A long time ago we used to be friends, but I haven't thought of you lately at all

Only a few Spaniards turned up to the beach on Tuesday night..coughcough.

Everytime I spend a night in the airport I tell myself I will never do it again, and yet I do. A Valencian beach fiesta, churros, a flight to London and 48hrs with no sleep later...Te gets told off by the police for falling asleep on a bench in Hyde Park. Please stop all the classy; maybe they wouldn't have minded if I hadn't thrown my empty beer cans at them and asked where I could find a soup kitchen...

Throw away your television

I am in Valencia. I am sunburnt. I can smell fruity shampoo wafting into the hostel common room. Yesterday I was walking around with a map and a girl asked me for directions in English, I adopted her. Today she turned up at my hostel looking for me, we adopted another lonely looking backpacker and hit the town. Randomness is the best part of travelling. Valencia is beautiful, I'm glad I decided to come here and get a patchy tan before heading to the UK. I'm finally getting used to trying to speak to people in Spanish and I'm leaving for atleast two months, figures. I kind of love the carefree, hostel-living, tan-having bohemian lifestyle. I like not wearing shoes. The end.


Take me somewhere we can be alone.


My photos of Valencia

I want something else, to get me through this, semi-charmed kind of life.

Ello poppets. Well, I know for months I have been going on..and on...and on about Spain, but hey, I'm going to England. I have a summer job lined up there, well 4 weeks of summer anyway. It will be about 20 degrees cooler than Spain, wonderful! I will return to Spain in late August hopefully, for the start of the school year, because I am going to teach English.

I don't know how I feel about the change of country so soon. I am relieved to have an income for some of the summer, but I'm sad I haven't had a bit more time to explore Spain; I suppose I will have lots of time when I return for the full school year. It is going to be interesting returning to England; I lived there for 6 months when I was 18, and lived in an attic with 5 other girls.

So! In 10 days I will be in England. Thirty days after that, who knows where I'll be..

Photo: Fergus Padel

I'll be the fire escape that's bolted to the ancient brick, where you will sit and contemplate your day

My photos of Toledo

I really do not have time for writing a blog post; I should be lesson planning. Tomorrow I am teaching an intermediate class about demonstrative pronouns. Which I like to refer to in private as DEMONstrative pronouns, but really, they’re not that bad, I just have to think of activities to practice them. Ay ay ay. Lesson planning has been filling my days here in Madrid. So if you have been having romantic notions of me speaking Spanish to gorgeous men while sipping my café con leche in a bar, snap the hell out of it. I have been frantically trying to think like a non-native English speaker and figure out how to teach this fear-inducing thing we call ‘grammar’. Here I need to complain: why oh why don’t we learn English grammar in school? Come on High School, enough of the goddamn book reviews and poetry writing; we don’t even know how our own language works! So while I have been trying to figure out how to explain what I intrinsically understand, there hasn’t been much time for exploration.

I did go to Toledo, though. It was the bomb-diggity; hells my English be owning, y’all. I was sitting on the train smiling to myself thinking ‘I am in Spain, lah di dah di dah’. Then I walked around alone for four hours and thought ‘I am still in Spain, lah di dah di dah’. Oh oh! I even ordered lunch, and not even at McDonalds, I am improving! No, but seriously, Toledo lifted my spirits a lot; it is gorgeous, and how I expected Spain to look. I bought some marzipan (It's famous...in Toledo) and ate it all myself. Then I was sad that it was all gone. I am still sad it is all gone. I can see the empty box in the rubbish bin, sometimes I stare at it longingly; perhaps I should take the rubbish out.

Since I have been so busy with my course I haven’t really had any time to look for a summer job. Well, I sent a few emails and got ‘our summer positions are filled’ replies. So, in 10 days I will be homeless and jobless with no concrete plan and little money. SUPER! Don’t you just wish you were me? It’s oh so exciting. Well, actually…it sort of is. Tomorrow I am going to give money to my local homeless man. There is a possibility though, that the minute my course ends I will be on a plane out of here.

