Update on bleeding internet

The situation is apparently that every time Pablo calls, they tell him it's not their responsibility, some other department has to deal with it. The problem is they can't contact the other department directly, they have to leave notes for them. And we can't contact the other department directly either because actually THE DEPARTMENT DOESN'T EXIST.

IT'S A FICTIONAL DEPARTMENT CREATED BY THE EVIL DISENCHANTED PEOPLE WHO WORK AT THE ORANGE HELP DESK. I can just see the door where they stick their post-it notes saying 'Please call these people to fix their internet'. And the door leads to the basement or their nuclear missiles stash, and every time they stick up a new post-it note, they snigger to themselves.

AUGH!!!! HATE!!! HATE!!! And we can't even change our company because we've apparently signed a contract and sold our telecommunication souls to this EVIL EVIL SAAJKFJAAFBEIOAEUADJDKLFAH HJA.

On a pleasanter note, tomorrow I'm going to Vitoria again with the kids for an excursion. They'd made kites that they were going to fly but it's raining so that probably won't happen. Shame. I was hoping the kites might act as a conductor and one of the kids would get struck by lightning. Just for the amusement factor.

Burgos, Vitoria and internet (lack of)

Last Sunday, my flatmate Pablo and I went to Burgos. It was very scenic.

It felt a bit weird because it was a Sunday afternoon and there were hardly any people on the streets in Burgos. There were quite a few tourists though. The top photo is of the famous archway. There's also a famous cathedral, which the pilgrims visit, I guess, when they do the Camino de Santiago which goes through Burgos.

The night before, I'd semi-crashed a wedding function that Javi and Ruben had been invited to and stayed out till about 6 am. Four hours later, Pablo and I caught the bus to Burgos and walked around for six hours. (Photos: with the statue of a pilgrim in Burgos; nice avenue with chestnut trees and lots of chestnuts on the ground.)

By the end of the day I was buggered. Pablo also took photos non-stop. He took more photos in 24 hours than I did in a fortnight of travelling. And the only reason he stopped was because his camera ran out of battery, but then he started taking photos with my camera so now cumulatively we have about 450 photos of one and a half days.

I think my smile started looking a bit frozen. We had morcilla and fried eggs as one of our tapas dishes for dinner. Morcilla is a Burgos specialty- it's like blood sausage with rice and onions and stuff. Very tasty. I love food.

On Monday morning, we visited the cathedral then decided there was nothing else to do in Burgos and caught the bus to Vitoria, which is the capital of the Basque region. I liked Vitoria so much better. It was much more vibrant. And we ordered a Menu del Dia at a Chinese restaurant for lunch, which gave you 3 dishes, plus drink plus dessert for only 6.95 euros. Bargain!

Our internet is still not working in the flat. Almost two weeks now. Pablo's been calling Orange (our internet provider) every day since last Tuesday when it broke down, to get them to fix it but they've decided they want to take their sweet time. And since they don't work on the weekends, it means at the earliest it'll be fixed tomorrow which I highly doubt. I am Very Bitter. (Photo: some slogan about the Basque country. I don't know what it means because I can't read it but I'm sure it's something like 'Freedom to the Basque region').

My room

This is my room in Logroño. It's about a third of the size of my room in Sydney, which means it gets messy very fast but, as my flatmate pointed out when he was showing me around, it'll be warmer in Winter. And it takes no time to clean.

The only thing I don't like about it is the purple and white floral curtain. Ugh. No wonder the boys chose the other rooms.

I might get a rug.

I put 'WRITE' up on my wall to remind me of what I'm supposed to do. So far it hasn't worked. Also bought a hot water bottle and cover. It was the best 10 euros I've ever spent.

Statues, crazy kids and concert

After the nightmare first day on Wednesday, Thursday was a breeze. I had two half hour classes with 4 and 5 year olds and one and a half hours of music class (which involved playing the recorder, hopping around to music and playing a bit of keyboard). Thursday is going to be my favourite day.

It was 2 euro pint night again, so went out with some of the guys and had pinchos afterwards. In the Espolon, there were these weird bronze statues that had sprung up out of nowhere. They were pretty cool.

And then on Friday, when I got to school, the English teacher was sick again. There was a teaching student training to be an English teacher, who was supposed to be going along to the classes to see how they were run. So she said to me 'I'm not trained to be an English teacher yet, just a language teacher, so you'll have to lead the class.'

Again, I was like 'WHAT???' My teaching experience consists of one-on-one tutoring of Maths and English and babysitting my nephew.

I had actually prepared something (thanks to the principal's suggestion on Thursday) so I did a slideshow presentation on Australia and got them to ask me questions. One of the first things they asked was 'Do you have a boyfriend?' I also taught them how to sing 'I Still Call Australia Home' from the Qantas ad. It was that or 'I Come From A Land Down Under', which has flowing beer and chundering men.

The sixth grade class was even worse. Another teacher was there supervising and she said 'I don't speak a word of English so you'll have to teach the class.' So I did what I did with the fifth grade class, but because these kids were older, I got through it in half an hour. And then I stood there going 'Ok... I'm done. What do you guys want to do now?'

