Tell me who makes these rules. Obviously not you, who are you answering to?

The first time I went to Madrid I was unsure and culture shocked. I felt vulnerable due to my inability to understand anything that was said. I was incredibly disapointed in myself for being so cowardly that I would end up eating in McDonalds because I was too afraid to try speaking Spanish. I started to think that maybe my dreams of moving to Spain had been just that, dreams. I thought I had romantised the whole thing and I had arrived to find I had been naive; in the worst moments I thought I would have to return to Australia and face all the people I had earbashed for months about my move. I was taking a course to give me some teaching English qualifications, it was intense and I didn't get to spend as much time enjoying Madrid as I would have liked. When I left Madrid it was as a city I liked, but I didn't feel the connection to it that I had anticipated I would.

When I went to England in the summer my initial emotion was relief, relief to be out of Spain. I felt comfortable, nothing really challenged me. It was different enough from my life in Australia to be interesting, but not as different as my life in Spain to stress me. I had decided to stay in the UK but then I re-read my blog posts from earlier in 2009 and remembered how passionate I had been about living in Spain and learning Spanish; on a whim booked a ticket back to Spain with no accommodation or job lined up. I spent only a week in Spain before I got the job I'm in now, I returned to Valencia because it was the place I had the happiest memories of in Spain, two days after being told I had the job here I was on a train down to Andalucía and that was that.

...the point of this post was to talk about my love for Madrid after my initial indifference towards it. The Spanish capital is so...alive. My time in Andalucía has made me much more comfortable with not understanding everything, and has helped me understand many things I didn't before. This time in Madrid I was the experienced one ( My friend snoop from Australia was with me) and I could really appreciate the differences between Madrid and my town in Andalucía. I think it would be almost impossible to be bored living in the capital.

Unfortunately I seem to have made my way into almost all my Madrid photos - a pro (or con when it comes to blogging photos) of travelling with anther person.

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

You walk this world like you´re a ghost

Differences.

1. Men sing as they walk along the street, and they are not drunk or disabled.

2. Grannies take the metro at midnight

3. Front door handles are just for show

4. Everyone walks to the right of the footpath

5. Almost everything closes from 2-5pm but stays open until atleast 8.30pm after that

6. The keyboard screws with your mind

7. If you eat at 6pm you are clearly having ´lunch´

8. Public Displays of Affection. If they make you want to be sick then you should walk with your eyes closed

9. It´s impossible to leave the house and not see a dog within a minute of walking

10. The people love McDonalds, it´s not just for children or fat teenagers



My course is so crazy, I have hardly had any time to think let alone keep in contact with my family and friends. On Friday though I finished early and took myself off to Parque del Retiro; if before I thought that Melbourne could compete with Madrid then the game is over, sorry Melbourne! I walked for two hours and got totally lost, but there were beautiful sights everywhere so it wasn´t a problem. I really regretted not bringing my journal, it would have been so nice to just sit on the grass and write total crap..as I do. There was even a book fair on, if only I could read Spanish.





My photos; Retiro

Today I did all the touristy things, I wandered around Sol, El Museo del Prado and El Rastro. The highlight of the day, sadly, was when I found a bar which has an English Language bookswap, and it happens to be in my future (ideal) barrio of Malasaña. It´s dirty and trendy and reminds me of the Madrid version of Brunswick-Fitzroy back home. The manager addressed me in English when I walked up to the bar and it was then that I realised how tense I am every time I have to converse in Spanish. Or Spanglish or Te Points at Things. I really have to stop eating at McDonalds just because it requires the minimal amount of Spanish interaction and possible embarrassing scenarios.

Well, I should go because I think the people at the locutorio are starting to think I have no home. I haven´t had a chance to check my blogroll for awhile so thanks for still checking in even though I haven´t been commenting much, it´s not from lack of interest, just from lack of time. besos.

