Tuesday, October 21, 2008

PHOTOS 4!!!!



First one is my bedroom. Nice big bed to stretch out in. Second - lots of closet space. Third is the bathroom with a window that opens to the terrace. This is also where my washer is. No dryer - all clothes are hung out to dry. Hope these photos help you understand where I am and how I'm doing!

Besos,

Haley

PHOTOS 3!!!



First is my kitchen. Everything is brand new. Second is door to the terrace. On bright, sunny days I like to open it up to let the sunshine in. Third is my diningroom/livingroom. In spanish homes these rooms are usually combined because in the winter the heater is put under the table. Then you pull the table cloth (which is more like a blanket) up over your lap to stay warm. There is rarely central heating.

PHOTOS 2!!!






First one is my rocking chair! Second one is the back of my house. It is a very old building. They've done some remodeling inside. Third is my entry way. Left to the kitchen, dining/livingroom, terrace. Right to spare room. Straight to spare bedroom, my bedroom, and bathroom. Fourth is the spare room that I shut off because I just don't need the space. Fifth is the spare bedroom. It doesn't have it's own door. It is in between the bathroom (left) and my bedroom (right). I put up my maps already as you can see.

PHOTOS!!





The first two are random streets in Puente Genil. The last three are from my terrace!! I have a view of the country side. There is a cover for when I want shade. In the one photo I've pointed a few things out for you. The writing is smaller than I thought, but if you click on it, it should open up bigger. One box is pointing to where I hang my clothes to dry and the other to where I work.

Settling In

I finally have all of my stuff from Granada and am settling in quite nicely. My roommate didn't stay long. Her job moved her somewhere else, so I have the place to myself. It is pretty quiet but I'm trying to find ways to keep busy. I have a book of short stories that I am reading, in Spanish of course. The goal is to pick one story when I get home from work and read it out loud while I'm preparing lunch. Thankfully there isn't anyone to hear me! It's pretty bad, but with time it will get better. Then after lunch, I read the story again, but this time the English version to see how much I understood. And pretty soon, I am going to try to translate some stuff for one of my classes. The teacher needs to translate the second year Science textbook for next year. It isn't the whole book, just chapter titles, activities, definitions, basic ideas. Generally, I'm just here to assist the teachers. For instance, he (Joaquin) would translate the text and I would correct his errors. But, he asked me if I wanted to correct his translations or translate it myself. I said I would like to try to do the translating. I welcome the challenge! In truth, I need something to throw myself into. Plus, I’ll get a chance to see if it is something I enjoy.

Work is going well. It is very easy. I basically get to talk to people. And thankfully, I like the people I am talking to. We laugh a lot and get a little bit accomplished in the process. I’m spending a lot of time reading out loud in English so they can hear how things are supposed to be pronounced. The hours I spend just talking to the teachers, so they can practice English, are fun and I learn a lot. Sometimes we talk about Spain stuff, sometime US stuff and often the differences and similarities between the two. The cool thing I realized is that I can use these hours to learn about things I have questions about. There are no rules or guidelines to what we talk about, so we get to talk about what ever we like that day. It is cool. Everyday hear is like an upper level Spanish class that they are paying ME to take. For people that don't like school, this wouldn't exactly be 'cool', but I love it. Sometimes I get to the point of overload, but that is how I'm going to learn. It is absolutely exhausting to talk to a group of people for several hours and understand what they are saying and try to be a part of the conversation. I still have difficulties expressing complex thoughts or things in the past. Ideally, I'd take a grammar class to review or get some good books to reteach myself, but it'll be a little while before that will happen. Everyone has been so patient with me. Last night, Marta and I went to Sonia's house for dinner and to watch a movie instead of going out. At one point Sonia asked me to put some food on the table in the other room. Or so I thought. I frequently understand parts of a sentence and then put them together to figure out what is going on. I understood 'put this on the table' and 'there are two pieces for each of us'. I was close. She actually asked me to take the food to the table, and serve it onto our plates, two pieces for each of us because there wasn't going to be room for all of the dishes. Close enough for me! We had a laugh when she realized I hadn't completely understood her.

