First on the list: get necessary documents together for renewing my Spanish identity card. The necessary documents included a copy of every page of my passport, so I went to a copistería (=Kinko's, but just a type of store, not a chain, not corporate and there are actually more of them than Kinko's. Also, you can't make your own copies; it's full service). I was the first in line, but when I told the copy guy that I needed a copy of every page of my passport he said I was going to have to wait while he tended to the other two people in the store. He answered his cell phone, flirted with the one girl, helped the other woman and eventually got around to making my copies for me. For whatever reason he charged me only 60 cents. I'm going to tell all my friends that need copies of every page in their passport to go there.
Next, I had to hand in those photocopies to the correct extranjero office. It took maybe thirty seconds to hand them in. It will take approximately three months before I have to go in for appointment number two and then who knows how long before I actually receive my card. I'll keep you posted.
Third on the list was buying random things like sheets for my bed, weights ('cause I need big muscles to intimidate the small children) and groceries. I also wanted to sign up for Spanish classes, get a gym membership (for when it is rainy and when I want to swim), get a library card and sign up for two races (A FREE night race in Sevilla and the 10K(ish) race in Alcalá (that I ran last year). I was not able to sign up for Spanish classes again because I was not able to register within the registration period. No, online registration was not an option. You had to travel to the registration office, take a number and wait. The two times I went they were out of numbers (aka they only serve x number per day and that number was already there waiting). The third time I went was the day after registration was closed and I asked if I could register anyway (since I registered late last semester) but I was told I would have to wait until February. Actually it was more like:
"Registration was open in the beginning of September. Where have you been?"
"The US"
"Well, that's not our problem."
The gym search continues because I don't want to pay $100 (I did the conversion for you) every month to use the gym when I know perfectly well I won't go that often nor do I have that kind of money. Getting a library card might have been one of the easiest things on my to-do list. I went in, filled out a form, waited until someone felt like helping me and they entered my information into the computer and handed me a card. And I had only slight problems signing up for the races: I got lost going to register for the night one, but eventually found the Olympic Stadium where registration was taking place. Make all the jokes you want about how an Olympic Stadium must be hard to find but I insist that it was. You don't know....you weren't there! (As in the Friends episode after the one where Monica get stung by a jellyfish). Registering for the Alcalá race was no problem. I have experience with that.
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| The bank payment step in the Alcalá race registration. |
The last thing I did was sign up for a Sevici card. It's the card that lets you rent bikes around the city to get you places faster. I signed up online, paid the yearly 25€ fee with my credit card and waited for my card to show up in the mail.
The Sevici card came in the mail just a few days later. I saw it in the mailbox as I was leaving for the night race. I decided to try it out right away. The race started at 10 PM and it was an 11.9 KM (~7.4 miles) race, which meant I would probably finish a little after 11 and would have just a few minutes to make it to the bus stop and catch the last bus of the night by 11:20. If I missed the bus my options were walking home, finding and then paying for a taxi or biking home. I thought biking sounded like my best bet. So I grabbed a bike and headed off to the start line. I wasn't exactly sure where I was going or where I could leave the bike, but I thought I could figure it out. I made it to the race area and found a place to park the bike, but since it was my first experience with returning a bike, I was having a hard time getting it back into the bike holder. I asked a fellow bike parker to help me, but he couldn't get it to go in either. So I asked the policeman that was nearby and he tried to give me instructions on how to do it. After a few tries it clicked in. Now the thing about the bikes is that after you pay your yearly subscription, you can ride them anywhere for free for the first half hour. After that you have to pay a small fee. Well, because I didn't know where I was going and had trouble parking it, I ended up using the bike for 40 minutes. That was 10 minutes over the free limit, so a 50¢ charge was placed on my account. Before I could use another bike I had to pay the 50 cents. Although I signed up with a credit card, they wouldn't just charge it. I had to have the card with me and pay at the machine/bike station or pay online. Since I was running a race, I didn't have a credit card on me. This left my options for getting home to walking or getting on that last bus.