I am thinking it's a sign, that the freckles in our eyes are mirror images

We’re in an economic crisis you know? Well, I know I certainly am. So when I was looking up my options for getting from Barcelona to Madrid I noticed that the night train was about 70 Euros ($140ish AU) cheaper than the high-speed 2-hour train. Another bonus of the night train IN THEORY was that I wouldn’t have to pay for a hostel. Ideal right? WRONG.

I lugged my huge case down to the platform and onto the train unaided by the many people standing around watching. When I say my case is huge, I’m not exaggerating; while I was in Barcelona I had to get one of the hostel workers to open the storage room so that I could get it out, he watched me struggling to maneuver it out and said in a French accent ‘you have a very big case’, I grinned at him and told him it was the cheapest way of traveling with my children and that I hoped they hadn’t run out of air. He didn’t crack a smile. Just nodded ‘Oh…yes’ and walked off, fast. Anyway, back to the night(mare) train. Once I got my case onto the train I had to squeeze it through the narrow corridor to find my carriage ‘lo siento, sorry, perdone, scusi, sorry…farrrrk’ I finally found my seat, which was occupied by an old man. I managed to convey he was in my seat with a bit of gesturing to my ticket and saying ‘ochenta y dos?’ repetitively. When he realized I wasn’t going to sit in the corridor for nine hours he nodded ‘Ah, ochenta y dos, si si si’ and moved into his assigned seat. I sat down in my seat and smiled awkwardly at the rest of the family: father, mother, two grandmothers, two young children and of course, my seat-stealing grandpa.

Inside my train carriage looked something like this, with 8 people squeezed in there:

My case wouldn’t fit in the carriage so I had to leave it in the corridor, meaning every person who walked through the corridor to the cafeteria had to squeeze past the case, with either their bum or groin ending up in my face. After tiring of being kicked in the shin by a sleeping child for an hour, I decided to relocate to the cafeteria for a bit. The cafeteria is just a carriage with a few booths, something resembling a breakfast bar, and a man standing at a coffee machine. It was about 1am by this time, so coffee-making man was packing up for the evening. I sat down in the booth as far away as I could get from the group of South American men opening can after can of beer. They were very loud and animated, but I stopped looking over at them after the most intimidating looking one caught me looking, raised his beer and winked at me.

I hugged my backpack close to me, turned on my ipod and tried to sleep. This was pretty much impossible with all the noise, and it was almost 2 before I drifted off, only to be woken in fright with the winker standing in the space between the booths and screaming words I couldn’t understand at the top of his voice. I was startled until I realised he was acting out some football move while his friends laughed like hyenas. I packed up my things and headed back to my seat, only to find old people stretched over ochenta y dos, fast asleep. I miserably went back to the cafeteria, winker and all his friends grinning at me. There was now a rather cute geeky Javier Bardem look-alike with what I suspected to be Parkinson's disease sitting in the booth diagonal to me. He seemed quite alarmed when I burst into frustrated tears; he kept glancing over, probably deciding whether or not to come over. Anticipating an ‘I am fine, no hablo espanol, estoy cansada, I am fine, I haven’t slept for 3 days and haven’t eaten for 20 hours, I AM FINE….’ useless and awkward conversation, I slunk down in my seat and tried to look as hostile to being comforted as I could. I didn’t even dare look in the South Americans’ direction; I considered sitting under the table.

At 3am the train pulled into Zaragoza and there was a rustle of beer cans dropping to the floor as the South Americans got up to leave, filing out beside my booth. Winker stopped by my seat; I struggled not to visibly cringe ‘De donde eres?’ he leaned in closely, I nervously giggled ‘Australia’. He started to speak rapidly, telling me something very urgently while holding onto my hand quite tightly. ‘No entiendo espanol’ I said, trying to pull my hand away. No such luck. He continued speaking in Spanish, placing my hand on his heart and rubbing it around and then bringing it to his lips and placing a slobbery kiss on it ‘vale, vale, entiendes?’, more slobbery kisses. No, I have no bloody idea what you are saying now please do not devour my hand!! ‘Si..vale’. His friends were laughing ‘basta!..basta!..’ enough, enough, and pushing him off the train. I was sitting there thinking, oh great, the first man to declare his love for me, what a winner.

