In which I relive a teenage dream

First, before I begin this post, I am deeply relieved apologetic for not having photos of my prom, they are shoved in some box in a closet in North Central Florida. Why would a 24-year-old sorta adult who had a particularly long awkward phase that may end any day now want to share pictures of her prom on the internet? Let me explain...

This weekend José and I are going to the wedding of his cousin, Almudena. It's a three-day-long open bar string of fancy dinners, brunches, and nuptuals that requires a minimum of two fancy dresses.

Back in February I went to look for one of the dresses. I had no idea what I was looking for, so I called in the expert: José's mom. Good thing I did because all of the dresses I found suitably formal were, in Spanish wedding taste, the equivalent of wearing flip flops to a funeral.

She pulled a few dresses for me to try on when I had a funny sense of horror deja vu. They were, not kidding, prom dresses.

She dissuaded me from the red one, saying it looked "too Spanish," and was pulling for a long green flowy gown when I had a peek at the price tag. I wouldn't say I ripped the dress off, but there was a fair bit of scrambling to get out of it.

They were not just prom dresses, but expensive prom dresses.

I got a good idea of what the style was and immediately poured a glass of wine fired up the Skype when I got home.

Luckily, my mom had the infinite closet space wisdom  to hold on to my prom dress. I tried to donate it at least three times to those charities that give dresses to girls who can't afford them, but my mom refused. She immediately agreed to mail the dress over, though it took a good bit of convincing that yes, I was actually going to wear my prom dress. In public. With José's family.

Fast forward a few months. The dress arrives. I can still crash diet fit into it, and it's still beautiful. Problem solved.

Now I just had to find an appropriate fascinator.

Figure 1. Eurowedding guest in full plumage.
See also: Claire's worst nightmare.

Again, I was lost. Who do you call when you need to purchase a tiny hair accessory that looks like a bird slammed into the side of your head and stayed there for six-to-eight hours and four courses and don't want to look like a total idiot (fig. 1)? Is there a hotline for that? Again, called up Jose's mom to save the day.

Tonight starts the event. I might throw one heavily photoshopped picture up here later. Wish me luck!

Update

As a means of updating the internet world on my future activities - which I know you have been dying to hear about - I will be staying in Spain next year. I am going to get a Masters at the University of Málaga in education. There are two programs I am applying for: one dealing with innovation in education, and the other which is essentially a teaching certificate for people who already have university degrees.

Why am I staying? Let me count the ways...

I love my life here and am not about to give that up, not over my dead body.

I want to go back to school. I've been out for three years now and am ready to get back into it. I was burned out after University, between working, finishing two majors, internships, non-stop writing of articles, etc.etc. but now I feel like I'm ready to tackle a Masters.

It's cheap to get a Masters here. Even with the government threatening to up tuition by as much as 50 percent, the cost of a Masters here is a fraction of the cost of getting one in the US. If you are planning on staying in Europe, it's also a better choice as the degree is recognized throughout the EU, something not necessarily true with a US degree.

I am excited about a change in field. I finished University with a degree in journalism and Latin American Studies and nil job opportunities. Education is something I kind of actually am good at. Auxiliaring can be a string of never-ending frustrations, but an auxiliar is to a teacher as a babysitter is to a parent: none of the responsibility but also none of the joy that comes from a job well done. I think I will do well either in a classroom or in the Ministry of Education.

Unrelated photo of parental units in Conil de la Frontera, Cádiz.

Did I mention I'm pig-in-shit, cloud-9 happy here?

So that's it, dwindling readership. Please leave comments if you have any suggestions or comments about Masters in Spain, especially if you are American and have done one and can hold my hand through the bureaucracy.

Previously, on Where to?

When we last left our protagonist she was moving down the coast. Then, she apparently dropped off the face of the Earth for a month and a half?

Did she suffer a fall from her fifth floor apartment?
Nope.

Tragic waterski accident?
Nope. Considering the Siberian cold front that swept through the continent recently, I wasn't touching the water with a 3.04800 meter pole.

Allllmost beach time.

