Teruel y Albarracín

Last weekend we made a trip to Teruel, where I lived in Spain before. I attempted to make contact with a few old friends, but we primarily hung out with Ana Belén and her new husband, Jorge. It was sad that I didn't get to spend some time with all of my old friends, but in a single weekend, it's nearly impossible to meet up with everyone. Ana and Jorge were amazing hosts, though. They got us a hostel room across the street from their apartment, just above a tavern. They bought us all kinds of food and took us around Teruel and even to Albarracín!

We ended up taking the bus to Teruel, which was every bit as long as I remembered. We somehow arrived thirty minutes ahead of schedule, despite it still taking nearly five hours to get there. I took Susan on a quick walk through part of the city center and the Plaza del Torico so she could get a glimpse of everything. Then we doubled back and met up with Ana at the bus station.

Although her life has changed quite a bit, she seemed mostly the same. She was noticeably happier with her life (she's headed to Kansas in July to teach Spanish for the foreseeable future) and she very recently got married to her boyfriend (mostly so he could accompany her to Kansas, though they seemed to be in love). The biggest difference I noticed was that I could now understand her much better. It's not that I didn't understand her before, but I could pick up on all the slang that she was using without nearly as much trouble. I believe I was automatically tuning out some of her slang before in order to pick up on the important bits of what she was saying. I was proud of my progress.

Beth Anne comes to Spain...finally (Part 1)

Beth Anne came to visit a couple Sundays ago and brought with her incredibly warm and sunny weather. I made the long journey from Teruel to Madrid to pick her up. They have recently jacked up the prices of all of the public transportation in Madrid, making a trip to the airport by metro almost ten euros. The bus that goes from the airport to the city center used to be two euros and it ran us five each. It was definitely worth it all to finally see her again after about four months, though.

We stayed in a hotel in the Puerta del Sol in the city center. I arrived a day before and quickly determined that it was an excellent location from which to see the city, but a terrible place to try to sleep. There were people out all night, yelling in the streets. So I may have managed about three hours of sleep before I just got up and showered and jumped on the metro. I arrived at the airport over an hour earlier than when Beth's plane touched down. As a result, I was tired and half asleep by the time she came through the gate and found me.

Before I showed her some of the major sites in the city center, I had to feed her and get some caffeine in both our systems. One of the magical things about Spain is its coffee. I have tried all manner of coffee in the States and have yet to like it (at least not enough to drink it habitually). I think Beth has had a similar experience. For her first few coffees here, I had to order an extra packet of Nesquik for her. After a few days, she was drinking it normal. We are both going to have some serious caffeine withdrawals soon.

Meeting some personal goals and working a bit much

I spoke too soon when I claimed it wasn't fall yet. It has been cold and rainy all week.

I'm starting to reap some of the benefits of being a teacher now, especially with the number of students I have (several hundred). I often see my students out and about in Teruel and they are always friendly. Many of them have invited me to go out to eat with them or have a coffee (and usually when I accept, they pay!). I think I could get used to this. But outside of getting free food, I have noticed that my presence in the classroom, both in the primary school and the foreign language school, has made some impact on the students' learning. While I don't consider myself all that qualified to be a teacher, I think I'm at least doing something right. The kids in the primary school go from being outright hostile to the idea of learning English to exclaiming "hello, how are you?" (or as Spaniards pronounce it, "how are jew?") every chance they get. It's a transformation that happens in just a couple of days because the kids are only there for one week and then a new set of them arrives. Perhaps it's merely the novelty of having a strange American around, though hopefully it's more than that.

At the foreign language school in Teruel (where I teach in the evenings), I have been giving a similar lecture to every class for two weeks now. There are three different levels of English classes, two classes per level, and several groups of classes in each one. So I will be in each class roughly once every two weeks or so. Thus far, I have been introducing some general information about Kentucky and about myself and then allowing the students to ask me questions in order to practice their English and to get them used to hearing a native speaker. Depending on the level, this is much more difficult than I had anticipated. My accent is somewhat neutral compared to what it could be, so the students usually have an easy time understanding me, assuming they know the vocabulary. However, I often find myself using turns of phrase and slang that they are not familiar with and speaking too quickly for them to follow me. I have also realized that they learn British English from their Spanish teachers, so some of my pronunciation (especially the T in words like Italy or twenty being pronounced as Idully or twinny) is hard for them to understand. Overall, however, the students at this school have expressed great interest in not only improving their English but exchanging cultural ideas as well. This is great for me because I often learn just as much as they do.

