Cider, concerts and classes

There are certain things about Spain that I'm finding particularly incredible - the fact that you can still swim in the sea in October, the fact that the whole world shuts down to dedicate time to lunch and the phenomenon of free food when ordering a drink to name but a few. I've ordered myself many a milky coffee now and the bonus food has ranged from a little pastry, to a shot of orange juice and a piece of marble cake, to cheesy nibbles. A few of us went to a wine bar the other night and couldn't go more than ten minutes without the barman bringing round a new platter of tapas for us to sample. And this weekend I ordered a glass of coke and 2 minutes later received my coke along with a complimentary bowl of olives, bread and tuna, crisps and red pepper stuffed with a tomato and sausage meat combo. It's madness. Amazing, tasty madness. Also, it's always appropriate to order a beer in Spain. Always.

Last Friday, a group of us went to a nearby town called Candás for a cheeky day trip. The sun was shining so we wandered around at a leisurely pace, exploring the coastline and discovering the various bits of random art that were on display. Then we found a little bar and made ourselves at home. I had my first experience of Asturian Cider and the art of pouring it, which involves standing tall with both arms extended in opposite directions - glass in one, cider bottle in the other - pouring the cider from above your head and catching it below. Asturian cider is flat so this method of pouring gives it a bit of buzz and wakens the taste apparently. It also makes for a jolly good show as we found out. About 3 hours, 3 platters of seafood, 18 bottles of cider and a fantastic amount of great laughs and banter later, we somehow managed to stumble to a bus stop and stagger our way home. People had told me that the cider here is lethal... they were quite right.

School has been just fine this week. The teachers have been very accommodating and the ones who don't speak English have discovered that I do speak a bit of Spanish so they've promised to talk to me as much as possible, which is great. I made a powerpoint presentation about Durham and cracked it out about 4 times in the course of the week. I decided to show them the fantastic Freshers Week video that was made for Collingwood this year and only just managed to fight back the tears, which did nothing at all for my already waning street cred. Spanish kids are cool and it's becoming harder and harder to maintain the illusion that I'm totally down with them, homie. It's only a matter of days before the mask slips completely. On Wednesday, I went for coffee with a few of the teachers. They were talking about two old-school Spanish singers who have heart-melting voices and sing the poetry of Lorca and Neruda and the like. I've had the pleasure of studying said poetry at Durham so I nodded along enthusiastically, overjoyed that my Spanish Literature module was about to provide me with a source of real conversation with actual Spaniards. One of them turned to me and said "Oh, you like things like that then?" to which I replied "Oh yes! Absolutely. I love Spanish culture and literature." This would have been fine, were it not for the fact that she'd actually asked if I wanted to go with them to the concert they were attending on Friday. Next thing I know she was telling me when and where she'd collect me and I was handing her 17 euros to cover the cost of the ticket. But thank goodness for this particular communication breakdown - I went to the concert and it was amazing.

They were called Paco Ibanez and Amancio Prada, with a combined age of 150, and were absolute masters of their trade. The concert hall was rammed. I was the only person under the age of 40 and certainly the only foreigner in the building. They walked out to absolutely raucous applause (but no whooping - in Spain it's not good form to whoop) then proceeded to blow everyone away for 3 solid hours with haunting vocals and intricately beautiful guitar-playing. They had pretty good banter too. At one stage Paco had quite a rant about 'Lady Caca'*, as he called her, and the 6 million 'cretinos' who'd bought her latest disc. I can't really express how much I enjoyed it... it was just the sort of thing I'd hoped the Year Abroad might bring. 

Yesterday a few of us from Gijón met up with some of the assistants from Oviedo and went to the botanic gardens and then on to La Laboral, which is a centre of art and culture on the outskirts of the city. It's a blimmin' beautiful building with a tower that gives a view out across the whole of Gijón. It was a lovely day. We had an extremely keen tour guide and I think I might have even learnt a thing or two about history and art and things whilst making a few new friends on the way.

I keep flicking through the pages of my diary and realising anew how long it is before I come home for Christmas. But if time keeps racing by at this rate, it'll be here in no time at all... and maybe even too soon - my checklist of things to do here and places to visit is growing by the second.

Hasta luego!

(*in case you didn't know, caca means poo. Haha.)

"Do you like Justin Bieber?"

Week two in Gijón and the time seems to be flying.