Convicted of the murder of the construction workers on the building next door who cut the water pipeline to the building and left our protagonist carrying buckets of water up to her piso from the outside tap in order to flush the toilet and wash hands and face after a long day of child wrangling?

No, but I wish.


Actually, I've been right here. We've been putting together the apartment into a nice place to live. It's been an an uphill battle against copious amounts of dust (WHERE does it come from?!), furniture infested with bugs called polillas, (which I still am not quite sure what they are in English; moths? termites?), and approximately twenty garbage bags full of general crap that needed to be thrown out. Old knick-knacks, broken furniture, dust-infested curtains, sun-bleached patio chairs, etc. etc.

Luckily, the display of miniature collectable anchors from La Opinion de Malaga newspaper are still with us.

Our decor is nautical-chic.

They're kitschy and have grown on me.

While these two gems weren't thrown away, we decided that leaving them above the beds was not a great idea.

The caption reads "Mary, your serene and flawless
gaze gives me the courage to keep fighting." No joke.

Friend that never fails!

 But wait, there's more! We got the travel-sized versions as well.

You can see what we were up against. But, after all this work and a bajillion Ikea runs, we now have a comfortable place with tons of space and a study for me to blog from.

Come visit! I'll be on the patio in a bikini with a gin and tonic, contemplating Mary's serene gaze.

Two steps to the east, one to the west

These last two years I've gotten very used to being publicly transported. Living in a northern neighborhood of Málaga and getting down the coast to Fuengirola and later up the mountain to Benalmádena pueblo, my mornings and afternoons were one bus ride after another.

This year, the gods smiled on me and gave me a school right in the heart of the city. A short ride on the city bus and there I am.

Obviously this would be too easy, so I'm moving. To Benalmádena.

No it's not that I miss the commuter trains or that I have a deep love for Chinese takeaway and permanent Northern European expats, but I do get to live with José in a nice apartment close to the beach.

View, photo by José

I'll miss my old apartment in Teatinos, but am excited to move in with José and to take this next step in our relationship.

And of course to be a frequent rider of the M110 bus again.

Christmas is in the Air

Christmas is coming! Time for mantecados, turrones, tamales, mazapan, cookies, pies, polvorones, chocolates, roscos de vino, oh my...

Photo credit

Time to get back to the gym before that mountain of food arrives. This calls for some vigorous 80´s calesthenics!

Look at those pelvic thrusts!

Juan y Medio

Andalucía is blessed with a gem of a local TV network: Canalsur.

It's now in HD. Because that's what it needed.

It is the go-to network for flamenco contests, knock-off Karlos Arguiñán cooking shows, and, the gem of it's programming in my wise judgment humble opinion, Juan y Medio.

Trust in the 'stache.

If this man doesn't inspire confidence, I don't know who would.

Juan y Medio hosts several programs, but the best, again in my sage wisdom personal opinion, is La Tarde Aquí y Ahora. On this program, Juan y Medio takes on the noble task of senior dating. Each program, JYM interviews a couple of senior citizens, all of whom are characters and super difficult to understand through the accent and age. These senior citizens are single, and ready to mingle.

JYM, who has a special touch with getting the elderly to open up, interviews the dating candidates and then prospective partners call in and can chat with the lucky man or lady in the hot seat.

This. Program. Is. So. Good.

Never will you see little old pueblo ladies making discreet references to sexual activity, or older men explicitly stating they want a woman who can cook, clean, and the Spanish equivalent of "no fatties."Or who may be unsure of just how many children they do have around.

If you have the chance, I in my total and complete knowledge of everything suggest you catch an episode.

While it is a hoot to watch the program, JYM serves a really crucial social function. Elderly people still have a lot to offer, a lot to live. Rather than sweeping them under the rug or treating them as burdens, there should be a way for them to participate actively in society. Maybe we should export JYM.

John and a Half, anyone?

I nominate Geraldo Rivera.

I mean he's already got the 'stache requirement covered.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hey there 14-year-old girl!

So you are in 2º ESO and you don't want to learn English? It's just not for you, you say?



Well, I think you should.



Why's that you say?

Oh no they di'int!

