Day 39

I´m thinking about moving. I really don´t like my neighborhood, and I would prefer to move to the old part of town- if I can find anything. My roommates are nice, but they NEVER, I mean NEVER, except for classes, leave the apartment. Not even on the weekends. It´s depressing to me. While they are nice, I think I need to find a more positive and engaging place to live.

I think I´m facing some phychological effects of being robbed. I haven´t been doing well lately, and honestly if it keeps up like this I don´t think I will come back to Spain in January. This last week has been horrible- I think everything just piled up: going out into the real world, leaving college, moving to a foreign country, leaving everyone behind, being sick, getting robbed, and then having food poisoning. I was already pretty sensitive to begin with.

I´m taking a free spanish class at the university. The good of that is that I placed into the second highest level on the European Union scale of languages (or something like that). I like having classes, it gives me something to do, challenges me, and I feel like I always come away with better spanish. I think I need to find something else to do with my time though. An hour and a half class three times a week is not enough to keep me occupied. I´m trying to find some kind of class, but I haven´t been able to find anything other than English schools. Maybe I´ll join a gym.

Day 31

I had the worst food poisoning of my life. I lost 8 pounds- although I doesn´t look like it so that´s kind of confusing. Went to the doctor, didn´t have to pay a cent which was liberating. All he gave me was a gram of Tylenol. At least it´s not swine flu.


Come on Jaén, throw me a bone here.

Day 28

Some kid was running behind me today and I freaked out. He was just out going for a run, but the sound of someone running behind me was enough to send me into panic. I'm a little shell shocked.

positive attitude....

Gitanos, os odio

I was sitting outside my school yesterday, in broad daylight right next to a busy street. I had just closed the top of my laptop, still on my lap, still looking directly at it and two 16 year old gypsies ran up, grabbed my laptop and ran up the hill. I screamed my lungs out- now I have a cough from the screaming- ran up the hill but lost them. It's been a horrible 24 hours. Have filed a police report. Am using a friends computer. There are 3 fortunate things though:
1. I have my computer backed up
2. It was not a crime against me, it was purely just something to snatch and sell
3. The Programs travel insurance covers the cost of the stolen item

Whenever I think about that moment I do freak out and panic though. I'm fine though. Just here. So there will probably be a longer wait for the next real post.

mmmmyyyy nnnaaammmeee iiiiissss..

Man just finished my three classes for today- I never thought it was possible to speak English so slowly! I noticed myself not using proper grammar to help them understand things easier- I need to stop this. They were sooooo interested in the American Schedule- Iĺl talk more about this later but for now I would like to get some lunch. (ugh look how formal that sentence was, welcome to my English life-haha).

I just wanted to say that I forgot to update my phone number. I switched cellphone carriers for various reasons so now my new number is: 622 274 329 (I do not know what you have to dial before that though). Like I said in my Málaga blog, if you start noticing that my English getting strange, don´t worry, that´s a good thing!

First Class

Well here I am, at the high school. I just had my first class with 15-16 year olds. I talked about where I was from, what I studied in College and about myself. Then I asked them questions and got everything from, do you have a boyfriend (a girl asked this, thankfully) to what is your favorite food. I answered all the questions as basically, yet thoroughly, as I could while speaking very very slowly. It´s strange, the English teachers can barely understand me, but said that it was because of my American accent. Although I did expect better English from English teachers. But everyone is trying. I then asked them what they thought of when they thought of America. The first response I got was ¨when the airplanes crash into skyscrapers¨. I was pretty shocked, and said, ¨You mean September 11th?¨ and they said yes. I find it fascinating that 8 years later, this was their first response. What does this say about us? I doubt that when we think about Spain the first thing most of us think about is the train bombing on March 11th by terrorists. The first response to what do you think when you think of America was September 11th. Take a second and think about what this implies. It´s incredible really- has our presence in the world been narrowed down to this single event? Sad, tragic, yet fascinating. The next things were baseball, big houses, expensive cars, parties, hamburgers and Obama (after which a student made like an entry into heaven noise). There was one section of students that sat to one side and kept talking in Spanish to each other. The teacher told me that these were students who were not as smart as the other students and in all classes they had lower expectations- I´m guessing it´s some kind of ill formed special ed program? She told me that while she´s teaching the class I might be working with these students. I have two more classes today. I don´t have internet at my apartment yet, hence the lack of posts. Alright going to get some pan con tomate at the cafeteria.