Allow me to extend an olive branch.

It may just save your life, or at least prolong it.  

But why stop there?  Here in Jaén, you wouldn't be hard-pressed for more (believe me, their diet reflects that fact).  There are some 150 million olive trees here, which outnumber the inhabitants of the whole province of Jaén about 150-1 (I live in the city of Jaén, which is also the capital of the province of Jaén, in case that's confusing).  El mar de olivo.  The sea of olive trees.  This is the olive oil capital of the world, it's largest producer, the trees packed into the countryside, neatly spaced and embedded in a deep red soil that spans over the rolling hills as far as the eye can see.  Although somewhat monotonous, it has a kind of symmetrical beauty.  

El Mar de Olivo 

Just a drop in the ocean

When I say that the olive branch could prolong your life it's because, on average, they live 3 years longer than Americans (81.1 to 78.4), which puts them near the top of the global charts.  They have an interesting diet - meal x (cooked and/or smothered in olive oil) eaten at times near 7 pm and 11pm-1am, beer or wine with that meal, a cigarette before, during and after that meal, and 27 more in-between.  Then, depending on whether you have a pressing issue the following morning, even later-night tapas with beers.  I always seem to face some critique for my American cooking and eating habits - sorry Ramón, but I think breakfast is an important meal.  

I think there is something to be said for moderation.  Which is worse - Wolfing down a ton of food quickly, so your stomach doesn't realize it's going to burst until it's too late?  Or picking slowly at your food, with abundant banter, sips of your fermented beverage, and an even more abundant inhalation of smoke (which curbs your hunger all the more)?  Well the proof is in the pudding - I've only seen a par of heavier-than-healthy individuals here, and about 50% of them were residing in the McDonald's at the Granada Train Station.  Our gift to the world.     

Is it bad that this is the most time I've spent in a public library, and it's not even for the books?  I mean, I've logged some serious hours in the WWU library, but my sudden disconnection from the internet has shed some light on a few things for me.

1. Apparently I will do anything for Wifi (pronounced wee-fee).  Including sitting outside of a bank with a tiny overhang to avoid the falling raindrops, only to be thwarted by the surprisingly loud noise produced by the roadwork (there is a tram track being constructed throughout the city), which then echoed twice over in my little corner.  I have also sat outside the library at night while it's closed, just for the free connection, in the "cold" (The Andalusian idea of cold is laughable) on the tiny sidewalks, where people are practically stepping over me to get by.  I haven't met hardly any shady characters, but I'll admit I would get a little nervous when the street would empty to just a few of us.  

2. The only connection I have to the mothership, the home-world, the heartland, the land of, well, not my ancestors, but most of my current family and friends, is through the world wide web.  When the internet we were "sharing" with our neighbors suddenly crapped out, I was cut off from the outside world.  This actually wasn't all bad.  It actually inspired me to get out and run around the city more, you know, the real outside world.  

The other day I got together with some of the other Americans teachers here and went to play futsal (soccer on a small, asphalt field with a slightly smaller, heavier ball) against a team of Spaniards.  In case you were wondering, the current world champions prevailed, however, I'm confident had I my all-star team from intramurals, the outcome may have been different.  

I do admire the layout of european cities.  Made for walking, not driving.  Parks and plazas galore, cars and motorcycles parked right on the sidewalk (seriously how is that legal).  I found a great park the other day.  It has what I'm assuming to be a one kilometer track, complete with pull-up bars, stationary bikes, dip bars, leg presses, and an extremely dangerous treadmill with metal cylinders that simply spin when you run on them.  It's like running on a rectangular sheet of ice three feet off the ground - an injury waiting to happen.  And what is a treadmill doing alongside a track anyway?  At any rate, its perfect - it encloses an enormous field with little pools, some balance rope/artwork thing and gardens and trees.  Perfect for the days when I'm feeling especially ambitious to go running and do some chin-ups.  

There isn't much motivation here to workout, though.  Amy (the other teacher assistant at my school) and I created a presentation to inform the kids on our glorious traditional feast that takes place every 4th Thursday of November.  Upon informing them of the importance of watching American football on Thanksgiving day, they asked if the action shot of Peyton Manning was me.  Kids say the darndest things.