Not back to Australia, but off to England for at least a month to work. I have to be back in Madrid by September for the beginning of the teaching year, but from the end of June until then, I’m free baby. Well, I use the term ‘free’ loosely; I am free to find summer employment in any part of Europe, not free to roam it aimlessly. Roamy roamy, no, that is not a real word. Next week I am teaching my advanced class ‘Australian terms’, not slang that only bogans use, but actual words we use in Australia that the Spanish are not familiar with, since their teachers are predominantly British and American. Any suggestions, homebakes?

Oh! Today one of the other teachers asked her intermediate class ‘What would you do if you could change sex for a day?’ and one of the students said ‘I would have sex with her’ these kinds of mistakes bring me joy.

Oh Hesus, I just read over that load of pure dribble. Oh well, it’s my blog, I can dribble all I want. Okay, back to demon *cough* stratives.

My sister is eating paint chips again, maybe that's why she's insane

This afternoon I started to laugh manically while alone in the kitchen. I realised that now I put my cup of water in the microwave to heat it up for coffee without even thinking; no longer do I stand in the kitchen pondering the absurdity of Spaniards not using kettles. I found this funny of course, that I am now part of the absurdity. Who knows how much more absurd I will become. I do not respect the lack of kettles, Spain. I do respect however Spanish manners. They don’t overdo the ‘pleases’ and ‘thank yous’ but they always say ‘good morning’, whether they know you or not. I lived in an apartment building for 4 years in Melbourne and there were people I’d see who I’d never spoken to, not even a ‘hello’. Here it would be weird to share an elevator with someone and not say buenos dias and hasta luego. I am the rude foreigner who just listens to her ipod and smiles, what an ignorant bitch. Well, the last time I tried to be friendly resulted in aforementioned awkward Spanish encounter, so… I will continue to say ‘hola’ to everyone I see in hope I will have some more material to blog about.

Today is Friday, that means that my weekly course assessment is over and rather than coming home and doing homework until midnight I can go to the supermarket, and maybe even socialize. Oh wait, I don’t have any friends here yet. So, I went to the supermarket. They wouldn’t let me keep my mango; the woman at the checkout took it from me, said something I couldn’t understand and put it aside. I stood there while she scanned everything else trying to think of what to say ‘por que? Por que no puedo comprar mi mango?’ but I just stared at it longingly and everyone else in the queue looked at me strangely. If I had understood what the woman had been saying to me maybe I would be embarrassed at being stared at, but all I could think of was ‘WHYYYYYYYYYY WHYYYYY, I want my mango!’ So what did I do? I came home and sulked to my flat mate about my lack of mango acquiring skills. She informed me that there is a fruit system. You bag it, weigh it, price it…and only then do you take it to the checkout. Now I am far too scared to every try and buy fruit again.

I said 'we've only known each other one year', you say 'pfft, I've known you longer my dear'

How depressing. I am in living in Spain and have less to report than when I was living in Melbourne. My days here are pretty mundane at the moment; get up, try and fit showering into my flat mate’s bathroom schedule, go to my course, get home and make pasta for dinner and next day’s lunch, work on coursework until midnight, sleep. Repeat. Oh wait, sometimes I go to the cheap supermarket, Día, in the evenings. Today some old dude tried to talk to me outside my class, he asked me where I am from, exhausted all my Spanish conversational abilities, told me he couldn’t speak any English, and then stood there staring at me expectantly. Oh! And the whole double-cheek kiss thing is a conspiracy, no doubt invented by dirty old men who will ‘accidentally’ try and get you on the lips, and then laugh heartily when you recoil in horror. Lesson learnt.

Okay well, I really don’t have anything meaningful or insightful to say, so I shall go back to my homework…or back to balancing King Arthur(laptop) on the window ledge in a usually fruitless attempt to steal wifi.
Oh and my latest Spanish word is Mierda. Mierda. Mierda. Mierda.


Photo: Anna Rosa Krau