It's been a hectic few days - I'll sum up what happened before the weekend:
Thursday night
- I met with Assieh, the director of the school where I'll be working. She is so lovely! A really energetic and bubbly character, I was greeted with a big hug when she first saw me! She briefly talked me through the teaching style of the school and how it works, and introduced me to the school's secretary, Araceli - a lovely Spanish lady, who was ecstatic to have a Spanish-speaking teacher join the team! She works closely with the teachers to ensure the students' well-being, so I'm sure my language skills can only be a positive addition :) I also met Assieh's husband, Miguel Angel, who teaches Maths and Science at the school (in Spanish), who seems lovely too. All bodes well so far!
- After I had met Assieh, the other teachers and I then went out to play bingo at a local bar. Assieh and Miguel Angel had very kindly given us some money for some drinks to enjoy our first night out together, so we put this to good use! On bingo night, buying a small beer gets you a bingo card, which you then use to play for prizes such as drinks, sandwiches and the kitty, which gets rolled over every time there isn't a winner. The night attracts quite a crowd of locals, and the atmosphere was certainly animated! Bridget won vouchers for three sandwiches and a few free drinks - more than she's ever won there before! It was decided that I was a lucky talisman... Once the game had finished, we were joined by a group of Spanish friends the other teachers have met during their time in Lucena so far - all really nice guys, and it was great to be able to speak to them and help translate for the others! We then moved on to another bar, and Bridget, Hazel and I went to a different bar where the free drinks tokens can be redeemed. The bar was empty when we walked in, so the rather bored-looking barman had quite a surprise when we turned up, brandishing bingo tickets and demanding free drinks! He seemed quite amused though, and happily obliged us, along with taking a few triumphant photos of us with our prizes! We were about to leave when a group of Spanish women from the bingo night appeared, also requesting their free drinks. This then resulted in loud conversations about how we are English teachers - this tends to go down very well, and is swiftly followed by a reel of English phrases known by the people you are speaking to! We ended up exchanging contact details with one Spanish lady who teaches English at a local school, who invited us to her regular bingo nights at her house with the other ladies!
- I was then shown another bar in Lucena, where one of our Spanish friends works. It was here that I first tried 'ron miel' (honey rum) for 50 cents a shot - absolutely delicious! It tastes something like mead, if I were to compare it to anything. Not bad for my first night!
Friday
On Friday I had a lovely long lie-in (albeit on the sofa - although pretty comfortable, I must say!) to make up for the hecticness of Thursday. Alice and I then went to Bridget and Bijan's flat to arrange things for skiing in Granada at the weekend. A few amusing phone calls to the Spanish ski school ensued - Bridget did very well using her Spanish over the phone, with me standing guard as translator for some tricky questions! We discovered that they didn't have any more classes on Saturday with equipment thrown in, so opted for skiing lessons on Sunday morning instead.
Alice and I realised that we could do with some thick socks and gloves, so we decided to drive over to the local Carrefour hypermarket to pick some up. We went outside and I was introduced to Bridget's beloved Spanish car - a 25-year-old Seat Ronda that used to be the prize in '80s Spanish game shows! We got inside and tried the engine, but disaster - the battery had gone flat! A ridiculous slapstick sketch then ensued in the middle of a street in central Lucena - three English girls pushing this poor old Ronda backwards and forwards down a one-way street, vainly trying to kick-start her! After causing a minor traffic jam and frustrating some locals, we asked a passing driver if he had some jump leads. Miraculously he did, and agreed to help us! He drove around the block to enable us to move the car back for him to park opposite. A fleeting panic over finding the bonnet lever occurred in his absence (thankfully I found it camouflaged behind the driver door!), then he pulled up his car and set to work. Bijan pumped the accelerator, but nothing was happening. Cue Helpful Spaniard no.2, who was passing in the street and advised that pumping the gas in such a way would drown the engine. He ushered Bijan out of the driver's seat and sat down himself. A few determined depressions of the pedal, and she was alive! Both men then nodded cheekily and were gone as quickly as they had appeared. What a drama!