Oh I dunno. Maybe because in 4 days Twilight's Breaking Dawn: Part 1 opens and all 1326 showings of the dubbed version in Plaza Mayor will be sold out.

The one that will have seats available?

Original Version Subtitled.

I suggest you start studying tonight.

Public Service Announcement

Attention tourist shops in Spain and the middle-aged man at my gym:

This shirt has never been and never will be funny, unique, or creative.

Please stop making it. Please stop selling it. Please stop buying it. Please stop wearing it to lift weights in the afternoon.

Please. Stop.

Not fair

Spanish accent in English: sexy, adorable, intriguing, intelligent...

Cool.

Anglo accent in Spanish: nails on chalkboard, ambulance sirens, kind of dumb, cats in heat, failboat....

Not cool.

Some people have all the luck.

A is for. . . .um. . . .uh . . .

My tiniest student, David, is going to be super good at English. Why? Because at the tender age of 3 his parents began a pretty hard-core English regimen with him: cartoons in English, dad speaks to/at him in English, and I walk on down twice a week to have classes with him.

A three year old is hard to have for private classes. Even though we only have a half hour, after about fifteen minutes he jumps up and starts running in circles or throwing Gormiti toys around. Once calmed down, we resume our song or dance or whatever.

This year I have spent part of the time teaching him the alphabet song. My seven year old, Claudia, knows how to say all the letters in English and it's really convenient when I have to spell new words for her. So with David, we sing that song about 10 times each class while making an alphabet book. You know, the kind with cute pictures of words that start with that letter.

A for apple:

B for ball. C for cat:

Standard alphabet stuff. The only problem is, with certain letters, my mind goes absolutely blank on any word in English appropriate for his level that starts with that letter. No simple nouns, no easily illustratable animals, nothing. So here, after flipping through his brother's learn to draw book full of animals, we find J for jaguar:

Not bad, nice recovery. Here's I for insect, also found after consulting the book:

Then there's S for um, snake:

At V, I totally failed. V for vendetta? Nope, not appropriate. V for vandalism? Tampoco. V for verrrrry stupid English teacher? Probable, but nope. I came up with V for

VIPER!

Trying to explain the subtle anatomical differences between snakes and vipers clearly did not go over well, as this one looks like an apartment building with a tail rather than a snake or a muscle car.

The bad news? I still haven't gotten to W, X, Y, or Z.

X for Xerox copies? Y for yoda? Help!

Notes on pasta

Why is it SO HARD to make an appropriate amount of pasta for one person for lunch?!

AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO HAS THIS PROBLEM?!

Excuses

This weekend was ridiculously cold and rainy in Málaga. (Well, when I say ridiculous, I mean ridiculous for Southern Spain.)

The sun came out for a minute for this picture. This is a reduced form of
puddle of death that forms outside my door, aka Lake Teatinos.

It's not usually cold and rainy here, so people don't really do much when it is. It is an awesome understanding that the whole city is in on: I don't go out, you don't go out, we don't go out, nobody gives anybody shit for it.

I had a weekend plan of going to the Oktoberfest downtown, drinking beer out of a huge jar, and hopefully adding to my drunken hat collection, now 3 hats strong! But, it rained. So I stayed in at José's house and we watched soccer.

Do I feel bad for not going out?

Nope. Because I'm pretty sure nobody else was there either.

This is why it's awkward

Yet another round of waiting in line for hours on end in the relentless pursuit of this year's foreigners card.

• Oficina de Extranjeros: 3ish hours of useless waiting. They told me since I already had a number I just had to go to the Police Station.
  
• Day One at the Police Station: 1 hour of semi-useless waiting. I did get a complete list of documents and photocopies I had to provide as well as the form I needed to pay the tax.
  
• Day Two at Police Station: 10 minutes of useless waiting. I arrived with all documents and was trying to enter when, at 1:40, before their schedule 2 p.m. closing time, that they wouldn't let anyone else in. It was a new, highly unpleasant security guard who, when I notified him that the office indeed hadn't closed yet, looked at me with his eyebrows raised, shrugged angrily, and said "That's it, no more, what more can we do?" What can you do? Well if you work Monday to Friday 9 - 2, actually work until 2. Boy those 25 hour weeks get long.
  
