Mint Tea in Marrakech, Morocco

One of my roommates, Laurel, and I were discussing whether there were any places that we both wanted to go to. Morocco was basically the only one. She has been to where I want to go, and I have been where she wants to go. Actually, I’ve been to Morocco as well, but never to Marrakech. In November we decided to check out prices for random dates in 2012 to go to Marrakech, and on the first try found a 54 euro round trip flight for the first weekend in February. We booked it right then and dealt with finding a hostel and whatever else last-minute.

I’m attempting to catch up my blog posts with my travels, so I’m going to buckle down and write about Morocco. I don’t know why I’m so lazy to keep up with this blog, I guess I’ve just been uninspired lately. Anyway, we arrived in Morocco on a Friday and took the bus from the airport instead of a taxi. I think the taxi probably cost relatively the same price though. I had read up a little about Marrakech before going, enough to know it’s a tourist trap, full of shopping opportunities in the souks, that the main plaza is total chaos, and that people will ask you for money in return for everything including when you ask for directions. The bus dropped us off in the main plaza of Marrakech, Jmna el Fna. We had met a Spanish couple in the airport store (where we bought an obsolete 4 euro map) and in the plaza they decided to trek with us to our hostel. We thought that we’d be able to figure it out using the map, but it proved impossible. What I’d read about Marrakech was true, the tiny streets, the crowds, people asking for money, it was quite a culture shock arriving there and being dropped off in the middle of it. We dragged our bags around for at least 30 min before we stopped to ask for directions from a shopkeeper. Immediately a young man came over and spoke with the shopkeeper in Arabic and the shopkeeper told us the man could lead us to our hostel for 20 dirhams, or about 2 euros. We had heard that advice cost here but we still didn’t want to pay and wanted to figure it out ourselves, the free way. The Spanish man wanted to wander aimlessly, the woman wanted them to figure out where they were staying since it was evening, and we just wanted to drop off our stuff and then eat. We walked off and tried to figure it out and bumped into the young man again who pointed us in the right direction. We ended up following him anyway and he picked up about 4 friends along the way. It seemed as if negotiations were going on between him and other men he passed. We were a bit confused, a bit nervous, and a getting fed up. He took us through a maze, which we later figured out was an insanely less direct route. Apparently they do this so that you feel that you never could’ve found the place without them and therefore give them more money. When we finally made it to our hostel (riads they’re called there) it had a tiny sign and was town a twisty turny dark alley. I told Laurel I’d much rather switch hostels to one closer to the main square, and she agreed but said we should do it in the morning. The man who showed us the way demanded his 20 dirhams, which we gave him but then his friends all wanted money as well, as if they had helped too. They told us 20 wasn’t enough, that we should give him more etc. The men who worked at the hostel told them to go away and eventually shut the riad door in their faces. They probably waited outside a while for us to come back out, but we were busy having mint tea in the courtyard/patio area of the hostel. The man who ran the hostels was named Mustafa. He was really nice, gave us free tea and told us the hooka (smoking shisha, flavored tobacco) was free as well. He said breakfast was provided for 2 euros extra each morning (which we never got charged). We didn’t even have to pay for our rooms until either later that night or the next morning (I can’t remember). That night we eventually ventured back to the main square to get dinner. Some guys from the hostel escorted us half way and explained how to find our way back. By the end of the weekend we had mastered it. In the square we got tajine, which was actually turned out to be the best food we had the whole weekend. We walked around the square after dinner. There were stalls selling fresh orange juice, women wearing hijabs doing henna on Moroccans and tourists alike, snake-charmers, musicians and pedestrians, bicycles and motorbikes zooming around everywhere. Any time we got close to a circle to see what was going on (music? drumming? a show?) someone would come right over to us with an outstretched hand, bowl or tambourine and ask for money for watching. It was frustrating because it was obviously just because we were tourists. Another unpleasant experience that night was when a man kept trying to talk to Laurel and she was ignoring him. It was our first night and we weren’t really sure how to act, how we would be treated, and what the environment was like. After we continually ignored him he reacted by saying “F*ck you f*cking b*tch c*nt”. We were so shocked we just looked at each other in horror. Fortunately nothing worse than that happened the whole weekend. In fact, we never once felt unsafe, even as two white girls at night on tiny dark streets. People were either extremely friendly and helpful, or extremely rude and bitchy but not scary. When people ask me to talk about my trip I keep saying that Marrakech was a cities of extremes. Back at the riad that night it was so insanely cold, well just as cold as outside (and I thought Sevilla was bad!) we slept with our coats, scarves and gloves on. Extremely cold!

Saturday morning we decided rather than trying to get around using the map (Mustafa had given us a better one with the highlights circled) that we’d just wander aimlessly and shop in the souks. We figured most of the experience of Marrakech was just being there and exploring, and we were right. That worked out fine and we both blew a ton of money, about our budget for the weekend plus another half. We got pictures, bowls, scarves, earrings, a dress, a shirt, Laurel got a rug, I got a leather jacket to replace the one that was stolen in a club in Sevilla. The souks are just a bunch of tiny streets leading out of the square with small store after store selling touristy low quality stuff, as well as hidden gems, and your every day items. Mustafa had told us to take any price they give us and divide by 4 and then start haggling. That didn’t really work out, but I definitely got the hang of it and got most prices at least down to half. I was called a Berber at least 10 times. I guess either the Berbers are really good at negotiating prices, or they are really cheap. But I was proud of being called a Berber so I hoped it didn’t mean I was a total cheap-o. By the end of the day I could write the script for the buying experience.

When walking by any shop…

Shopkeeper: “Hello, come in, just for look.”

Me: “No thanks.”

S: “Just for look, no problem, don’t have to buy, no problem, come see.”

If we did walk in…

S: “What do you like?”

If you touched anything..

S: “Here try it on” or “We also have these colors” or “Do you like it? What else do you like?”

Whether or not you kept looking at something or put it down…

S: “How much you want to pay for that?”

Me: “No thanks, just looking.”

S: “No really, how much? Name a price.”

Me: “How much is it?”

Shopkeeper mentions absurd price at least double it’s worth, like 200 dirhams (20 euros) for earrings that were made out of a material akin to tinfoil.

Me: “No thanks.”

S: “How much you want to pay?”

Me: “No more than 30.”

S: “30? No, no, how about 180?”

Me: “What? No, 35 maybe.”

S: “Noo, is so little, what do you want to pay? Last price?”

They would always ask again what I wanted to pay, even though I had just told them. If you start to walk away they follow you saying “last price, last price”. In the particular earring scenario, he ended up saying he’d sell them to me for 30 dirhams but at that point I’d decided I really didn’t think they were even worth that, and didn’t want them anymore. He wasn’t so happy about that when I just walked away, promising to think about it and come back, which of course I never did.

Another interesting experience was in a scarf shop. I had just gotten convinced to buy a painting by a hipster-looking shopkeeper who then passed us along to his friend in the scarf shop and we were sucked right in. Laurel wanted 2 and I wanted one. I already had similar-looking scarves I’d gotten on the street in NYC for 8 dollars, but in Marrakech they insisted each one was worth minimum 20 euros. I tried and tried to bargain, but the guy wasn’t budging much. I decided I didn’t want one, but I continued trying to get 2 for Laurel for the price he was giving for one. No such luck. Hipster guy came in and his friend stood in the doorway not wanting us to leave but not wanting to lower the price. We were thinking max 12 euros per scarf. What happened was so funny that I can’t even remember what we ended up getting them for. I tried pulling the cute flirty American girl card, but instead of scarves it got us free mint tea. Prior to the tea we attempted to escape the scarf shop by saying we had to go to the bathroom, which was true. We were passed along to another friend who escorted us to a public bathroom nearby, which had a beautiful entrance arch as if it were a mosque. We used the hole-in-the-floor bathrooms, for a fee of course, and since the guy never left the door to the bathroom, we were escorted right back to the scarf shop where stools had been brought in and a pot of tea were waiting for us. We were stuck. So we sat down and chatted up the Moroccan guys. We ended up getting their phone numbers and promising to call them to meet up in the main square later (which we weren’t actually completely interested in doing, and never did call them). We did end up buying the 2 scarves for a price closer to what we had wanted, probably only because they thought they’d bagged some hot dates for later in the evening. Oh well. Thanks though!

