The good the bad and the ugly (not eduardos)

I had my first taste of the ugly side of students at school. It really wasn’t all that horrible, but I must say that I must have been pampered with better students in the rest of my classes. The disdain with which I held for one of my classes today was quite heavy. I wanted to stomp them and wipe them off at the doorstop. These classes were the “compensatoria” classes. This means that they are repeats, and are normally mixed bunch of slow learning kids from “barrios bajos”, or better put for my English readers, lower class neighborhoods. While it might be true that these miscreants do not understand or speak English, I begin by telling them that I will slow down, or repeat myself if they need. This device of classroom assistance functions comparatively as well as an infant would while fighting Mike Tyson.

Instead of asking me to repeat myself or slow down, the majority of students turn to their friends and laugh saying in Spanish that they don’t understand what I am saying. They don’t try, they don’t care, and they don’t know anything. I eventually told them that I could stop if they did not want to listen to me anymore, and that I had come a long way to help at their school. The teacher was not doing an adequate job of controlling them, and instead of yelling at them in Spanish tried to use English. Whether they understood her or not did not matter. She needed to use her harsh Spanish tongue to really make them feel bad. I did a good job of this by letting them know I was not happy with them, and by the end was very glad to be done. Two nice girls in the front listened and answered. I wanted to shake their hands.

On a lighter note, I went running today around Logroño today in the dreary drizzle, got my first international bank card, and had a nice dinner with 2 friends. Good stress reliever. BTW, Spanish women are quite beautiful and funny, especially if you can understand them.

La Musa

I have found funk to be one of the greatest genres ever. This is not to be confused with some newfound thought manifesting itself for the first time in my mind, but rather a recent realization. Compared to bad Spanish house music, or perhaps bad Spanish pop/rock, I can easily say that James Brown, or even newer affiliates such as Jamiroquai head to the top of T’s charts much quicker. A bar close by called La Musa hosts funk every night, as far as I am concerned, and offers a small dance floor filled with older Spaniards who languidly thrash their bodies about and phonetically mouth words to songs that they do not understand. The funniest part about this bars’ two floors of entertainment exists on its second floor. Downstairs is good music and a mixed crowd, whereas the second floor is home to flashing lights and awful techno which fuels the gay bar that it really is. I normally go with my friend Chris, from Chicago, and other hand-picked folks from around Logrono. Some good photos should come up soon of our unparalleled dance moves.

Aside from L-town business, I have decided to go to Oviedo next weekend to see my friends Collin and Mary. There are apparently some city-wide parties or celebrations that weekend, and friends make the whole trip worthwhile nonetheless. I am very excited to get out of Logrono on my first weekend trip, and am leaning towards San Sebastian on the following weekend. I hope to indulge in some of the Spanish beaches before it is far too cold to attempt any form of beach trip.

The weather has already turned here, and the once green verdant leaves on the trees outside my balcony are already wilting and losing their ability to keep up with the temperature. A scarf and sweater are currently necessary. I can’t wait to see snow for the first time in Spain

filthy brittish friends

Reward : A meal cooked by me, WITH Texas Pete, and a Mahou

Eduardo Thompson shall be on the wanted list until I receive my Texas Pete!

It is being held hostage by him in Madrid, near plaza del sol. If you see a wiry pale British chap with an armful of outerspace math and physics books, and a blue popeye shirt, or green messed up shoes, shove him to the ground and demand that the Texas Pete be returned to its rightful owner.

Hablando por los codos

So far, I’ve found that my teaching position is altogether in itself quite a strange experience. There is supposed to be another girl at the school, but she is having problems with her passport, and won’t be here for a few more weeks. This results in a game of hot potato at el instutito La laboral. I am that hot potato, and the teachers are passing me around like mononucleosis… sans interchange of saliva.

I walk briskly, but outrageously confused from classroom to classroom. With my laptop case and nifty memory stick, which has a master class powerpoint in its tightly packed electrical circuitry, I enter the class and am ogled like some piece of meat by 17 year old girls. Just kidding, that doesn’t really happen. Presenting brilliant word art from Microsoft Office, I stun the classes each time with the number of states in America. I ask them to guess how many states there are, while a picture of the country is up, and receive wonderful guestimates as 38, 27, and 55. To follow up I give them a picture of North Carolina, and ask that they guess how many counties there are (just to keep the whole math and language thing going). The three regions of my beautiful state are displayed with 2 large clouds for the mountains and coast, and a big happy face for the piedmont. Efficiently giving the smiley face a googly eye by putting a circle around Forsyth County, I usually get a laugh from the crowd. I show pictures of each region, and of course of Winston-Salem. “Now, who likes to go skiing” – queue Sugar Ski Mountain. “So who here likes the beach?” – queue Emerald Isle and the Outer Banks.

