Birthday

Today's my son birthday. Ten years old to the day.
It was a bit sad without the usual party and guests. He took some chocolate bars to share with his classmates and he reported that some of them tried to cheat getting twice in the line to get an extra bar!! There was one little Mr. Greedy who tried five times!! Total success.

Later on we had his favourite food for tea and a delicious chocolate and hazelnut cake that we bought from the local Pastisseria (where they make all sorts of breads, cakes and sweetmeats). Off course he had some presents and he loved the day.

In special days like these I feel the distance more acutely, I feel that we're twice separated, first from family and Argentineans friends and now from the British ones. I miss you both!

New car!

We took it for a test drive and it runs like a dream, it's very quiet and it feels slightly bigger than our old Daewoo Matiz. Nice car, small enough for me to feel comfortable.

The only down side is the colour, a most boringly dark gray.

Due to the paperwork, we gave a small deposit and the agency will be doing all transfer of ownership and so on and we'll collect it next Monday.

Used vs. New cars (this is for car loving Carlos)

Yesterday we spend the whole afternoon going from car seller to car seller and we collected loads of information about diferents cars and makes. We even checked cars we didn't consider before (such as the smallest of the KIA, the picanto) or double checked on the Smart which I love but was discarded because it's too small.

In the process we discovered and fell in love with the Lancia ypsilon (pictured here).
Nobody does design as the Italians do, and this little car is just gorgeous. The whole interior was designed by Dolce&Gabanna (my favourite designers after Versacce died) in a very retro style and very glamourous. Off course it's way out of our budget as it cost near 20,000€ (around 14,000 pounds), not the most expensive car ever but totally out of reach right now. So, just to keep the dream alive, I'll place it first in my wish list on Amazon. You never know.

Back to reality.
After tea we compared several cars within our budget and decided that we're going to get an almost new Nissan micra boringly gray but apparently reliable, cheap to run etc. We'll take it for a ride on Monday and with any luck we can have it on Friday.
To buy a car is a lot of hussle here in Spain with loads of paperwork to do, so, we'll count ourselves lucky if we manage to have it by the end of the week, specially a week with a fiesta in it.
I'm also considering taking some extra driving tuition, if I can afford it, just to be on the safe side. People drives crazily here, altough they're more careful since they implemented the penalty of taking point out system on driving licences as they do in the UK.

Sant Cugat Rugby Club

First thing in the morning we went to P.'s rugby club where they were having an annual meeting.

Rugby's not a very popular or even a known sport (most Spaniards confuse it with American football) so this is one of two clubs in the whole of Catalunya and even then, it's rather small for British or Argentinean standard. However the club's building is quite new, the field has only a couple of years and is made of artificial grass (visually stunning, from afar it looks like an emerald green oasis in the middle of the general brownish hills). Apparently the club's old place was bulldozed a few years ago when the local council built a motorway, and as part of the agreement, the council gave new lands and it's slowly building a completely new club.
Off course, the players and the parents of the younger kids run and keep the whole thing going. As usual, there's a small core of people doing all the work and they're always in need of money and help.

There's not much we can do regarding to getting money or finding sponsors, we don't know a soul here yet, so I thought that we can help out creating and maintaining a web site for the club, so I offered "the husband" knowledge and expertise and my work. They loved the idea and told us that the council offered to have the club web page in their site and they'd love to share the job, so we'll be in charge of creating and maintaining the section for the younger kids.

Next Wednesday we all going to Perpignan to watch the kids play, so we'll take pictures and videos to start the season's page up and running as soon as we can.

I've no idea how to create or maintain a web page, so I'll learn it as i go along. And I'll tell you the address so you can see it as soon as we have something running.

By the way, next Wednesday is fiesta again. No work or school that day so we'd be able to travel to France to watch the match. It's the day of the dead, so people go to the cemetery to take flowers to their dead. Part of the tradition for this time of the year is also to eat panellets, baked sweet potatoes, roast chestnuts and sweet wine. You can see the panellest here, they're delicious and very easy to prepare, you can check the recipe if you click on the highlighted word.

I'm a firm believer of the old adage "when in Rome, do as the Romans do" so, we'll be eating panellets the whole week. One has to support local traditions.

One of the parties bidding for office on the incoming election proposed a card for immigrants where they'll get point for positive actions toward integration. Although I think that the idea is pure electoral nonsense, I wonder how much points we'd get for eating the panellets.

Another interview

Yeap.
This time for a job with Avis the car rental people who need somebody with languages. Next Tuesday.
I think that for every 6 times i send my cv and stuff, I get 1 invitation for an interview. So, if things keep on going like this I shall be able to find my dream job in before Christmas.
Not bad.