While walking around we ended up where what I assume is the end of the touristy area within the old city because people kept pointing at us and saying “main square” in the opposite direction. They assume that any tourist who is not in the souks or main square is looking for the main square (not just exploring, looking their riad, whatever). A guy came up to us and told us we should go to the tanneries, that today was the only day the Berbers were working and we were lucky and should go see it. So we followed him. This seemed to be a pattern. A man offers to show you to somewhere, and then you see him speaking to others as you all pass as if saying “these are mine, I’m taking them ______” and others would still try to get in on the commission. At the tanneries we were handed mint leaves (I think you are supposed to sniff them to avoid the smell of poop and dead animal carcass). We were shown the piles of skin and fun, the pools of dirty water where they are washed, and there was some step in the process that I didn’t quite catch but it was essentially that the leather is covered in pigeon shit to…I really can’t remember but it had to do with preserving the texture or color or something. Finally we were shown leather hanging to try and then taken into a rug and leather shop. In the shop they showed us upstairs and then made us sit down and presented us with rug after rug insisting that we pick which ones we liked. Then we were forced into rug negotiations. I liked some but the imperfections irked me and I knew I couldn’t have that on my floor with my OCD symmetrical tendencies. Laurel and I had narrowed it down to one small rug each. This was our first interaction of the day (I’m telling it as it comes to me and therefore out-of-order) so we didn’t really know how to bargain yet. After Laurel chose her rug they folded it up and began to package it and took her into another room. I think that is a tactic as well, they start packaging it, and they’ve shown you so many that you feel like you have to buy one. Then they separate you from you friend so no one can influence the price, and then they barter with you until you give in. After Laurel had agreed on a price they worked on convincing me. I outright refused, albeit awkwardly, to buy a rug. They then separated me from Laurel and offered me a price that was half of what Laurel had just paid. I still said no, after about 10 more minutes the guy gave up, looking really pissed. I’m sure they make a killing in that rug store. I also wonder about the real worth of the rugs. They looked great, and were hand-made but if they are willing to sell on for 60 euros but the rate they give at first is 350 euros? Hmmmm. Moroccans sure have a successful hustle in Marrakech! Working hard for the money.

Gosh there is so much to say about Morocco. While I’m thinking of it, a few more comments…they loved Futbol Club Barcelona there. We saw Barcelona graffiti all over the place. We even sat in a kebab shop and ordered (gross this time) tajine and watched a Barcelona game on TV surrounded by men in traditional Moroccan dress (nightgown-looking things with pointy hoods, didn’t catch the name). We also saw little boys playing soccer outside in an empty square by the tanneries and when we started taking pics they posed for us like soccer stars. I didn’t take as many pictures in general as I would have liked because I was afraid of getting yelled at. Last time I was in Morocco I got cursed out in French. This time I got told off a few times too when I tried to take pics. Whether it was hands up, dirty looks, or French words, I didn’t really want to  deal with it. Also, there was something I like to call pedestrian rush hour. In the evening around 7pm the tiny streets would become impossibly packed with people, which wouldn’t be so strange except that the streets were the width of a mini cooper and still had motorbikes with families of four zooming and dodging people walking. In fact, everyone seemed so used to it, including the drivers, that they didn’t even slow down, they just weaved around people walking like they were orange cone obstacles. What else…at one point in Jmna el Fna, one of the snake-charmers (who we never did see charm any snakes) came and put two smalls ones on my shoulders. Laurel took a picture from about 20 feet back. I’ve had snakes around my neck before but I actually thought it was grosser having the tiny ones because their lack of weight and wriggling was just creepy. After seeing that Laurel was all sketched out and every time a boy came by with a fake wooden snake (that they were selling as well) she would jumped to the side or beeline through the crowd. Other funny things that happened were one of our many guides asked us where we were from and we said New York and he made a comment about taxis. Then when a cart full of something-or-other with a man perched on the side pulled by a donkey went by he said “Look that’s a Berber taxi”. Another time we were walking around two men glanced our way and one said in English “I like the red one” which was hilarious because Laurel was wearing a red coat. Yet he didn’t say “her” or “the one in red” he said “the red one”. We chuckled about that for a while.

Back to the daily report. Saturday night I was dying to go to Pacha Marrakech, a huge international electronic music club, but we heard the cover was really expensive so in the end we went out with Mustafa, some of his friends, 2 Dutch girls from the hostel and an Italian guy who worked in a bank in London, who was also from the hostel. What we didn’t know was that Sunday was a holiday, not just any holiday either. Sunday was the prophet Muhammed’s birthday and thus no alcohol could be sold to Muslims Saturday night or at all Sunday. Bummer! I heard the new city part of Marrakech has awesome clubs. We went from place to place and everywhere was either empty or closed. We finally went to an upstairs lounge that was serving alcohol to anyone. It was the smokiest place I’ve ever been. No air, no ventilation and cigarette smoke and shisha smoke everywhere. I was beyond miserable. I had forgotten what it was like to be in a bar with cigarette smoke because recently Spain has instated a law against that. I could barely breathe and my contacts were drying out. I went downstairs to the bathroom multiple times just to escape the smoke. I guess it was so obvious that I was pouting that we finally moved on to another place, an empty club in a hotel. It was someone’s “brilliant” idea to buy a bottle of vodka but since there were so many of us it barely saved us any money from buying single drinks ourselves. In fact, we ended up spending so much money that night we could’ve gone to Pacha. We did have fun though, we had a big enough group to be able to dance and not look toooo ridiculous in the empty club. Although, since apparently it had just opened, there were more staff there than patrons. Also, our table was filled with juice and other mixers but the bottle had to be kept behind the bar in case authorities came in. We had to go up and ask for them to make us a drink every time we wanted one. It had to be hidden because the Moroccan guys we were with technically weren’t allowed to be drinking, although they didn’t seem to care at all.

We slept in Sunday because we had been out late the night before. The guys at the hostel had really taken a liking to us, especially the owner and Laurel. He offered her a job there for the summer if she wanted. Accommodation, food and 400 euros a month. Not too shabby! We didn’t want to spend any money on Sunday so besides going out for lunch and checking out some palm tree-filled parks we mostly hung out in the hostel. We didn’t go see any of the “places to see” in Marrakech because they didn’t seem too important and we felt we got more of a true experience exploring the way we did. In one of the parks there was a group of teenage boys standing in a pavilion singing, clapping and playing drums as tiny adorable Moroccan girls danced and moved their hips like Shakira and shimmied to the music. Moroccan kids were some of the cutest I’ve ever seen. Beautiful exotic eyes of all colors and caramel skins with think straight hair or crazy afros. Many looked like they could’ve been kids from DR or Puerto Rico. Walking through the main square I got accosted by one of the henna women. She shoved a book of pictures in my face and asked which I wanted. I told her that I didn’t want any right now but maybe later, which was true. She grabbed my hand and said she’d draw something for good luck, free she said, just to show me to see if I liked it. She drew a flower and I asked her if she was sure it was free and tried to pull my hand away. She wouldn’t let me go and continued to draw swirls down my finger and around my hand as I told her to stop. When she finally let me go after drawing a simple, messy henna, she of course stuck out her hand for money. I told her no and immediately another woman came over and starting bitching at me about being cheap, telling me I had to pay, that she drew that on me so I had to give something. We had just gone to the bank and only had big bills of Moroccan money so we gave her 2 euros coins just to shut her up, and the other woman gave me a dirty look and said “That’s nothing, fuck you!”. Lovely manners that one. Needless to say I never did get a nice henna like I had wanted.