I have also noticed an improvement in my Spanish. I have picked up a lot more vocabulary, through independent study, association with all of the words I see on buildings and signs, and in everyday conversations with people. I especially enjoy learning the colloquial words and phrases. I believe my speech is becoming more coherent and I can do more than convey simple ideas now. But perhaps the most considerable change has occurred in my comprehension. I attribute this in part to having settled down and gotten used to the language and the people speaking it, though I have also managed to increase the amount of things I can understand and the range of people I can understand as well. At first, it was primarily slow-talking women that I could understand because their voices and pronunciation are typically better in my experience so far. However, I can now understand the low, muffled voices of some of the old men as well.

This week I have been ridiculously busy in the two schools but I have managed to accomplish several of my goals for the week. First of all, I set out to learn how to use my fancy camera in full manual mode. I've owned the camera for quite some time now and made pitiful efforts towards using it manually on entirely too many occasions. I decided it was high time that I learned. I found an online "class" by Alexandre Buisse and read almost every lesson in two days, all the while practicing with my camera. The result is that I now know what every part of my camera is for and how it works and I have way more control over the shots I take. To test out my progress, I decided to take pictures in the one situation I've never been able to get a decent shot in - at night. Despite a few flaws, I think some of the pictures turned out quite well (and none of them have been doctored up):

This last picture is of a hotel that sits atop a Medieval passageway. They also have some excellent tea that you can drink underground in a cozy room with walls made of stone. It may be one of my new favorite places in Teruel, as it combines two amazing things: history and tea.

My second goal for the week was to open a bank account so that I could get paid for this month's work. I managed to do so by myself. This is the first difficult thing I've done on my own. Usually one of my mentors is there to make sure I don't screw something up. I even had a nice conversation with the banker about Kentucky and about the popularity of his surname in this region. The fact that I managed to do that on top of the technical stuff makes me proud.

In addition to the things I had planned to do this week, I also spontaneously decided to go to a volleyball game and go out to have tapas with some of the teachers at the foreign language school. Apparently Teruel has the best volleyball team in Spain. Unfortunately, they weren't playing a Spanish team when I went. They lost (though it was a close match) to a Polish team. One of the teachers at the foreign language school took me along and I enjoyed it quite thoroughly. The fans were exactly like any other sports event in any other country I've been in - they are loud and they always make what they believe to be better calls than the referee. My favorite part of the whole event was that the best player on Teruel's team was an American. I wanted to go talk to him after the game but we couldn't get to him. Perhaps next time we can have a chat. It would be interesting to know how he ended up in Teruel and how he's getting along here.

Last night I went to a bar called Torico Gourmet, home of the number one tapa in some contest from 2009. It lived up to its reputation. The tapa had ingredients that were all grown or raised in villages around Teruel. It was absolutely delicious. Then again, I don't think I've tried much food in Spain that I haven't enjoyed. The teacher that invited me out paid for all of the tapas as well. Then we had to go to another bar for coffee (or in my case, tea). What I thought was going to be a short dinner ended up turning into several hours of learning about different foods, slang, and Spanish television. I enjoyed it but I paid for it today, as I had to get up early for work.

That's what siestas are for, I suppose. It's almost 10:30 and I'm about to go out to a bar to listen to jazz music. Hopefully I can get home at a decent hour, though that's never the case with the Spaniards.

Traditional Spanish garb is kind of awesome.

Last weekend I agreed to attend a banquet for my mentor's dance group in Teruel. I showed up after the dinner (as it was 30 euros per plate) and had some dessert. Most of the dancers were sufficiently inebriated at this point, which was entertaining for me. They repeatedly sang a song that would call out a person in the room to dance like a jellyfish. I'm not sure why this was done, but eventually even I was called out to wiggle my arms around. The dessert was some kind of delicious mousse with raspberries. After that we headed downstairs for a picture slideshow of the dance group and to watch some dances and hear the Spanish folk songs being played by their band. They dance/play the jota, which is a traditional Spanish style. The singing isn't all that appealing to me, but it is fun to experience the cultural aspect of it.

I mistakenly thought that this was the extent of the night. Afterwards, the dancers went to a pub nearby and continued to dance and increase their level of drunkenness. At least they were entertaining. The worst part of it all was having to listen to a talkative, cocky Argentinean bartender with a microphone. I wasn't a fan of the music being played, but I couldn't really hear it over his incessant boasts that he could get any girl in the bar. More power to him.

