Fist week of classes

I've lived in Logrono for two full weeks now and I just finished my first week of classes.  Logrono is a really nice city and I am slowly getting accustomed to the culture.  Some of the stuff that is harder to get used to is the pace of life, grocery shopping, walking down the street and of course the language barrier.  By pace of life I mean the daily schedule.  Stores seem to always be closed unless its really late at night on the weekend (then most of them are open), sometimes I have to return to a place more than a few times before catching them during business hours.  The weekend schedule is very specific and it seems that everyone in the whole city has the same frame of mind.  Around 930-10 its time for pinchos on the Calle Lauren.  Pinchos are the basque version of tapas, and they are truly delicious.  Common ingredients are mushrooms, any type of seafood, many varieties of ham, quail eggs, regular eggs, spanish tortilla and of course matched with your choice of drink.  There are tons of different wines here ranging in price from 1 euro a bottle to 20-30.  A glass of tinto (just regular "joven" red wine) is usually 60 cents a glass with your pinchos.  The wines are classified as joven (young),  semi-crianza (aged in oak for a few months), crianza (aged 2 years with 12 month minimum in oak), reserva (aged at least 3 years, 12 months minimum in oak, and 24 months in a bottle.) and gran reserva ( aged at least 5 years, 24 months oak and 36 months in a bottle).  There are also lots of white wines and something called vino claro which looks like a white wine and it has no label.  People may also choose to drink beer with their tapas or drink both beer and wine.  Beer comes in at least 3 different sizes that I can see and most of the spanish people drink it in the smallest size which is about the size of a large shot glass.  The way that pinchos work is that EVERYONE in the city goes to a small area in the city (the most popular place is called Calle Lauren) and starts shoving their way to the front of their favorite bar to place an order of food (small bite sized plates) and a glass of tinto and cerveza (or both).  They take about 5 minutes to tilt back the glass of wine and eat the pinchos, then they light up a cigarette yell at their children that its time to move and they move on the the bar next do to do the same thing.  This goes on every single night till about 12 AM.  To give you an idea of how popular this is these streets and bars are litterally shoulder to shoulder packed for 3 hour each night.

On Friday and Saturday everyone moves to the next part of town (there are about 3 to choose from) to start their partying.  From about 12 or 1 till 3-4 people drink in these louder foodless bars before either heading to the discoteca or home.  During all these you will see all the children under 18 walking around playing games, drinking sodas and eating ice cream cones, it really is unlike anything I have ever seen before, and it sure is fun.

My first classes went pretty well with some better than others.  Each teacher I work with has a different idea of the amount of work they expect from me.  One teacher told me I was the teacher and basically left me with the class alone for the whole time with no instructions and 35 7 year olds.  Another teacher just had me pronounce words for the class.  Some of the classes the kids are so much more well behaved than others, which was also a surprise to me considering they were the same age group.  This past week I worked with kids between ages 6-9.  Next week I will have some classes with kids as young as 3-5 and as old as 11-13.

I am very pleased with the apartment I am living in, all of the roommates are very nice, there is plenty of stuff close by and the central (pincho) area is only a 10 minute walk.  One of the roommates had her friend visiting from San Sabestian this weekend and her friend (who is also doing this program) lives in Portland.  Last night when we were out eating pinchos and drinking wine me and here reminisced about Portland the entire time, and it really made me miss home despite how great it is over here.

Sorry I havent updated in so long just been very busy.
The pictures here are from a walk I took outside of the city in Logrono.

Found a place to live

So I was really tired today and fell asleep after hours of no real responses about an apartment.  When I woke up I had a good response that I followed up with.  He called me and told me to wait outside in 30 minutes and he would take me to see the place.

The place was really nice, 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, kitchen, living room, patio, storage area, garage, tv, dvd, internet, washer dryer etc etc.  It was great.  I told him I wanted the one remaining room that was in my price range, and he said I could move in tomorrow.  The room is pretty spacious but the bed is tiny, I mean child size.

The guy told me that so far 2 other people live there, a woman who is 28 and a dentist, and a 25 year old girl from czech republic.  Neither of them speak English and the czech girl doesnt speak Spanish.  It will be very interesting.

I wont have internet for 5 days but once I do I will post pictures of the new piso.

the address is C/ Chile 40, 2º B 26005 Logroño (la rioja) spain.

Traveling the world is sweet. Working in a country where you cant communicate with people is another story.