Back at the hostel in the evening we smoked a lot of shisha, drank a lot of mint tea, played the drums and guitar that were at the hostel. I taught the guys to dance bachata, merengue and salsa while they attempted to teach us how to dance to Moroccan music. We spent the whole evening hanging out with the guys in the hostel because we were the only people staying there that night. They cooked delicious tajine for us and then we got our own nice big rooms for the night instead of sleeping in the 8 bed hostel dormitory. I even took an extra blanket from another bed that night. When we left Monday afternoon we were all Facebook friends and had been given 2 CDs each of Arabic music. We walked back the square, heads high like masters of the city because by that time we knew the way perfectly. We ate at the same place as the first night, and bumped into the Spaniards from the first night as well. Together we took the bus back to the airport and made it onto our Ryanair flight without problems. Actually there was literally no security which struck me as absurd. We didn’t have to take off our shoes, belts, or coats when we walked through the thingy. They didn’t look in anyone’s bags when they came out of the x-ray machine. I beeped and the woman barely patted me down and didn’t make me go though again. That’s comforting, knowing that flights from Morocco to Europe have less security than anywhere I’ve ever traveled…..

All in all, insane but fun weekend. I don’t know if I’d go to Marrakech again but I definitely think Morocco is cool and I’d go back any day, preferably to hang with the locals!

Malta

Malta is a country I’ve been wanting to go to for a long time. I’m not sure when and why Malta became a cool destination spot in my mind but thanks (or no thanks) to the new facebook timeline feature I stumbled across a post from 2007 mentioning how I wanted to go to Malta. It just seemed so cool, an island country in between Europe and Africa. And it was cool. Malta is the main island, but there are actually two others, Gozo (smaller, inhabitants) and Comino (uninhabited). Although Malta is a popular summer destination because of the beaches and surfing and scuba-diving schools, it was also pretty nice in the winter. I was originally going to go alone, but my friend Armando decided to join me, and that was actually a lot more fun because I had already gotten tired of solo traveling in Budapest. We got cheap Ryanair tickets and landed in Malta on the afternoon of January 3rd. The airport is in Luqa and we were staying in a hostel in St Julian’s which is supposed to be the cool party and restaurant town. By the time we took the bus from the airport, got dropped off in the center, found a snack (pastizzis- more on those later), and walked up a massive hill to our hostel, I had a little note waiting for me which made us wonder if we were the only ones staying in the hostel. That actually wasn’t the case, there were a few other people. My ETA had been way off so he had left, so we called him and while we waited for him to come back and let us in the hostel, we bought fruit from a random fruit vendor in this residential-looking neighborhood.

I had written down all the things I wanted to do while in Malta. My biggest interests were the ruins they have all over the island, some of them dating back 7,000 years. What I didn’t think to look up was whether we would have to book ahead to see them. Sadly for the main attraction, the Hypogeum in Paola, that was the case. They only allow 80 visitors per day and needless to say we didn’t make it. The Hypogeum of Hal-Saflieni is the only known prehistoric underground temple in the world, so I’m sure it would’ve been pretty awesome to see. We did make it to a couple of other cool ruins though. Prior to arriving I wasn’t really sure how we’d get around the island. I looked into public transportation and buses seemed to be the way to go. What I didn’t know was that they take for-absolute-ever to get from one end of the island to the other. No matter what the distance each bus took around 45 min to an hour to get between towns. My original idea of visiting two towns a day, one in the morning and one in the evening was a total fail. Despite missing out on a few things I wanted to see we ended up making it work and took some amazing pictures in different towns around the island. That first day we didn’t do much, just explored St. Julian’s a little, ate, and slept.

The following morning we took a bus to Valletta, the capital, and from there took another bus to Rabat. We explored Mdina, the walled city next to Rabat, and went to the disturbing Dungeon Museum and took pictures by the wall at the edge of the city where you could see all the way across the island to the water. We were being silly and I attempted to climb a tree, which didn’t work out so well, and Armando was walking along high walls where the other side looked like a former mote, so we got some interesting comments from Italian tourists. Armando got called crazy multiple times, “Ma, sei matto! Scendi!”.  Malta was filled with Italian tourists. Many Maltese spoke Italian as well. Most spoke at least basic English, which is one of the languages of Malta, and they spoke Maltese, their native language, which is Semitic but to me looked about half in Italian. Every sign was filled with what looked to me like gibberish and then every other word looked like Italian, it was kind of mind-boggling. In Rabat we explored Rabat and St. Paul’s Catacombs. We decided not to go in St. Agatha’s Catacombs because we figured it was more of the same and we wanted to save money. The catacombs were very cool. It was a huge labyrinth cave of holes that used to have bodies, like coffins. There were many tiny ones that the audio-guide said were for children. It was creepy but very interesting. I also liked that the audio-guides were free. Many things were like that in Malta, either way cheaper than in Europe or free of charge. For example the all-day bus pass was 2.60 euros. The public bathrooms were free and the cleanest I’ve ever seen and always had a supply of toilet paper, which is more than I can say of any bathroom in Spain (my school doesn’t even have toilet paper in the bathrooms for the kids).  After seeing Mdina and Rabat we had wanted to continue on to another city but the sun set so early, around 5pm, that we didn’t think we’d have time. Also, everything closed around 5pm so you couldn’t see any sites or museums after then anyway. We decided to check out the Dingli cliffs which I had read about. It ended up being probably the most amazing thing we saw the whole trip. We arrived at the Dingli cliffs an hour or so before sunset and the light was really beautiful. There was a view out over the water and we took tons of pictures. Then we ambled into the small village nearby and bought a bottle of wine at a butcher shop which was the only store we found open. The really nice man there sent one of his workers around the corner to get a bottle opener for us and then he leant us two real glass glasses to use even though we said we were walking back to the cliffs to watch the sunset. He didn’t mind, so we took our open bottle and the glasses and went back to the cliffs and sat freezing on a rock watching the beautiful sunset. After returning the glasses we took the bus back to Valletta and then on to St. Julian’s.

The next day, I really wanted to check out the Mnajdra and Hagar Qim Temples but because of the ridiculously slow buses we didn’t end up making it until the last day. The second day we went to a fishing village called Marsaxlokk which was a complete waste of time in my opinion. It was super touristy, the fish wasn’t even that great, and it didn’t have much else besides over-priced restaurants and a market with over-priced souvenirs. However we took some pretty pictures of the colorful boats, and ate some fresh fish, but ended up spending so much time there that we decided to head back and do Valletta tourism in the afternoon. The capital was set up in a very odd way. I knew it was a walled city but I didn’t realize that it was full of hills. Walking around the small city was all up and down enormous hills, sometimes with stairs built into the streets and sometimes without. We skipped out on the majority of the expensive museums but we did check out John’s Co-Cathedral, which had amazing marble-work in the floors. The audio-guides there were also free but so confusing that I really didn’t know which paintings they were talking about most of the time. That cathedral has some famous works of Italian painters though so I pretended like I knew what was going on. Afterwards we went to a park with a view of the “Three Cities” which are across the bay from Valletta. They are Vittoriosa, Senglea and Cospicua. Once it got dark we caught the bus from Valletta back to St. Julian’s.

Another side note about Malta. They have these amazing pastries filled with ricotta cheese and sometimes other things as well (ham and cheese, curry chicken, or peas) that are called Pastizzi. They cost less than a euro and ended up being our breakfast and lunch almost every day. We met up with an Australian Maltese guy one night through couchsurfing, even though we weren’t staying with him. Turns out he’s the rugby coach of the Maltese team. He and his Australian buddy took us out for drinks one night and we learned a valuable bit of inside knowledge which is that Pastizzi is also a slang term for a woman’s genitalia. Apparently it’s based on the shape of the pastry. Sadly I didn’t think to take any pictures of the delicious pastries as I ate them but it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out what they looked like. Obviously we found that beyond entertaining.