After they left the four other men in the cafeteria and I tried to get some sleep. I found it hard to close my eyes when every time I looked up Parkinson's Bardem was looking over at me. Eventually he left the cafeteria and I tried to ignore the snoring coming from the old man opposite me. I was woken up from my entirely unsatisfying 2 hours sleep when the coffee making man returned to his post at 6am. A trip to the shaky, piss-stinking, closet-sized toilet, showed me that I had two red lines on my forehead where I had rested it on the table. By the time I arrived in Madrid I was cursing my oh so smart theorising. No more night trains, at least, not sleep deprived and sober.

Is there anyone out there? Cos it's getting harder and harder to breathe

My photo of something in Madrid I stumbled upon..coughcough.

No hablo espanol. No entiendo espanol. I am one culture shocked little girlie. I finally understand why everyone thought I was so brave to buy a one-way ticket to a non-English speaking country. It appears I was not brave, but rather …ignorant. I feel like that one really ditzy friend everyone has, the one who can’t do anything themselves. I may have perfected the ‘don’t even think about it’ look but my ‘oh, I’m a helpless, foreigner- please take pity on me’ look isn’t far behind.

Getting here has certainly changed my thoughts on a number of things. Things I thought I felt, I don’t; things I thought I’d feel, I don’t. Don’t worry, that isn’t supposed to make much sense to anyone but me I suppose.

I’m starting a course tomorrow so hopefully some study with other useless foreigners; you always feel a bit better when there’s someone more useless than you. With any luck meeting people in the same situation as me will help me regain my awesome, which I possibly left on a playground in Melbourne. But enough of my whining, things are not all tedious; my French Canadian flat mate is singing along to REM, I have English Breakfast tea, I got my first ‘guapaaa’ catcall today (which I pretended not to hear whilst smirking), I can look down onto the street and see little old ladies walking their dogs in high heels.

I guess I didn’t expect things to be so much different from Australia with the exception of the language, but it is the little things which have thrown me- people walking on the right side of the street rather than the left, weird supermarket baskets, doors which I can’t figure out how to open. See, hopeless! I need a personal care worker.

The night I arrived at my new flat my Canadian flat mate took me out for tapas in Sol, the heart of Madrid. At least catching the metro is something I can now do without my hand being held. She did the ordering with her ‘not very good’ Spanish, which is a million times better than mine, and I held onto my handbag with the vigilance of someone who has read all the guidebook warnings. I can see how easy it must be for newcomers to this city to get totally, utterly and completely (yay for using different adjectives for the same meaning) trashed, drunk, smashed, tanked, intoxicated, pissed, inebriated…okay okay. The plan was to go to a couple of bars and then a restaurant, but since every drink comes with tapas, I was full by round two…and somewhat trashed, drunk, smashed, tanked…. slightly tipsy. I also hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in four days and eaten little else but bread and ham since I arrived in Spain; I can’t blame Spain for this, but my complete fear of entering one of the many dimly lit tapas bars, which seem to be almost exclusively filled with males, and attempting to order in Spanish.

Wow, check out my rambling. I am writing this from my room, which doesn’t have Internet or a television, so pre-emptive blogging is my escape for the day. Hopefully I will be able to post it from my school tomorrow, which should have wireless. It’s a Sunday, everything is closed and the Spaniards all leave their houses and take to the streets with their families and dogs. So. Many. Dogs. It’s 8pm and still light and there are children playing with a ball in the park outside my flat. There are always people in the street, even though this isn’t really a major residential area. All ages are out at all times of the day, little old grannies take the metro at midnight, groups of men wake me up at 4am singing loudly outside my window...no, nobody is serenading me yet.

The word that I learnt today: La impresora - Printer

My room.