After the bar, my mentor's brother led us to a "disco movil" (I believe that's how it is spelled). It was essentially a discoteca or dance club set up temporarily in a big warehouse. It was not the least bit enjoyable. The music was horrible and loud and the people were all high on something besides alcohol. One guy was throwing small amounts of change at a pizza vendor and demanding food, despite the vendor telling him it wasn't enough money. Needless to say, we didn't stay there long.

The next day I watched two of Almodovar's films, "La Mala Educacion" and his new one, "La piel que habito". The first was lent to me by a new friend who works at the Foreign Language School in Teruel. The second I watched with my roommate David and his lady friend Pilar. Both films were very intense and provocative, as is Almodovar's style. I really liked the concept of the new film, though. And I believe I understood most of the story despite it being entirely in Spanish with no subtitles. I watched the movie in the cinema in Teruel. It is over one hundred years old and was converted from a stage to a movie screen. It still has the balcony seating on the sides.

This week I started at the secondary school in Albarracin. Though the kids behaved entirely different than the 10-12 year-olds, most of them didn't know much more English. I have been somewhat impressed by the upper-level students, though. They managed to ask me some fairly coherent questions and I taught them vocabulary for facial expressions, clothing, pattern styles, etc. They managed to successfully apply the new vocabulary when describing pictures of my friends that I dug up from my external hard drive. Jac was especially popular for his many different hairstyles/colors and his variety of dress. One of the other classes prepared questions to ask me in English, which I thought was a decent exercise because it allowed them to form questions and ask them orally without the pressure involved with creating ideas on the fly. Given their level of English, it was probably a good thing. However, they came up with some of the weirdest questions, such as "when did you first kiss a girl?" and "if you had kids, what would you name them?"

Last night I followed the dance group through the streets of Teruel while they danced and sang. It was quite enjoyable. Afterwards, Ana and Louis took me to their apartment for dinner. I got to play Louis' bass for a while and listen to some of their music. They bought me a Spanish Civil War book about the Battle of Teruel in a bookstore and gave it to me last night as a gift. They are so helpful and friendly. Louis prepared pizza, omelets, mushrooms, some kind of sardines, and of course bread. I skipped out on the sardines.

As usual, Ana and Louis led me to a bar after dinner. They have a tendency to say something in Spanish that I don't quite understand and then they get up and expect me to be ready to follow them. We went to a really old pub that is apparently notorious for attracting strange people. It was entertaining. Louis had to explain a lot of the conversations because they were full of slang and cursing that I wasn't familiar with, but watching a drunk man force another drunk man to dance with him is enjoyable without understanding a word of what they are saying. Louis shared a tea with me, which is uncommon for Spaniards. They are strict coffee drinkers and they denounce American coffee as too watered-down.

Today I woke up early and headed across town to meet up with Ana's family to participate in the Catholic fiesta honoring St. Pilar. I didn't get much about what the festival was supposed to be about other than putting flowers on a pyramid-shaped wire structure. I don't think there are many religious people in Spain, at least not among the younger generation, but they all go along with the traditions. So no one clearly explained what was going on, only that it was some sort of mass. The dancers danced for the mass and the band played as well. I got to dance with a baby too. They abandoned her in the back room while they went to perform, so I babysat. And by abandoned I mean they all just walked off without securing a babysitter or anything. Anyway, the baby enjoyed the sounds of the dancers and the music and started bouncing about. It was adorable.

The best part of the day, however, was that I got to dress up in traditional Spanish garb. I had lacy socks, velvet shorts, a corduroy vest, and a pirate-like headpiece. I think a picture will describe this better than I can in words:

After a dance in the nearby park, I was invited to lunch by Ana's parents. We met up with their family at a fancy restaurant. It was 20 euros per plate. Her family paid for everything. The helpfulness must run in the family. Ana's father has a great sense of humor when I actually understand what he is saying, which made dinner fun for me. I ordered what I understood to be pork steak, though I didn't receive it until much later. We had I think five or six rounds of appetizers prior to the main course (salad, rice, mussels, bread, a couple different kinds of pork with bread, etc.). By the time I got the pork steak, which was a huge hunk of meat, I was about to burst. Then I had ice cream in the shape of the star of Teruel with hot chocolate poured over it. Absolutely delicious, though my stomach hated me later.

I seem to be comprehending more Spanish conversations and picking up on quite a few colloquial phrases. I'm not sure how fluent I will be after all is said and done, but I think this is an excellent way to learn a language after you have the basics. And I'm not just learning a language, I'm absorbing so much culture. I have so many opportunities to learn here.