Following our shopping tripI then read over some notes that Alice had written for me on all the classes I'll be taking over when she leaves, before I went to meet her at the school to observe her four classes that afternoon! This was a brilliant experience, as I got to meet the kids and see Alice in action, i.e. what I will need to live up to!
The afternoon was fantastic but exhausting - even sitting and quietly observing can be tiring when you're in a room full of 5 and 6 year olds! The kids are all adorable though, and I was very impressed with the amount of English some of them knew - the sentences they were forming were on a par with the responses I would have expected from the adult class I was teaching in England before I moved here! I do think that the teaching here will be challenging, but I'm excited to push myself in a new direction and have a feeling that it will bring interests out of me that I never realised I had. A great afternoon!
We then caught up with Bridget and Bijan on their afternoon's lessons for a bit, before being invited to their lovely flat for dinner. We discussed who we were borrowing ski gear from - fortunately a lot of the Spanish guys here have their own jackets and salopettes, and had kindly offered to lend us some! Antonio had already given us one pair of salopettes, which Bijan tried on - much hilarity ensued, as they were for someone about twice his size! Alice and I then rolled home to bed at around midnight - we had an early start ahead of us to get to Granada the next day!
Saturday
I hurled myself out of bed at 8:00 on Saturday morning (a bit of a shock to the system after the very Spanish timetable of the day before!) and Alice and I packed up our things and headed to Bridget and Bijan's flat to pack up the car and go on our road trip! Eternally grateful to the kind strangers of the day before for ensuring that the car would start on the big day, we trundled off to Granada - around 1.5 hours' drive from Lucena. We parked near the bus station and caught a bus into the centre to find our hostel. It was strange (and lovely) being back in Granada after visiting there for the first time just three months earlier! We wandered across Plaza Nueva near the Albaicín, passing the street I had stayed on in October, and found that our hostel was just a stone's throw away! The White Nest hostel proved a very good choice indeed - lovely and clean and well-decorated, with a beautiful Moorish interior courtyard and free tea and coffee - just what we needed! We put our stuff in our room and set off in search of free tapas!
We began our tapas crawl at Los Diamantes on Plaza Nueva - a discovery I made back in October. Ask for a caña (small beer) of Alhambra Gold (the delicious local brew) for a mere 2€ and receive a free tapa of whatever they're currently serving! Today it was meat and seafood paella rice - a nice, filling dish to give us some energy for exploring!
Next, Bridget led us to Plaza Isabel la Católica, where Calle Navas can be found - a narrow street packed with tapas bars and revelling locals and tourists alike. We sampled some delicious manchego cheese and a platter of tortilla and barbecued meat in a rustic bar, before moving on to what probably became our favourite bar of the trip - a tiny little place with a silver-haired bartender, who served us up some more Manchego and calamares before turning the classic Spanish pop ballads on his radio up to 11, much to the delight of the somewhat merry Spanish ladies drinking at the bar! They soon started singing along at the top of their lungs, firing requests at the cheeky-eyed barman, who occasionally startled us with his smooth dance moves! On our way out of the bar we were cornered by the ladies, who applauded our English teaching and one even gave us her contact details and offered to show us around Almería! Dizzy and delighted by this experience, we flung ourselves back amid Granada's streets to hit the Spanish January sales - some of which go on until March! I acquired some warmer pyjamas (Andalucía has taken me by surprise by being cold at this time of year - something I could never imagine describing the region as!) and a jumper to serve me during skiing and the rest of the cold weather, as well as some bargainous patterned trousers (I was coerced! The price was too good to resist!). We then made our way back to the hostel for a brief respite before the evening's activities.
