Con calefacción

We found a place and we're moving in today. It's warm, it has a color tv, and it's more centrally located (read: more traffic noise). It's not as bright as the other apartment. I am very sad to leave the old, cold one. I've become accustomed to it and I love it. It's the type of place I would choose, and it would be perfect if the electricity situation was fine. We told the landlord about it last week and he didn't seem to care. Alas, I must remind myself of last winter when I was miserable for several months because I was always cold. So. The new address is:

Calle Isabel La Católica, Nº 2 - Pº 1D
10800 Coria, Cáceres, España.

I'm having flashbacks of my last move (end of August) but clearly this won't be nearly as bad. One negative thing about this piso is that we have to buy dishes and sheets. Pain. But it's warm!

Buscando otro piso

So we are looking for another piso, and we have to find one before the end of the month. It's a pain, and everything takes so long here. We decided that since the current landlord didn't seem to care that we couldn't heat the house, and the weather is just going to get colder, we had to leave. I feel bad (of course) but there doesn't seem to be any other way. Even if the landlord were to fix the situation, who knows how long it would take? I've been sleeping in my new sleeping bag, so I'm finally warm at night. Ridiculous.

Next week we have a puente, so Sydney and I are going to Madrid. I can't wait to get out of Extremadura. I've been here too long without leaving. I feel suffocated. I've realized that the hardest part for me to adapt to is the lack of nature here. I can deal with pushy people. I can deal with paper-thin walls. I can deal with the heat/electricity situation (but not for much longer, ojalá!). But I just can't adapt to the concrete. Everything is concrete. There are no trees, grass, beauty, anywhere nearby or easily accessible. You can always hear cars and people yelling. I can't find serenity anywhere. I've been in so spoiled in Olympia and Bellingham, I realize now. I found a park here, which is better than nothing. With huge ducks. Everyone keeps telling me about the beautiful mountains ("mountains") nearby but I can't get there easily. I've been dreaming about mountains (real ones) lately. Even in Segovia there was a nice wooded area below the city, away from roads. Nothing like that here. I can't wait to leave for a few days. And only two weeks after that is the vacation de las Navidades. We're going to Lisboa, then to Italy. I can't wait for this either!

So on my way to this internet cafe, I had to turn back because it was raining too hard and I wasn't wearing correct rain gear. I feared that I was turning Spanish, or, por lo menos, into a fair-weather person [gaspthehorror]. However, turns out that I had just forgotten that during torrential downpours it is necessary to wear a raincoat. Thus, kith and kin in Washington, fear not. Today was the first day of real, actual, Northwest rain since I arrived. Today is a truly drizzly depressing dark dreary day (fun with alliteration that I am not skilled enough to do in Spanish). It's surreal. Anyway.

The weather has turned colder. My apartment is so so cold; there is no central heating and we can't use more than one portable heater at a time (or anything but the lowest setting) or it overloads the electrical system or whatever. How educated. There's probably a better way to say this but I don't know how. Jennifer, from Florida, has moved into the piso. It's nice to have someone who can help me try to figure out Spain (ie electricity situation). I've resorted to longjohns already. I'm just hoping that it won't be as bad as last year. But it doesn't seem possible that anything could be as bad as that.

The bank still hasn't allowed the money to go through. I don't have to go to Cáceres to have a document signed, but I have to wait for the bureaucracy at the bank to figure the problem out. It seems like I have all the correct papers and the bank is the one with the problem. Several people are trying to straighten it out for me (crying on Thursday afternoon made them feel sorry for me?) so it should be fixed soon. It's still just so ridiculous, but more funny now.

So I hadn't judged Torrejoncillo too harshly before. If anything, not harshly enough. I went to two classes with the same teacher. Horrible. The first one I spent the entire class standing in front of the class while the children all yelled at each other in Spanish and the teacher yelled at them in Spanish too. She told me that they were always like this, impossible to teach, that there was no point in trying. I couldn't believe it! She would sternly tell them to be quiet, then look deploringly, then sign and yell some more. There's no point for me to go to classes like this. If the teacher can't control them, what can I hope to accomplish?

