Donald?

I'm so sorry but I can't figure out who you are based on your comments! Let me know!!!

Foot Problems!

So most of you know that right before I came out here I injured my toe and basically had to have the end of it sewn back on. It took months before it felt normal, and I was in an incredible amount of pain. Then yesterday morning I was picking up a glass and dropped it and it shattered all over the floor. I swept it up, swearing as I was doing it thinking it was going to make me late to work, but understanding that Zoe could walk on it or something so it had to be done. I thought I had finished, but my next step told me otherwise. I managed to get a huge piece right in the middle of my bare foot (same one as the toe) and sliced the whole bottom of my foot. So I had to stay home, not move, and elevate my foot all day. And I should stay home today, but my students are giving a huge presentation so I must go. Ah, the life of foot injuries. Fun! Hope this makes everyone's day a little better in thinking how nice it is that they can walk normally!

Hugs to all!

Grading Done!

Grade time has always been stressful, but for some reason this particular year it was worse. Each report card took about 15 minutes, and with over 100 students, this added up to quite some time. It's these times I wonder why I became a teacher and get paid so little.

However, with that said, other aspects of my life are going well. I managed to get my first haircut in Spain with limited Spanish and a notecard that said "I want highlights. More in the front than in the back. Also, I want you to layer it in an A-line shape." This was courtesy of one of my students who looked at me like I was crazy when I asked her to write it out for me. But it worked!

And I'm starting to tutor after school this week, which I fought against for a while because I didn't want to stay after school later, but when I realized four hours a week would bring in 800 euros a month (that's almost a thousand dollars), I decided it was worth it. Maybe now I can have some money saved up for when I come back! And at this exchange rate, it'll be worth it!

I also figured out how to order groceries online to be delivered from one of the huge supermarkets so I no longer have to worry about the five pound bags of dog food I get at my local market and can save money on the Zoe monster.

All in all, life is good. I'm learning bits about Spain, and very little Spanish, but I think that deep down in my brain somewhere I can form a sentence.

Hugs from Spain on a very cold November morning!

Pumpkin Carving!!!

I forgot that in Europe they don't do Halloween, so I was a little sad when it came around and no one knew what I was talking about when I said "pumpkin carving." However, Kathryn (my beautiful dog walker) and I set out to find pumpkins and teach Susana how to carve her first one. We finally found some and went home to get things set up. Kathryn and I diligently did the first steps to carving and got all the wonderful goop out of the middle and the started drawing. About that time Susana just picked up a knife and started cutting without drawing anything first. We started laughing and explaining that it was better to draw and shape it first, but she just looked at us like we were crazy and continued on. Turns out, her pumpkin looked way better than both of ours. I hate art teachers =)

It was an entertaining night, and one that I never had the pleasure to experience when I lived in France. So I may not have had any trick or treaters and pumpkins lining the streets of Portland, but I had three pumpkins in my living room, glowing with the same intensity as those of years past.

El Escorial and Spanish Countryside

Last weekend I took off with Susana and Javier for a day into the countryside of Madrid. These are some of the photos. It was beautiful--very different from what I expected, but beautiful. I wanted to at least share the photos!

Food for Thought

This morning on the train I was reading a Paul Auster book that I picked up at Powells last time I was home. It's called The New York Trilogy and is separated into three different mystery-type novellas. I finished the first two last night, and was not that impressed. But then this morning I started the third and final one, and on the first page came across a passage that really struck me. He's talking about a close childhood friend who he hasn't seen in over a decade, and says the following, "We grew up, went off to different places, drifted apart. None of that is very strange, I think. Our lives carry us along in ways we cannot control, and almost nothing stays with us. It dies when we we do, and death is something that happens to us every day."

Recently a friend got in touch with me whom I hadn't spoken to in over a decade. It was like a rebirth of memories, of thoughts, of smiles. Death had occurred, but so had resurrection. Though I'm in Spain, and drifted and drifting from the people whom I've known and loved, I realize that maybe death is happening everyday, but so is rebirth. And thus I leave you with another quote from the book. "The fact was I had let go of Fanshawe. His life had stopped the moment we went our separate ways, and he belonged to the past for me now, not to the present. He was a ghost I carried around inside of me, a prehistoric figment, a thing that was no longer real." I miss my ghosts, but they are there, inside of me, with every stroke of the keyboard, homework I assign, and breath that I take. Hello, and goodbye, to all of my ghosts.

SAT Proctoring

Ok, while I can admit that I really enjoy teaching, and I do like my students, I did not want to wake up this morning at 5:30 to take Zoe out in the freezing cold, hop into my shower, and somehow make it to school by 7:30 to proctor the SAT on a Saturday. I do not want to be sitting in a room full of stressed out students, one of whom puked during the first twenty minutes. I, unlike the kids of course, am counting down the minutes until I am allowed to go home, watch the new episode of Greys Anatomy that itunes has just kindly sent me, and take a nap. Instead, I have to go home, take Zoe out again since she´s been cooped up for hours while I was here, and then figure out how in the hell to make fried chicken. Let me remind everyone here that I am a vegetarian. I have not eaten meat in over a decade. I have no clue how to cook fried chicken. But for dinner tonight we all pulled out a card with what we were cooking, and my luck, of course, is that I got fried chicken. So I bought the chicken, put it in the freezer, and have been searching on the internet for the last hour trying to find a recipe that tells me how to make it. Looks like I´m supposed to defrost it first. Great. Guess I forgot to do that this morning. And shake it in a bag with flour and seasonings? What are these people thinking?? I´m going to placate myself with the fact that I am also making mashed potatoes, if I can find potatoes, and then tonight, when no one is around, I am going to eat an entire sackful of them. After all, if no one sees you eat something, then you´re not really injesting calories. And it´s cold. And I want them. And a nap. And not the timer that is about to go off to tell me that once again I have to instruct the students to put their pencils down, that they are not allowed calculators if they are not taking the mathematics section, etc . . . Ok, enough of a rant. Happy Saturday to all.