The difference in classes that I am placed in is quite diverse. Bachiller 1, 2, secretariano (people studying to get jobs as paper pushers I guess) The range of ages goes from 17-20somethings. Spanish students are quite shy, and are ashamed to speak another language in front of their classmates. I try to comfort them by telling them by saying, look where I am, and I wasn’t afraid to talk (god knows, we all know that) Next week, I will be taking on more hours. I have already been approached to give private classes. Logrono is really starting to warm up to me, and I to it. Monday is el festival de Pilar. This place will be locked down, no school, all party, get ready to get wild Logrono.

bologna bocadillos

Walking from Logroño to La Laboral sucks. Big time. I found out the hard way tonight that the buses in Logroño stop running at MOTHER FUCKING 10:30 at night. Now; if I had found an apartment by now this would not have been a problem, however, this is not the case. I just walked from the center of L-town all the way here, and it was a solid hour + walk. I even attempted to hitch a ride with my wonderful genetically prone hitching thumb. This yielded no gain. A woman slowed down once, and put her blinker on. That was a total tease, and as I ran towards her car, I realized that she was only pulling into her gated house.

I had left my memory card in the computer, so, no photos. My Ipod was in my room, so, no music. My water bottle was empty and I was quite thirsty. *Some guy is blowing the shit out of his nose in a bathroom somewhere near me, and definitely not into a tissue. Anyways: the whole time that I am walking back I am thinking, “Well Thomas you’ve gotten this far, but what if the school is locked?” Well, it was. I had to jump the gate to get in. Thinking past this, long before I arrived, I thought “What if the residence is locked and your key does not open the main doors?” Well, that was not the case, thank God. I eased in the door to unload my stress on the security guard, who thought it was funny and of course said “no te preocupes” (don’t worry about it). After putting my key incorrectly in a few wrong doors in the dark, no doubt scaring a couple of sleeping students, I flopped down for this wonderful session.

Now I sit, staring at this delicious bologna bocadillo that has been sitting in my room for some 8 hours, deciding whether or not I want to eat it.

Great

(btw this was not even late, and I had not been drinking)

Freshly Planted

Logroño is my new home.

The convention at the hotel was long, and quite boring, but some of the speakers offered good humor, information and insight. After a few workshops where random Spanish people talked at us about various aspects of teaching-all of the different nationalities had their own meeting. Ours was run by a tall woman with superduper shoulder pads who was HILLARIOUS. She went over not getting arrested and who to contact if things went wrong whilst dropping familiar social humor and brief anecdotes of prior trouble makers.

With free lodging, food and a great way to meet people, the hotel proved to be quite a good time. The last night in the hotel was a relaxed evening. Collin and Mary (new friends) came to my room for wine on the balcony and we told stories about wild times in the states throughout the night. They will be living in Oveado, which is approximately 3-4 hours away by bus, and I will be going with them to Amsterdam sometime in November hopefully.

After the reunions at the Hotel Convención ( a four star hotel in Madrid ) all of the Americans, Germans, Austrians, Aussies, Brits, Canadians, Italians and I am sure I left out a country or two, regardless, all headed to our respective regions. My bus ride was a quick 4 hours where I met some other Riojan bound teachers from around the world. Traveling is quite possibly the greatest thing ever.

Logroño is not a huge city, rather quite small, but is home to some 150,000 people. It looks like the entire city is nothing but apartments. There are nice parks like El Parque de Ebro- a large park alongside the Ebro river; and El Parque de Carmen-quaintly situated in the middle of the city with plenty of large trees, playgrounds and a gazebo/restaurant/bar. The Casco Viejo is an old and historic part of town with small winding streets lined with bars and pinchos (tapas). It is very fun and cheap to go from bar to bar to snack and have a beverage. The city has good energy, and everyone LOVES to eat.

Tomorrow I will go to my school, La Laboral, for the first time, and temporarily move into the boarding school residence until I find a flat…. Fo freeeee. My teacher Nuria is very nice and likes wine and cigarettes, a lot. I will also be opening a bank account, and getting my N.I.E. (numero de identificación extranjero) or simply put, Green Card. I will be a quazi citizen for the first time in a foreign country. Viva Logroño!

futbol

After a few missed emails, I finally was able to meet up with Reed and his girlfriend Bridgette, but even this was a difficult process as I could not find the cervezaria in which they were eating. After catching up with the two of them, we met up with the Brits by Plaza del Sol, and then went for some tapas up the road. The Sangria was delicious and strong.

Cramming into the metros like sardines, we funneled through the doors and recounted seeing the Japanese officers whose sole job is to shove people into the metro cars there. Exiting the subterranean station at the stadium, we were confronted with thousands of people swarming into the arena. The energy was pulsating and we could hear the crowd already roaring from within.

After a quick beer, and the purchase of a cheap jersey, we headed in and climbed forever to our nosebleed seats. The first half was weak, no goals. The second half was chalk full of three great goals, and Real took the match somewhat easily after they began their roll. The loudest the arena got was, surprisingly enough, when the crowd didn’t like a call that the ref made, and everyone was bickering and shouting. Ed and I thought this was quite funny. Hearing the cheers of these some 80,000 people was amazing, and I am definitely glad that I went.