One very big difference for me this time in Spain is that I am actually living here; not passing through, not a guest in someone’s home. This means I have to cook for myself. And as many of you know, this is not one of my strong points. J I have never had much need to learn how to cook meals. Oh, the times have changed. Now I spend 1-2 hours everyday cooking and doing dishes. Everything I eat comes off of the stove top. I DO NOT have a microwave-I do not have an oven-I do not have a toaster. If I want to reheat leftovers, they go back in a pan. If I want to heat water or milk, they go in a saucepan. It’s been a very steep learning curve! Also, common ingredients differ here, so I’m getting used to what my staples are. And HAM, I can’t tell you how many varieties of ham there are! It is going to take me a lifetime just to be able to tell them all apart. Little by little, though. Today’s dinner turned out pretty good, last week my big experiment failed miserably. Haha. And when all else fails, downtown there is a take-out pizza place that is pretty good and a take-out hamburger place that I’m saving for an emergency.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Photos are coming

I forgot to tell you that photos are coming. The cable to connect my camera to my computer is in Granada still. Hopefully I can post some of my house and town soon! Besos

It´s official, I have 2 heads and 4 eyes....

I can´t believe I´ve been here for two weeks already! It doesn´t feel like it in the least. I finished my first week at school. It was exhausting and great. There are so many facets to my job and I am always doing something different. 4 of my 12 hours are spent in class with a teacher. 2 of the classes are with first level; one is Natural Sciences and the other Math. Then, I have 2 English classes; one with third level and the other with fourth level. There are four levels in the school and they correspond more or less with 7th-10th grade. In these classes I do a lot of pronunciating of words. The students spend a lot of time alternating between repeating what I say and staring at me. Many of them are very good at doing both simultaneously. My other 8 hours are spent outside of class with teachers. These hours are split into 2 parts and sometimes overlap. With some of the teachers, I help them go over materials they plan to teach, in English, in their classes. Other teachers simply want help improving their English. The school in is the beginning stages of being a Bilingual School. In this type of school, students don´t just take English classes, rather, in addition to English classes, they also have some of their other basic subjects taught partially in English and partially in Spanish. However, it is just starting and their proficiency level of English is still very low and their desire to learn English is often lower. Lucky me. ;-) I need to use my novelty to my advantage to try and get them interested.

One thing I have had a difficult time adjusting to is the noise level. Everything ECHOS is Spain. Their buildings are made of Cement, Brick, Tile, Marble, Metal.... They don´t have much use for material that absorbs sound like carpet, wood, drywall, wallpaper. Today one class was working in groups and I was trying to go around the room to help them pronounce their exercise, but couldn´t for the life of me hear what they were saying in any language. Even in the teachers´lounge it is difficult. When there are only a couple people in there, I can hear just fine, but get the whole bunch of them in there and I have to stand right next to the person trying to talk to me. No wonder Spaniards don´t require as much personal space as Americans do, they can´t hear each other if they stand very far apart! Another thing that shocked me was on my first day when the bell rang in between classes. I asked how much time there was until the next bell and I was told there is only one bell. Students actually just go to their next class. Frequently, students are in class before the teachers are. There are 6 hours of class everyday, but they are not the same 6 subjects each day. Teachers have quite a few hours a week when they don´t have class. They are not required to be in school if they don´t have class. For example, if a teacher does not have class the first hour, but they do have class the second hour, they can show up just before 2nd hour. And I mean ´just´ literally. One morning I arrived for first hour, which starts at 8:30, and the teacher arrived at 8:29, at which point the students were already sitting at their desks. This is not uncommon! And then if a teacher doesn´t have a fifth or sixth hour, they can go home. It is all very different and interesting.

Thankfully, I have made a friend in Puente Genil. Marta is a teacher at my school. She is a year older than me, this is her first year teaching, and teaches the third level English class that I´m in. She isn´t from P.G., so she doesn´t know anyone either. She did by chance run into a classmate from High School the other day, so now we are 3! Last night we ended up walking around town for an hour trying to find a certain office so we could sign up for an aerobics class. It´ll be great. We´ll be able to keep busy together. We even got to talking and Halloween and Thanksgiving came up. I said Thanksgiving was my favoriate holiday of all and they decided we are going to celebrate it together! This is awesome because it is a non-existent holiday here!! Now I have the girls to spend Thanksgiving with (we´re working on more people) and Juanmi and Toñy to spend Christmas with. Yipee.

There´s still more I want to share, but I´ll let this settle in for a minute first. I hope you are enjoying my tales of adventure because I am loving living them!

Saturday, October 4, 2008

There was an Italian, a Spaniard, a German, and an American living together....

