Living in Spain

I´m going to rant a little bit today about something that has been building up.

In the past months, because of construction workers, electricians, plumbers, carpenters, internet suppliers, and many others, I have been expected to be sitting and waiting at my apartment until any one of those people decides to drop by. If there was some sort of communication about when they were going to do so, maybe I wouldn´t be so frustrated at this time. But no. they say, "We´ll stop by tomorrow."

"When?" You say... Whenever they damn well please because even if they tell you "mañana" o "tarde" both of those time spans are pretty subjective in this country. Morning could be anywhere from 8 in the morning till they eat lunch which is sometimes as late as 2:30PM. So I am expected to be waiting for them and drop everything I had to do for that day. And besides, when someone HAS actually told me one specific hour, I´m sitting there waiting and they show up an hour later.

I really don´t know what people who have a "real job" do. My fiance for example could never excuse himself from his job for an entire morning because he had to wait for a delivery man. If they adopted the simple practice of calling ahead of time maybe this problem could be mitigated but apparently the country is so used to it that it continues to happen this way.

I have been privy to more than one occasion where I was told they would be passing by one day and they never actually came. One of these über-professionals still hasn´t come to this day to finish the job that he started after repeated attempts to contact him and repeated promises that he will stop by. It´s incredible.

Anyway... that´s just my frustration after a pretty intense session of kitchen renovation and I´m sure the average person won´t have as many problems but for those of you who are lucky enough to experience any kind of professional behavior, be very thankful!

What was your worst experience in dealing with any type of service? Have you found international customer service/treatment to be above or below your expectations?

Besos from Spain,

Tara

Working in Spain

So this is my third year of living in Spain and I´m still doing what the majority of anglophones do when they arrive to Spain with the idea of financially supporting themselves whith their meager Spanish skills: I am teaching English as a foreign language, preparing students for their Cambridge and TOEFL exams, reviewing grammar with adolescents, playing with toddlers, conversing with middle agers. It´s the story of an English teacher´s life.

I´ve been putting up advertisements on the University website to try and get my classes rolling this year but as the entire country is sleeping/vacationing/not thinking about the "real world" during the month of August, it´s been a rough few months with no steady income. This being half-way through the month of September, FINALLY, I´m getting some responses and inquiries. As I do have experience teaching in an academy, am a native speaker, and usually travel to these people´s homes I do not offer "economical" prices. I have had many people e-mailing to ask about prices and then I never hear from them again. I´m not nervous. Yet. Last year, between the work I was doing at the academy and my own private classes I was working about 60 hours a week. It´s a little early to lower my prices just to fill up my schedule. In the mean time, I am enjoying my free time trying to get some wedding planning done and my house in order after a huge kitchen remodel. (I´ll post the after pictures this week!)

Bottom line, things are starting to look up and the Spaniards are finding their motivation to learn English as the new school year starts... but it takes patience and a lot of self-assurance that things will pick up and I will be able to pay my bills at the end of the month! Good luck all of you out there putting yourselves in this situation. I´m here to tell you that you can make it on your own offering private classes in your home, their home, or even a cafe. After you make some contacts and keep your students happy your name will start to spread throughout their circles and you will get more contacts. Keep your head up!

How was your experience when you first started working as an English teacher in a foreign country? Or if you have never been there, what are some of your biggest fears that hold you back from moving abroad and living your dreams?

Besos,

Tara

Living in Spain

It was probably 4 months ago now that my landlady and I started talking about kitchen reformations. I´ve been living in my apartment for over a year now and been dealing with a kitchen that was in dire need of some updating. Exhibit A, my exhaust fan. And check out that gross tile. And the outlet secured with tape? Pretty sure that´s not safe.
Although it does not fully demonstrate the monstrosity of the horrible blue flowers randomly placed throughout the pattern...













If you are not familiar with the oddities of Spanish living, let me give you a glimpse of the greatness that is living in a 1960´s apartment building. First of all, the stove and oven run on butane. This means that every once and a while, depending on what all runs off of the butane tanks, you have to refill these orange beauties.

So we lived with the joy that is running out of gas in the middle of making dinner to have to call and order a new tank that would be delivered a couple of days later. Carry the 50 pound tanks up and reconnect them to the necessary source.

I´m told we´re lucky because those people who also heat their water through butane have to refill their tanks every 2 weeks! In our case, in the year we have lived here we have only had to do it twice. But look at those things. What kind of country still runs on this kind of system? Craziness.

