Meet New Friends. Stay awhile. All Together Share a Smile.

It has been just over a month since I arrived in Spain, according to the calendar.  A month already?  No puede ser.  It just doesn’t feel like a month to me. It feels more like a week.  I am only going to be in Spain for eight months and one month is already over?  If this were a marathon I would be past the 5K mark.  And while the 5K mark is definitely not the end of the race, it is the first significant chunk you mark off in the race distance.  I must slow the pace down a little bit so I don’t wear myself out before the end.   

I, for one, am completely shocked to be feeling this way.  Before I got here, I was positive that I would get to Spain and feel completely out of my element, with no one to talk to and nothing to do.  I imagined myself standing all alone in a room with nothing but a calendar hanging on the wall, black marker in hand, crossing off the days until I could go home for Christmas. I was coming up with weird excuses for having to come home, like I wasn’t sure that I would be able to run and swim here and prepared myself for the possibility of early departure due to my inability to get a(n almost) daily dose of exercise endorphins.  I was preparing for the worst and expecting it too.  I had little faith that quitting two jobs, leaving my nice (rented) house complete with a nice roommate, great running routes and a close proximity to two pools and moving to Spain at the age of 29 would ever really work out.  I convinced myself that I would go and within a few weeks come to my senses and realize that this ‘bucket list’/ ‘living my dream’ stuff is all just a bunch of bologna (special thanks to the Oscar Meyer commercial that allowed me to spell that word correctly without using spell check).  I gave myself a month, tops.

Spain had other plans for me though.  And it started before I even got here.  When I got the news about where I would be teaching, I set out to get some first-hand information about the city.  I contacted my host mom from my study abroad experience back in college.  She didn’t have great things to say about the town, so I set out for a second opinion.  My Spanish teacher was kind enough to give me the name and contact information of a friend of hers who lives in Sevilla.  He, in turn, was kind enough to ask around and find out what kind of place this Alcalá de Guadaíra was. He also made the suggestion that I contact the school to find out if they knew of a place to live.  So I did, and they led me to an English teacher who had a three-bedroom piso available for rent in Alcalá.  That contact with the school gave a name to one of their three ‘helpers’ for the year (the school knows that they will get people, but they don’t get those people’s names), which they shared with one of the (American) helpers from last year, who was still in contact with the school.  She, in turn, contacted me via Facebook.  We ended up meeting up and she told me all about Alcalá (the teachers, the classes, the buses to get there and my options for which city to live in, among other helpful facts).  She was kind enough to ride the bus to Alcalá with me, showed me how to get to school, how to get to my new piso and introduced me to one of my new pisomates. From there, I was put in contact (again) with the director of the school, who was kind enough to pick me up in Sevilla and bring me (and my 4 pieces of luggage) to Alcalá. And it of course doesn’t stop there.  I have two really fun, friendly roommates. Among several kind gestures, one is that one of my roommates was kind enough to call a bunch of Internet companies and find the best one for us and get it all set up for us (I could never have communicated with the Internet companies about what we needed, that is for sure.  I would be typing this from and Internet café if it weren’t for his help).  My other roommate is always willing to talk, go to the shoe store, or just for a walk. Spanish may be a second language for both of us, but we still manage to figure out what the heck the other one is talking about (most of the time).  

And then I met the teachers at my school. Those that live in Alcalá offered their phone numbers in case I ever needed anything, wanted a ride somewhere, or just wanted to go out for a drink or some other social activity. The students are just as kind, asking me where I live and offering their phone numbers for if I ever need anything or want to hang out in Alcalá. Just a few days ago Clarisse and I were at the grocery store and I was in the produce aisle selecting a melon when one of my students came up to me and starting talking. A few aisles later I met up with another student, who introduced me to his daughter and wife. A few minutes after we parted, he found me in the store again and he offered me his phone number in case I ever needed to know about anything here in Alcalá. I have one student for private lessons too, who also offered his Alcalá wisdom. The other American teacher at the school (who lives in Sevilla instead of Alcalá) is also always around and ready to eat lunch, go shopping or do whatever. Suffice to say, I am very far from being alone.