The race had 23,000+ participants so we running like packed sardines the whole time. If you can even say we were running. My 10:00/mile pace was not my normal racing pace. It got me to the finish line behind schedule. I had no chance to take the bus. And so, because I could and because I had to, I ran the 3 miles back home. And the first thing I did when I got home was to pay the 50¢ charge (plus a little extra in case it happens again, I'll be covered).
On Sunday morning Megan, Katerina and I went to Cádiz to spend a day at the beach. The bus from Sevilla was a little sketchy as the transmission seemed to be on the fritz. You could tell because it lurched into the parking space at the bus station. There were discussions between the driver and another worker and we ultimately did leave in the lurching bus but we only went as far as the other bus station on the other side of Sevilla, where there was a fully functioning bus waiting to take us all the way to Cádiz. The beach in Cádiz was pretty windy and sand was blowing everywhere but we found an abandoned, beached boat to shield us from the sand tornado and enjoyed a few hours of sun.
School started on Monday. I was placed in an elementary school in Alcalá del Río, a pueblo 30 minutes north of Sevilla (by car. By bus- an hour). I'll be working with kids ages 4 to 12, but mostly the younger kids because I'm really good at singing songs like 'One little, two little, three little _______ (fill in your noun here. The kids said 'elephant', but I don't)'. The teachers seem really nice, even the ones that aren't part of the bilingual program. They've been trying out their English on me and telling asking me questions about the sports teams in the US. The 4th and 6th graders asked me questions about my favorite things like, what's your favorite color, food, sport, piece of clothing, etc. I was also asked (in Spanish) several times if I spoke Spanish to which I replied 'No.' It's not a lie. I really don't speak that much Spanish. But several of the quick ones could tell by my eyes that I understood what they were saying, for the most part. Among my favorite questions were: How old are you? (To which I answered 84 and they pondered it for awhile.), Where is your favorite restaurant to eat hamburgers, McDonald's or Burger King? (To which I had to answer that I didn't eat hamburgers.), Do you like football? (I had to clarify if he meant soccer or NFL football. It didn't occur to me at the time that the answer was the same either way.) and my favorite, Will you speak to us in American?
My first impression of the classes is that the students are so loud and never shut up and that it is a miracle that they learn anything at all. At one point I was so overwhelmed with all the talking and the volume of this talking that I just stopped and stared, lost and mystified. One of the students asked why I wasn't answering any questions. The teacher answered that they were too loud and all talking at once so I couldn't hear anything or speak. Spaniards are highly skilled in conversations like this. I've seen it in action before. Everyone will talk at once yet somehow they still hear each other and carry on coherent conversations without ever having a moment of silence. It's amazing, but it takes practice to master a skill like that. Apparently school is a great place to acquire this skill. I hope I can improve in the next 8 months.
My other job is in Alcalá de Guadaíra on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:30-5. I'm teaching English in an after school program to kids in 1st through 3rd grade. It's an hour and a half class after their regular school day. Needless to say, it's going to be a challenge. The students are getting a strong grasp on what 'Be quiet, please', 'Sit down' and 'No, you can't go to the bathroom, you just went to the bathroom' mean. On the first day one little boy drew all over a desk (in pencil, luckily), two kids made paper airplanes, two girls glued two erasers to a ruler and danced around the room and one told me he was bored. The second day I had 30 kids because the other teacher was gone. When a student brought up a worksheet a fellow classmate had scribbled all over and informed me that he wasn't doing his work I said, 'I don't care. If he doesn't want to learn English, it's not my problem.' As long as he was scribbling on the paper and not on the desk this time, I was happy. This job is definitely out of my comfort zone, challenging, and exhausting but that's why I think it might be good for me.
In the rest of my free time I want to take on more private lessons. I am searching for adults to teach because I may go on child English lesson overload.
The last big event of the past two weeks was the race in Alcalá (El Naranjo).
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| Me in the El Naranjo race last year. |
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| The poster, all wrapped up by the Spanish bartender. |
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| This year's El Naranjo t-shirt. |
Those bikes are kind of wimpy looking. Is that to prevent theft?
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