According to local newspapers, the unemployment is at its lowest since 1979. Let's hope it'll keep this way for a long time.

Zulu time!

I just typed "Zulu" into google and, off course, the true was out there in a second.

So, there's something called Zulu time and it's used by the forces.

The only homework I assigned to my students was to watch their videos set in the English language with whatever subtitles they wanted. I told them that in this way they'll learn words and even idioms without realising and they didn't laughed the idea off, however, they did set their videos and they are learning! I'm so proud of them!!

So, just for you to learn:

The world is divided into basically 24 time zones. For easy reference in communications, a letter of the alphabet has been assigned to each time zone. The "clock" at Greenwich, England is used as the standard clock for international reference of time in communications, military, aviation, maritime and other activities that cross time zones. The letter designator for this clock is Z.

Times written in military time (24 hour format) are four digits, such as, 1830Z (6:30 pm) with the Zulu suffix. Note that the phonetic alphabet is used for the letter Z (Zulu). This time is usually referred to as Zulu Time because of the letter assigned to this time zone. Its official name is Coordinated Universal Time or UTC. This time zone had previously been called Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) but was replaced with UTC in 1972 as the official world time standard changed. While GMT is based on Earth's rotation and celestial measurements, UTC is a based on cesium-beam atomic clocks. The two clocks are rarely more than a second apart as leap seconds are applied to UTC.

zulu time??

Today I was teaching my intermediate students about time, how to tell the time, days, months, years and language related to time. I told them that in English the clock has 12 hours and you add am/pm if needed and that mostly the military in US movies use the 24 hours clock such as 12hundred hours.
So they told me that they've seen a movie when the hero said in the radio something like "14hundred Zulu", and they asked me what does that means.
I told them that I know that Zulu is code for the letter z, the same international code that has Charlie for the c or tango for the t. However it doesn't make any sense to tell the time plus a zed. I also told them that I'd try to find it out anyway.

any idea?

International player

Next Wednesday P's rugby coach is taking the children abroad to France to play against another club.

Rugby is still a minority sport here in Spain so the closest club they can find to play with is in Perpignan, France. They're hiring a coach and they're going to spend the whole day there. I wish I could go but I'm not sure if I'll be working that day. Thinking about it, what about school? Are they mad? mmm... unless, next Wednesday is another fiesta day for whatever reason, I need to ask.

It sounds all very exiting until you realise that going to Perpignan from here is like going to Cardiff from Bristol, just a short trip. But France is and all together different country from Spain, while Wales and England... well... I hope that dear George (totally Welsh) isn't reading this blog nowadays .
The thing is that according to international rules, a player's "home" team is the one where they played their first international match. So I'll guess P. will be forever bound to play for Spain from now on and in future world cups. So I'll have to cheer for Spain? I need to ask this too.

Plans, jobs and cars

On Monday I had my second group of students. They've been having some classes with a Spanish teacher but she left the agency because she had a full time job in a school. So in theory they knew some English and they were not completely beginers. The owner of the agency I'm working with assured me that they knew some grammar at least.

HA!!

Nope. None. Nothing.

So there I was with a group of 9 adults with no English whatsoever and with 2 hours to fill. My worst nightmare (related to this particular job).

So I started by asking them loads of questions, what kind of job they do (mostly administrative) what does the company do (TNT, transport goods), what do they want to learn (how to calm some angry costumers on the phone long enough to be able to transfer the problem to the person who actually does speak English).
And on we went. When there's no knowledge to start with the options are unlimited. I started by teaching them greetings and excuses. We'll go from there.

The 2 hours disappeared quickly enough but at the end I realised that I had sweated like a pig. It was stressful but I think it was to be expected for the first time and that it'll get better. The guys are friendly and chatty enough and that does made a difference.
I have 2 more hours tomorrow with them.

All in all I took 10 hours a week with this language agency. The owner keep on asking me to take at least 6 hours more but I don't have a car yet and to commute using public transport takes ages and it's just not worth it right now. Ten hours a week would give me more or less the same amount that I was earning in Filton so money wise that's ok for now, plus it gives me time to search for a more permanent kind of job.

I feel a bit more settled now.

As my luck has it, it just happens that this weekend there's a second hand car fair here at Sabadell, so we'll try and buy the car there and then.
We disagree in the kind of car that we'd like to have. "The husband" like a medium size sporty mean-looking machine, probably French. I'd rather have a cute pink tiny girly car, such as a Smart or the new beetle. The smart only seat two and we're 2, so, that rules it out until and unless we have 2 cars. P, my son, used his veto vote for any car with just 2 doors, he said it's too uncomfortable to go in and out them, so that rules out the new beetle.

