it's been a rato since i wrote - i've been rather ocupada (would you believe it?! i didn't at first either). however i feel inspired to bash out a few thoughts on this chilly october night. this morning's trip to the 'office of foreignness' (direct translation) in sevilla gave me some material i suppose and got the ball rolling as it were...
today i got up at 6am to make the 120 mile round trip to the 'office of foreignness' in sevilla to get my NIE (not sure what it is either, appaz a 'foreigner essential'). bearing in mind that not even pensioners surface before 10am this was achingly early. to make matters worse this was not the first time i've been to the 'office of foreignness' - oh no, i stood in the 100 person long queue for 3 hours last week too, but guess what - chronic fuck up in the 'foreigness office' meant that instead of sending me my 'foreigner identity card' in the post i received a form regarding the import/export of fruit & veg. quite how i will never know, is my spanish so bad that i can't distinguish a banana from an identity card? let's hope not. things got pretty messy at the 'foreigness office' this morning, a brawl broke up between some marroquis and the security guards who shouted i quote 'we'll call the police if you don't start speaking spanish, you fuckers'. sure enough the marroquis were escorted from the building yelling and screaming (and not in spanish either, though i doubt that would've helped by that point). if that's not abject rascism then i don't know what is. anyway correct form successfully submitted, i am to be a recognised resident of spain (albeit foreign) and not a greengrocer, yippee.
a little moan about spanish food... principle ingredients: olive oil, tomatoes and salt. even the shitting hobnobs (hobi-nobis or somethinkg) are salty, i'm not talking about a mild savoury tang either. oh no... i'm talking montruous chunks of rock salt heavily distributed at random within the biscuits themselves.
so andalucian breakfast - big blob like white bread, drenched in olive oil, then you get a tomato, halve it, rub it up and down your bread then if you're feeling exotic crack open a couple of garlic cloves and go nuts with the rubbing up and down. THEN if you're feeling flush whack out the iberian ham (salty salty stuff) and chomp to your heart's delight. i can handle this kind of thing at lunchtime, not 8am, i'm sticking to the special k for now.
pretty sure someone fed me fried cake the other night. like doughnut but with a cakey interior, not good for the food baby/heart/teeth.
tapas...well everyone just BUMS tapas and yup once a month tapas is beautiful but ahh my gahhhd fried salty food every time you go out?! there's a reason why la tasca always makes it on to studentbeans.com every week.
i've started teaching in the nun school this week, the nuns make me nervous. however there's only 4 nuns that work there, the rest are just ermmm normal - especially headman alvaro - he's such a LAD! the first time i met him i walked into his office (adorned with pics of mary, baby j etc) and goes 'heyyyy', i hear you like to party (word spread like wildfire after my performance at the policeman party)...not quite what i was expecting, i'd put on my smart clothes (teachers at school told me 'baps out' was inappropriate) and had my diary out all ready to talk education and the merits of cathechism and here we were discussing 'lash'. anyway so the kiddies enrolled on my little english course and trotted along to colegio this week... monday was the 3/4/5 year olds: i was slightly put off by the fact that most of them were crying before i'd even got there, however they met paddington bear and calmed down and looked after him because he doesn't speak spanish so sometimes he feels very lonely, they made him a bed out of crayons and loo roll and spoke to him in english. winner. the older children were actually really good fun and sang me all the songs they knew in english, this went on a while, endearing though. then wednesday & thursday were 1st and 2nd years...aka little shits. entertaining though - 'do you sleep in constantina or do you sleep in english?'(sic). we learnt red, yellow, green, blue, stand up, sit down - still working on 'shut the hell up' though. no but seriously the spanish just LOVE to yell and it seems perfectly acceptable for their children to yell too, pretty sure i can yell louder though...if the 'yellow card/red card/go & sit outside and think about what you've done' technique doesn't work this can be plan b.
winter is on its way in constantina, it's pissing it down so they've all put metal barriers up outside their doors so their houses don't flood. the streets are like rivers when it rains but then again i suppose it probably hasn't rained for 6 months so it's doing it properly. just about to order some hunters, don't know that constantina will ever have seen wellies as a fashion item, the townsfolk reacted pretty badly to the geek glasses - pretty sure they thought i had a serious sight problem and that my glasses were corrective, if anything they evoked sympathy and more people talk to me now. i snapped the arm off though so won't be wearing them again, at least i made a couple of friends out of them even if they do pity me.
i've got un monton de cosas to say but am going to call it a day here. and will endeavour to write more frequently and hope to keep you entertained. thanks for reading.
muchos love xxxx
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