hoorah! i left the village about 2 weeks ago and holy bread did it feel good! in my experience, in that kind of situation (ie one that you're not enjoying) once you're half way through, time goes much quicker and it gets better. however, with constantina it got progressively worse and each day got longer and longer. thankfully though i escaped relatively unscathed (which is more than can be said for my car whose value, thanks to consti reprobates, is now about 62 p) and i never ever have to go back there (or teach english) EVER AGAIN! but this needs to be written in order to squeeze the last dregs of comedy of that backwards little village and its resident nutters.
one of my neighbour's most memorable comments was made a few days before i left for inglaterra. she started harping on about the joys of pressure cooking and as at the time 'pressure cooker' was not part of my now extensively useless spanish vocabulary, i found myself slightly lost. so i asked what this word 'olla' meant - and she looked a bit baffled and replied, "well, it must be a different word in your language. is it not 'olla' in french too?" (yup, she was convinced i spoke french although she was fully aware of the fact i was english.) and no shit were the words different - is that not the WHOLE REASON i was there? it certainly wasn't for love of teaching or solitary country walks.
another entertaining episode occured when i stepped out of my car one balmy summer evening when i'd got back from teaching. i gathered my shit from the car and shoved it in my wicker basket bag and headed for home. en route i was stopped by an elderly lady (though not so elderly that her age could be an excuse for what she came out with). the convo went a little like this...
"excuse me senyorita, are you one of those women that works?", she enquired.
"ermm, excuse me?" i'd been accused of being the sister of a murderer in the greengrocers whilst quite innocently buying cucumbers before so i wouldn't have been surprised if she'd made assumptions due to my plunging neckline.
"you know, one of those working women?"
"what kind of working women exactly?" i reply
"you know, the ones that pick peaches."
is this a joke? am i missing something? does "peaches" mean something other than the squishy fruits?
"peaches?as in the fruit?"
"yes, are you a peach picker?"
"errr no, i'm not. i teach english."
"oh well, i just thought you were a peach picker"
"oh ok, so ermm why's that?"
"well my child, because you have a straw bag and a tan" she replies as if that was the most normal thing in the world and i was the one that was crackers.
so it's time to reflect a little on the shit that went down in the village and try and get the good stuff down on paper so that i don't forget it happened (this won't take long).
good shit
olive oil and oranges - cheap as chips but tastier.
sleep - i averaged 12 hours a night, enough to last a lifetime.
siestas - as if the 12 hours during the hours of darkness weren't enough.
teasing small children with the internet - sounds utterly vile and yes, admittedly it was a bit cruel, but you can't really judge too much as you weren't the one living alone in the arse-end of nowhere for 8 months, were you now. so for some reason i couldn't lock my internet network which meant that most of my streets pre teenage residents gathered around my doorway and others close by with the little laptops that their school provided in order to steal internet from me. at first i didn't mind. then it pissed me off. then i turned it into a fun game of waiting until they'd congregated outside (there was a 4pm peak) and then pulling the plug out and watching the disappointment on their little faces as their online gaming ceased to function. then i'd put it back in for a minute or two, let them reload whatever they had been engrossed in previously, then ruthlessly rip the plug out again. mwwahahaa.
to be continued...
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