andanzas en cáceres

After the wondrous night of Primavera and the equally majestic morning of teaching, Guadalupe and Ana took us to Mérida, a town which is featured in Ridley Scott’s ‘Gladiator’. It’s full of ancient Roman ruins.

Road trip to Guadalupe to see the Real Monasterio de Santa María de Guadalupe with mom and Juande! 

So. I’d say for the most part, my blog has been pretty kid-friendly. We do a lot of really cool, wholesome things. But sometimes debauchery happens, mostly at these demonic botellones. The last of which was Ferial, or Primavera. When I first heard about it I was thinking, cool, a fair, rides and candy apples and rat tails and obesity and roasted corn ROCK. But when I asked my students what the haps was, they were like, no way dude. It’s just a giant botellon. Just drinking and a concert. Yep. 

I wasn’t going to go because it was on a Thursday and Brandon and I teach class at 9:00 am on Friday, but on our way to the gym on Wednesday I ran into my friends Nieves, Gonzalo, Isa, Amanda, and Javi, and they offered to pick up my ticket since I didn’t bring any moneys to the gym. I couldn’t say no! So we all met at the bus stop on Thursday, and the festivities began. 

The deal with this botellon is that you can buy a ticket for 10 euro and get access to the concert along with all you can drink beer or tinto de verano (which is red wine mixed with lemon fanta….) or you can just stand outside in the fields and drink what you brought. We did both! 

Me, Isa, a girl I don’t know, Gonzalo, Javier, Amanda, and Alessandra in the front.

Me and Nieves :D

DANCING QUEENS

We partied for the first four hours, enjoying the endless refills, picking up new friends, and dancing like crazy. All of the dudes tried to ‘ligar’ with Isa, which basically means ‘get with’ or ‘hit on’. A frequent question here is, ‘has ligado?’ or some variation of this. The first four hours were relatively coherent and supermuch fun, and the next five may or may not have been equally fun, but starting around 11:30 my memory’s a little hazy.

Guadalupe, Ana, and their friend Ivan met up with us outside for the botellon portion around 11:15, and we commenced to tear up the fields. Apparently I saw everyone I knew, including many students. Friday morning class was really fun.

1/3 of Lengua Inglesa II. Woot.

David, Guadalupe and I

The end of the night with Guadalupe and Ana. Me lookin rough, but stoked.

According to Guadalupe and Ana, I’m a recklessly happy, affectionate drunk. In the immortal words of my friend from home Logan, ‘Destroyer of beers. Kisser of faces.” The beer destroying refers not to my (admittedly awesome) ability to put ‘em back, but to my uncanny ability to drop or knock over any drink I come into contact with.

I rolled home at 4:30, climbed up into the bunk bed (where I slept while my mom was here), and blissfully passed out, only to be awoken at SEVEN by a giddy Brandon, to get ready to teach at 9. Here is a lovely picture my mom took of us.

The unit was ‘weather’. If you note the blackboard, I’m teaching the kids ‘Blustery’. My favorite word.

And so ends the Primavera chronicle.

In the last post that wasn’t about Neil Gaiman or Brandon terrorizing elevators, I mentioned going to Madrid to pick up my mom. She flew into Madrid on the 17th, so we went on the 16th and spent the night there to pick her up the next morning. On Saturday morning we dined on typical spanish fare (JP had churros) and went to the Prado Museum, which we get into cheap as free for being students! The museum was a lot of fun, it’s too bad you’re not allowed to take pictures. OH WELL GUESS I’LL HAVE TO COME BACK TO SPAIN. 

Momma Rossabi waiting in line for the Prado

Me and Brandon hydrating for the long museum journey ahead. I hydrate with chocolate milk, duh.

Some of the highlights:

Netherlandish master Jheronimus van Aken aka El Bosco aka Hieronymus Bosch and his iconic triptych ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ aka El jardín de las delicias. I’ve seen pictures in art history books and been fascinated, but seeing it in person was unreal. I had no idea how enormous it was (220 x 389 cm), and no picture can remotely capture the majesty of the details. I think I stood there a solid 10 minutes, gazing.

My next favorite was Flemish Baroque painter extraordinaire Sir Peter Paul Rubens, who I undoubtedly wouldn’t have seen were it not for JP’s suggestion. His hall was all kinds of magnificent, in particular ‘Saint George Slaying the Dragon’. 

It’s always interesting to note the beauty ideal of the time, personified in this case by his ‘The Three Graces’: 

And of course the Velazquez wing, housing the Mona Lisa of the Prado: ‘Las Meninas’:

Excitomundo.