Apparently the company Gas Natural is beginning to make some headway installing systems into the apartment buildings who agree to pay for the cost of installation. This replaces these tanks with an equally big water heater in the middle of the kitchen that has a pilot light that has to be ignited. I dont´know. The whole thing is just a bit weird to me after living independently in the US, a couple of places built just after the turn of the century (the 20th century that is...) and never having to deal with this kind of thing. Maybe we´re just spoiled.

So needless to say, when my landlady started talking renovations and showing me beautiful pictures of green mosaic backsplashes and WHITE! {hallelujah} tile, I was jumping for joy. Not soon enough would I have an oven that actually had a temperature reading! No. But literally. Not soon enough.

As I mentioned before, we started talking about this in early May... Please note that I just ran out of the last ounce of butane this weekend right before I was going to make a huge pot of chili and some buffalo wings to celebrate opening day of college football season. I was dis-a-ppointed. My house is covered in dust. I´ve spent more than a few mornings having to be at the beck and call of builders and I am ready to be done with kitchen renovations already! It´s going to be so nice when it´s all done.

Check back for pictures and anecdotes of the differences in our cultures throughout the whole building process!

Cooking in Spain: Chili Cook-Off

I started off this beautiful September morning having a cafe con leche with one of my closest friends, who studied here with me back in 2006 and felt the need to return a little over a year ago. One of the cafés between my house and her work offers an ¨anti-crisis¨ breakfast with a perfectly made espresso with the most exquisitely foamed milk and the trademark of someone who knows what their doing behind an espresso machine, the rosetta. The perfect coffee also comes with two pieces of toasted baguette and jam for only €1,20. ($1.70)

Take that Starbucks! I love living in a city small enough not to be tainted by the presence of that coffee shop which would undoubtedly make the cafés around here think that they, too, could charge un riñon, y la mitad del otro. (a kidney and half of the other, the way Spaniards say an arm and a leg...)

After a budget-friendly breakfast, I took off to go to the supermarket to search for some important ingredients that I wasn´t sure I´d be able to find here in Spain. This being the first week of what everyone accepts to be ¨fall,¨ I´ve been having hankerings for my father´s award winning steak chili. (Maybe I´ll post the recipe if I´m feeling really generous/not lazy.)

I went looking for whole cumin seeds that are toasted and a huge part of the depth of flavor in the dish, chili powder, jalepeños which are suprisingly hard to find... we´re not in Mexico, and the right types of steak and ground chuck that make this chili different than any 99 cent cup you get at Wendy´s. My SuperMarket Sweep was pretty successful. I found the cumin seeds, figured I could make do with some spicy (and smoky *bonus!*) paprika instead of chili powder, found some canned jalepeños in the Mexican section, and found some pre-cubed steak and regular ground beef that should work out.

I´ll post later on today, hopefully with pictures of how this American recipe for the best steak chili does after crossing the ocean. It´s funny how recipes change when they change countries. For example, I´ve tried to make the Spanish staple, tortilla española or Spanish omelette, for my family when I was back in the States. I don´t know what it is but it just never tastes the same.

Do you have any favorite recipes that you couldn´t live without if you made the jump to live in Spain? I looooooove hearing and talking about food. I think a little too much.

Besos from Spain,

T

Update: As I began this tailgate food cooking extravaganza, I lit my stove and was reheating a bit of food for lunch when I realized the flame went out. It was what I had been fearing. My butane tank had run out! Look for the next entry to explain the oddities of the Spanish kitchen.

The chili was made at my friend´s house and was a perfect accompainment to kickoff of college football season but this time I didn´t get the chance to do my picture/ recipe sharing. You just wait for when I have my brand new kitchen to make all sorts of goodies!

Sutdying in Spain: First Reactions

I was re-reading some of my thoughts that I wrote shortly after I touched down in Spain for the first time in Juanuary 2006... Oh the innocence and romance I must have felt. It all seems so far away now. This is why I must continue writing my experiences. I truly feel like I relive the emotions when I re-read my words.

I´m laying here in a bed 5,000 miles from home and I´m still in complete awe that I won´t see home for over four months. The last month of goodbyes was definitely hard, but in comparison with trying to explain in Spanish to my host mother my family and what they mean to me over their photos in the yearly calendar my mother makes -it was nothing.

I´ve never really been in a situation where I´m completely at a loss for words -just ask my roommates -I´ll owe it to the fact that I had absolutely no grasp of any vocabulary because I floated through Spanish classes via on-line translators. In all sincerity though, I´ve been here only a day and I´m amazed at how a person can go so many miles from home, not be able to muster more that a few un-conjugated verbs, and still feel like the people listening are truly listening -not to the words, but to the emotions. And they do understand.

