eat was cow themed. Sadly, weather wise it was a horrible day. It poured with rain, was foggy and cold so the city was quiet and it was a shame that the weather prevented justice being done to what is a clearly beautiful city. The drive there however is fantastic. It goes through proper, undisputed, Basque country. Its very mountainous and the road weaves through them high up and you can look down on tiny villages and farms below, it looks like Austria.
Today however was more successful. Marc, his lovely lady wife Kathryn, Cormac and myself ventured to Bilbao for a day of high-browed culture at the Guggenheim. I confess that art galleries aren't my thing, I know you aren't supposed to say that but they aren't. It's over my head and I veer between feeling stupid and angry that these pretentious people make me feel stupid. I did want to go though, and I CAME THIS CLOSE to understanding some of what I was looking at. I really enjoyed it so I now feel I have earned the right to be smug and arty, I'm thinking of buying a beret.
The thing I realized is that the Guggenheim only has a small part dedicated to paintings and when looking at these I reverted back to glazing over but the other stuff (use of the word stuff means I'm in no way arty) was much more enjoyable. The best bit were three video instillations. You went into a small dark corridor and as you walk down you can hear the sound of what awaits you at the end and you can't help feel this growing sense of anticipation until you turned into the room itself. The first one was Nirvana playing Negative Creep. It was loud and the film was jumping and frantic and standing in this small room felt like you were moving within a packed crowd. The other two were of Zidane, and of a Chinese factory. There was an exhibition on an architect Frank Lloyd Wright who came up with these amazing buildings full of bubbles, waterfalls and spiraling towers. Most of them looked like they had landed from an episode of the Jetsons. More of them got built than you might imagine to look at them. He was commissioned to redesign Baghdad in the 1950s, it didn't happen which is lucky as it wouldn't be there now. Despite there being lots of interesting things the best thing about the Guggenheim is the Guggenheim.
It's an amazing building. Bilbao has a reputation for being fun with a lot going on but also for being ugly and industrial. I thought that was very unfair.
One of the best things about Bilbao is that in Basque it is called Bilbo. Which gives me an excuse to post this.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2HQ1K7YyQM&feature=related
I don't think I could ever tire of that.
love love love x
I woke up on Thursday, stumbled out off my room to be told to get myself sorted out. Within fifteen minutes I was showered, partly dressed, sitting in Cormacs car on the way to San Sebastian, not completely sure what was going on. I'm glad for the quick around. San Sebastian is a glamorous sea side resort. Everything is five star and all the normal Spanish shops are replaced with expensive Italian versions. Everyone is young, rich and beautiful. Obviously, these are my people, so I mingled with ease, dazzling with my wit and charm. The truth is that the only place we could afford to eat was cow themed. Sadly, weather wise it was a horrible day. It poured with rain, was foggy and cold so the city was quiet and it was a shame that the weather prevented justice being done to what is a clearly beautiful city. The drive there however is fantastic. It goes through proper, undisputed, Basque country. Its very mountainous and the road weaves through them high up and you can look down on tiny villages and farms below, it looks like Austria.
Today however was more successful. Marc, his lovely lady wife Kathryn, Cormac and myself ventured to Bilbao for a day of high-browed culture at the Guggenheim. I confess that art galleries aren't my thing, I know you aren't supposed to say that but they aren't. It's over my head and I veer between feeling stupid and angry that these pretentious people make me feel stupid. I did want to go though, and I CAME THIS CLOSE to understanding some of what I was looking at. I really enjoyed it so I now feel I have earned the right to be smug and arty, I'm thinking of buying a beret.
The thing I realized is that the Guggenheim only has a small part dedicated to paintings and when looking at these I reverted back to glazing over but the other stuff (use of the word stuff means I'm in no way arty) was much more enjoyable. The best bit were three video instillations. You went into a small dark corridor and as you walk down you can hear the sound of what awaits you at the end and you can't help feel this growing sense of anticipation until you turned into the room itself. The first one was Nirvana playing Negative Creep. It was loud and the film was jumping and frantic and standing in this small room felt like you were moving within a packed crowd. The other two were of Zidane, and of a Chinese factory. There was an exhibition on an architect Frank Lloyd Wright who came up with these amazing buildings full of bubbles, waterfalls and spiraling towers. Most of them looked like they had landed from an episode of the Jetsons. More of them got built than you might imagine to look at them. He was commissioned to redesign Baghdad in the 1950s, it didn't happen which is lucky as it wouldn't be there now. Despite there being lots of interesting things the best thing about the Guggenheim is the Guggenheim.
It's an amazing building. Bilbao has a reputation for being fun with a lot going on but also for being ugly and industrial. I thought that was very unfair.