HONESTLY. I had no idea of their level of English, I hadn't been told I was supposed to teach them for an hour, I don't know how to interact with children. Bah! Bah!

The first grade kids are nice though. Very, very obedient. Very easy to deal with.

On Friday night, I went to a Spanish rock concert, of a band called Extremoduro, with Javi and some friends. It was great but I think I have permanent hearing damage now. Stayed home on Saturday night for the first time since arriving. Was fantastic to sit at home in my pyjamas reading a book.

Yesterday, I finally met up with Quique. He'd been in Mexico when I arrived and then I was away. I think the last time I saw him was at Pancakes On The Rocks (yummm... pancakes...) a year ago. He came back to Spain in February after his exchange year at UTS. We went for pinchos and he explained the difference between pinchos and tapas.

Tapas are from the south and pinchos are from the north. Pinchos are better.

My new friend, Lola

Had my first day at work today. It was slightly traumatising.

Let me just say that I've never had to do much with big groups of kids before. So to meet five different classes with about 20 kids each was extremely daunting. And the Infantil class, with three year olds... The teacher asked me to sit at the front of the class, so I did, expecting her to sit down next to me and do something that I could imitate.

She said to me 'Why don't you teach them something? You've got something prepared, haven't you?' I was like 'What? What?'

Then she handed me a stuffed toy elephant who's their mascot (called Ellie) and told me to teach them something about Ellie. Scrounging around desperately to come up with something, I said 'Ok... This is Ellie the Elephant. She has a BIIIIIIG nose! A BIIIIIIG nose.'

The children stared at me blankly. I continued on, trying to keep a huge smile on my face. 'And she has BIIIG ears! BIIIIG ears!'

I had no idea three year olds could be so silent. The teacher took pity on me. She said to the kids (in Spanish) 'Can you repeat please, "BIIIIG ears!"'

Silence.

She gestured for me to continue.

'Ellie has a small tail,' I said. 'A Small Tail. Can you say "small tail"?'

Apparently not. They were looking at me like I was some crazy lady come out of nowhere and gabbling in some foreign language. One of the boys was snivelling and had snot dribbling from his nose. The teacher told me to take Ellie around to each of them and say 'This is Ellie' and make her give them a kiss (extremely unhygienic I thought). At least they smiled and kissed her when I did that. Until I got to this one boy, who turned away and started crying.

I was terrified he'd start an orchestra of weeping but the teacher put on some music and got them to clap along, and then she gave them a picture of Ellie to colour in. But honestly, what are you supposed to do with three year olds? They can barely say their own names. I can tell I'm going to dislike Ellie a lot before the month is out.

Anyway, fearing a debacle like today, I've actually prepared something for tomorrow. I've cut out body parts from coloured paper (photo is of assembled body) so we can play a semi pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey kind of game tomorrow, except with arms and legs and eyes and ears. But I'm a bit worried about the fact that she's naked- is it too obscene? And I wasn't too keen on her skin tone because normal people don't have that shade of pink.

I quite like her. I've decided to call her Lola.

And the first thing I did after class was buy a hand disinfectant gel.

No ginger?

I bought this pair of boots on Saturday. They are beautiful and I love them (although not the price...)

Went to my school on Friday to meet the teachers and students. It was great- I have a fantastic timetable that results in me getting a 5 day weekend every two weeks. Plus the teachers were nice.

Had dinner at Javi's grandfather's place with some of his friends on Saturday night. This is the cool house with the boar head hanging above the fireplace. Javi cooked ribs, bacon and chorizo for us in the fireplace- so so very tasty.

I have discovered a horrifying thing. There is no ginger to be found in Logroño. I went to two supermarkets and about six greengrocers. And the greengrocers all said they didn't know where I could even find ginger. Terrible.

Back from Madrid

So- I'm back.

I was telling one of my friends how it feels like since about the 10th of September, I've been non-stop packing and unpacking, and repacking and unpacking again. Completely bloody sick of it. I don't understand how I managed to do it for 3 1/2 months in 2006. Although I guess I was travelling non-stop then, so I never completely unpacked.

The orientation was good. I got to meet some of the people going to Logrono, as well as other places, and they told us what to do with the children (although apparently we're supposed to get in touch with the schools to find out when we start, they don't tell us...)

We didn't have anything on this morning, so this Canadian guy I met and I went in search of a Chinese supermarket to stock up on Asian groceries, since most small cities don't have them. After a few hours, I finally found one. He had to leave before we found it. And I bought 40 euros worth of stuff...

SO overpriced. It also added an extra 6 kg I had to lug home. But I'm happy.

My other flatmate has moved in ie. he's added a duffel bag to the blanket in his room. I still haven't seen him yet. It could be that from now till when I leave, I never meet this phantom guy. He'll just keep coming when I'm not around to add stuff to his room, and then a month before the end of semester, he'll start emptying his room again.