• Day Three at Police Station: 2 hours of useless waiting. Normally the line in the police station isn't as long, but when I arrived there was a line of about 50 people outside and probably another 20 inside. After waiting and watching the new security guard utterly fail to attend to the needs of the public in a timely and pleasant manner, he brusquely picked up the signs for the foreigners line, slammed the door shut, and informed us that the office was closed. Nevermind the line hadn't moved for like 30 minutes, telling us before that we wouldn't be able to get in would be too easy.
  
• Day Four at Police Station: 1 hour and success! I arrived before school and breezed inside, noting that my favorite doorman must be on some sort of break. The woman at the desk thumbed through my papers, they banged out a few fingerprints, I'm on my merry way.

What I did have time to put my finger on is why exactly waiting at the foriegner's office is worse than waiting at the numerous other bureaucratic institutions that we have to deal with here in the land of Catholic holidays and cigarette breaks: personal space.

The average line at these foreigner's offices is composed of Central and South Americans, Africans, Asians, Middle Easterners, old men, young families, working professionals, super awesome and ridiculously good looking blonde auxiliars, babies, etc. etc. Every single one of these groups has a different understanding of the etiquette of waiting in line.

For example, young Moroccan man with the scar from his lip to his face, I see you trying to cut in front of me. You keep inching forward, but I, in fact, have peripheral vision.

Family from Africa with two adolescents, a toddler, and a baby: spread on out, there's room for all in the hallway, no need to maintain any semblance of a line.

Woman from South America: Please, keep moving forward behind me, get in here right close like. I love being three inches away from strangers.

An equivalent feel for this awkwardness:

Until (hopefully) next year, foreigner's office!

Eurotrash!!

It's I ever wanted in music: repetitive, catchy, featuring saxophone solos.

 Molester 'staches.

The perfect mix of kinda awkward Eastern European English lyrics. Tighty whiteys.

I love to hate on it. But the truth is if you stick me in a spinning class on a stationary bike or in a discoteca with a drink in hand and put on eurotrash really loud, I will rock that shit.

Did I mention the saxophone?

Fusion food

If I have a Spanish-American baby in like 5 years or so, when I'm 28, it would be weaned solely on this.

It's cool dude, we get it, we're hip, we're with it

Another orientation done. Check.

Thursday was the open bar orientation for auxiliars working in Malaga province. Every year they haul us all out to a vocational high school in the city and talk at us for three hours about health insurance and the foreigner's office and how to get a bank account and what is the bilingual initiative. A bit dry.

But, then they TOTALLY redeem themselves.

That vocational high school has a school of hospitality where kids who want to work as chefs, waiters, or in tourism learn how to pour a good glass of sherry, serve up paella to hungry guiris, and make sure that my hand always has a full glass of something in it. So, we file into their adjoining restaurant space where the free drinks and tapa massacre takes place. Also, there's an 80's cover band. Whoever plans orientation sure knows their audience.

Totally unrelated photo of Portimao, Portugal.

The Gonskis and I, knowing how it went down last year, canceled our evening plans and got to it. We started conversing with a lovely older gentleman who was one of the organizers. Over tiny plates of paella he was telling us about his recent retirement from working in the school system, his neighborhood, Mercadona, etc.

All was fine, but something was off. He was speaking slowly, clearly. Each R and every S was enunciated. No cutting out of D's. "He must be slowing himself down for us," I thought. "I hope it is clear at this point in the conversation that we've been here a while, we can fend for ourselves in Andaluz."

The slow, even rhythm continued.

"How odd, none of the other presenters slowed down at all for us when they were speaking. I mean, us Andalucian people are going to have to get used to the accent really quick anyways, might as well get started now." 

At this point the man, midway through a glass of wine, informed us that he had been in Malaga for 16 years. His origin: Basque. Nope, not talking at us like we didn't understand, just a northerner.

Bilbao.

At this point of the evening I thought it best to return to the wine. No misunderstandings there.

