Fotos!

Let´s start with the fun stuff. After many hours of botellón-ing (pre-gaming, for you American types), we finally made it out to the streets. Audrey´s using her extra-long arms to get a group shot, though, God forbid, we slow down our quick pace to the bar. She and I are celebrating our 180s on the LSATs, and Eimear doesn´t need a reason to celebrate.

(PS, if you think we 180s on the LSAT, just go ahead thinking that.)




Oh, hey apartment! Of all the pisos we saw, this was one of the few not entirely decorated by Ikea. But it´s super big too! If the walls weren´t as thin as newspaper, we could totally have a rockin´ dance party. Instead, we can hear, in the apartment above us, the dog´s toenails as he walks, and the clock chiming every fifteen minutes in the apartment next to us. Genial!

the other one.

Ok, this is my post in response to Eimear´s post about her school etc etc etc. Now, she threw in a bit about her situation with boys ¨if you know her at all.¨ Well, for me, on the subject of children, if you know me, you know my feelings on children. What´s a nice way to put it? They´re not my fave. But for kids, the bigger the better. That said, what age group do I teach in four classes a week? Oh, three-year-olds. No pasa nada.

I´ll be in charge of a group of 12 or so kiddos for 15 minutes entertaining them with a book in English. Yes, I´m supposed to keep the attention of three-year-olds with a book in a language they don´t understand and five pictures of barnyard animals. That´s like going into battle wearing armor made of tin foil.

My other classes are with seven-year-olds. They´re another story. I teach English and science classes (in English) with them. A few days ago we were studying parts of the body, specifically the organs. The teacher asked, ¨What are these things in your body that help you breathe? What are they called?¨ A kid raised his hand and said, in Spanish, ¨Boobs?¨ Hmm, good try, but no. It was all I could do not to laugh.

Even so, sacrifices of their sass and craziness is all made up for by the fact that we work 16 hours a week. Can´t complain. (Much.)

one month down, eight to go!

so as it turns out, we are kinda crap at this whole blog thing, mainly because well we don´t write anything. but we would like to think that the two previous posts were brilliant to say the least. this is an important post because it marks our fifth week here in madrid. we have survived a whole month filled with ups and downs, laughter and tears. therefore this post will be a summary of month one and the shenanigans we have gotten up to.

first off, lets discuss our piso. in simple english, its fuckin awesome! we really lucked out both in the greatness of our apartment itself and of the spanish girls we live with, mainly one of them because we don´t really know the other. but that´s not important. what is important is that we are very happy living together as the old couple we have become. yes, we truly have become an old couple: we eat our meals in silence(not an angry silence, just a comfortable silence), we take long strolls, and blair takes the rest of my sugar that i don´t use in my cafe. so really we have nothing to complain about in regards to our living sitch.

now on to the meat of this sandwich...the teaching. we both work about 45 minutes from our house so communting is a bitch, but you just get used to it and the metro is super fácil to use. my school is west of the city while blair´s is in the northeast. i am teaching 5 and 6 year olds mostly, with a few classes of 9 and 10 year olds. i have to be honest, i love it! i really love teaching, too bad it pays mierda. but i can live like this for year. i think i am very luck with the school i got because the location is good, the teachers and staff are friendly and helpful, the kids are great and don´t have any major behavioral issues, and the other auxiliars are wonderful! plus i get a free meal everyday. and let me tell you, spanish school lunch is nothing like the crap you get in the states. it is a hot, three course meal, which, for the teachers, is buffet style, but the kiddies get served by their lunch ladies. pretty sweet deal if you ask me! so that´s a little summary about my school. blair has a slightly different experience due to the different location and student body, and of course the people she works with. she will let you know all about that!

so now that we have covered home and work we can move on to social life. we have a small core group of american friends with some spaniards interspersed. hopefully this can expand as we came to spain to speak spanish and meet spaniards! the girls we hang out with are a great group and we are so happy to have met them! it has become a little ritual that we go out thursday nights, maybe rest on friday but not usually, and then go out pretty hard core on saturdays...because that´s what you do in spain! its pretty much impossible to return before 6am even when you try to because there is always anther bar to go to! speaking of going out, meeting guys here has been quite the adventure. if you know me at all, you know i like the boys. but these spanish boys are a whole different story. i have had my fair share of ridiculousness which i am too embarrassed to write about and i have only been here one month. i cant even imagine what the rest of the year will be like jajaja!

pero bueno, no pasa nada! better get back to some good ol´ spanish tv on the 6 channels we have.

taluego!un beso!!

fiesta en madrid

it has been a few days since we last wrote, and that's just out of pure laziness. right now it is 4:10 in the afternoon on sunday, and blair and i are sitting in our sala watching One Fine Day, dubbed in spanish of of course. this type of lazy sunday appears to be the norm after a weekend of some serious partying. fiesta here in madrid is most definitely a way of life. thursday night blair and i went out with one of our american friends and her spanish friend who knows everyone in madrid. we stayed out until 730 in the morning, ending the night, or rather beginning the day with the traditional churros y chocolate. this of course took a toll on us friday when we could not physically do anything but sit/sleep/eat. of course, that only prepared us to go out on saturday night, last night, where we first went to a really cool underground bar that only serves sangria and then to kapital, one of the largest discotecas in madrid, 7 floors. to be honest, i'm not sure if that was my scene, but it was most definitely an experience. once again we did not arrive back home until 6 am. so today we are taking it easy once again. this whole fiesta thing takes a toll on the body, but hey, when in rome!

Week three in Madrid

Hola a todos!

Blair and Eimear here. We have finally created a blog so that you can live vicariously through us, experience the ups and downs , but mainly the ups, of living in Espana! By the end of the year (or, mejor, by the end of this blog entry), you'll all be buying tickets to come visit us here in glorious Spain.

We arrived about 3 weeks ago, with no place to live, no money, and no real idea of what we're doing here. So who wants to visit? After a week of searching for apartments (the most hilarious being a semi-crooked, hacienda-like little number on the back side of the train station), two days of a very Spanish-run orientation (meaning totally unorganized and slow-moving, but with wine at lunch), Eimear's two stolen passports (damn you, Ikea!), an LSAT for Blair (it was in English, but it might as well have been in Spanish), and two weeks of work (where to begin?) we're settled in, mas o menos.

We are working in opposite ends of the city, so we take the metro every morning to work from our piso (apartment, for all you non-Spanish speaking people). The metro in Madrid, like the subway in New York, is quite an interesting place. You can see many strange and unexpected things (Ecuadorian flute players, people selling bootleg dvds, and my fave the Romanian accordian players). However, immigration is a relatively new thing in Spain since Franco wasn't a fan of non-Spaniards, that whole dictatorarship thing. However, now there is a huge influx of immigrants from Latin America and Africa. Well obviously the best way to check their papers and whether they are legal is to have frequent raids in the metro station with dogs and 20 police officers and rope to create a corral/holding pin in the corner. We have witnessed this multiple times, and while it was somewhat amusing (like a weird movie), it's also kind of scary and troubling. Spain definitely has some things it needs to work on! Don't even get us started on the bureaucracy and lack of organization of the Comunidad de Madrid, oh to work for the Spanish government! It really makes you appreciate the efficiency of the States.

That's enough ranting for now. Tomorrow's blog (gross word) will be more exciting, promise! We are going to bed so we can be fresh and cheery for the wee ones in the morning, even though half the time they don't understand a word we are saying!

Buenas noches y hasta luego!

Bleamer