Back at the hostel, we refuelled on a cup of tea and bumped into a group of American girls in the communal kitchen, most of whom were studying just outside of Madrid. We also met Adrienne, a Canadian girl who was travelling solo around Europe and who would be sharing our room for the night, and who had just spent three weeks volunteering on an olive farm! We invited her to join us for dinner once we had spruced ourselves up for the night's activities. Once again, we set upon Calle Navas, finding a large and popular bar and choosing a selection of tapas, ensalada mixta and a big plate of chipirones (fried baby squid - delicious, honestly!) to share. Once we had eaten, Adrienne retired to the hostel for some sleep and we continued on to meet our friends in the student quarter of the city, an area I had not been to before. Walking amid the streets, it was clear why it was so popular with students - row upon row of takeaways, rock bars and alternative music shops - how had I not found this before?! We began the night at our friend's flat, enjoying the blissfully reasonably-priced Spanish red wine and learning to sing along to Spanish songs played on the guitar before venturing out to a local bar. We were pleased to hear some classic English pop songs to dance and sing along to, and when our exuberance resulted in a broken glass, I was surprised to find that the barman, upon hearing that I was from Bristol, invited us to the bar for some free shots of ron miel instead of removing us from his bar! Unfortunately, the revelry meant that we had much less than the desired amount of sleep the night before a morning skiing lesson an hour's drive away, but I wouldn't have had it any other way!
Well, time has run away with me and I think I'm going to have to call it a night at that, but I'll certainly write about my experience of the snowy Sierra Nevada as soon as possible! Love to everyone :) Nikki xxx
- I was then shown another bar in Lucena, where one of our Spanish friends works. It was here that I first tried 'ron miel' (honey rum) for 50 cents a shot - absolutely delicious! It tastes something like mead, if I were to compare it to anything. Not bad for my first night!
Friday
On Friday I had a lovely long lie-in (albeit on the sofa - although pretty comfortable, I must say!) to make up for the hecticness of Thursday. Alice and I then went to Bridget and Bijan's flat to arrange things for skiing in Granada at the weekend. A few amusing phone calls to the Spanish ski school ensued - Bridget did very well using her Spanish over the phone, with me standing guard as translator for some tricky questions! We discovered that they didn't have any more classes on Saturday with equipment thrown in, so opted for skiing lessons on Sunday morning instead.
Alice and I realised that we could do with some thick socks and gloves, so we decided to drive over to the local Carrefour hypermarket to pick some up. We went outside and I was introduced to Bridget's beloved Spanish car - a 25-year-old Seat Ronda that used to be the prize in '80s Spanish game shows! We got inside and tried the engine, but disaster - the battery had gone flat! A ridiculous slapstick sketch then ensued in the middle of a street in central Lucena - three English girls pushing this poor old Ronda backwards and forwards down a one-way street, vainly trying to kick-start her! After causing a minor traffic jam and frustrating some locals, we asked a passing driver if he had some jump leads. Miraculously he did, and agreed to help us! He drove around the block to enable us to move the car back for him to park opposite. A fleeting panic over finding the bonnet lever occurred in his absence (thankfully I found it camouflaged behind the driver door!), then he pulled up his car and set to work. Bijan pumped the accelerator, but nothing was happening. Cue Helpful Spaniard no.2, who was passing in the street and advised that pumping the gas in such a way would drown the engine. He ushered Bijan out of the driver's seat and sat down himself. A few determined depressions of the pedal, and she was alive! Both men then nodded cheekily and were gone as quickly as they had appeared. What a drama!
Following our shopping tripI then read over some notes that Alice had written for me on all the classes I'll be taking over when she leaves, before I went to meet her at the school to observe her four classes that afternoon! This was a brilliant experience, as I got to meet the kids and see Alice in action, i.e. what I will need to live up to!
The afternoon was fantastic but exhausting - even sitting and quietly observing can be tiring when you're in a room full of 5 and 6 year olds! The kids are all adorable though, and I was very impressed with the amount of English some of them knew - the sentences they were forming were on a par with the responses I would have expected from the adult class I was teaching in England before I moved here! I do think that the teaching here will be challenging, but I'm excited to push myself in a new direction and have a feeling that it will bring interests out of me that I never realised I had. A great afternoon!
We then caught up with Bridget and Bijan on their afternoon's lessons for a bit, before being invited to their lovely flat for dinner. We discussed who we were borrowing ski gear from - fortunately a lot of the Spanish guys here have their own jackets and salopettes, and had kindly offered to lend us some! Antonio had already given us one pair of salopettes, which Bijan tried on - much hilarity ensued, as they were for someone about twice his size! Alice and I then rolled home to bed at around midnight - we had an early start ahead of us to get to Granada the next day!