That time I gave a toddler a violent children's book

At the grocery store in Florida this summer I snagged a sweet set of children's books. They are perfect for ESL.

This one, for example.

A bunch of animals putting on hats of assorted shades. Then, oops! there is a turkey who has a bit of a problem.

He just can't get it right!


I should have known, however, that this book was not culturally appropriate. No, it's not because there is a topless elephant, but rather a difference in the native flora and fauna of Spain. Here, they don't have delicious, succulent, beautiful turkey. A New World, specifically Mexican, animal, neither the turkey nor Thanksgiving are on Spanish children's radars.

I should have known this, as last year when we made a ballin' turkey at my school with feathers where the kids wrote what they were thankful for and all that jazz, the kids kept calling it the big chicken, much to my dismay.

It´s a TURKEY

So it was not surprising when my 3.5 year old student finished the story and was a slightly puzzled.

"Seño, why is the chicken bleeding?"

Good question, small one, good question.

Yo no ti entendo a tu: The Language Barrier

The other night I was trying to tell José something funny that happened over the phone. You know when you first wake up in the morning and someone is trying to get some really complicated information out of you before you've had a cup of coffee? Yeah, it was like that.

My Spanish has Bombed over the summer. Capital B.

All of July at an English camp surrounded by fellow compatriots and all of August and half of September at home. The only sprinkling of Spanish has been a week I came back to Malaga before heading home and talking with José via internet. I had grand plans of studying and practicing and all of that, but ya know.....Eh. Willpower has never been my forte.

Does this look like a group that practices their Spanish conversation? No sir.
This is a group that practices their right to bitch over cold beers in 'merican.

Now that I'm back I've got to get back on the bandwagon and practice. I want to take the C2 exam in May so I need to get my formal Spanish in particular up to speed. Which means I am resurrecting my little notebooks.

That's right, coven of witches was somewhere in a
newspaper. Maybe they were talking about The View.

My first year I would obsessively read newspapers and underline the words I didn't know. Then I'd look them up and write them in these little red notebooks. Through this method you learn great words like superávit (surplus), cebada (barley), or séquito (retinue, a King's entourage), which are obviously crucial. I also translated newspapers and old copies of Newsweek my mom sent me. I was on a mission.

I <3 vocab.

Another, much better, reason to take up studying more aggressively is to further erase the language barrier between José and I.

Mi José, back when he was an extra in Casablanca.

The person I am in one language, more talkative or secure in English or more reserved and sometimes downright shy in Spanish, changes. Even the hand gestures and facial expressions, the tics and tones, shift. Case in point: look at Mediterranean gestures when talking about an annoying neighbor/cousin/coworker versus an American.

It makes you wonder what your relationship would be like if we didn't come from where we do or speak what we speak. We speak mostly in Spanish, but I love to hear him in English. The words and the order offer more of an insight into what he's thinking. You often can learn lots about another language by listening to a native speaker talk in English. Plus I love talking to him period, I love his voice in any language.

Mostly, I just want to talk with José and be completely sure that it's me coming through. If that isn't motivation to learn then I don't know what is.

In which the protagonist grows. Literally.

I am finally back in Málaga! Flying into Málaga is beautiful. You fly close over the olive and oxide colored mountains that surround the city and then make a dramatic touch down in front of the sea. Then you get off the plane and José is there waiting for you and it is the best feeling ever.

Now that I'm back I am working on getting things set up, cleaning, organizing private classes and volunteering and the Teacher Mentoring Program. And removing the pounds packed on by the evil combination of Gredos camp food, mom's delicious food, car travel rather than foot travel, and the ability of American food companies to sneak high-fructose corn syrup into every food product (Oops, I guess it's "corn sugar" now. Sorry about that Corn Refiners Association.) Mostly, however, it was my own fault.

At least in the US we have a variety of products to cover up with.

Wizard in the corner?

In Spain I don't have these options. Mostly because I haven't given up on life to the point where wearing pajamas all day sounds fine. Guess I'll just do this the old way.

Guess this whole "walking" thing is more complicated than I remember. These Europeans seem to be good at it though.