Today I had my first class with kids and it was quite fun. To be honest I’d rather be working with kids, but I came too late, after the start of the school term, so I’m just getting a few filling in classes with them. It went pretty well today – until they figured out that I was covering, and then they went a little crazy… which I seem to remember was what we did at school when we had covering teachers – so no hard feelings. I felt humbled by the fact that these (I guess) 12/13 year-olds speak much better english than I do spanish :(
Afterwards I had a class with a guy who is fast becoming my favourite pupil. He stands out because he’s the only person I teach (or indeed know) who is the same age as me. He’s a programmer working for BT and we spent this lesson geeking out about linux and badmouthing Macs. When I asked him (as part of the lesson plan) what kind of problems one encounters at work, he gave me a lesson in querying oracle databases. Tomorrow is a public holiday here so nothing to do… also I got my first pay cheque today… wooohoo!

A strange habit I’ve fallen into recently – flushing the toilet while still upon it.

I didn’t have any students for my evening class today so I took the opportunity to wander into the centre of Madrid where, in the Plaza Mayor – one of the big tourist places and kind of historically significant – there’s a Christmas market which is a sight to behold. Spaniards take their nativity scenes very seriously and the market has to be seen to be believed, consisting, as it does, of endless stalls selling almost nothing but figures for nativities. Not that they stick to the basic Mary, Joseph, Shepherds, etc, but countless models of farm animals, vegetables?!, and enough buildings to reconstruct a miniature version of Bethlehem seven times over, including blacksmiths with simulated flames flickering in the forge, working water wheels, fake rocks and so on and so forth. What’s weird is that every stall seems to stock basically exactly the same things, there are a few marginally different styles, and a wide range of scales, one stall may have a few more detailed buildings, one a wider selection of farm animals, but really there’s not much to differentiate them. Even weirder though, apart from the stalls selling Christmas trees around the edge of the square, there is only one other type of stall – every fourth one stocks a wide variety of joke products – Halloween masks, knives with retractable blades, fake walnuts, blood, whoopee cushions, etc – again with almost no differentiation in products between stalls.
I spent a full hour wandering around being perplexed.

I think the Plaza look pretty good though, in its Christmas regalia (blurry photo alert):

 

Yesterday I got a letter from Social Security here welcoming me into my Spanish tax paying status. It made me laugh quite a lot:

"Dear Friend" it starts, "… welcome… [to] the Social Security system, a system that every day has greater reason to thank the efforts of millions of people like you… fundamental to our state of well being… solidarity between generations… between workers and employers…"

Etcetera. A whole page of gushing loveliness.

Man… now I really feel a part of something wonderful.

Also, I have a little Picasa album where I’m starting to upload my Madrid fotos… slowly but surely:

http://picasaweb.google.com/snailsnail/SnailsnailEnMadridNovember2007Whenever

Abrazos a todo.

This morning, whilst ironing my shirts, I found myself composing eulogies for the still living… Is that cause for concern?

I had another Saturday morning lesson this week frustratingly… I’m told these aren’t going to be permanent but I’m not convinced. At the moment they seem to be struggling to find me enough hours – I’m contracted to do 28 a week but last week I only had 11, and this week 12… in general this is fine be me, I still get paid for 28, but it’s a bit disconcerting.

So I made the most of being up too early and went to a couple of exhibitions, the first Ocultos (Hidden), recommended by Vicky – essentially an exhibition of bum photographs, but pretty good ones, including Man Ray, Dali, a slew of others, most pretty groovy. The most intriguing thing about it though was the way it was done – dimly lit with rich red boudoir walls peppered with fake doors fitted with spy-holes allowing you to peek at people looking at the pictures.

Then I popped over to Reine Sofia, an awesome gallery that everyone should get to (and free on Saturday afternoons). I’ve been before but only for a whirlwind tour of the permanent collection. This time there was an awesome photography exhibition, some of my favourite pieces being by Ann Lislegaard, Dionisio González. Andreas Gursky, Marcos López and Per Barclay. Unfortunately I couldn’t find my favourite photo of the lot online, by Lislegaard – but here’s my own piece inspired by it, part of my public toilet photos series:

And finally, here’s what I did today (and some of yesterday) – my response to Ben’s last post, you might need to read this first.