They didn't know anything about Thanksgiving, which made it more fun.  They had a hard time differentiating it form Christmas - the joining of family and friends, the large feast - just no Santa, snow, or decorations (of course I hear there's snow on the ground right now at home).  They have a tough time in general differentiating our culture from Britain - Guy Fawkes day was November 5th, which was termed as a "thanksgiving" for the failure of the gunpowder plot, an act of terrorism against parliament.  The kids almost all consented on a preference of ham instead of turkey (blasphemy in my household), and cringed at the thought of pumpkin pie (although one boasted of eating mashed pumpkin...is this real?).

I'll leave you with some humor.  The language barrier exists between those of the same tongue (they learn British English):  There is a cartoon picture on the wall in a classroom at my school with a girl politely asking a boy, May I have a rubber?  What she meant to say was eraser, but I'm glad she didn't because it served for some confusing laughter - but not nearly as much as the difficulty in pronunciation - somehow, a repetition of taste buds came out as...can you guess?

Taaaassty baaalls

The next 2 minutes consisted of confused faces, both student and teacher, and unstoppable, repressed chuckling.  I know, immature.   

Teaching English. Spanish Mentality.

I don't think my biological clock has ever been so confused.  My roommates just had their midday meals, at 7:00pm.  I teased my hunger with a small bowl of soup so I can partake in their normal dinner hour, which is going to take place here hopefully sometime soon (between 10 and midnight?).  I'm almost always the first to go to bed, I mean I would stay up and watch late night "reality" TV in Spanish with the boys, but quite frankly, I think it's just awful.  You thought Jersey Shore was bad?  Anyways, enough said.

Since I've moved in, I've rearranged my room in a way that, according to my roommate, Ramón, is very American.  So I said, you mean better and more efficient?  He said yes.  I'm not sure if he completely understood.  Don't get me wrong, I speak a bit of Spanish, but there is still a language barrier at times, and in this instance it served me well.  

I was talking to Ramón about his studies, and he began describing to me how he always has trouble concentrating on school work until the due date comes very close.  I was surprised the Spanish don't have a definitive word for procrastination, considering the "no pasa nada" lifestyle.  

What I've got here is essentially a "Hakuna Matata" mindset, it means no worries, for the rest of your days.  But seriously, we had a discussion about retirement, and the government takes care of you after 65, even if you've managed to survive that long without working a day in your life.  But hey, if you can do that, you're probably resourceful enough to not need retirement.

Today I was the first to awake.  The time was noon.  I had gone to bed somewhat early (2am) as I had had a busy weekend in Granada.  Even on a school day there is never any need to rush.  I tried to call the immigration office about a hundred times to schedule an appointment to get a temporary residency, but the line was busy every time, and they close at 2pm every day for siesta.  Ahh siesta, you better have nothing you need to do between the hours of 2 and 5-6, because that time is reserved for, well, nothing.

So as it's been a good ten days since I've posted anything, I guess I'll give a quick and dirty recap.

I've had my first few days teaching.  Of course the first day was chaos.  If you want to feel like a celebrity, go to an elementary school anywhere else in the world (well, to my knowledge, Spain or Chile, and according to a friend here, China).  The kids are great, although the English level is pretty low.  I'm not too impressed with the (quite spendy) curriculum they use (which I guess would include me as an assistant, so I can't really complain), but something somewhere isn't working, and the Andalusian government spends far too much money on it for it to be failing so badly.  They bought elementary schools a computer for each student, more or less - I've noticed about 1 per every two students, but still, that's pretty progressive as far as I know.

All the kids packing down to see the water caves on our field trip!

Well I have to teach in the morning so I guess I'll call it a night and just have to recap later.  Ah who am I kidding, I'm going out for a drink with my roommates, I mean, I have to fit in right? 

Half the battle is almost over - Thurs Nov 5 - En route to Jaén

Waiting for the train in Madrid


After navigating my way back to the train station, I made it onto the train that will take me to Jaén.  Upon buying my ticket for this train, I was informed that only 20kg (45 lbs) of luggage was allowed per person.  I had about thrice that amount, but he said the 20kg was only "en teoría, en teoría" (in theory, and that it wouldn't really affect me).  Well here I am on the train along with all my luggage, all is well, except the girl next to me is sitting in my window seat.