So we've been checking cars, comparing them and even reading the motor section of the newspaper lately but still no agreement.

I'd be interesting to go to the fair and see what do they actually have there and how much do they cost. I'll let you know.

Today was my free day, no classes, so I spent it looking for jobs, sending my CV and doing the laudry and some shoping for the week. Nice and quiet.

Local campaigning

In a few days there's going to be local parliamentary elections. Catalunya has a status akin to Scotland after devolution so they have their own parliament and they're pretty independent from Spain, a fact that provoke endless arguments for nationalists all around Spain.
There's three major political forces here and everybody's out in force canvassing all around the area. There's the usual stuff: tv adds, streets posters, junk mail and, this still being Spain, public fiestas.
So we went for a stroll today, a lazy Sunday afternoon after siesta time and it seems that everybody is out and about.
In the central square there was a band playing traditional music and some folk dances, first some local groups dressed in traditional costumes did some fairly elaborate dancing and then the band played and everybody was invited to dance. It's really sweet to watch people of all ages joining hands in a circle (and sometimes a circle within a circle) to dance the traditional local sardana.
I'll try to add a short video that I recorded with my mobile as soon as I manage to learn how to do it.

There was also a small fair with local produces (great ham!) and the usual people seated at cafes while the kids skate or cycle on the roads closed to cars for the day.

The weather, as usual, was fantastic, a slightly cold Autumn breeze but warm enought o be comfortable wearing a light denim jacket.
Overall: absolutely lovely. One can get use to this easily!

Wish you were here.

Another interview

I've got a call asking me for another interview, this time for a full-time job as a bilingual secretary. I went and they did offered me the job but I turned it down. The salary is far too low for a full time job, at around 900€ is a low salary for local ststandards.
However, the experience of this interviews is a positive thing, it not only get me used to interviews but helps me knows exactly what I want, which is always a good thing.

In the domestic front we had a new milestone: my son is taking the bus and he's travelling home after school all alone. He loved the sense of independence and I was more anxious than he was during this first week. The pilot week went without a hitch but it'll take some time for me to stop worriyng.
As part of this new travelling, we bought him a mobile phone. I still think that children under 14 shouldn't have a mobile phone but we really need it in this case, obviously more for my peace of mind than anything else. P loves his phone and we made sure to tell him that is not a toy and that it's also part of his (incoming) birthday presents.

I'm a teacher now!

Well... I had my first 4 classes. I did have a plan for my classes: firstly, I assessed the level of my students (just to make sure they didn't know more than I did!!), that took a good chunk of our time; secondly I asked what do they want from me and our time together and finally we agreed on a plan for the classes for them. On our second class I brought relevant material and we went on from them.

So far I have two classes of 2 students each, one group level is beginners and the other is intermediate, surely they'll keep me on my toes.

Not bad for a clueless first time teacher. Not that they're going to know the difference unless they read it here!!!!

My boss called them later on to gather feedback and they loved me!! They think I'm funny and that they'll learn a lot from me without getting bored. My boss is pleased and asked me once again to take 10 more hours a week and I said no one more time. I don't really enjoy teaching and I'm still looking for a more settled job, maybe full time. So, I'll keep this job going on as a sort of security net while I'm looking for something else.

The only bad thing today was the public transport. I have to travel to their company site which is outside town in and industrial park, just 10 minutes away from home with a car and plenty of parking room, but more tricky to reach using public transport, and it take me a whole hour. I need a car.

My next 2 groups are next Monday and Tuesday, wish me luck.

I start tomorrow!

They called me to ask if I can start working tomorrow with 2 classes, one for intermediate and one for beginners.

poor souls.

Driving licence

First thing this morning I went to the local DVLP to exchange my British driving licence for a local one. I checked their web page to make sure to bring with me all the papers they need, and just to be extra sure I took a few extras with me, just in case plus on my way there I photocopied everything. Finally it seems that I'm getting into the spirits of the Spanish bureaucracy and i just needed to go back home once for a paper that i did manage to miss.

(Here there are scarier words than "Spanish inquisition", the local version of the Monty Phytons could scare the ghost out of people here by jumping and saying that you'd never expected the Spanish bureaucracy)

So, after just 4 hours of queuing and getting to know the security guard, I did manage to deliver all my paperwork and they said that it can take up to 2 months for me to be able to exchange licences.

The security guard is an ubiquitous figure in any public building, they're fully armed, probably to be able shot at the queues when people go into bureaucracy rage and they rule the place. Treat them nice and they'll guide you around the mazes and tell you what you need and where to go. Rub them the wrong way at your own peril. I even saw one send somebody to the very back of the queue for an unknown reason.

