Feliz Navidad

It´s been a while, but all is well. Laura has avoided the buses, and mom´s flight got in on time. Isabel actually drove Laura and I to the airport on Christmas Eve to pick her up. Then she told us about a sort of party in the street that happens in Santa Teresa, a neighborhood really close to my apartment. So we went there at 4pm and it was crazy. About 3,000 people were milling around in the street and in the bars, drinking, eating garbanzos and other miscellaneous Spanish dishes, and there were firecrackers and maybe a cannon exploding periodically. We met up with Isa, Felipe and two of their friends -- Kike and Kris. They told us usually there are even more people there, 6,000 or 7,000, but that other neighborhoods have started to do the same thing so people are more dispersed.

Christmas Eve night and Christmas day were spent mostly just hanging out in the apartment, sleeping, waiting for Laura to break her fever, drinking red wine and eating boxes of chocolate. Three school aged kids came to our door Christmas Eve with a tambourine and sang us a song about the Belén and Christmas bells. It was really cute. We gave them some chocolate too.

We also had visitors a few days before Christmas. Two Jehovah´s witnesses came by and chatted with me for a while. They didn´t give me any books but told me that there are a lot of Jehovah´s witnesses in the states, so if I ever want to know the truth from the lies, I can just go to them. They also explained to me the reason behind society´s downfall -- parents give their kids presents on January 6th and tell them they´re from the wise men, then the kids discover it was really the parents giving them the presents, they lose trust in their parents and turn to street people and drugs.

A few days before mom got here Laura and I were walking through some side streets. We came upon a young man with a cup standing next to a building singing Christmas songs. There was also a strong smell of marijuana. The guy apparently heard us speaking English, because when we passed he greeted us. It went something like this:
guy¨´´´Hello.´´
me ´´Hello.´´
guy ´´How are you?´´
me (slipping into school English mode) ´´I´m very well thanks, how are you?´´
guy ´´I´m fine.´´
Laura and I walk about 40 feet.
guy ´´Excuse me.´´
me ´´Qué?´´
guy ´´One fucking please.´´
me (thinking maybe I´d misunderstood) ´´Qué?´´
guy ´´One fucking please.´´ (then something about him paying...)
Laura and I keep walking, this time cracking up, me wondering if this is what my students´ English abilities will be like 10 years from now.

baaa

A lot happened this weekend, and a lot was learned...

Thursday - I knew Merle was in the library but didn´t know where. Went to look for her in la Sala General. Sign on the door says ¨don´t enter w/ cell phones, even if they´re turned off´. Put my cell phone on top of a nearby metal detector (there was no one around, I planned on coming back in less than 30 seconds). Went in, found Merle, came back, cell phone gone. Merle called me, it was turned off. Checked at library desk, it hadn´t been turned in. First encounter w/ theft in Europe. Lesson - I am an idiot and people suck.

Thursday night - Went to botellón w- Raquel, her boyfriend and his friends, Merle, Jessica and Belén. I ended up walking home w- Raquel and the guys but without Belén. I wanted to wait for her, but everyone said ´´no, she´s okay, she´s with a man´´ (she´d gone off w/ some friend from school). I wanted to text her but didn´t have my phone. We got home and she was there, super pissed because she´d walked home alone, and still seems a bit hostile even today. Lesson - Don´t leave w/o friends, regardless of if they are with men.

Friday morning - Went to the library to check mail. Inquired about the phone. It had been found in the trashcan in la Sala General. Lesson - I am a lucky idiot.

Friday afternoon - Called Laura on her birthday. Call center employee shortchanged me and tried to tell me that the booth I was in shows one euro less than you actually use, so even though it said I´d used €3.77 I´d actually talked for €4.77 worth. I pulled out my newly found phone, did the math on its calculator, insisted that that was impossible (refrained from calling her a liar) and stood there until she gave me the euro she´d tried to steal from me. Lesson - People suck.

Friday night - Went bowling w- Jessica, Merle, Nancy, Nancy´s friend Jesús, and about 9 of Jesús´ friends. I won both games (in my lane) with scores of 93 and 89. Lesson - Spainards can´t bowl.

Sunday - Woke up at 7am. Took the bus to the Metro. Took the Metro to the airport. Waited for Laura, after one hour inquired at Delta. They said there were baggage problems, keep waiting. Waited another hour. Inquired again. They looked up her name. ´´Laura Wittmer doesn´t arrive until tomorrow. You´ve come a day early.´´ 7 hour, €11 Lesson - double check flight info.

Monday - see above. But this time waited less than a minute and Laura showed up. Returned to Toledo. We went grocery shopping. On the way back she sort of almost got bumped into by a bus (don´t worry mom it was about to stop anyway). Took her to see the living Nativity scene outside of the bank. Laura communicated with one of the sheep, hilarity ensued. Laura´s lesson - living Nativity scenes are fun; don´t stand in the area next to the bus stop where the word ´´BUS´´ is painted on the ground.

los vikingos

Carey -- mom is babs.
Mom -- The Alchemist is the book they gave me.

