Some Very Spanish New Year’s Resolutions (or, Yes, I’m still alive I’ve just been really boring lately)

Pick your jaws up off the floor, yes, I am indeed back from a v long self-imposed hiatus. I wish I had a cool reason for not having written for ages like I was off travelling and having way too much fun in places without wi-fi, but alas, I’m just really boring. The alternative to not writing this blog every week was to risk boring everyone senseless with stories of wiping 4-year-olds’ snotty noses for them. So here I shall make my much-anticipated return with something a bit more interesting: a list of Spain-related New Year’s resolutions to see me through til the end of May (or possibly forever if I truly adopt my new Spanish lifestyle?)

1. Drink more red wine. It’s so cheap here there’s literally no reason not to accompany every meal with a glass of Rioja and then when I come back to the UK people will think I’m really classy and worldly with my new love of vino tinto.
2. Teach at least one Spanish child how to write my name. Either that or just relent and let Daysi be my Spanish alter-ego.
3. Learn how to properly and efficiently take a siesta. Because it doesn’t really count when it lasts 4 hours, does it?
4. Learn how to cook one Spanish meal. Just one. If I can make a good tortilla by summer I’ll have accomplished something.
5. Learn how to roll my r’s so that kid in 4th grade will stop asking me to say ‘perro’ every lesson and laughing when I can’t
6. Travel at least one weekend a month so as to truly appreciate Andújar’s small town vibes when I get back
7. GO TO THE BEACH WHICH DOESN’T NEED EXPLAINING OBVS
8. Work out how to use a Spanish keyboard (and the printer and photocopier at work without googling the user manual twice a week)
9. Get into one Spanish telenovela and follow the ridiculous drama as best I can
10. Watch all the Almódovar films on Netflix so I can kid myself I’m being a little bit cultural

i’m still alive!!!

hours people have spent travelling to visit me: 24, fingers trapped in a door: 2, trips to Spanish hospital: 1, times I’ve tried to start writing this post and then forgotten again: 23

Sooooo I’m still alive! Since visiting Anna I have had the following exciting things happen to me:

1. Got a new flatmate! 2 have become 3 and Cristina has moved in, which means that there’s finally someone in the flat who can cook so Veronica and I don’t have to eat popcorn for every meal
2. Went to Granada! This made me really sad because Granada is sooo beaut and made me realise how much I miss city life (I hate being this person!!!!). We stayed in the NICEST airbnb right in the city centre and I realised how small Andújar is 😦
3. I SHUT MY HAND IN A DOOR (I know this is what you’ve all been waiting for.) This story is tragic for several reasons, which will become clear now. I went to work on my DAY OFF to get my jacket that I had left there the day before and as I left I pulled the gate shut behind me and just shut my middle and ring fingers in the door. Because I’m really grown up and good at dealing with pain I started crying in the middle of the street, nearly threw up, and then sent my mum the most pathetic voice note via WhatsApp. The worst thing was that I couldn’t just go home because I had errands to run (who have i become?!), which were going to pick up the teabags my mum sent me from the post office and then go to the bank and beg them to give me an account. Then I went home and just cried and stared at my big ugly club hand for a few hours. All weekend I just dosed up on painkillers and pretended it didn’t really hurt until Cristina dragged me to the hospital on Tuesday where I made a fool of myself in front of a different type of Spanish administration person. When you go in to A&E you have to sit and tell a man whats happened and because I’m not Spanish I had to provide some paperwork to prove who I was. So caught up in the embarrassment of having to go to hospital, I started waving my GIANT HAND around in his face for like a minute until I realised he was asking me for my EHIC (lol). Anyway they made me have an X-ray and it turns out nothing is broken (oh I also got lost walking from the X-Ray department to the waiting area), and he couldn’t pierce my nail to let the blood out because it didn’t hurt anymore. SO I took matters into my own hands, went home and pierced my hand like 14 times to get all the blood to drain out which was equal parts the most gross and satisfying thing I’ve ever done. And now I’m just waiting for my manky dead nails to grow out into shiny new ones.
4. A group of 6 year olds made me cry! Last Thursday I had to teach my school’s out difficult class about the difference between Spanish firefighters, ambulance, police and their English equivalents. Armed with a Fireman Sam video and a few printouts that I didn’t really know what I was doing with, I headed to class only to discover that there’s no digital screen! (give me a break pls) At this point the teacher left me alone with 24 6-year-olds for FORTY-FIVE MINUTES, which was basically just me shouting at them to shut up in Spanish once a minute. They were clearly really impressed with my teaching skills cos yesterday I walked into their classroom to borrow a book and they all audibly groaned ‘noooo not English’ 😦 BUT today they actually managed to do to worksheets and I didn’t have to shout at ANYONE sooo my approach to teaching with that class is just going to be to bombard them with activities and give up all hope of them actually learning anything.
5. Alice came to visit me!! If we’ve learnt anything so far living abroad, it’s that it is a lot harder to travel across Europe than you think when you’re living in a town instead of a city. It took Alice a very convoluted 24 hours to travel from Orleans to Andújar but she did it because she is a real life angel and my company is 100% worth it. With her, Alice bought the freezing cold and rain which meant I had to go out and buy a duvet and that all the teachers at my school have spent all week laughing at me because I don’t own any boots and I’m still wearing heeled sandals to work. I think Alice managed to restore a bit of my sanity cos I was starting to go a bit stir-crazy seeing the same faces over and over again every day and having people not understand a word I say. You really can’t overestimate the power of having someone listen to you moan and agree with you.