(how do you pronounce "ubiquitous"? this is one of those words that I read but never really heard or even try to say out loud)

So it just happened that after I chated politelly with the security guard while I was in the queue, and when he learnt what I wanted to do, he sent me straigh to the second floor and when I had to go home and once I was back, he kindly scorted me to the apropiate floor. That was really nice and probably save me a few visits there.

I don't really know how all those Britons who retire here manage to do all this papers, quees and what-have-you without even speaking the language. I've spend lot of time since I arrive here doing just that and geting all our documents in order.

Whatever. Now I can drive with my British licence plus a piece of paper saying that my local one will arrive one of this days.
Now I need a car. And a map.

Got it!

I manage to arrive on time to the interview and I dressed just as usual: £2 jeans from Tesco (one of the major supermarket in the UK), local supermarket's ssport shoes no makeup.
It's a small language centre, they do translations, interpreting and corporate language teaching.
We had a chat and the lady who owns the place offeredme the job on the spot. She actually begged me to get 20 hours a week and I'm not exaggerating here... well.. not more than usual anyway. She didn't beg but she did offer me 20 hours a week.

The problem is that she wants me to teach English, businessEnglish to adults and I'm not sure I can do that. Just imagine my students going to the States and asking to see the big "skycrappers", or in restaurant ordering "smashed potatoes, to mention only a couple of my most famous mistakes and not to mention that I'm never sure when to use on, in, at etc. Just imagine their writing if they have to learn it from me!!
The blind leading the blind.

The job also involves a lot of driving around hopping from company to company given classes in differents places and I don't have a car yet, not even a local driving licence.

I was ever so honest with her in the interview and told her that I've never taught English before but she tut-tuted me and said that they're desperate for an English teacher and offered extra euros more for each travelling I'd have to do!! Maybe she though I was negotiating or being just modest (as if!). We didn't even have a chat in English, for all she knows I could be totally lying.

So I did the only thing that I could politely do and graciously accepted the job but only 8 hours a week to start with and after a while we'll evaluate how things are going and we'll see.

I start on Friday.

Job interview!

Wow. Today I've got a mail asking me to call them in order to fix a date and time for a job interview.
I'm not sure if this is from the same people who called me a week ago. If it is from them, this actually take the meaning of the infamous "manana country" to new lows. If this is for another job aplication that I did over the web... well, this is even better!

Anyway. I've just called them and I've got myself a job interview for tomorrow. Now, the question is: what should I wear?

Sporty Sunday

One of the, many, reason that allegedly brought "the husband" to live here is that the weather in funky but rainy Bristol doesn't make him feel like exercising and thus explaining why he was turning into a coach potato.
HA! I'd always though it was the lamest excuse ever and told him so in so many words.

So, I don't know if the reason was actually true or he just want to win one over me, whatever... Earlish this morning, (for a Sunday that's it), he woke me up and dragged me out to take the bus to a local sports club of some sort on the outskirt of town. A brand new, sparkling sports club with two swimming pools (one heated and indoors), state-of-art exercise machines and eerily and totally empty; but for the doorman there was no sign of life in the whole club.

The sun was shining as it only does it in August in Bristol, I mean, a t-shirts and sunglasses sort of day, in mid-October!! It was actually too cheery for me, as you know, I'm definitely not an early bird.

The plan was for the three of us to play paddle tennis, a sort of racket sport that was very popular in Argentina when we used to live there. I bough two Sunday's newspaper just to make sure that I could have something to retire to in case the playing was too much or too boring, after all, I am searching for a job. Anyway, and believe me I was the first to be surprised, I didn't need them at all. We fought about the rules a lot, but it didn't really matter because we had to struggle just to keep the ball going, we're such klutz!
(am I being enough of a Newyorker here, Lloyd?)
The weather was just perfect, warm enough to enjoy ourselves, breezy enough to keep us just on the good side of warm. Sunny and nobody was around to see me making a fool of myself (not that I care anyway).

We play for around 3 hours, on an off, and had a great time. The club closed at 2pm (isn't it silly to close a sport club on a Sunday?) so we left just in (Spanish) time for lunch, which we took just outside a tapas bar in the Sabadell rambla, next to hone.
The guys want this to be our new Sunday activity and i couldn't agree more.

I just hope that tomorrow I'd be able to walk!