Frustration

I guess I will start by enumerating my frustration with Spanish bureaucracy. First, they still have not paid me. Well, they have finally paid me, but the bank will not put it into my account because I have to have proof that I am here legally. Of course, my id card will not be ready for another month, probably, (even though I requested it a month ago) or at least two weeks. My número de identificación extranjero is not enough, even though I had been told it would be for the bank. And it was, to open an account. Just not to have money in it, I guess. Thus, I must go to Cáceres, to the national police, to have them sign a paper saying I'm here legally. However, the bank did not tell me I would need to do this until yesterday, when I went to see why they hadn't put the money in my account. I was irate. So I have to wait until Monday because the police aren't open in the afternoon (claro).

Anyway.. On a better note, I have been giving private conversation classes to three boys, 8, 11, and 13. And they have paid me. These children are really sweet and so much better than the classes at school. I actually enjoy the classes with them (yes, I am enjoying children).

So I've lived alone for a month now, loved it, but now I will be sharing my piso with another American lectora. Jennifer will be teaching in Moraleja, a small(er) town near Coria. She's moving in tomorrow, I believe, and I'm excited. I have been spending a lot of time with the other profesores at school and I enjoy it. But it's also tiring. I only hope that we can try to speak Spanish together and not fall back into English... it's so tempting.

Right now I'm in Torrejoncillo, waiting for classes to start. First, the name of the town is impossible to say; second, I dislike coming here. The children are rude and badly behaved. I am also with some lower level classes that really don't understand ANYTHING. Nor do they care. This is only my second time and I'm probably judging too harshly (but I doubt it).

I spent the weekend in Badajoz with Sydney. It was amazing to be in a real house, with decoration on the walls, a fully stocked kitchen with utensils, heat... Syd made me a spectacular homemade, nutritious, delicious, vegetarian dinner with eggplant. And a cake. Wonderful.

Time...

As many of you know, I have trouble with time. I don't really have a firm grasp of it, nor do I understand it for my life. I have been here nearly a month and I can't believe it. Sometimes it feels like I have been here forever, this is what I've always done and always will do. However, when I went to Granada and saw friends from the US, returning to Coria was completely surreal. Other times it feels like I just got here, especially when I learn something that I really should have known before. I had been correcting the children when they said 'football' for soccer. I just realized yesterday that they do call it football in British English so they are right.. Duh. Why didn't I think about this before? Why did this occur to me randomly nearly a month after starting this? Another disorienting aspect is the weather. I've never known sun, constant sun, in the fall/winter, so this weather seems like late summer.

I'm getting more used to my job. I'm beginning to know the classes, too, which ones are good and which ones stare at me blankly or talk the whole time amongst themselves. I dread going to some classes and accompanying some teachers. The behavior of the class depends greatly on the behavior of the teacher, and some exercise no discipline whatsoever. They stare at the children and roll their eyes as if there were nothing they could do to control them. These ones I dread. I also hate the classes that stare blankly. Do you understand? No answer. Yes or no? No answer. My favorite moment was when one teacher told them to open their books to page 69. She adds, "Sixty-nine, the erotic number. You can say anything, they don't understand." The additional conversation classes (which I do by myself) are going well because these students want to learn and they already know a lot. Next week I'm going to start giving private conversation lessons to some children of one of the teachers here. O god more children!

I am learning so much about Spain. I am understanding more about tapas (or pinchos, as they are commonly called in Coria--this threw me for awhile), encountering their strange meats. You guys will never believe. I'm learning more about the politics and class differences as well as the Spanish mentality in general. Qué raro, ¿no? Sydney understands.

Granada

I just spent a long weekend (puente) in Granada with Sydney and Lindsey. It was great to see them both, to speak English, and to be in a city!! I didn't realize how much I missed everyone until I saw them. I had to take three buses to get from Coria to Granada, about 10 hours of traveling. But, really, what else do I have to do with my time? The weather was beautiful, but the nights were incredibly cold. I was reminded a little of Washington... Except for the sunburn in November. We didn't get into the Alhambra because we didn't buy tickets in advance (note to self). Seems like I'll just have to go back. We spent a long time wandering the city, the Albaicin, and the cuevas de Sacremonte, the parque de García Lorca. We ate tons of amazing food. I hadn't realized how much I missed this either. Chinese, Japanese (sushi!), Indian, Middle Eastern. And, of course, delicious tapas. Seeing all these American students together reminded me of studying in Segovia. Returning to my life in Coria feels strange, and my Spanish is suffering a bit after the weekend..