Today was Angel´s birthday. He turned 5. He is usually a huge trouble maker but today behaved really well. Now that I know more about him he´s actually becoming one of my favorite kids. He stood on a chair with the long orange cape and gold plastic crown that´s been broken and taped together while we all sang Happy Birthday to him. Isa pulled his ears 5 times. Then she asked me to show the class what we do in the states instead of the ear pulls, so I gave him 5 (soft) spanks on the butt and one to grow on. We carried on with the routine as normal but were quickly interrupted by Sofia, who started bawling uncontrollably. Isa called her over and asked what was wrong. The poor girl was terrified, crying so hard she couldn´t talk. Finally, after a minute or two of hugs from Isa and deep breaths, she managed to say, between sobs, what was bothering her. She didnt want me to do that to her on her birthday!

The second graders are starting a unit about Vikings. Before they start their ´´research´´, they made a poster called ¿Qué sabemos? (What do we know?) I thought the list of things they already know about the Vikings was worth sharing...

¿Qué sabemos?
women vikings did all the work while the men sailed
they built a lot of boats
the vikings and pirates were enemies
they attacked small towns
when they arrived in a country they killed people and took everything

¿Which places did they attack?
islands
Hungary, Jamaica, Spain, Mexico, Italy, Japan
towns close to where they lived

Why did they attack?
they were mean and fierce
they didn´t have food
they were looking for treasure and jewels
they only thought about killing

What did they eat?
the people they killed
fish, buffalo, wolves, eagles, sharks, whales, pigs, cows, bread, wild bears

What language did they speak?
english, italian, rumano, spanish, catalán, chinese, taiwanese, greek

The Alchemist

So maybe Belén felt bad about the snotty comment, or maybe it was just coincidental timing, but when I went to my room last night after dinner there were two wrapped Christmas gifts on my bed. Belén and Raquel gave me a book and a lamp to put by my bed so I wouldn´t have to leave my room to turn off the light every night, a very thoughtful gift combination. They said the three wise men came early.

Two of the preschool teachers were absent today, as was one of the moms in my afterschool class. Sounds like something bad is going around. It was kind of a panic this morning when we all heard the news, because in a school with 9 teachers that´s almost 25% of the teaching staff gone. And in Spain the schools don´t get a substitute unless a teacher is going to miss at least 15 days!!

Lucía from in my afterschool class is sick as well, the past two days her cheeks have been super rosy and she´s constantly coughing. When I asked her ¨How are you today?¨ she replied, between hacking coughs, ¨very well, thank you.¨ That´s the canned response they´ve been fed the past few years, so I wasn´t surprised, but used it as an opportunity to explain that you don´t always have to be very well, thank you.

ouch

No, Carey, I didn´t understand what the gypsy woman said. I think the piano might have still been playing and it was pretty loud. I wish I was almost fluent, but I have such a long way to go. I can tell I´m getting better, but my level of understanding still depends a lot on so many factors -- background noise, the person who´s speaking, the topic of conversation, how tired or distracted I am, etc. And last night my confidence was dealt a blow by Belén at dinner.

Merle was over, the three of us were chatting and talking about how Laura´s coming on Sunday. Belén asked if she knew Spanish, and I said yes, and was about to qualify it with ´´some´´ or something like that, but before I did Belén asked ´´more than you?´´ and I said no, and she said ´´well then she doesn´t know Spanish.´´ So that stung. With one sentence she offended me and the luvie. I didn´t say anything, but nonetheless couldn´t contain the shocked look on my face. She saw it, and said something about how I know English, and she doesn´t, but that didn´t help at all. How can she compare my Spanish to her English, granted she´s had mandatory english classes in school, but she´s not making any sort of effort at actually learning the language, whereas I´m here watching The Sopranos in Spanish with Spanish subtitles...

Thursday morning in Spain

The gypsies with the keyboard were back yesterday. This time they had a trumpet. The woman happened to see me, 4 stories up, taking pictures. She yelled something to me and held up her bowl, wanting me to toss money down to them.
I just waved and took another picture.
Then they packed up the keyboard and rolled away.

things can be small or big

(I didn´t tell them to make peace signs, by the way.)

We went on a field trip at school today. Instead of going to school at 9am like normal, the kids (minus the 3 year olds and the 5th and 6th graders) all met in the town plaza at 10am to get on the charter bus. All of the mothers were there to see them off, giving multiple kisses and hugs as their kids stood in the line to board, twenty moms on each side waving fiercely up at the windows as we started off. You would have thought the kids were going to France for a month, not Toledo for 4 hours.

We rode the tourist train around town and listened to some of Toledo´s history and legends in both Spanish and English. Then we went to see a play -- Jack and the Beanstalk -- in English. I had been expecting British actors for some reason, but they were Spanish actors who knew English. The audience was exclusively school kids on field trips, and the script was catered to the 5-7 year old crowd. There were a lot of songs that the kids were encouraged to join in on --

´´Fee-Fi-Fo-Foy

I smell a little boy´´

and, my personal favorite,

´´Small or Big,

Small or Big,

Things can be

Small or Big´´