No, this is not the start of a joke. It was almost my life. Finding a place in Cordoba proved harder than I thought. I was THIS close to renting a place with a Spanish guy, an Italian girl, and a German guy. I even gave them a holding fee to keep it for me until the next day. If I hadn´t, they were going to show it again in mere minutes. But, as soon as I left and thought about it more and talked it out something didn´t feel right about it. I can´t say exactly what didn´t sit right, but I do know my gut was telling me it wasn´t the place for me. And if there is anything I have learned in my short time here on earth, it is that my gut is usually right! So, I gave the keys back and went on my way. This is not to say that I was without worry and/or frustration. By this point I was super tired from sleeping in a different bed every night and traveling constantly. Then I had my orientation for work. I met people that had decided to live in the city and commute and I met people that were living in the small towns near their schools. I met an American that was looking for a roommate in Puente Genil. Again, I felt conflicted. Finding spanish people to live with is not that easy. Most live with their parents until they have finished University and then have families of their own. I do not want my spanish to suffer by living with an American, but I also don´t want to live in a box on the street! There were a few assistants at the orientation from the previous year that spoke about their experience. So, even in my sleepy haze, I knew that the only this that would help me figure this whole thing out is INFORMATION. I´m just that type of girl. So, I pulled one of the returning assistants aside and asked her what she thought given her experience. I basically asked her if she thought it would be better to commute and live with Spaniards (hopefully) or live in PG with an American. She felt it was very important to live near the school and in the village. You get to know the people you live near and become a part of the community. If you live in the city, you can´t attend after hours school events and you are always worried about the time and the bus or carpooling schedule. In the end, she thought it best to live with an American if necessary in the village and force myself to get out and interact with the community. After this, I decided to take a leap of faith and go to PG for a few days to find a place to live. The American girls that live here in PG have been a lot of help, but they are not the type I´d want to live with. They have been a little evasive in meeting up and joining together to look for apartments. That´s fine. I like knowing they are here, but I´d rather they not become my circle of friends that I see everyday. If that happens, I won´t get out and interact with the locals. But, luckily, one of the girls gave me the number of her new landlord saying that he had another apartment for rent. I put him on the list. Another bit of luck was that one of the assistants here was gone for the weekend and offered me his place to stay in while he is away! Super cool. I have an apartment to myself for a coule of days...and for FREE. I love free. Yesterday I called a bunch of numbers about apartments. An apartment search would normally be daunting, but add on the fact that I have to talk to these people on the phone, in spanish. I really hate speaking in spanish via the phone. But, it was a great test for me and I accomplished it. Unfortunately, everyone I called said they had already rented their places out. Argh. Today is Saturday and nearly everything shuts down over the weekend. That leaves me to wait until Monday and Tuesday to continue looking. Not good considering I don´t have a place to stay past tomorrow. But, I tried one last number that hadn´t answered. He then gave me another number. And that´s when the sun came out from behind the clouds and I heard the choir. (Or something like that.) What I am trying to say is...I HAVE A PLACE TO LIVE! I´m on the outskirts of the town in between the center and my school. I even have a terrace outside the backside of my house with a view of the countryside and the olive groves!! The owner is wonderful. She and her family live upstairs. She so warm and helpful. I think we both feel good about the situation. Her husband travels some and she wants to feel comfortable and safe with who is living in her house. Already, she has been very helpful, offering to show me where the market and closest stores are and said if I have to go to the far away big grocery store some time I can go with her in her car. For the month of October, I am going to share the house with another girl (I think she is Spanish). They already said she could stay there for a month while she looked for a place and neither of us mind sharing as it is a month´s time paying half of the rent. With how cautious my landlord is being, I am comfortable that it will be a good situation. The girl has a couple small dogs, so it should be nice having animals around. Hopefully they aren´t crazy or anything! Anyway, it is only a month and that frees up some money for me to get some basics things and get set up. I am SUPER excited. I move in tomorrow. I can breathe now. And I´ll have a washer!!!!! I desperately need to wash clothes. I thought I was only going to be gone from Granada for a few days, but it is turning into a week or longer. This Thursday or Friday I´ll be able to go back to Granada and get my stuff and bring it back to my HOME in Puente Genil!! So, all this said, I´ll have an address soon. And hopefully I can get internet in my HOME soon so I can write more often in smaller blocks! haha. This is looking like a novel. For now I have found an internet cafe and can communicate when I need to. That makes me (and my parents!) very happy.