I am also far from being bored.  I have lots of stuff to do.  For example, Clarisse and I made a trip to the bank and got ourselves our own bank accounts.  Since she is only 22, she got an account that doesn’t cost anything.  The man at the bank tried to set me up with a young person account too, but when he entered my birth year, the computer stopped him.  He asked me if there was an error on my passport because there was no way I could be as old as it says.  He thought I was 22 or 24 tops.  I was flattered, but told him that my passport wasn't lying. It is true that I am an old lady.  And that meant that I had to get a big-girl account where I pay about 1.25 Euro per month as a processing fee as well as a 1 Euro per-month charge to have and use an ATM card.  It’s the price you pay for being a big-girl.  The whole bank account experience took about 2 hours, but the man at the bank was very kind to us, speaking to Clarisse a little in French and speaking to me little bit about Tennessee whiskey (I have the face of a whiskey-lover), whether Kansas was near Minnesota and telling me that another American came to that very bank the day before to get an account.  To his dismay, I did not know her, even though she and I are from the same country (according the information he showed me, she is from Pennsylvania). (Special thanks one of my elementary school teachers who taught me how to spell that state correctly without spell check).  I have to go back to the bank this week to pick up my ATM card and then return a third time when I actually have my TIE to officially have a Spanish savings account.  Speaking of which, I went to the watch store/identity-card-photo-taking place this past week and got my photo taken for the identity card.  I don’t think I’ve ever had a better 'official' photo taken.  I may not have understood a single word the watch store clerk/photographer said to me besides ‘pasa’ (come here) to direct me to the camera, but he took one hell of an ID photo. On Tuesday of this week I'll  head to Sevilla for my second appointment for the identity card. 

PHOTO OF THE PHOTO:

Clarisse’s birthday was on October 21. I made her a banner that said, ‘Feliz Cumpleaños’ and hung it up in the living room on her birthday. José and I were co-conspirators in the rest of her birthday celebration plans. It really came in handy that we could make the plans in English so she wouldn’t know what was going to happen.  We got her a chocolate cake, a birthday card, a Spanish cookbook (which had to be purchased in Sevilla because Alcalá has a cookbook store deficiency), gloves (for ‘winter’ in Spain) and a bracelet. After work, Megan, José, Clarisse and I headed out for tapas and drinks/darts to further celebrate the occasion.  

CAKE, TAPAS AND DARTS:

We had so much fun that we decided that we will make Thursday nights a weekly occasion. 

And the fun did not stop there.  Megan, Clarisse and I went to Cádiz as another way to celebrate.  We took the bus from Sevilla in the morning and arrived in Cádiz after about an hour ride.  Our first stop was the tourist office, where we found a map/tour guide.  The city had several different color-coded routes for us to take.  You simply follow the corresponding colored line on the ground to arrive at the designated tourist attraction. We spent the day in Cadiz following the lines.

 

(Notice the purple line on the right.)

And I of course, in my spare time, I go to class.  I am assigned certain activities in each class, some of which require preparation.  Then there are the conversation classes I have throughout the week for which I need to plan activities, as well as private lessons 3-4 times per week (which, truth be told, haven't really started yet; I've only done one so far). 

I've also fit in a couple of trips to the Festival of Nations in Sevilla (a bunch of outdoor booths with food and or craft/clothing items from different countries) and a shopping trip this past weekend. I tried to find some jeans and other clothes, but to my dismay my calves did not fit in the jeans and my upper arms did not fit in shirts. You can't make this stuff up.)  After shopping we (Megan, Clarisse and I) went to a movie- Rumores y Mentiras (Rumors and Lies) (Why yes, Deb. Amanda Bynes is in that movie). It was dubbed in Spanish, but it's a movie that is pretty easy to understand, even if you miss some of the lines.

I'm sure I've forgotten to tell you about a lot of exciting things, such as how we came to have two home phones, one that doesn't ring and the other that rings, but is more of a challenge to dial since it is a rotary phone. Or how last week I had to give a demonstration on how to carve a pumpkin in front of the entire school while wearing an apron with a cow on it and being videotaped. Or about our amazing oven that cooks things, but for some reason they come out of the oven cold. Or about my plans to run a half marathon in Morocco in January. Or about no matter how hard I try, people do not call me Missy. I am known as Melissa.  But hey, I've only got seven months left in Spain.  I don't have time to tell you everything.

Melissa/Missy