Our last day in Malta we crossed the island and went to the Mnajdra and Hagar Qim Temples in Qrendi. The weather was very fickle while we were there- it apparently rains only 5-10 days a year in Malta, however it rained while we were there off and on and was quite cold at night. We wanted to see the Blue Grotto as well, which I assume is something like Capri’s Blue Grotto but the wind was insane. In a very unsafe way, the area by the Blue Grotto was not blocked off, nor were any Maltese anywhere near it, so Armando and I and a few other brave tourists walked down near the edge of the water and took pictures of the waves crashing against the shore and the crazy light between the clouds before a storm. This was after we went to the temples, which luckily we made it through despite the insane wind. The temples are part of a complex of megalithic temples dating back to around 3200 BC. They were essentially giant pieces of stone, much like what I’d imagine Stonehenge to be like, placed in semi-circles, fitting so tightly that you wonder how they shaped and moved these giant blocks of rock so many years ago. I was satisfied with my trip after seeing the temples. We even tried to sneak a peak at one other temple in Paola, the Tarxien, but it had closed 10 minutes before we got there and they refused to let us in. So in our funny way, we took joke pictures peaking in and “attempting” to jump the fence.

That about sums up my trip to Malta. There are probably other fun facts I’m not thinking of, so maybe I’ll update this post later. I’d love to go back when it’s warm and check out some of the beautiful beaches, explore the rest of the island and the other two and maybe learn how to surf.

Who’s Hungary?

It’s been a long time since I made a blog post. Mostly because it seems like such a daunting task these days, not because nothing has happened. I’m going to attempt to catch things up to speed by writing about what I did for winter break. I took two trips, the first to Budapest, Hungary, alone, and the second to Malta with my friend Armando.

I took the 6 hour bus from Sevilla to Madrid because it is cheaper than the train. I spent a night in Madrid staying with a Dominican friend of mine that I had met when I studied abroad in Madrid in 2008. Originally I was supposed to couchsurf at another guy’s house but at the last minute he cancelled. The following evening I flew on Hungary’s low-cost airline Wizzair to Budapest. I had decided ahead of time that I would spend the first two nights in a calm hostel and do all the sight-seeing and the last two nights I would stay at Retox Party Hostel and, well, party for New Year’s Eve. That ended up being a really stupid decision because I ended up meeting very cool people at the first and cheaper hostel, and not meeting anyone of interest at the party hostel and it cost 3 times as much. The first hostel’s motto was “sleep like a baby in our hostel” which I thought was pretty hilarious in comparison to the name of the party hostel, Retox. HBC Hostel, the first one, was owned by a Croatian man who had lived for years in Hungary and all over the world. At first he gave the impression that he was a fatherly figure but over the course of two days he did crack a couple inappropriate sexual jokes (“What is your father’s profession? Oh I thought he was a sculptor because you are a piece of artwork”), but I think it was all in good fun. For the most part he was super helpful, polite and funny. He even took van-loads of people that were staying at his hostel for drives around the city at night to see the lights. He also cooked some spicy Hungarian dish (Goulash?) one night and even though I had checked out of the hostel that morning, he invited me to come back for the free dinner.

I saw the most on my first day in Budapest, and my tourism went downhill from there. The whole time it was gray and cold but for once in my life I had dressed appropriately and wasn’t too cold. I had on tights, two pairs of socks, jeans, long-sleeve shirt, hoodie, hat, coat and gloves. The first day I crossed the Danube river over the Chain Bridge from Pest to Buda and went up the funicular to explore Castle Hill. I saw the Royal Palace (not inside), Matthias’ Church (didn’t go inside), the Fisherman’s Bastion, the labyrinth of caves below the city that were created by thermal waters and then expanded  by man (also didn’t go inside), and I just walked around and explored that whole area which is a World Heritage Site. That took the whole morning. I can’t quite remember the order of events from the afternoon or the rest of my trip but I will mention what I did.

Basically the second day of my trip I saw a little less than the first. I saw the Parliament building but didn’t go inside. I went to one of the famous spas, Szechenyi, which was an utter disappointment. It was probably the most expensive touristy thing I did and it was miserable. Besides that, Budapest was very cheap. I spent less during the whole trip, including accommodation than I did on the flight. I had to pay for the ticket to enter the baths, wait in a line, there weren’t any flip flops to rent, the locker rooms were super confusing, there were lines and crowds everywhere, the sprint to the water (“hot” outdoor pools) was impossibly cold, and then the water was luke-warm after all that!! I lasted 5 minutes in the water before starting to freeze to death and then I made the mad dash back inside, down to the locker rooms where I dried off with the rented “towel” that was really a sheet, put back on my layers, and then stood in a long line to return the rented towel. Terrible terrible idea. I wouldn’t recommend those particular baths to anyone.

I walked to St Stephen’s Basilica and went inside after paying a partial entrance fee that was disguised as a donation. In fact, I had asked the man at the hostel if it would cost to enter and he said “No! Does it usually cost to enter a church?” And I couldn’t remember if it did. Then I got to the Basilica and there was a priest or something, I don’t really have my religious authority figures straight, who was asking for something like 350 forints, or about a euro if I remember correctly. I looked at him in shock and said “I have to pay to enter?” and he said “It’s a donation” and I said “How about 100 forints? I don’t have more” and he said “Or you can give a euro” and I told him that I didn’t have euros either, and we ended up conversing for a good 5 minutes, and I must say his smile was borderline flirtatious. He was trying to guess where I was from (He guessed France – mais pourquoi??) and in the end I flirted my way (blasphemously?) into the Basilica for 100 forints.

I also walked down Andrassy Ave to Heroes’ Square and saw the Palace of Arts and Museum of Fine Arts buildings on either side. Behind Heroes’ Square there was a giant outdoor ice rink and I was tempted to go skating but I remembered how much I detest rental skates so in the end I decided against it. Also on Andrassy Ave, I went to the House of Terror which is a house full of history (it housed Fascists and Communists and many people were tortured and killed in that very building). It is also a “memorial” to the victims now and a museum. My feedback is a mouthful to say the least. I even left a lovely note in the guestbook. First of all, there were no tour options so it was all on your own; there were pictures of people all over the walls in the inner stair-well area but it was unclear if they were the victims or the aggressors; there was a normal-sized (A1?) piece of paper to pick up in each of the 30something rooms with information about each room (the least Green idea ever- I had a stack to make a book out of by the end of it and no place to recycle) and that was the only explanation you ever received. Now, the paper was very informative about the history of each room but it didn’t explain why the museum was presented how it was. In fact, the papers had so much information that it took me over an hour to make it through the museum because I spent so much time reading the papers and way less time looking around. Each room had no connection to the next, many had multiple videos playing at once in Hungarian and only a few of them had subtitles in English. The paper was only available in English or Hungarian, but most of the tourists were from other countries, in fact I didn’t hear any Hungarian while I was in there. The noise from the TVs was unbearable at times and for me caused confusion since I couldn’t understand them. Rather than having the effect of depressing the visitor with the tragedies that occurred in that building and educating about how not to have history repeat itself it dazed and confused people. After purchasing the entrance ticket you are instructed to go to the 3rd floor, where you make your way from room to room like a maze and then down stairs until you eventually end up in the basement in former torture cells. From the looks of the guestbook, I wasn’t the only one that was unhappy with the presentation.

Two nights while I was there I met up with Nory, who had been the tour guide/entertainer in Andalo, Italy last year. Although for obvious reasons I didn’t get to know her very well then, TJ reminded me that I could contact her via Facebook to try to meet up with her in Budapest to show me around. One night we went to dinner with 5 Italian guys from Milano that she had met through couchsurfing. We went to a restaurant called Pomo D’Oro. I was drooling over the pasta menu but didn’t get to order my own because the Italians took control and ordered a zillion-course meal. The food was quite good but I was a little bummed that I missed out on gnocchi, until of course the boys paid for the entire meal and wine and grappa and then I wasn’t so bummed after all. That same night were invited by the owner of the restaurant to a club in Buda that was full of locals. The club was massive, like a warehouse, and only one floor, and still must have had thousands of party-goers. There were many tiny bars, each serving a specific kind of alcohol, but the bartenders were too busy dancing on the bar to actually serve drinks. I found that out the hard way. There were also tables of small Pringle cans everywhere! Free Pringles, now that’s something I’ve never seen in a club before. If I had brought a large purse, best believe I would have walked out of there with a lifetime supply. Since getting drinks was so hard I chose eating Pringles in the club as my man-repeller move of the night. Boy do I wish someone had been with me to witness the crowd at this club. Words cannot even begin to describe. Imagine every trashy Eastern European stereotype, 40somethings, fur-trimmed outfits, drawn-on eyebrows, and the worst American 80s music that exists. Nory was shocked that I didn’t know the words to the songs and I didn’t quite know how to explain to her that every single song that played was the end-of-the-night-you-ain’t-gotta-go-home-but-you-gotta-get-outa-here song at bars back in the States. To give an example, anyone that is up on Youtube fads may have heard about getting “Rick Rolled”. That is when you are sent a video by a friend, about some topic you may be interested in, and when you click on it Rick Astley’s One Hit Wonder “Never Gonna Give You Up” comes on with the most absurdly hilarious music video as well. Let’s just say the whole club got Rick Rolled and loved it. 