Such a lovely day

P. (my son) went to his rugby training this morning, as he's been doing every Saturday, but today it was extra special because for the first time ever he went all by himself. I mean he actually got a lift in one of the coaches' car together with other 6 kids (big people's carrier).
At around 9:30 in the morning, he walked 3 blocks and waited outside the coach's flat together with the other kids until he was taken to to the club and he was back at around 1pm.
This is a first. One of those steps toward independence that every mum both dreads and dreams about.
It was about time for the little one to get more independent, he's almost 10 years old; and now I want him to be able to travel from school everyday as well, even though his school is a bus ride away and in the next village (and not a school bus but a local, public one).
I feel much more comfortable with this in Spain that I felt in England. Not sure why and even not sure if this corner of Spain is really more safe than the west-side of olde England. It's all about perception of the reality. In England children just don't go around by themselves, here they do and you can see them everywhere.

Also for the first time in a long time, "the husband" and yours truly had a long lazy, quiet week-end morning to spend in bed., mostly. Nice!

After we all three had lunch, we decided to have an impromptu visit to Barcelona's city centre. We took the bus instead of the tube and had a lovely half and hour ride there.
As usual, the ramblas in Barcelona were packed with tourist and locals, this been a long weekend here. It's always terribly busy but not in a hurry-hurry, frowning, hectic sort of way but in a leisurely strolling, touristic kind of mood.
It's such a beautiful city!
I wouldn't actually like to live in the centre of Barcelona, far too busy and crowded for a day-to-day life, it'd be like living in Disneyland! But I'm considering myself really lucky to be able to take a bus ride and being in the hub of everything. I started to enjoy this.

We find the cutest shop ever, they only sell hand-made chocolates and jolly good ones. We also founded a shop selling Argentinean stuff and we bought some biscuits we hadn't had in a long time.
Barcelona is full of one-of-a-kind, little shops, selling everything from key rings to sex toys but my absolutely favourites are shoe shops. Now they started to display boots of every kind imaginable and I find myself lusting aver them everywhere i go. Spain is one of the stronger shoe producers in Europa and is currently struggling to keep the industry afloat amid the entry of cheaper products from China. The shoes are wonderful, lovely design and you a big array of prices and styles. I can't wait until I earning enough money to buy myself a few. That'd be a treat! (there's a link on the top of this paragraph to a site showing more about the shopping experience in Barcelona).

Are you still intent on visit me here?
You did promise. Actually all my friends and even some acquintances did promise to visit me and I'm sure love to show off this place.

Glynnis, are you appling for your passport yet?

No interview - too bussy to mind

I actually started checking my e-mail for the job interview the minute I've got home. . Even before I managed to go to the (much needed) loo.

None.

Never.

If they've got my mobile number, they got my e-mail address.
So I can only think that the guy wasn't happy with me don't understanding his Catalan in the first place so he changed his mind and didn't send me the address by mail.
Or that they're not computer literate and they need me more than they can imagine.
Whatever!
I don't have the time or the energy to think (or mourn) about that job now, my plate is as full as it can be right now.

Earlier today we signed the contrato de arras for the flat. In it we agreed to lose the deposit money (nearly 12,000 pounds) if we can not buy the flat in a reasonable time (we've got until December the fifth to find a mortgage) but we have a way out in case no bank here trust us enough, so the contract also clearly say that the estate agents agreed to find us a mortgage lender able and willing to give us a mortgage in reasonable conditions.
God knows exactly what "reasonable conditions" actually means in Spain, so my job for the next few weeks will be to find a lender and get us a mortgage.

By now, you know that to get a phone line installed at home in the middle of a middle-sized town took us more than a month and a number of increasingly annoying phone calls... well... then you can start to imagine the pain that is going to be to get a mortgage. For instance: you can forget all about fixed rates, they don't exist here. Luckily we have a third of the value of the house as a deposit, so I can somehow confidently write that it cannot to be that hard.
Although I have the nagging feeling that I'm being really naive here.

We're committed to buy the flat now and it's my job to find a good mortgage package with the best interest rate available. ASAP.

Where's the fast-forward button of my life?
I just know that all this working, worrying, heaving and puffing will be over somehow, someday and then we'd be looking behind with amusement and laugh at the insanity of it all. Now, however, I just want to curl down under the bed with chocolate.

By the way, Glynnis darling, you're turning me into an alco-choco-holic, the lovely drink that you got for me is getting even better now that it's Autumn here.

Copyright

My storytelling must be getting really good.
Tonight, after I finished telling my bedtime story to my son, all made up as I go, of course; he turned all starry-eyed and said: -"wow, mummy, that was brilliant, can I have the copyright to the story?".
I was surprised and amused. It turned out that he want to have the copyright in order to tell the story himself in a Kirby interactive web page that he reads.
I'm touched!