Sincerest apologies for my absence, thanks for coming back for another wild ride. Here’s some photos of my gammy hand to make up for lack of posts for a few weeks – you’re welcome.

semana dos – teaching, travel and tinder

banks I’ve cried in: 2, words I’ve had to learn how to say in English: about 20 (including heterogeneous ?!), worksheets printed out: 75, google searches of how to work the printer at school: 4

Some people might say that moving country to teach in a primary school is a bit stupid if you have no experience with teaching and have never had to deal with 25 7 year olds before … and they would be correct. A lot of my time in class is spent looking at the kids with the hope that they have any idea what I’m saying while they gawk back at me, bewildered. Their level of english really varies depending on the quality of the bilingual teaching they’ve received in the past. Some classes are really switched on and bright, and lots of the kids go to English academies where they get extra english tuition, and then in other classes many of the children don’t know how to read, even in Spanish. I’ve realised pretty early on that dealing with kids all day is draining because you have to make EVERYTHING fun and – unsurprisingly – a lot of the course material is dull. (shout out to my mum who does this 5 days a week, i dunno how you’ve not gone mental yet.) Some of this teaching might be a bit easier if the classrooms were as well-equipped as they are in the UK with things like smartboards, but generally it is chalkboards (!!) all round here, so i have become the QUEEN of making worksheets. top tip: always include a picture that the kids can colour in when they’ve finished working and then they will like you.

An embarrassing side note is that here they teach the kids to write in cursive from literally day one, whereas I had the standard comic-sans handwriting education like everyone else at home. Instead of the kids thinking that my handwriting is easier to read, I was laughed at by an entire class who took delight in calling out ‘is that meant to be an R or an F?’ soo I’m either never writing on the board again or I need to learn cursive.

This week I also experienced my first of many Spanish national holidays which meant that school was closed on thursday so I had a 4 day weekend since I don’t work Fridays. I’ve been feeling a bit cabin-fever-y so I decided to get out of our little pueblo and get to a city and visit Anna (who also has a v funny blog – annagetstanned.wordpress.com ) in Córdoba. Our weekend was v cultured (read: we went to the mosque, ate paella and drank rioja) and I also got to return to the things I miss so much about living in a city: cordoba actually has bars and a nightlife!! It was so nice to realise that I’m not as much of an idiot abroad as I think I am and that anna is having the same struggles with Spanish bureaucracy as I am.

My friends seemed to think that i would find amor while I was here but it is not looking likely (which isn’t surprising since I’m not exactly a serial dater in england), but it has provided a good explanation of just how small my town is.. there are literally 5 guys on tinder from my town over the age of 20, and after I swiped left on all of them I realised I was gonna have to increase my distance which I thought would work well until I matched with a guy who lives in TANGIERS, MOROCCO. 😦

Come back next week when we will (hopefully) (probably not though) get answers to questions like: am I a permanent resident here yet? do I finally have a bank account? will the temperature ever drop below 33 degrees? does anyone in Spain own a kettle?

semana uno

days at work completed: 2, medieval festivals attended: 1, trips to the police station: 3, appearances on Spanish tv: 1

So I’ve survived the first week which is a good indication that I’ll probably survive the rest of the year. By now I’ve managed to actually explore the pueblo and meet lots of lovely people. Buckle up n get comfy cos here’s a recap:

On Friday my flatmate Verónica took me to a medieval fair at a castle in a neighbouring pueblo. Vero is a dance teacher and is basically princess jasmine in real life, and I spent the evening with her and her dance students. I was nervous about moving to a town instead of a city because I knew I’d have to speak Spanish more frequently because less people speak English and Friday was a perfect example of this. What I hadn’t accounted for was that Spanish people are literally the nicest most inclusive people on the planet and everyone was so patient with me and kind (thank god).