Traveling South, looking West from the train

The 4-hour train ride was nice.  Spain has some interesting countryside as you travel south.  Much of it has a reddish hue, almost like a desert, but with a constant scattered greenery, and even some cactus.  All the soil is tilled and looked after, and there were what looked like various tree farms and windmills.

I didn't have the slightest clue as to what to do as I reached Jaén.  I didn't have Amy's phone number (the other American girl teaching here), and I didn't know the city, and once again I would have to haul all my luggage.

I headed for the nearest locutorio (internet and phone center) and started looking for places to live, then found Amy's number and gave her a ring.  She came and met me and we went to her place where I promptly napped for 4 hours.

Upon awakening, we headed for the apartment of 3 Spanish gentlemen that Amy had met when trying to find a place.  In fact, she wanted to live in this room, but her current landlord would not allow her to leave without a hassle, so she decided against it.  I had seen this very ad online and responded to it, quite the coincidence that Amy happened to have their phone number and address.

So I went there, met them all, everything looked good, went back to Amy's, collected my things, and now I'm getting setup here in my new room in an apartment with 3 other Spanish students.

My room

The kitchen

Getting there is half the battle - Wed Nov 3rd - 5th - En route to London, then Madrid

I am a bit behind on this whole blog thing, anyways, I'll start the night of my flight to London where I would connect to Madrid.

I really lucked out on this flight.  British Airways asks that you pay if you would like to book a seat in advance.  Well I had certainly planned on doing that, and I remembered planning to do it as I printed out my boarding pass with my designated middle seat for my upcoming 9-hour flight.  Luckily upon arriving to my seat, an older woman was already sitting in it next to her husband, her window seat vacant, soon to filled with my happy bottom.  Great way to start the journey, heck, I just made $30.

Of course no flight would be complete without an extremely pissed off baby.  The adorable little girl who grabbed by pant leg and backpack straps as I passed by her in the aisle on the way to my seat is now wailing to high heaven for some unsatisfied need.  I am luckily far enough away to not be bothered by it and really just more empathetic toward the mother who has two more rugrats to deal with besides the difficult one.

A sizzling "beef with vegetables & mashed potatoes"dinner later (complete with wine, italian dressing spilled all over my pillow, and constant, harrowing turbulence, which made drinking anything at all, or even keeping it on my tray and off of myself, a challenge), I was halfway through a good book and on my way to dreamland, and then London (not dreamland).

I awoke to a breakfast box that had some disgusting meat muffin thing in it.  I settled for the tiny bran muffin and yogurt and left the meat muffin alone after I almost refunded the first bite.  We circled the runway once due to excessive incoming traffic and then had a bumpier-than-I-would-have-liked landing right on time at London-Heathrow Airport.

I showed up at my connecting flight with time to spare, and we boarded on time and everything was looking good, until the captain got on the intercom (never a good sign) and informed of us our broken plane.  It would only be an extra 45 minutes.  So sure enough, after 45 minutes, we began to taxi away from the gate, then after we taxied what seemed a fair amount of time, we stopped, and then 45 minutes later, we were taking off.  So much for tonight's train to Jaén, guess I'll have to find a hostel in the night streets of Madrid while carting around 130 pounds of luggage.

After I picked up my luggage, I went with this California girl who was being met by a friend to go to the train station.  I figure it saves me the trouble of figuring out the metro.  Of course neither speaks Spanish, although the friend lives here half the year playing roller hockey (what?), and don't know the metro, so I had to figure it out anyways.

After buying my train ticket for Jaén the following morning, I set out upon the busy streets of Madrid, buzzing with nightlife, delicious smelling restaurants, and hoards of drunk people, looking like (and being) a confused American with far too much luggage, extremely hungry and tired, looking for a hostel.  After finally finding one, lugging all my things up two flights of rickety spiral staircase, I was informed the room would be 40€ (just over $50).  Seeing as how I've paid less for a hotel, I wasn't about to settle for this, so I turned around and played hardball, to which my opponent went to his lowest offer possible - 38€.  I went back to the street, and back to square one.

Luckily the next one I found, run by a one-eyed man named Carlos, went for 20€ a night, sold.  I proceeded to take one the greatest showers in recent memory and then slept hard until my 7am wake-up call.