I’m finding it to be a very explore-able city so far. There are bus stops everywhere and about 20 different bus lines in all, which all seems a bit unnecessary because everything’s within walking distance of everything else anyway! The streets are mostly laid out like a massive grid, so it’s almost impossible to get yourself so lost that you can’t find your way back again. It’s struck me that in Real Everyday Life, time rarely allows for the luxury of getting lost. If you get lost, it means you’ll be late somewhere or you’ll miss something and it nearly always causes a downright convenience. Here in Year Abroad land, I've found myself with time to spare so wandering aimlessly is something I've indulged in a LOT. In the last few weeks, I've clocked up a good few hours of getting lost. It’s becoming a game – seeing how long I can wander before I have to yield and pull out the map to check where on earth I am. Once or twice, it’s turned out I’m at the complete opposite end of the city to where I was expecting. I reckon the buildings just get up and relocate themselves a few blocks away every now and then, y’know? That’s where the buses come in handy. It’s quite liberating to jump on a bus that seems to be heading in vaguely the right direction and just see what happens.

My school is great. The kids are all incredibly friendly and are thrilled to have a real live English person in their midst, which has really taken me aback – I was almost expecting hostility or, at best, indifference. I've been with 6 different groups in the course of a week, ranging from 11 to 16 years old. Regardless of their age, there are a few seemingly essential basics that they need to get out of the way before we can form any kind of bond. “Do you like Justin Bieber?” “Who do you support, Barca or Madrid?” “Do you watch MTV?” I learnt very quickly that my answers to these questions would be the making or breaking of me. By the third lesson I’d developed a sort of alter ego, fine tuning my answers to get the best possible reaction from them “Hi! I’m Sian, from England. I love Barca football team, paella and everything about Spain, particularly Gijón. My favourite film is The Hunger Games and my favourite sport is handball. I love The Big Bang Theory. I don’t like Justin Bieber one bit. My favourite band is The Script. My favourite actress is Penelope Cruz.” It’s not all strictly true, but seeing their blank faces at the mention of Emma Thompson, Dr Who and Newton Faulkner was too much to handle.

It’s not all sitting around having a good old chinwag though - that’s just the safe haven of the English classes. Something I didn't really realise is that the school runs a bilingual course which means that, if the students enroll onto it, all of their lessons are taught in English. But they still have to get to the same standard in each subject as the students who are learning in their native Spanish. It seems a bit mad to me. The concepts they’re learning about are hard enough to follow, let alone having to learn them in a foreign language. On Tuesday, I was asked to make a presentation on Neoclassicism and the Culture of Enlightenment in the 17^th Century for next weeks History lesson, whilst yesterday morning I had to delve deep into the depths of my mind to retrieve words like pipette, burette and graduated cylinder for a Science lesson. There’s a reason I didn't carry on with either of these subjects beyond GCSE. I’m total crap at them. Maybe it’ll turn out to be a romantic Hollywood-style ending that sees me teaching the children but at the same time learning a thing or two myself so that we finish the year in a slow motion, soft focus montage depicting how we've grown together. Maybe they’ll all fail their exams because of me. Fingers crossed for the former.

I've had a few nights out on the tiles of Gijón, which have all been highly enjoyable. The other language assistants in the city are all lovely and we've formed a nice little group. We went to another university faculty party last weekend, this time the medics. But when we arrived most of the party-goers were younger than my brother, which was hugely disconcerting (it’s legal to drink in Asturias from the age of 16. I know, right?!) so we returned to the little seafront bars in the city where we found some grown-ups.

In terms of speaking Spanish, I’m not doing as much as I should be. If you get me started in a good one-on-one conversation, I can just about hold my own. I’ve managed to maintain a good few conversations about all sorts of serious things: politics, long distance relationships, the education system, you name it. But catch me off-guard and you’d think I’d never had a Spanish lesson in my life. I was paying with my card in a shop the other day and the lady asked to see some ID – not particularly complicated, especially seeing as the Spanish word is ‘identificación’ – but she might as well have asked in Chinese (or Russian for that matter). After asking her repeat herself about 5 times I eventually got the jist and managed to pull my passport from my bag but by that point I was shaking, sweating, on the verge of tears and redder than a baboons bum with the stress and embarrassment of it all. Never mind. Practice makes perfect I suppose.

I’m looking forward to becoming more of a fixture at the school and my timetable includes a 3-day-weekend so hopefully a bit of travelling will be possible in the next few months.

That's all for now. Don’t be a stranger, eh?