-The entire second half of this paragraph mysteriously deleted itself and I’m too annoyed to retype whatever I had written-

Not much day tourism happened the last two days in Budapest. New Year’s Eve I met up with Nory and she invited me to her University’s town Veszprém, 2 hours away. I ended up ditching the hostel and traveling with her by bus to the Hungarian equivalent of Ithaca (well not quite). I spent New Years bumming champagne off her English-speaking friends (they all study tourism) at a dorm party, and then heading to the one of two clubs that exist in that town. It was pretty fun and everyone was super friendly. The funniest thing that happened that night was learning how Hungarians celebrate New Years. Americans tend to leave home early and go out with their high school friends and celebrate the clock striking 12 at a house party or club. Spaniards celebrate at home with their family until midnight, there they eat 12 grapes, one at each chime of the clock, and then they go out and party until the wee hours of the morning with their friends. These Hungarians had actually gone back early to their University to spend New Years there with their college friends instead of in their hometowns with friends from high school. When the clock struck 12, they quickly wished each other a Happy New Years, and clinked champagne glasses, and then turned their attention to the TV, where the President came on, said a quick something, and then the National Anthem played and they all sang along. I almost died! It tickled my funny bone so much that at midnight they get all patriotic and sing the anthem and only after it is finished do they go around kissing cheeks and wishing each other a proper Happy New Year. I spent the anthem giggling and imagining what if we Americans sang The Star-Spangled Banner at gag..I mean midnight. Three hours after my New Years’ bedtime, I was up and on the bus back to Budapest, to catch the metro (2nd oldest in the world I might add) and then another bus to the airport to get my flight back to Madrid on the first day of 2012.

All and all it was a gray but nice trip. During most of my exploration I was lonely and wished I had someone to travel with, but I still managed to see most of what I had researched beforehand. At the hostel I had met some people from India, two boys from Singapore who were studying in Scotland, and some Americans doing a similar Auxiliary program in France. In the party hostel 2 days later I met a rowdy (understatement) group of Slovenian kids and group of Russians and a group of Austrians. None of them were very friendly, and I imagine since they came about 10 people deep they didn’t need to make any new friends anyway. The party hostel ended up being the opposite of what I expected. The highlight was the risqué gross artwork in my room and the fact that the staff was too hungover to help with much of anything, although to their credit they were quite friendly when they weren’t taking turns napping. One bonus of the hostel was that there wasn’t a check-out time, however it didn’t end up benefiting me since I had an early afternoon flight back to Madrid and had to get up early anyway. Oh and the fact that I didn’t even spend the last night in Budapest.

Couchsurfing

Someone a few years ago told me about this website called Couchsurfing.org where you make a profile about yourself and then you contact others if you would like to spend a night sleeping for free on their couch, or air-mattress, or extra bed or whatever while you’re traveling and then when people want to stay in your city you return the favor. It’s like a huge community and there are hosts and surfers all over the world. I made an account a few years ago but never used it. Then, while I was in Bolivia, a friend of mine lived with her boyfriend in a house with lots of couches and extra space and they hosted couchsurfers all the time. We met a bunch of cool people who were mostly backpacking around South America. That was the first time I had seen how it really works. When I moved to Spain I decided I’d participate in couchsurfing, and luckily my roommates were cool with the idea too. We started at the end of October and have been hosting people a couple of days at a time.  People send me requests almost daily, and I read their profile to see what type of people they are, send back and forth exchanges, and then decide whether or not I’d like them in my apt and if we have time and space to host them the dates that they will be in Sevilla. It has been an awesome experience so far. Everyone we have met has been super nice, neat, respectful of our apt, independent, and a couple of them have cooked for us, or brought us things, and we’ve taken them out for tapas and drinks and introduced them to our friends here.

So far our list of couchsurfers include:

10/23/11 Cameron (USA)

10/24- 10/26/11 Simon (Germany)

11/7/11 Jen and Leigh (USA, New Zealand)

11/11- 11/13/11 Luca (Italy)

11/17- 11/19/11 Sirena and Pamela (South Korea)

11/20/11 Zac and Virginia (USA)

12/1- 12/4/11 Fabio (Italy)

When I travel to Budapest in December and Malta in January I’m thinking of doing couchsurfing there. I also plan on contacting the girl from Hungary that I met in Andalo while I’m in Budapest, and in Malta I’ll be traveling with my friend Armando so we’ll have to find people willing to host us both. I’ve already contacted people about couchsurfing in Madrid in between those two trips so we’ll see how it goes. In big cities it can be hard to find people willing to host because they get so many requests a day it can be overwhelming. When I first switched my location to Sevilla I was receiving about 15 requests a day, but now it has died down a bit. I asked all of our couchsurfers about their experiences, some of them had never done it before, others had traveled all through Europe using only couchsurfing, and none of them had any bad stories to tell.

More couchsurfing in 2012:

1/20/12- 1/22/12 Laura and Milena (Germany)

1/23/12- 1/24/12 Maria and Mirjam (Netherlands)

1/28/12- 1/30/12 Alvaro and friend (Spain, Latvia)

Thanksgiving in Spain

I know it’s well past Thanksgiving but I’ve been slacking on the blog posts and thinking back, Thanksgiving here does deserve a mention. One of my roommates is an Auxiliar at a culinary arts school and when Thanksgiving was coming up one of the teachers there offered to make traditional American Thanksgiving food for her in one of his classes. He said he would make a bunch that she could take home and then we could have a dinner here. She decided we’d have a Thanksgiving party and we invited around 25 people, although sadly only about half them showed up. In fact we ate Thanksgiving food for over a week after and then finally had to throw some out because we were worried it was getting too old. I ate sweet potatoes for every meal for about 5 days, I’m surprised my skin doesn’t have an orange-ish tinge these days.

My roomie gave the teacher some recipes, and others he looked up himself, and then the class cooked us food. We then invited other Americans we knew as well as some people who had never celebrated Thanksgiving, Spaniards, Germans, Bolivians etc. The class made us 2 turkeys, 2 bags of mashed potatoes, 2 bags of sweet potatoes, 2 bags of green beans, 2 bags of stuffing and one bag of gravy and one bag of cranberry sauce. I say bags because they literally gave it to us in sealed plastic bags. It was very very strange looking. We squished the food out of the bags and served it in mix-matched bowls that probably date back decades and we had people bring beer and wine and we had a feast/party/gathering.

I’m not a huge fan of Thanksgiving food as it is but here’s my verdict on the food. The turkey was quite good, not too dry at all; the gravy, although I never eat gravy, was good; the cranberry sauce was suuuuuper tart but tasty in very small dosages; the green beans were gross because I hate green beans (I even gave them a try this time, but still gross); the sweet potatoes were really good because they weren’t too sweet, and the mashed potatoes weren’t at all like what we eat at home; they were exactly like Spain’s puré de patatas which don’t taste like they come from real potatoes. Well, don’t get me wrong, they were good, they just tasted a bit like instant mashed potatoes and they had no lumps at all and an oddly smooth texture. The stuffing was nooooothing compared to Nana’s stuffing (which I missed!) but it was good, even though in true Spanish style they added ham to it.

