we have an apartment!!! (and other news from Madrid)

Hola! I am very happy to report that I am writing this post not from a tiny hostel room, struggling to hear my own thoughts over the tuneless cacophony of drunken Germans singing on the damn Gran Via, but from the quiet comfort of my own living room. That's right, we finally moved into an apartment on Thursday! And no, it is not the really awesome one I told you about before (the so-called "light at the end of the tunnel"- I think I jinxed it). That one didn't work out. And by didn't work out I mean we got totally screwed over, but whatever, we're not dwelling on it. We ended up finding a nice, big place in the same neighborhood. Mo and I are now living with Emily, another girl from our program, who is really nice, and it's going really well so far. Check out pics of the apartment in my Picasa album:

Our apartment!

On the job front, we also started teaching on Thursday (it was a big day). My job is going great so far- I really like the school, the teachers and the students. It's a Catholic school but it gets public funding (which is true of all of the schools that work with the program- it's a common thing here). It is a little weird how much Catholic stuff they have everywhere (it's kind of intense), but the school is really nice and big and has lots of resources- according to the teachers from Maureen's school, mine is the "posh" school, while theirs is kind of ghetto- aka poor and has lots of immigrants. [Side note: They really HATE immigrants here- the anti-immigrant sentiment is even stronger and definitely more unaninimous than it is in the US. When looking for apartments we were repeatedly told not to look in Lavapies- a predominantly immigrant neighborhood- and were also assured by many landlords that the neighborhood we were in "no es Lavapies"- aka there are no immigrants- well, except us I guess.] But anyway, my job: I am an "auxiliar de conversacion" for the 3rd and 4th level English classes in the secondary school (meaning 14-16 year olds). I work with 4 different classes of 30 kids but I only take 10 at a time. Since they do grammar, reading, writing, etc. in their regular English class, I get to focus just on speaking and listening, meaning I get to be the "fun teacher" who does interesting things with them. I've only worked 2 days so far so I haven't even met all my kids yet, but so far I really like them. Their English skill level varies but generally it's pretty good. They seem pretty interested in talking to an actual native English speaker from the USA. Hopefully that interest won't wane as the year goes on (though I suspect it will). I asked them about what music, movies and TV shows they like and they're all really into American stuff and think Spanish stuff sucks. For some reason Green Day, Sum 41 and Blink "one hundred and eighty two" seem to be the most popular bands. They also watch a lot of American shows dubbed in Spanish (when someone said they loved One Tree Hill I refrained from exclaiming "Oh my God, me too!" lest I sacrifice any small amount of authority and respectability I might have). At Maureen's school, the "theme of the year" is "All the people moving," which is apparently some song that is popular here that they think is popular in America. Her schools has a big banner with this slogan and pictures of people on surfboards, bikes, etc. She didn't have the heart to tell them that it doesn't really make sense in English.

Anyway, it feels really good to finally start to settle into our lives here. Before we just kind of felt like tourists on a vacation that was dragging on a little too long, but now it feels like we really live here. Though the thought of spending a whole nine months here at first seemed daunting, now I'm really looking forward to it (though I still miss everyone back home lots and lots and lots).

Unrelatedly, there has been a general air of sadness here since the announcement yesterday that Madrid didn't get the Olympics. There has been a big campaign here that features a hand with all the Olympic Rings colors on it and the slogan "Tengo una corazonada," meaning "I have a hunch." The president, the king and queen, the mayor of Madrid and the president of the Community of Madrid all went to Copenhagen to campaign. I think everyone knew it was a longshot but they were still really disappointed (though it was surprising that Madrid beat out Tokyo and Chicago in the first round). Personally, I'm glad it went to Rio since it's never been in South America, but I do feel kind of sad for the madrilenos since they wanted it so badly.

That's all for now. I'll update next week on the trials and travails of my first full week of teaching.