After exhausting ourselves (and our feet) for 3+ hours at the Prado, we lunched at a restaurant across the street, where all the waiters were amazing and where a table of maybe 25 American teenagers were seated next to us. When their food came out, we were astonished and ashamed: every single one of them had ordered either a hamburger and fries or spaghetti. No wonder we have a bad name… and it’s not as though it was a language thing and they didn’t know what they were ordering-not only were there translations but the menu was replete with pictures of EVERYTHING. Geez. I’m so proud of my intrepid mom for trying new things.

Afterwards we took a much-needed siesta and relaxed before JP, Brandon and I struck out on the town once again. My mom needed extra rest, she hadn’t slept on the plane at all and we pretty much whirlwinded through her first day so she’d been up for a billion hours. We day-drank at an irish pub (it was St. Patty’s day!) where we made friends with the bartenders. We told one of them we were living in Cáceres, and he was like, ‘oh cool, this other bartender is from around there!’, upon which the guy scoffed and condescendingly told us he was from Badajoz, NOT Cáceres.  Oh, well. Haters be hatin’.

Oh yeah, we got hats with the purchase of Guinness. I hate Guinness, but they gave me a hat anyway!

Ballin’.

Later we picked up my mom and went out for a tapas-bar-hop, which was thoroughly enjoyable. The night life in Madrid is really neat. I would never ever want to live there. I love Cáceres, we are so lucky to be here! Suck it, bartender from Badajoz.

Mom and I 

That night after my mom went to bed we went out again, where the highlight of the trip was when we ran into a group of Scottish dudes who ambushed and ‘chatted’ JP and Brandon. Chatting consists a group of boys surrounding you, picking you up and bouncing you, all while yelling, ‘CHAT CHAT CHAT CHAT!’ They turned out to be English teachers too! Also a guy tried to pickpocket Brandon later, to no avail. Madrid was fun, but we were all super glad to hop on the train and get back to the homeland. 

Sleepy kid.

Neil Gaiman. Touching a Dalek. My life, complete.

(via neil-gaiman)

Brandon forced the elevator door open in a fit of hulk-like excitement, causing it to lurch to a stop between floors. We were only stuck a few minutes, but panic crept upon us, owing to the intense smallness of the elevator. Fun Fact: ‘elevator’ is ‘ascensor’ in spanish!

I keep meaning to post, like every day, but every time I get on tumblr a trillion posts from FUCKYEAHTATTOOS come up and I waste hours scrolling and coveting until my eyes bleed. It’s bad. So here’s a few posts I wrote over a week ago and lazily never put up. Enjoy!

(March 16th) I’m writing this on the train on the way to Madrid to pick up my momma, and I’ve realized how long it’s been since my last post. When last I updated we were headed to Badajoz for Carnaval, and we had such an amazing time that I forgot all about this blog business. Sorry for the gap, but here’s the haps!

Train to Madrid: Pensive JP, Industrious Rachel, Fast-Asleep on my Shoulder Brandon

Carnaval is similar to Mardis Gras in New Orleans in the city of Badajoz, which is about an hour (by bus) south of Cáceres; it’s a bit smaller but during Carnaval the body count skyrockets to 3 or 4 times the usual population. JP was, sadly, super sick, so he sentenced himself to quarantine in the apartment while Brandon and I took the bus down on Saturday afternoon. We ate the most incredible food I’ve ever had, a Portugese shrimp concoction; it was basically a recreation of Meg Ryan’s false orgasm scene in ‘When Harry Met Sally’ with every bite. We’d gotten to Badajoz super early because we’re rookies and didn’t know any better, so we wandered aimlessly through the city, playing in orange groves, petting baby sheep, the usual. After hours of extreme shenanigans, the party started for real when the clock struck 10. We changed into our costumes, a makeshift 50s throwback theme, met some new friends, Jesús and Lucía from Sevilla, easily the nicest people I’ve ever met, and danced in the streets with them until around 12, when they left because they’re old (their words, not mine!). Striking out on our own, Brandon and I took to the streets, soaking in the festivities and befriending fellow festival-goers.

Lucía y Jesús

Napoleón on a phone..