Saturday
I hurled myself out of bed at 8:00 on Saturday morning (a bit of a shock to the system after the very Spanish timetable of the day before!) and Alice and I packed up our things and headed to Bridget and Bijan's flat to pack up the car and go on our road trip! Eternally grateful to the kind strangers of the day before for ensuring that the car would start on the big day, we trundled off to Granada - around 1.5 hours' drive from Lucena. We parked near the bus station and caught a bus into the centre to find our hostel. It was strange (and lovely) being back in Granada after visiting there for the first time just three months earlier! We wandered across Plaza Nueva near the Albaicín, passing the street I had stayed on in October, and found that our hostel was just a stone's throw away! The White Nest hostel proved a very good choice indeed - lovely and clean and well-decorated, with a beautiful Moorish interior courtyard and free tea and coffee - just what we needed! We put our stuff in our room and set off in search of free tapas!
We began our tapas crawl at Los Diamantes on Plaza Nueva - a discovery I made back in October. Ask for a caña (small beer) of Alhambra Gold (the delicious local brew) for a mere 2€ and receive a free tapa of whatever they're currently serving! Today it was meat and seafood paella rice - a nice, filling dish to give us some energy for exploring!
Next, Bridget led us to Plaza Isabel la Católica, where Calle Navas can be found - a narrow street packed with tapas bars and revelling locals and tourists alike. We sampled some delicious manchego cheese and a platter of tortilla and barbecued meat in a rustic bar, before moving on to what probably became our favourite bar of the trip - a tiny little place with a silver-haired bartender, who served us up some more Manchego and calamares before turning the classic Spanish pop ballads on his radio up to 11, much to the delight of the somewhat merry Spanish ladies drinking at the bar! They soon started singing along at the top of their lungs, firing requests at the cheeky-eyed barman, who occasionally startled us with his smooth dance moves! On our way out of the bar we were cornered by the ladies, who applauded our English teaching and one even gave us her contact details and offered to show us around Almería! Dizzy and delighted by this experience, we flung ourselves back amid Granada's streets to hit the Spanish January sales - some of which go on until March! I acquired some warmer pyjamas (Andalucía has taken me by surprise by being cold at this time of year - something I could never imagine describing the region as!) and a jumper to serve me during skiing and the rest of the cold weather, as well as some bargainous patterned trousers (I was coerced! The price was too good to resist!). We then made our way back to the hostel for a brief respite before the evening's activities.
Back at the hostel, we refuelled on a cup of tea and bumped into a group of American girls in the communal kitchen, most of whom were studying just outside of Madrid. We also met Adrienne, a Canadian girl who was travelling solo around Europe and who would be sharing our room for the night, and who had just spent three weeks volunteering on an olive farm! We invited her to join us for dinner once we had spruced ourselves up for the night's activities. Once again, we set upon Calle Navas, finding a large and popular bar and choosing a selection of tapas, ensalada mixta and a big plate of chipirones (fried baby squid - delicious, honestly!) to share. Once we had eaten, Adrienne retired to the hostel for some sleep and we continued on to meet our friends in the student quarter of the city, an area I had not been to before. Walking amid the streets, it was clear why it was so popular with students - row upon row of takeaways, rock bars and alternative music shops - how had I not found this before?! We began the night at our friend's flat, enjoying the blissfully reasonably-priced Spanish red wine and learning to sing along to Spanish songs played on the guitar before venturing out to a local bar. We were pleased to hear some classic English pop songs to dance and sing along to, and when our exuberance resulted in a broken glass, I was surprised to find that the barman, upon hearing that I was from Bristol, invited us to the bar for some free shots of ron miel instead of removing us from his bar! Unfortunately, the revelry meant that we had much less than the desired amount of sleep the night before a morning skiing lesson an hour's drive away, but I wouldn't have had it any other way!
Well, time has run away with me and I think I'm going to have to call it a night at that, but I'll certainly write about my experience of the snowy Sierra Nevada as soon as possible! Love to everyone :) Nikki xxx
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