So today has been very interesting to say the least.  I started my day by leaving the hotel (that I really couldnt afford and took a huge chunk out of my money) to head to a hotel I found that was more reasonable.  I had directions and a map, and it took me about 30 minutes to walk to this address with all of my baggage with me.  When I got to the address the door was unmarked and it was also abandoned so I walked back 30 minutes to the hotel (looking for wifi or an internet cafe the entire way) to see if my address was wrong.  I finally got back to the last hotel and checked the address, of course it was correct so my only option was to go back and see if I had missed it.  I walked back and still couldnt find it so I decided to keep walking on the street and finally found the hotel 3 more blocks up the street.  This "hotel" is actually just someones apartment but its still cheaper and its ok.

After checking in and relaxing for a few minutes i started my long walk to one of the schools I will be working at to meet with my teachers and talk about what I am supposed to do.  I got there and I met 4 teachers I will be working with, none of which really speak more english than a 2 year old except for the head of the english department of one of the school.  He speaks enough english that I can understand him but he doesnt understand anything that I say in english.  They were all really nice and we had a meeting for about an hour.  In this meeting they spoke to me in really fast spanish as though I would understand (even though I told them I do not).  I now know that I will be starting school on Monday and that I am supposed to have a "presentation."  I will be teaching kids from ages 3-16, many of which do not understand ANY english at all, and many of which have Spanish as a 2nd or 3rd language.

The head of the english department tried to help me find a place after the meeting, after they all seemed very suprised that I didnt have a place to live or a car.  He took me to the university where there are lots of international students and he basically found me a place I could move into right away; however this place was not only TINY! (which i would deal with in an instant) it was also about twice as much money as i could possibly afford and I would have to commit to a year.  He then took me to another place where they printed out a sheet of paper with about 200 different apartments available, some of which are within my price range.  I'll start calling these people relentlessly tomorrow.

My christmas break starts on the 24th of december, but they told me it was ok if i left on the 23rd so I wouldnt miss christmas.  I'm going to buy a ticket back to portland for the holiday as soon as my money transfers over to the correct account and I will be home from the 23rd till January 9th.

I can easily say this has/is going to be the most difficult thing I have ever done, but I think I'll get through it.  Things should sort of fall into place in the next week if I am able to find a place to live and get through the first few days of school.

That being said I have not taken any more photos.

Madrid to Logrono

On my birthday in Madrid there was a General strike in all of Spain.  People rampaged through the city shouting, celebrating, protesting, and putting stuckers all over everything.  It was really an interesting sight.  I did not really do anything for my birthday until the following night.

On the 30th I went to a show with two of my favorite Dj's; Rex the Dog and Erol Alkin.  Some spanish band called Dorian played too.  The venue was huge and really a sight in-and-of itself.  So I had a pretty good birthday I would say.

Orientation was boring and I could not really understand much of what they were telling me.  Maybe that is why by the time my 4 hour long bus ride reached it's destination in Logrono I was lost and confused with no place to stay.  I wandered around looking for a hostel;  the first hostel was completely full, so was the second hostel,  the third hostel was not a hostel it was an apartment building.  I was starting to get really frustrated, tired and not too sure where I was going to stay.  And I was starting to get worried that my rolling bag was going to break and I was going to be really stuck.  The bag is really on its last leg; the handle is wobbly and feels like its about to break off.  I just hope it makes it long enough for me to find a place to live.  Well, luckily I was able to find a place with a room, unluckily this place was a fairly expensive hotel.  I am spending two nights in this hotel and then I have 2 nights booked in a cheaper one that I found for tomorrow.

The apartment search is not going well.  I have emailed dozens of people and only 2 have returned my emails.  The first one said that they wanted me to be a girl.  The second one may lead to something we will find out soon I hope.

I am meeting with the english teachers of both schools tomorrow afternoon and I am hoping that they can help me out a little bit.

All that being said, Logrono seems to be a very amazing and beautiful city.  It feels much larger and more "city like" than I had expected.  The streets are filled with people eating tapas, drinking wine (lots and lots of wine), and eating ice cream.  The weather here is much hotter than Madrid and there are tons of ice cream stores and it seems like everyone is always eating ice cream.

The last 4 pictures are of Logrono.

I am missing home, but having a great time (for the most part).  I hope to find a place to live VERY soon.  I also hope to talk to people soon,  and I will keep updating this blog.