So a lot of what Carnaval consists of is people forming small groups in the streets, each group with their supply of a bag of ice, the Spanish equivalent of Solo cups, bottles of liquor, and mixers, usually Fanta or Coke. This is called a botellón, and is one of the main ways in which young people socialize at night and sometimes during the day at certain festivals. Everything is really chill, and people move between groups, trading their wares. Miraculously, among the sea of thousands, we stumbled upon Carmen and Maria, some awesome girls I had met a few weeks before in Cáceres. It was fate. We spent a good three hours there, with Brandon wandering off to talk to every person within a 30 foot radius of our group and me running after him and bringing him back. Brandon and JP don’t have phones so we had to stick together, but I hadn’t factored in Brandon’s ability to talk to anybody and everybody and his extreme propensity for wandering: he eventually snuck away and lost us, and I gave up looking for him after about half an hour. 

My last Brandon-sighting

I spent the next four hours with my girls and their friends, street-dancing among parading bands and possibly engaging in illicit activities. Unfortunately my camera died around the time we lost Brandon, so I don’t have that part documented, except for in my brain. The night ended with me falling in love with a beautiful Spanish boy who walked me to the bus station to catch the 7:30 am bus back to Cáceres, thoroughly partied-out but elated. I was a little distraught that Brandon could have potentially been kidnapped and murdered, and briefly toyed with leaving without him, when he popped up with his own Spanish friend who’d driven him to the station. Again, the heavens had opened up and we were fatefully reunited. The whole thing was indescribably fun, writing about it only captures so much..

We’ve been at the university for a little more than a month, and we’re pretty much the most popular kids in school. We like to talk in a variety of accents amongst ourselves, including British, a really nice French-people-speaking-English, and super southern North Carolina style, a la Kenny Powers in ‘Eastbound and Down’. Once on the bus we busted out the extreme southern drawl and some students next to us said in Spanish, ‘they’re speaking English, but I can’t understand a word of what they’re saying’. It’s pretty awesome. 

Our classes are cool, the best one by far is ‘Historia y Cultura Gallego’, which JP and Brandon have to take for a civilization credit at UNCG. We were pretty worried about it at first, but the teacher is unbelievably awesome, which makes the class amazing. He’s super passionate and knowledgeable, and it’s really interesting subject matter. He talks faster than anyone here (with the exception of our friend Juande, with whom I understand about three words out of every 10-15 he machine-guns out of his mouth. It cracks me up virtually anytime he talks, I love it), sometimes slips into Gallego, and talks in this sing-song way. He’s promised to take us up to Galicia sometime before July. Our notes for the class are hilarious, because we definitely don’t catch every word, although he’s really nice about asking us whether we’re following and if he needs to slow down (which we would never admit to needing). There’s also a lot of words in Gallego sprinkled throughout so we’re going to get home and have our notes reviewed, and it’s gonna look like we never went to class and instead stayed in our beds scribbling nonsense in a made-up language.

Teaching is ecstasy, I’m having such a good time with it. My English VI students are opening up and talking more, I had them split up and debate a question about advancements in modern medicine, and during the debate I almost cried with joy. I was so proud how incredibly well they did. I went in between each group hearing their points, offering suggestions, and psyching them up for battle for about 25 minutes, and then the last 35 minutes they word-dueled. We had also gone over some useful phrases to use as transitions and such. It was basically the most adorable thing ever, they would make their cases and say, “I see what you’re saying but…” and “I disagree with your point because…” and the like, and then look up at me expectantly, with me grinning like a proud mom at her kid’s ballet performance. They invited us to a picnic last week, where Frisbees were thrown, friendships forged, and English and Spanish were spoken in harmony. Before we went we met up with a few of them to ride to the park, and our friend Alessandra (who’s not in the class) told me that their ‘profesora’ was coming. I automatically assumed she was talking about Denise, the professor I’m assisting, who has a real degree and stuff, and was pretty surprised. It took me a good 15 minutes to realize they were talking about me. ‘Profesora’. Hah!

We’ve made friends with some French Erasmus students, Lucile, David, and Pauline, who probably think our French-affected English accent is hilarious, especially when it comes out in full force after a few drinks. They’re awesome and we love them, and we have to speak Spanish together which is excellent because they’re much better than us and can correct our mistakes. We still occasionally have hiccups in communication, last week David was trying to tell me a story involving a snail and had to describe it as ‘the little animal that carries its house around on its back and moves really slowly’. Snail: escargot in French, Caracol in Spanish.

We also hang out with Paola, who’s Italian. We met on the bus and when she found out our nationality she laughed with glee and squealed ‘Americanos! How cool.’ She likes to sing along while Brandon plays the guitar, we have a sing-along park date next week.