One of the best things about Bilbao is that in Basque it is called Bilbo. Which gives me an excuse to post this.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2HQ1K7YyQM&feature=related
I don't think I could ever tire of that.
love love love x
Tuesday, 1 December 2009
The Ghost of Tom Joad
Spain has many wonderful things, the pintxo, that the Christmas decorations were up today, unreasonably attractive television presenters. However the best thing is the fact that the Spanish will do just about anything to avoid going to work. This week we finish on Wednesday. Thursday is Navarra day and Tuesday next week is a Saint's day and you can't possibly be expected to work on a Saint's day so whoever decides these things sat down and thought well you might as well have Friday and Monday off as well. This doesn't include last Monday which the schools had off for some reason known only to themselves so I didn't have to go to my kids classes. God bless Navarra and all who sail in her.
When you don't speak the language small, mundane tasks become very stressful. Panic when the person at the till asks you a question, rehearsing what you want to ask for at a counter only to fluff it under pressure, the all consuming vortex that is trying to deal with money. With serious things like when you lock horns with a certain Spanish bank, people go out of their way to help, there is also a much better chance of someone speaking English. With smaller things people are less concerned.
One of the scariest things is the hairdresser. A friend here just attempted to cut his own hair with a nasal hair trimmer, with unfortunate consequences. I braved a trip to a barber even though it did conjure up memories of the humiliation that I suffered in Romania when the middle aged women grouped around to take the piss in Romanian. This was slightly better. Bolting only crossed my mind once when I first noticed the guy was wearing a backwards baseball. He thought he was in the film Barbershop, surely Ice Cube's finest moment? My initial reaction was the same as anyone elses would be, it will be a cold day in hell before I let someone who thinks its acceptable to wear a backwards baseball cap touch my head, but I calmed myself and after a few hiccups we managed to get through. At first he shaved the back and sides and left the top completely alone and thought that was finished but with some Spanglish I got him to carry on. It took him an hour, including a TV break but its done. I'm dreading the next one already.
The exam period is coming to an end. The initial delight in ruining some teenagers day has been replaced with the bitterness and regret of a massive pile of marking. I hate marking, firstly its boring and repetitive. Secondly and worse of all is that I can't detach from it. Some teachers can just say oh well if their class gets bad marks, I feel personally responsible for every mistake. All I can think of is a saying which I don't know where I heard it but it goes: There's no such thing as a bad students, only bad teachers. That's not true but that's what marking will do to you.
It's been quiet. The biggest stir was yesterday when we had snow! It took me a while to get my head around that it wasn't big bits of rain. The weekend was good. A night out on Saturday followed by a day watching football on Sunday. You couldn't miss the fact that it was Barcelona vs Madrid, it has been the only thing on the news all week. Channels who weren't showing it previewed it all week and the build up on the actual channel started at 9 in the morning, kick off was 8 in the evening. As Charlton weren't playing it was the biggest game on the planet.
One more thing, HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROMANIA! And you thought I had forgotten. To celebrate here is a short video of Romanians dancing. Happy days.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kf-RI62PFs
I miss them so
love love love x
When you don't speak the language small, mundane tasks become very stressful. Panic when the person at the till asks you a question, rehearsing what you want to ask for at a counter only to fluff it under pressure, the all consuming vortex that is trying to deal with money. With serious things like when you lock horns with a certain Spanish bank, people go out of their way to help, there is also a much better chance of someone speaking English. With smaller things people are less concerned.
One of the scariest things is the hairdresser. A friend here just attempted to cut his own hair with a nasal hair trimmer, with unfortunate consequences. I braved a trip to a barber even though it did conjure up memories of the humiliation that I suffered in Romania when the middle aged women grouped around to take the piss in Romanian. This was slightly better. Bolting only crossed my mind once when I first noticed the guy was wearing a backwards baseball. He thought he was in the film Barbershop, surely Ice Cube's finest moment? My initial reaction was the same as anyone elses would be, it will be a cold day in hell before I let someone who thinks its acceptable to wear a backwards baseball cap touch my head, but I calmed myself and after a few hiccups we managed to get through. At first he shaved the back and sides and left the top completely alone and thought that was finished but with some Spanglish I got him to carry on. It took him an hour, including a TV break but its done. I'm dreading the next one already.
The exam period is coming to an end. The initial delight in ruining some teenagers day has been replaced with the bitterness and regret of a massive pile of marking. I hate marking, firstly its boring and repetitive. Secondly and worse of all is that I can't detach from it. Some teachers can just say oh well if their class gets bad marks, I feel personally responsible for every mistake. All I can think of is a saying which I don't know where I heard it but it goes: There's no such thing as a bad students, only bad teachers. That's not true but that's what marking will do to you.
It's been quiet. The biggest stir was yesterday when we had snow! It took me a while to get my head around that it wasn't big bits of rain. The weekend was good. A night out on Saturday followed by a day watching football on Sunday. You couldn't miss the fact that it was Barcelona vs Madrid, it has been the only thing on the news all week. Channels who weren't showing it previewed it all week and the build up on the actual channel started at 9 in the morning, kick off was 8 in the evening. As Charlton weren't playing it was the biggest game on the planet.
One more thing, HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROMANIA! And you thought I had forgotten. To celebrate here is a short video of Romanians dancing. Happy days.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kf-RI62PFs
I miss them so
love love love x
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