X

Angel and Luz

Today I went to a meeting in Oviedo for all the language assistants in the region and met my mentors for the first time. Mentors are the teachers who are supposedly responsible for the language assistants assigned to their school. We were meant to have received emails from our mentors many moons ago - mid-summer sort of time - with a general introduction, tips on how to find accommodation, offers to meet us from airports or train stations and good old-fashioned encouragement and advice. I didn't hear a thing from mine. But I didn't panic, I just sent them a few pestering emails over the course of a few months. September came around and it transpired that some peoples mentors had actually found them a flat or offered to house them for their first few weeks in Spain. Meanwhile my pestering emails remained unanswered. I panicked a little bit then. Eventually, I heard back... a nice email informing me that yes, I could go home for Christmas and no, they didn't know my timetable yet. Thorough. Most people had already met their mentors by this weekend. Jean's (the Scottish girl) had bought her a toaster for her flat and was picking her up to take her to the meeting this morning. I'd received an email saying 'hi, we don't know how we're getting to Oviedo, but we'll probably see you there'. Again, thorough.

So, needless to say, I wasn't feeling overly optimistic when I walked into the foyer to see assistants from all over the world chatting away to their mentors - their new found best friends whilst mine were still unidentified and incognito. I wandered aimlessly for a few minutes looking for anyone who might be them, feeling like a stray dog or something, then gave up and went to find Jade (the girl from France). All of a sudden, a ray of Essex sunshine burst into the room in the form of Miss Alex Nel. It was lovely to see her and she was looking very well indeed. For a brief period, I forgot all about my abandoned-by-my-mentor woes and went and sat with Alex and her super keen mentor in the conference room. The meeting was a bit of a waste of time to be honest. I did some doodles. That was cool. At the end, Pilar (the lady in charge of the whole operation) started calling out names of people who were yet to meet their mentors. Cue: the awkward moment when a Spaniard tries to pronounce my name. "Seeen? Sheehan? Shown?". I waved my hand in the air. A man and a lady in the front row waved back and beckoned me over.

They were my mentors. I get two because the man has just (very reluctantly) retired and the lady is taking over his position in the school but he still wants to be involved. Angel and Luz. Angel means, well, angel, funnily enough. And Luz means light. Not to sound cheesy, but that seemed pretty promising.

And then it all went drastically up hill. Within minutes I'd more than forgiven them for the lack of contact and information. They were so warm and friendly and down-to-earth. It didn't really add up, but I assume they must have just been busy with their respective near-retirement and new-job stresses. They invited me to join them for coffee and a donut and we chatted and laughed and had a lovely time. They gave me a really good sense of the sorts of things they want me to do and what the school is like. I tentatively floated the idea of leading extra-curricular drama classes because it isn't taught as an actual class. I wasn't sure how they'd react - if they might think it was a bit forward or presumptuous - but they couldn't have been more enthusiastic. So that's a very exciting prospect and I was pretty over the moon.

Angel winked at me a few times in that endearing way that all Grandpas seem to innately master. Not that he's Grandfather age quite yet, but it's the best way to describe it. And Luz insisted we take pictures to mark the occasion of our first meeting. After coffee, I'd already decided that I'd hit the jackpot with the two of them but in the car on the way back it just reached a whole new level of great. Angel revealed that he's a Newton Faulkner fan. I nearly fainted - to find someone who's heard of Newton in Spain is a rarity but to find someone who's a fan is nigh on impossible. And, if you didn't already know, let me tell you: I LOVE Newton Faulkner. Just as I'd recovered from the shock, he casually asked if I'd ever happened to see Bon Iver live at which point I lost all self control. He told me about seeing our beloved Justin Vernon and co live in Bilbao and said 'when you see them, they're so good, you freak completely out'. Too right. (We'd had to switch to English by this point because my broken Spanish didn't allow for the elation that I wanted to convey). I apologised for overreacting but he said he understood - that it must be like finding a piece of home away from home, which was spot on.

When I got home, I had an email from him inviting me to dinner with his family. He signed it off 'Viva Bon Iver!'. What a legend.

So it's been a great day. Just great. And proves how first impressions can be deceiving, that good things come to those who wait, that patience is a virtue and don't judge a gift horse by the cover of it's silver lining. Or something.

Bienvenido a Asturias!