The next morning I met up with the other language assistants in Andújar and went for a walk along the river (who have I become lol) and then went to get churros for breakfast (more like me).

Cultural fact número uno: the river is called the Guadalquivir, which comes from an Arabic name that means ‘big water’ and it’s the second longest river in Spain.

*non-cultural thing I also learnt: on our walk we saw some teenagers swinging about some foam swords and shields and wearing capes & the Americans kept saying they were LARPing which I’ve just learnt means live action role playing, in case anyone was wondering

I started work on Monday and I won’t lie, I’ve never been more confused as I was that first hour of the day. I basically spend it wandering from classroom to classroom until a child came to collect me (I must seem v professional). I knew I was teaching in primary schools so I basically thought I’d be teaching numbers, colours and simple phrases but BOY WAS I WRONG. Turns out I’m helping in two classes: natural science and social science, which bodes well since i have so many fond memories of understanding absolutely nothing during gcse science. The curriculum is soo difficult even in Spanish let alone bloody English so these kids might hate me by the end of the year. These are pages from natural science primary 4 (NINE YEAR OLDS LEARN THIS)

At the moment though the kids don’t hate me!! The benefit of working in a primary school is that little kids are generally impressed by/ interested in anything new and different and I fit both these criteria. The kids are adorable and I’ve already been recognised in the street by a few who ran up and hugged me, which was super cute. The best part so far was playing ‘London Bridge is falling down’ in Spanish for year 3 and them all singing along (I wanna adopt them all)

The main achievement of the week is that I finally have my NIE which means I’m legally here (for tax purposes and other boring stuff I don’t understand) and I only got laughed at by 6 people in the police station whilst doing so, which by now is a pretty good number.

The most important thing however is that I have now mastered the art of making tea in a pan (we don’t have a kettle) so there’ll be brews aplenty henceforth x

he llegado en España!!

flights caught: 1, trains taken: 3, attempts it takes me to get back into the front door every time I go out: 52

I made it here! After basically taking the longest and DUMBEST journey ever I’ve arrived in Andújar. Before I left I’d joined a couple of groups for auxiliares de conversación specific to my region and loads of them had said the easiest way to get to where I am is to fly to Málaga and then take the train. Like an idiot I didn’t realise that all of these people were American and that I, unlike them, was able to fly from London to Seville and then take just one train, but when I found that out it was Officially Too Late.

Having said that, the trip here was actually pretty easy and stress-free. The Spanish know how to make train journeys comfortable and that includes air conditioning (!!) and every train I’ve been on makes a really funny sound when it makes a stop, like the sound your phone would’ve made when you got a text in like 2009.

So far I’ve had varying levels of success with interacting in Spanish. My flat mate seems to understand me fine and told me my Spanish is really good (but she might’ve just been being nice cos I’d had 2 hours sleep and had been crying all day). The taxi driver at the station, however, took one look at me after I mumbled my new address and said ‘English?’, so clearly my accent needs some work. Oh AND everyone told me Andalusians have really strong accents and I was like, I’m sure I’ll understand them.. plot twist: they were right. An old lady spoke to me for a good 10 minutes at Cordoba station and all I could make out is that she thinks Andújar is a ‘really boring town, where everyone’s waiting for heaven’ (I think?) but then she got off the train here and clearly lives here so I dunno. And today in the supermarket a man said something to me and I just laughed and nodded and I’d accidentally bought a packet of pineapple, which, incidentally, I do not like.

hola / hello / hi / etc

flights caught: 0, trains taken: 0, goodbyes said: about 100, tears cried: approx. 4000

If you’re reading this you are probably one of the following:

1. a family member (hi mum)
2. a friend who is going to take the piss out of this
3. lost

As part of my degree, English and Spanish at Uni of Leeds, I’m spending this academic year abroad. Instead of going to uni I’ll be working for the British Council, teaching English in two schools in Andújar in Andalusia, Spain (I’d never heard of it either).

This is all a really amazing opportunity and I’m hoping to mature loads this year and become more of a grown up basically. I will preface this blog by letting you know that I’m going to try and keep it funny and light hearted but hauling yourself and a select-few prized possessions to another country is a really scary task, so expect some sad stuff maybe. I’m pretty dramatic and emotional so I’m guessing that when/if I read this blog back when I return from Spain I will want to have taken back half of what I’ve said but it’ll probably all be quite amusing.