All in all it was a success, I explained the history of Thanksgiving which I had only really learned a few days before when I had to teach classes about the holiday to my students (slightly but not completely sarcastic comment). I told our dinner guests about what it means to “give thanks” or “be thankful” a concept which was completely over the heads of all of my students but our friends seemed to get the gist of it. There isn’t even really a Spanish translation for being thankful. The highlight of my classes was when I made my 16-year-olds trace their hands and draw turkeys. Some came out so terrible I lost my composure in class and laughed so hard I cried and brought up the worst ones to show the whole class. Really professional, I know. Anyway, besides our leftovers lasting forever, Thanksgiving is not such a distant memory because I just finished scrubbing the spilled wine off the floor yesterday. I would say we did our cleaning in stages, food that will go bad being first, empty booze bottles second, moving chairs and tables back third, and finally cleaning the obscenely dirty floor. So yes, our apt looked a bit like a Sunday after a house party for about 2 weeks. Although I did a lot of cleaning, I am thankful that the cleaning lady who comes monthly is coming tomorrow before my parents arrive!

Adventures of Clases Particulares

The title doesn’t accurately describe what this post is about. It should be called Estoy Perdida. It’s not really about the private lessons I’m giving but rather the adventure I go through each time I try to get to the home of my student for the class. I agreed to teach these classes without first looking at a map to see where they were located, I took their word for it that they were near where they said they were near. But I’m getting the feeling that Spaniards aren’t so good with distance. When you ask them for directions sometimes they will tell you “wowww that’s far, you should take a cab” and you hop in and hop out in 2 minutes and find out it would’ve been a 15 minute walk. Sometimes you have the opposite experience. Case in point, one of the houses is not at the end of Avenida de las Palmeras, it is actually the last Sevilla Capital neighborhood before you get to the closest pueblo. So, in actuality it is one bus stop away from the next town over. Lovely. The other is not a little up the road from Santa Justa train station, it is at the end of a large street Avenida Kansas City (that’s the name, seriously!) where the street turns from 3 lanes into a 4 lane highway with no pedestrian areas at all and exits leading to Cordoba. What did I get myself into!? That being said, I do like the two people I tutor, a medical student a bit older than me, and an 8-year-old girl.

I decided to make a post about this because I have now successfully gotten lost on the way to both houses. I’d also like to mention that neither of these times was the first time I went there. The first that I mentioned is in an area called Bellavista. The first time I had a lesson there the girl picked me up at the last stop of the bus 1 because I didn’t give myself enough time to do the bus transfer. To get there from my apt I take the bus 1 to the last stop, cross the street, take the bus 37 to the 3rd to last stop or something like that. I say ‘something like that’ because I in fact do not know. It didn’t work out so well last time I tried. I took the bus 1 to Prado de San Sebastian which is another location where you can transfer to many other bus lines. After walking up and down the street I finally found where the bus 37 stops. I got on the bus and took it towards Bellavista, however I had no idea how I would know which stop to get off at, and my student didn’t know either because she drives everywhere. I used Google Maps on my Blackberry for the first time (brilliant idea!) and noticed that the little blue dot moves with an arrow down the street as the bus does. Well that’s a start! But…still don’t know where to get off. Every time I looked at my map and then looked at Google Maps, I still couldn’t find the girl’s house on my map. It wasn’t until during this bus ride that I realized it’s because it is off the city map, so while I could find it on Google Maps, it was no wonder I couldn’t find the neighboring streets on my paper map. I had just thought maybe the street was too small. Nope. I asked the bus driver where the nearest stop near that street was but he didn’t know either. He asked to see the map on my Blackberry so I handed it to him under the plastic window thing that he was behind and he glanced at it while driving and still couldn’t figure out where I was supposed to get off. Finally I called the girl and we figured out together that I had passed the stop because the bus had already passed one of two hospitals in the area. I told this to the bus driver and he finally got an idea of where I needed to be as I attempted to pass on the info that the girl had told me. He told me to stay on the bus and after the last stop, which I guess was coming up, we’d go back around and he’d tell me where to get off. At the last stop I saw a sign for Dos Hermanas (the next pueblo over) and that is when I realized how far I was and that there was no way this girl’s house was on my map. I finally got off at the closest stop and she came and met me. I had spent over an hour on buses. We decided that from now on I’d take bus 1 to the last stop and she’d pick me up there like she had the first day and then drop me off back there after the class because it’s a 5 min drive for her and then I don’t have to switch buses. So that was really nice of her. That plan has been working out ever since.

My story about getting lost on the way to tutor the little girl is what happened today. For once it wasn’t raining on a Wednesday, my busiest day, the day with two private lessons. Well, it wasn’t quite not raining..it was sprinkling..but that barely counts because I was soaked to the bone the last 2 weeks because I was too cheap to buy an umbrella slash in denial that I had lost my other one (I swear it’s somewhere in my room). Ironically, I made it to the house twice in the pouring rain, but today I missed the stupid stop. I walk about 7 minutes from my apt to catch a bus on the other side of the train station. The bus goes up Avenida Kansas City (ha, that name again, kills me every time) and usually it stops a couple of times before I need to get off. Today, the bus was pretty full, but it just didn’t stop very much. Either that or I was spacing out more than I thought. Anyway I totally blew by my stop and didn’t notice until I realized we were on a real highway and then exiting the highway next to the Spain equivalent of Walmart (Carrefour Planet). I jumped off the bus thinking how glad I was that I had left a bit early today. I started to backtrack, luckily there were sidewalks near this exit. I passed BMW stores, a John Deere store full of tractors (in Sevilla? really?) and other huge stores that you find in the outskirts. I made it back to the two-level roundabout where 2 highways cross and there are a couple of exits off of them. Across the way I could see the apt building where I needed to be but there was a highway with no pedestrian area at all, and a giant wall full of graffiti that went along in front on the building. I called the mother of the girl to ask her what to do but she didn’t know and then my credito on my cell ran out. I decided to walk along the wall for a while and see if there was a place to cross but it was pretty dark and empty so I was wondering where I was going to end up. After a couple of minutes I turned around and headed back towards the highway hoping to find someone to ask near all the parked cars in front of the car stores. I asked a guy and he told me to follow the wall and eventually there is a bridge. Then, the girl’s father called me and told me the same thing. So I backtracked again and finally came to the bridge, crossed over and made my way back to the apt building. How insane, seriously, to see where you need to be but to have an enormous elevated highway and a monstrous wall in front of you. It was so annoying. Anyway, I did eventually make it. It seems I’m always 20 minutes late or 20 minutes early to every private class I teach. Sigh. Now wouldn’t it just be gravy if I got paid for travel time as well, not just the fares.

 

Valencia

I went to Valencia over the puente, or day off/long weekend around Halloween. Sadly, there’s not a whole lot to tell. That’s not to say that there is not a whole lot in Valencia, just that the two days prior I attended going-away fiestas for friends of mine moving to Madrid and we partied the night away resulting in extreme exhaustion over the weekend, combined with more partying (against my will, I swear) and all that equaled was that I barely saw any of city. Valencia seems very cool to me, it’s the 3rd largest city in Spain, it’s on the beach, city and beach, what’s not to like? Plus the language, Valenciano, is pretty cool because it’s a mixture of Italian, French, Spanish and Catalan. From the little that I saw of it, I understood almost all of it. I wouldn’t mind living there next year, since I decided I’m applying to do this teaching program again, however it’s not so easy to select your location preference. Tangent: On the application you have to choose your favorite location from 3 columns, and then label each column 1-3 ranking them in order of preference as well. Andalucia and Valencia were in the same column, so I chose Andalucia, therefore I couldn’t even choose Valencia as my second or third choice, which is really obnoxious.

