There are weirdos in Spain too! I fit right in...

I taught my first class tonight. It wasn’t great, and it wasn’t terrible, so I am ok about it. The little girls are very sweet and eager to play, but not really eager to learn. That’s ok. I think I have sufficient knowledge now about teaching so that I can successfully trick them into learning next time. The only problem is that the littlest one, Lucia, who I was told was three years old, is actually two. She can’t even speak Spanish yet, let alone English. What the heck can I do with a two year-old? Today, she pretty much just colored a picture and watched her sister play a matching game with flashcards. Adriana, the six year-old, knows some basic words and is better behaved than her last teacher’s final report led me to believe. However, she did take her skirt off half-way through the lesson and wanted to continue in just her underwear until her dad saw her and made her put the skirt back on. She’s sweet though, and I think I’ll enjoy hanging out with her a couple times a week. The dad, Julio, speaks a little English. Their apartment is very nice and clean with fancy Pier-1 type décor. It is pretty far away from the center of Madrid, so it takes me about 50 minutes to get there. I have to take the metro all the way out to the end of one of the lines, and then catch a train the rest of the way. However, I can use my monthly metro pass for the train, and Canterbury is giving me a 3 euro travel stipend per class because of the distance. And I like riding the train because there are lots of windows and I get to see the outskirts of the city. So I am happy for now. Hopefully, they’ll start offering me more classes soon. Also, I am going to apply with other English schools around Madrid to try and pick up extra classes. Heck yeah! English teacher in Madrid! Everything is starting to come together now. It’s just a matter of time before I’m cruising the calles on my purple Vespa with my little puppy-dog’s ears flapping in the breeze.

Last night, I had kind of a rough time. I developed a really bad stomachache, and so spent a large percentage of the night in the bathroom. I don’t really know what the problem was, though it may have had something to do with the entire jar of green olives I ate for dinner. I stayed in bed late this morning because of my lack of sleep and then got up and went to the second half of my TEFL class. Don’t worry about me though. I’m fine now. It was probably just my stinkin’ dengue acting up again. (Just kidding, Joaquin! Don’t get mad…I love you…)

I went to church on Sunday with my friend Biz. She found a small Iglesia Cristiana in another part of town, and so I went with her to check it out. Luckily, the guest speaker wasn’t a native Spanish speaker. He was actually a German missionary working in Mexico, but he spoke in Spanish slowly and clearly, without slang or difficult words, so we were able to understand him fairly easily. We spoke to him after the service, but apparently he doesn’t speak English because he continued to converse with us in Spanish even after we told him we were Americans. It was a nice Sunday morning, and Biz and I stopped for empanadas at a little bakery close to the church on our way back to the metro station.

The neighborhood I live in is very multicultural, like I have said before. However, I thought the multicultural-ness was restricted to South and Central American countries. Apparently it’s not. I have a strong suspicion that I live next door to an aboriginal Australian, because I got ready this morning to the sound of him practicing his didgeridoo. I know you are probably thinking that‘s highly unlikely to be a correct assumption, but trust me. Didgeridoo music is very distinctive. I know the sound of a man puffing up his cheeks and blowing with all his might into a long thick tube of Australian-type wood stuffs when I hear it.

My Moroccan roomy has calmed down a bit since the last time we talked. Some of you already know about her psychotic episodes of absolute nonsense, but hopefully she has lightened up and will remain so. She is having her older brother bring a desk for my room sometime this week, so that will be nice. Her brother also lives here in Madrid, which just follows the trend I have noticed about girls from Muslim families living abroad. Every Muslim girl I have ever met was only able to move to another part of the world after her older brother had already established himself there. I sure am glad my family is not like that, because I have no older brother. So I would either be stuck at home cooking couscous all day, or be disowned and ostracized from my family for shipping myself off anyway.* Thank God for the good old Baptists.

Speaking of other religions, I saw a couple of “Elders” on the metro this afternoon. Poor things must have had to leave their bicycles at home today. I was wondering when I would run into some Mormons, as they seem to pollute every country I have ever visited. Saw a couple in Quiznos in Tegucigalpa, and got into a heated verbal exchange with two in the Tupac Amaru market of Juliaca, Peru a couple of years ago. Well, good for them. I hope they get nice big planets when they die and become gods. And seven virgins. And a 21-gun salute. And their first taste of Coca-Cola. Gosh, it can’t be just a coincidence that the name of their religion is only one letter away from spelling “morons.”

Well, I am a sleepy child who needs her rest and all that. Maybe my roommate’s asleep so I can go sneak and take a shower. Madrid makes my armpits sweat like crazy. And apparently everyone else’s too. During midday, this whole city smells like a boys’ locker room. Not that I’ve ever been in a boys’ locker room. Obviously. Because I am a girl. Ok, then…

*I mean no harm by making gross generalizations like this. It is only for humorous purposes and not meant to be taken seriously. Muslims are generally very nice people. And I make fun of my own religion quite regularly. Those mentioned in the next paragraph, however, I do not wish to spare. Let all laughter at the expense of the Mormons ring loud and free!