So it all became real two days ago when my mom came down to my bedroom at my sad definition of being ¨almost done packing.¨ She took the initiative of vacuum-sealing all of my sweaters and finally we filled two whole suitcases for my 4-month trip. I´ve decided I want to be able to move anywhere I want in only this space -it´s so liberating.

I woke the next morning still have to finish my carry-on and left for the airport around noon, stopping by my grandparents´ house before I left. We picked up my brothers early from school (you´re welcome, boys) and my last American meal was chicken McNuggets with Sweet´n´Sour. How charming, no? Finally met mom at the airport casually talking around the elephant in the room. The maternal grandparents came and it was nearly time to head to security. Ay. Reality hits and tears begin. Saying goodbye to all of my friends seems so easy now. My father doesn´t cry much, but he did his best to cover up that he was about to and it wasn´t easy to forget.

So started the fligh from hell five airports with only two hours in between each flight - a total of around 24 hours of time in airports and in the air! After the flight being delayed over an hour, I finally was chasing down my baggage and walking through an automatic door to a woman holding a sign with my name on it... no joke. Gene is my program director for my studies here and attempted to speak slowly and understand me -even saying I spoke well, ha. We drove to my new home and she dropped me off with a map and a calling card and introduced me to Lourdes. We hauled my suitcases upstairs and she forced me to eat 2 grilled ham and cheese sandwiches that were much needed after a day of airplane food. (side note: said airplane food came with red wine and a Miller Lite. No complaints.)

Lourdes helped me unpack and laughed at how much I had brought -especially underwear. I called home and talked to my dad to tell him everything would be fine but was overcome with emotion so I probably scared him. I went to my new bedroom and woke up the next morning finding out that I wasn´t dreaming.

Lourdes made me Nesquik hot chocolate and two pieces of toast with a homemade fig marmalade. I met her children Fernando, 31, and Vanessa, 27, who still live at the house. Their kindness and understanding put me at ease.

Today happened to be the day of the Reyes Magos, or the Wise Men who, in Spanish tradition, bring the children gifts and coincidentally remembered one for me. A little stuffed doll representing a traditional pilgrim of the Way of Saint James (El Camino de Santiago). We played games in the living room and Lourdes made paella for lunch. Afterwards we took a walk around town going to the Alameda Park with fountains and great views and palm trees! The sun was out and it was like a spring day with many people out and about because of the holiday. We walked to the cathedral and through all the squares and cobblestone streets filled with stores and cafes and music.

It all seemed so surreal. Sunset was gorgeous and light displays turned on with stars and sleighs and crowns. We sat at a restaurant and ordered drinks and had patatas fritas and aceitunas (potato chips and Spanish green olives.) Lourdes and I went to church and then headed back home.

It´s amazing to me how many conversations I´ve had today and how much I´ve learned. More amazing still is that it was all in Spanish. For someone who claims they nothing of it, I´ve come out alright with the patience of my host family. I find myself thinking of what to write and have to remind myself it´s not worth the effort trying to translate to Spanish. Wow...

Rachel and the others come tomorrow. I can´t wait to show them how beautiful our new home is -we´re never going to want to leave! Ciao!

How cute is that? I´ve come a long way from that moment. Part of it saddens me because I have lost that romantic vision of the cobbled streets and feeling of living in a dream world. I´d love to wake that up in me again.

Until next time, besos!

Ing in Spain

So many years ago, a Spanish professor of mine mentioned how amazing studying abroad in Spain is and encouraged me to look into the international study abroad program at my college. I listened. I did some thinking. I did some research. And in January 2006, I stepped off of a plane in the Madrid Barajas airport not knowing fully what lay ahead of me.

Here I am. 3 and a half years later. I have been through ups and downs and ins and outs. Learning a language. Backpacking through Europe: Portugal, Spain, England, Italy, and France. Making new friends. I´ve been an au pair, taught English as a foreign language in an academy and on my own. I´ve eaten all the tapas they served me, drank many a bottle of wine, and ended the night dancing in the discotecas. I´ve fallen in love. Meandering through the Spanish countryside on the Camino of Santiago, being awed by the vineyards in the Rioja wine region, and in Andalucia feeling the passion of flamenco in Granada and being enchanted by the smells of blossoming orange trees in Sevilla.

-Ing in Spain is a tribute to these past few years and an homage to the future that is coming. Ing (the English teacher in me points out that it is a reference to the gerund form of a verb) is about everything I have done and will do.

Studying, traveling, playing, walking, working, eating, drinking, dancing, learning, speaking, adapting, moving... and loving.

Look for more anecdotes, reflections, opinions, discussions to come.

And please, tell me what you are doING in Spain. What do you want to hear most about?