Anyway, my first day in Valencia, I arrived tired, it was cold and rainy, and we spent the day running around the center in the rain looking for Halloween costumes and props. That is all I got to see of the center. I couldn’t even take pictures because A- it was raining and B- my friend and her friends were in a rush to get their costumes together before it was time to get ready to go out. Sunday was spent in recovery mode, I started catching a cold because of the rain and lack of sleep. I regret not doing anything Sunday because I really wanted to see the center, but rather than venturing out alone, I waited on other people and then we never got a chance to go anywhere. Sunday night we went to a quinceañera which is like a Sweet Sixteen party, common in Latin American countries. Monday was another lazy day although I did manage to go see the famous Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias and that is what the majority of my pictures are of (besides Halloween-related events). Monday night we went out again and I went straight from the club to the airport and back to Sevilla. That weekend made me realize that I truly am not 18 anymore. Not only did I lack the desire to go out that much or that late at night, but once out I was still tired and not into it. I do like going out for a couple of drinks or dancing, but the girls I was with that weekend were all way younger than me, and I just couldn’t hang. Next time I’m in Valencia (hopefully for Las Fallas, a huge festival where they create large statues of puppets or dolls then burn them) I plan on just doing cultural stuff!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you haven’t noticed I added extra pictures to this blog post to make up for the lack of substance.

Sevilla Fútbol Club vs. Racing de Santander

I went to see my first Sevilla FC game last night. Sevilla, like most cities, has two teams, Sevilla FC (red and white) and Real Betis (green). All my students ask me which one I’m rooting for, and I tell them I haven’t chosen yet. One of my friends is living in a homestay and the guy our age has season tickets so he got us some with a member discount which was awesome. Sevilla was playing Racing de Santander (silly name, and a team I’ve never heard of). One word comes to mind when I think of soccer in Europe- crazy. And this game did not disappoint. We arrived about two hours before the game and the streets were crowded by the stadium with people wearing red and having botellónes. There were also people purchasing beer from all the nearby bars. We got inside, and split up, the Spaniard went to his seats down by the field near the insane section, and we went up near the top. The view from our seats was great, and I was perfectly happy to be far from the chaos below. The fans in what I presume is the equivalent of the student section (the cheapest member seats) did not sit down the entire game, did not stop chanting and clapping and singing, and at certain points did start some sort of mosh-pit with excitement. The game started of with the Sevilla FC anthem which you can check out here. If you don’t know Spanish you can probably find the lyrics in English on youtube as well. It’s a pretty cool song. I find it especially entertaining/awesome that it include flamenco claps. Typical Sevilla, even the soccer games involved the crowd clapping palmas half the time. I had invited my roommate along and we just kept glancing at each other and smirking while looking down on the insane section while they sang the majority of the game. It was just so nuts and fun to watch, probably more fun than the actual game. A lot of the songs sounded like old Americans tunes and they just added a lot of “ole ole oleeeee” and “lo lo lo looooooooooooh” in there. If you want to check out the atmosphere during Sevilla’s biggest game (when the city’s two teams play each other) look at this: Anyway, Sevilla scored the first goal, followed by Racing scoring 2 more, and then the game was about to end when 4 minutes of extra time were added to the clock and Sevilla scored finally. People were already starting to leave and we were contemplating it, but I’m glad we stayed. At least they tied! The only annoying part of the game was that the players are a bunch of pussies. I thought that was just the theme of the world cup, but apparently its pro soccer in general. They just receive the slightest shove and go rolling all over the ground probably fake-crying their eyes out. The game was stopped soo many times so that both team’s players could put on a show akin to making snow angels in the grass. Half the time penalties weren’t even called. I think the game only had 2 yellow cards. Racing was really putting on a show near the end so that Sevilla wouldn’t have time to catch up, but in the end they tied up the game anyway so I was happy.

Clases Particulares: Day 1

I finally got some private tutoring lessons! Not for me, well for me, but to give them not receive them. I’ve been on the hunt for people who want me to teach them English in the afternoons after my morning school job. When I first arrived in Sevilla and was apartment hunting, I went to meet with a landlady about a room and by the time I got there for my appointment the person that had seen it before me had decided to take it. So, while the landlady was explaining this to me another lady overheard her, and a few minutes later she stopped me on the street and handed me a flier about her apartment. The problem was she was renting out the whole apartment, not by rooms, so she was mostly looking for groups of friends to move in. I was not in that situation, as I was looking alone, and I told her so. Then she asked me if I could tutor her daughter in English. I don’t even know how she knew I spoke English, she must have overheard me at some point. I gave her my number and she called me soon afterwards. Actually, she called me smack in the middle of my orientation, and when I answered I couldn’t remember at first who she was and then I couldn’t hear or understand her very well. I thought I told her to call back later, but maybe I told her that I’d call her back. In any case, I only got around to contacting her last week and she’d already found another English-speaker as a tutor. I’m not surprised, it has been a month, but I wanted to get settled in first and focus on my primary job before taking on other responsibilities. Some time last week I posted an announcement in Spanish and English on tusclasesparticulares.com advertising that I’m looking for pupils to teach. I also took down the sign I hung in the teacher’s lounge and my school and had it photocopied 92 times and put it in every teacher’s mailbox. (It was the other Auxiliar’s suggestion, I swear). I received one email from a teacher at my school, but she hasn’t followed up about meeting me in the teacher’s lounge to discuss my schedule. I haven’t heard anything from the students at my school. I wasn’t getting any hits from my ad so I was wondering if I was charging too much. I originally wrote 15 euros per hour plus transportation fees to the house (about 2 euros). In Madrid I got paid 18 euros an hour to tutor two young kids, and 30 euros an hour to teach an after-school class of like 20 five-year-olds. I guess since life isn’t so expensive down here, 15 euros seemed too much. I refused to go down as far as some of my peers, charging a measly (haha) 10 euros an hour so I chose 13 euros plus transportation. My roommate also recommended I change how my last name was listed. Here, I’ve been using just my first last name because it’s easier for the Spaniards, since my name sounds Spanish. However, my roomie pointed out that if I just use my second last name I’ll sound more foreign, more English, and maybe I’ll get more hits. Good point! So I switched it and whadayaknow the next day I received 2 emails. I now have an hour-long class with an 8-year-old on Wednesdays and the other person who email is a young woman who wanted 4 or 5 hours of lessons a week. I originally suggested 1 and a half hours 3 times a week, but she preferred 2 hours. I think this girl must be crazy. Does she know how much work she will have to put in to converse in another language for 2 hours at a time 3 days in a row? Does she know how much work I’ll have to put in? Well, I’m fine with it for a few reasons. One being so I don’t go broke. I have no problemo with 28 euros for 2 hours 3 days a week. Two, she wants to focus on conversation classes so I’m hoping she has a pretty high level already and we can just debate about interesting topics like region, politics etc. all class. We shall see. Well at least I won’t have time to spend money! The commutes will be super annoying though. Wednesdays being the worst day with 4 classes at school and 2 private classes in the evening. I added 7 hours to my 13 hour schedule so now I will definitely be busier and, knowing me, quite overwhelmed at the beginning. What, that’s only 20 hours you may say. Why no, no it’s not. I’ve been spending an unhealthy amount of time planning out lessons for my school. Ok well that may be a gross exaggeration (I’ve been spending time eating tapas and drinking tinto de verano as well), however I have been stressing over it a little too much and writing out these detailed lessons plans (a la TEFL course assignments) and now I’ll have to prepare my private lessons as well. My primary job is frustrating me a lot because of the disorganization of the teachers and the lack of communication. That, added to the fact that I’m doing 10 times the amount of work of my other Auxiliar peers because my school has an established bilingual program so they are taking full advantage. The other Auxiliars just stand in the classroom and occasionally read instructions and help with pronunciation issues. I’m not going to complain though because it is the beginning of the year, and I’m sure things will smooth out. And also, frankly I can’t think what else I’d be doing this year if I weren’t here, and being in Europe is so enjoyable I may stay another year anyway.