Right then, I'm in Asturias. I'm sat in my very own room in a beautiful house which is going to be home for the next eight months. Up until now, I've had this strange feeling that I'm going to get a call from Durham at any moment saying 'Psyche! You can come home now. As if you're going to have to live in another country for a whole year. Hahaha'. And then we'd have a jolly good laugh about it and I'd jump on a plane home and settle down with a plate of fish and chips and a pint of Thatchers cider and normal life would resume. But now that I've unpacked and my clothes are in a cupboard and my books are on a shelf and my suitcases are tucked away under my bed, it feels more likely that I'm actually here for the long haul. This is view from the back door... Not too shabby, eh?

I spent most of my last full day in Llançà decorating some shelving for the Love Cambodia shop, which has undergone quite the transformation since I arrived at the beginning of the month. It looks like a proper shop now and is all kitted out, ready to open for business so fingers crossed for Sheryl that it all goes well. The next morning I packed up my stuff (which involved standing with a hairdryer, drying each individual bit of clothing that I'd washed the day before but, thanks to the uncharacteristic lack of sun, hadn't dried in time to be packed. Typical) and got a lift to the station from Sheryl's friend Steve. The 3 hour-ish train journey went pretty quickly and I ended up chatting to a lady from Winchester, which is about half an hour from my house at home, and a Canadian man who lives half an hour away from Owensound, which is the town where a certain handsome young man happens to be living this year. It's a small world.

I arrived at the airport in one piece with a casual two hours to spare before my flight. I know, right? Me? Early?! There's a first time for everything. At the departures terminal, a very random man started telling me how he'd been robbed and asking whether I knew where he should go to buy a new ticket with no money. It was a bit like an A-level oral exam and I kept getting the feeling that an examiner was going to pop up at any moment and ask me to summarise what I'd just heard and answer a few comprehension questions. It was unnerving. I told him to go to security and off he ran. Boarding the plane, a group of men had been stopped because their hand luggage was too big. I had to sidle past with my best innocent face on, in the knowledge that I was dragging a perfectly regulation-proportioned but 5kg overweight suitcase behind me. I got away with it. The plane took off and I waved goodbye to Barcelona.

At Oviedo airport I was met by Nicholas - the Father of the family I'm staying with - and his son Alex. The family are English but they've lived out here for 14 years so they're all bilingual. When we got home (the house is incredible - they pretty much built it themselves. It could be on Grand Designs or something) I met Rebecca (the mum) and Mel and Isabel (the daughters). Isabel is who I arranged the homestay with so it was lovely to meet her in real life! They've said we can talk Spanish in the home as much as I want so my fears of not getting enough Spanish practice were quickly allayed. It's a pretty great arrangement and I'm very happy to be here indeed!

On Friday morning, Isabel took me to the police station to try to get my NIE (national identity number). I won't bore you with the details, but 5 hours later we still hadn't managed to conquer the Spanish bureaucracy. We went from the police station, to the social security office, to the bank, back to the police station, to the town hall, to another office, to another bank and back to the police station which, by this time, was closed. So I ended up with a national identity, but no card to prove it yet. It was so flippin' complicated and my head hurt from trying to keep up with all the Spanish - I would have died without Isabel there to translate. I did get a great walking tour of Gijón in the process of it all though, so that was a nice silver lining. We went out in the evening and met three other girls who are also working as language assistants here this year - one English, one French and one Scottish. It was an great taste of Gijón nightlife, involving many hours spent in a bar seemingly dedicated to drinking games, playing a ring-of-fire-esque game with a wine and coke mixture called calimocho.

Saturday night, we went out again to a massive chemistry faculty party in a nearby town. It was a top night, starting off at a botellón (a street party) and moving on to the club, which was huge. I spoke a LOT of Spanish including a prolonged conversation in which I tried to explain to a group of Spaniards just how rude it is to say the C-word in England (the Spanish equivalent gets thrown about so casually). I kept talking about Barcelona and La Festa Mercé and Catalonia and how amazing it all was but experienced for the first time, first-hand, just how disinterested the Northen Spanish are in Catalan traditions. It was strange. I felt offended somehow. We left the club at 7am and got a lift back to Gijón, where we went for a coffee. The people in the coffee shop had been to bed, had a full night's sleep and were up for breakfast. We were sat there in our clubbing gear from the previous night. It was surreal.

Tomorrow we've got a meeting in Oviedo as the official start of the assistantship so I'm going to see Alex, which is incredibly exciting.

It's been a great couple days. I've been VERY grateful for skype and for spotify (Mumford and Sons new album - wowie). I wish I'd brought less clothes and more home comforts, but I do have my dragon onesie. So that's good.

Until next time!

X