David, Paola, and Lucile

When we’re not hanging out with people, we explore the remote areas around Cáceres, hoping to befriend some livestock. There’s a lot of bulls and cows and sheep and horses. Here’s some pictures of the exploration of the wasteland near our apartment:

Together we shall rule this land! And we shall call it…this land.

Our new living room furniture!

We also cause hijinks to ensue in various parks around the city:

Nighttime park excursions. In case you aren’t clued in by JP’s enormous beard, this was a couple of months ago.

These park contraptions are unbelievably fun. Tears of laughter were streaming down my cheeks. I still laugh myself to tears when I look at these. We seriously need to get some of these in the states.

I’ma cut this one short, but I’ll work on another one shortly. Possibly today. Ciao!

This has nothing to do with Spain..but check it out!

But it’s important to Greensborians nonetheless! If you grew up in G-boro like me, you know that downtown was a total wasteland until sort of recently! Let’s keep it poppin! I’ve already talked to two classes about Greensboro, and one of the highlights was our downtown scene! Keep it a highlight.

Today was the first day of teaching class! Mondays and Wednesdays I’m in charge of expanding the knowledge base of the students in ‘Lengua Inglesa VI’, or English 4.  According to the ‘Common European Framework of Reference Levels: English’, my students ideally should be at level C1. I’m familiar with the written, official definition of what that means, but putting it into practice is a little different; it’s difficult to assess the level of the students if they won’t talk.

A few of them seem painfully shy, the majority seem unsure of their English or else just don’t like speaking up in class, and only a handful offer answers fairly willingly and consistently. I’m definitely beginning to understand why Ignacio (one of my professors at UNCG) didn’t want me answering all the questions in his Spanish classes: it’s frustrating when the same three girls volunteer while the rest of the class remain stony-faced, silently staring.

I think I did an ok job of getting most of the students to speak, and during a partner exercise in which they had to discuss the histories of glasses and ambulances whilst I circled the room like an adorably smug vulture to make sure everyone was speaking English, I didn’t hear a single word of Spanish! The listening exercise was the hardest for them to understand: I attribute this to the fact that the pace is fairly quick and the narrators are British and sometimes Scottish: they don’t enunciate as strongly as we do, and a lot of words seemed to run together.

During the last ten minutes of class, I violently threw (gently put away) the book across the room and asked the students to go around the room and tell me their names and a little about themselves. At some point I asked them how old they were, expecting to hear a lot of 20’s, 21’s, maybe a 19 or two. They are 22 and 23 years old. Also one Portuguese man is 40. It’s really bizarre leading a class of people so close to my age, I feel like I’m treating them like idiots when I ask if they need me to slow down or explain the definition of anesthesia. I did have lunch with some girls after class and they said they could understand pretty well, but sometimes I should maybe slow down. I attribute their general understanding to my excellent abilities to project my voice INCREDIBLY loudly, also my willingness to talk about anything possible.

No, by and large everyone seemed eager to learn and to be at a really good level of English and the Portuguese man even told me after class that he loved learning about glasses and ambulances, and that he hoped the other lessons would be as interesting. Yus!

In an example of how teensy tiny the world is, I met one of the girls in my class, Estela, in the office of the teacher I’m assisting, and was told she could use a person to practice English with. I of course agreed to help and we exchanged emails/telephone numbers. Come Monday, I find out she’s not only in the class I’m teaching, but also the sister-in-law of a girl that recently graduated from UNCG: Audrey was in a few classes of mine and had studied abroad in Cáceres the year before, met someone, and recently married him. We knew all this, and also that she’d be moving back here with her husband, but it blows my brains out of the back of my head violently and with much blood and more gore that he’s Estela’s brother.

Anyhow, we are very excited to attend Carnaval in Badajoz this weekend! The plan so far is to take the bus down on Saturday, spend all night awake and enjoying the festivities, then drag ourselves back home on the Sunday bus. We have to wear a disfraz, or costume, apparently absolutely everybody does. So far I’ve collected a radically blue neon wig and some other blue-ish accessories, my plan is to go for a ‘Fifth Element’ style alien look. I’m going to add a couple of spacey guns and a holster tomorrow. It’s going to be REALLY FUN to roll up at the UNEX on Monday at 9 am to teach!!

Many more exciting updates to come, wish us luck!

http://josiehoggard.blogspot.com/

By the way, that seemingly random conversation/post was inspired by my perusal of fellow spanish journey-er Josie Hoggard’s fabulous blog, check it out!

Josie and I attended Jones Elementary together, where we learned all our mad spanish skills, and now we’re in the motherland! The world is a magical place.