Today was my first private lesson with the 8-year-old girl. I told the other woman that I’d start with her next week so I’d have some time to prepare. I left my apartment 15 minutes earlier than I thought I’d need to just to make sure I could find the place. I had to walk 10 minutes to the bus stop by the Santa Justa train station to catch the bus. I had to ask a guy at the bus stop how I would know where to get off even though the girl’s mother gave me a map with the address pointed out and directions. The nice man told me where to get off while we were on the bus, but then I promptly took the wrong road. They live in a weird almost gated community-looking area with mostly fancy houses and then one enormous apartment building where their place is. There are many tiny streets with impossible-to-see signs. So as I’m walking down some unnamed road a nice warm breeze is blowing…and then it starts pouring. This week has been the first rain I’ve seen since I got to Spain. I guess I should be bragging but I feel more like whining. So as I’m jammin’ to my techno tunes and sloshing through the mini downpour sin umbrella, I’m also attempting to pull up the pdf file from my email on my Blackberry to see the map that I cleverly did not print out. My phone also only had enough credit or saldo to dar un toque to the woman, so I couldn’t even call to ask directions. That failed anyway because she did not call back. (Side note: dar un toque, or timbrar, is when you call the person and hang up after one ring so they call you back and you don’t spend your credit.) Long story short, I was late, had to ask 2 people the way, turned out I took an extended route, and I arrived 15 minutes after I was supposed to. I walk in the building as people are leaving so I didn’t buzz up and when I got to the door and rang the doorbell and knocked a bunch of times no one answered. I then called the house phone with my remaining saldo, no answer. Finally the women returns my toque and calls back from her cell saying she’s not home but her daughter should be. Meanwhile I’ve been hearing someone talking inside. Finally the maid opens the door and lets me in. I don’t know if maid is the proper term but it seems very common in Spanish households to have a woman who takes care of the kids and cooks and cleans while the parents are at work (nanny?), or sometimes even while they are home but busy. I’m not going to go into the lesson but the girl was cute, with two cute younger siblings, and since I started the lesson late, I ended late, and I got home later than expected- which is to be expected on Sevillano schedule.

Can’t wait to see what next week’s private lessons with bring! (Wee bit o’ sarcasm).

Oh, it’s October?

You wouldn’t know here in Southern Spain that it is actually Fall. Well is it Fall though? Can we really consider ourselves in that season when it’s in the 90’s (Fahrenheit) every day? Ok,it is October and Halloween is coming up, so maybe I’ll go Trick or Treating as a sweaty mess. No lie, it is hot here. And it gets hotter! Not that I’m complaining, in fact I refuse to complain. Whether like this well into the Fall is fiiiiine by me. I’d rather be hot than cold any day. My rationale is when you’re hot you can take a cold shower to cool down, when you’re cold it takes ages to warm up, especially when you are shivering and chilled to the bone. But imagine July and August here, sheesh. Even my landlords told me I can’t rent the apartment past June because they won’t be here. No one stays for the summer, they all go to the coast to the beach. Speaking of beach, everyone who knows me knows I’m not such a beach-y person. Not that lying around half-naked in public doesn’t sound appealing (not) but with my skin complexion I’m not only always going to be the palest person around but I’m also going to be the first with skin cancer *knocks on wood, crosses fingers etc* (hope not). So yea, GTL (Gym, Tanning, Laundry for those of you who aren’t avid Jersey Shore watchers) isn’t really on my list of fun things to do. However, I managed, as I do most summers, to not go swimming at all this past summer (I think). I actually love swimming I just never quite make it to the water these days. That being said, I also haven’t quite made it to a beach. Most people I’ve been talking to here in Spain have been mentioning these weekend beach trips they’ve been taking, and I decided I wanted to go as well. Some of the L and C Assistants were placed in towns on the coast like Huelva (where Sevillanos go to lay out in the sun), Cadiz (reckless Carnaval location) and Malaga (aforementioned shithole, but I will retract that statement). Originally my idea was to find the cheapest transportation to the closest beach, and lie out for a day or two. Last weekend, I went out Friday night, and was on my way out the door Saturday night when I decided I might as well stay in and go to a beach the next day. I hadn’t managed to get anyone to come with me, and I hadn’t decided where I wanted to go. I got on facebook (well let’s be honest, I’d probably been signed in for that last couple of hours at least) and began talking to Minsoo who suggested I come to Malaga where he works. Although my first impression of Malaga was less than impressive (train station to crappy hostel to airport for Oktoberfest) I decided I would go because I had a place to stay and someone to show me around. So I didn’t go out Saturday night, I attempted to go to bed at a reasonable hour and then I got up early and caught a train to Malaga. First thing we did upon my arrival was go to one of the beaches in Malaga. We went to Huelin, which was a long beach, not too touristy-looking. It was nice because there weren’t too many rocks, there were waves, and there weren’t too many people even though it was Sunday and lovely weather. I only had a towel about the size of 4 washcloths in a row that I had bought for 2 Euros at the chino shop so needless to say I couldn’t really fit my whole, or half of, my body on it. I put on my Aveda sunscreen SPF 85 (haha yes, I know, does a SPF number that high even doing anything special?) and lay out on the half towel half sand. I desperately wanted a bit of a tan, but for me it’s either burn red like a lobster or stay pale. I pretty much stayed pale, with the addition of a few zillion freckles on my face and shoulders. All in all that was a relaxing beach day, minus losing my awesome sunglasses to a wave. Bastard. Like the smart cookie that I am, I went in the water with my sunglasses on (it was bright outside!) and all was gravy at first, I didn’t go above my shoulders and I jumped the waves that came my way. It wasn’t until I decided to get out, I turned around, took two steps towards the shore, got smacked upside the back of the head by a wave, and involuntarily donated my sunglasses to Nemo and the other fishies. I also had a deja vu feeling that that had happened to me before. My friends very nicely spent quite some time looking for them (I know, good luck with that, that’s what I thought). Minsoo swore he had found sunglasses in situations like that before. No such luck. After a little more time on the beach we called it a day.

The next day, Monday, Minsoo had to work so I did the Malaga tourism thing. The Picasso museum was closed because it was Monday, but the house where he was born wasn’t. For some reason I didn’t care to pay the 1 Euro to enter the house, but I did manage to spend 6 Euros in the gift shop. I don’t know…I do have a picture of the outside though, so that still counts, I can say I’ve been there. The I walked by the Cathedral, which was closed as well, or at least I couldn’t find the open entrance. Then I took a man-made hike up the side of a hill to check out the Gibralfaro castle. The Alcazaba part was closed as well and I would’ve liked to see that. The view while walking up, and once on top and in the castle was amazing. It literally gave me a whole new perspective of Malaga. I took tons of pictures of the 360 degree view of the city, the mountains, the beaches and the ocean. I took many pictures of myself, you know the kind, my face, small bit of background view, and long pale outstretched arm. I also managed to get some Portuguese, German, French and who knows what other tourists to take a picture of me here and there. They all sucked at taking pictures though. All castle floor and me, and minimal pretty view in the background. After my tourism I met up with Minsoo and we went to the more touristy beach, Malagueta, that is only a 15 minute walk from his house. Not too shabby, eh? We ended up in a lovely spot between 5 topless thong-wearing young women, dark as leather. I couldn’t imagine they could get much more tan. Euro-beach style all the way. I had purchased an overpriced and over-sized towel (to make up for yesterday’s sandy experience) and lay out as if on a king size bed. It was late afternoon, so I didn’t put on sunscreen (tsk tsk still, I know). I did end up a bit tan, but I think that was more from my walk up to the castle in the midday sun. It was quite windy, so after the sun starting going farther down, we left the beach. I took a train back to Sevilla that night. Part of me thinks it would be awesome to live on a coastal town, but also there were just way too many tourists, and it just felt like vacation. I wouldn’t want to get up and go to work, and I’d probably be lying on the beach every day instead of writing lesson plans.  In any case, it was a good time, and I’m tempted to check out another beach this weekend. However, the forecast says it will be only in the 70’s (shock!) this week, and may even be cloudy or rain on Sunday and Monday. (Not to brag, but what does that mean again?) So we’ll see…Halloween weekend I’m planning to be in Valencia, another coastal town but farther up North. They have beaches as well, imagine if it’s possible to go to the Beach on the first day of November! Now that would be cool.