See if you can spot the fleeting 3d graphics reference.

Ooops, I forgot to post, and now it’s bedtime… tomorrow maybe…
Just one thing – I did count, and it is literally 6 branches although within literally 30 seconds walk…
And to Jo:

Right that’s another thing ticked off – got my bank account today, and how easy it was – waltzed in with my passport, told them my address, 10 minutes later I walk out with an account – try and do that in the UK. Of course it’s probably not the best account I could get, but that can wait. It’s interesting how your priorities change – if I was in the UK I’d be hunting around for a good interest rate, asking people what they think of their banks, worrying about which one is the least evil. Here I’m presented with about a million choices – there are literally branches for six different banks within two minutes walk of my flat (Yup, I hate the word literally too, and there may not be six, I’m just guessing) – and all I want is a simple account so I can get paid. So I asked my Spanish flatmate Nacho (I think) which one he thought was good, he told me his and I went there – my banking Spanish stretches to "I’d like to open a current account please" and thankfully that was all I needed.

Today also I bought some bedding and this is kind of the point where one feels one has arrived. It’s kind of an investment that stands as an acknowledgement that, ok, I’m definitely not humping this onto a plane and getting out of here anytime soon. Although actually I am, I’ll be back in the bay briefly for Christmas (without my bedding).

Having arrived I’d like to reel off a little mushy acceptance speech and thank everyone who got me here – particularly my family – mummy and daddy for being endlessly supportive, Hannah for telling me to get my butt back for Christmas, Ben for the awesome madrileño t-shirt, Sarah for not saying goodbye. Also all you kids who came to my adieu party and gave me such awesome presents, props most obviously to Marcus for being forever a dude and Jo for, amongst other things, driving a shedload of traffic to my site (not entirely sure why that works). Then, of course, there’s Elisa who provided me with plenty encouragement, long-distance Spanish lessons, and a place to stay for my first week here, also Alba y Laura for letting be plonk myself down there. High in the encouragement stakes too is Caro, always ready for an online chat and particularly helped out when I was despairing of ever finding somewhere to stay, and everyone else who stays in touch electronically, who comes to visit, all International Bangorians wherever they may be.

Right, I think the orchestra kicked in an hour ago and half of that was drowned out. Thanks a bunch guys!

Incidentally I’ve just started using Windows Live Writer to write my blog posts with and weirdly it’s a piece of Microsoft software that doesn’t suck – it does produce some kooky html but in general I’m pretty pleased.

One other thing… about those photos – I was working on a ginormous panorama of my room but Photoshop ate up all 8gb of free disk space I had trying to do it and died. I’m not sure why I only have 8gb of disk space but am working on it.

I am now thoroughly ensconced in my new place, only got here after dark though so photos will have to wait.

Yesterday, despite the unwanted teaching in the morning, was an awesome day. After I finished work I met up with Vicky and we spent most of the rest of the day wandering around Madrid, drinking in the city. We stopped for lunch and then later at an Irish bar (worryingly my fourth of this stay already). Alex and Andres, fellow former Bangorites, then showed up and I abandoned them to the football as I went of to move some of my stuff into my new place, rejoining them for a midnight dinner. We wandered between a few bars until the night took it’s toll and I said goodbye to the others. Unfortunately I forgot my camera but here’s a photo of us freezing our bottoms off (reminder to self: dress more sensibly):

The night didn’t end quite so well. One of the problems with living where I have been is that I haven’t had a key. As both I and my host were out separately last night we tried to arrange a meet-up, which did work, things went down hill from there. I won’t write about it in detail – but sufficed to say, quantities of illicit substances (not the soft kind) were involved, as was some fairly heavy racism and other prejudices and personal attacks, some driving under the influence and well, you get the picture. We parted on terms which could have been better.

Still, my excellent navigational skills came in useful and that’s all in the past now, I have a nice new room and looking forward to the coming week!

Here’s a thing:
Can you put these Modal Axillaries in order of strength of probability? I struggled.

can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, will, would

and, furthermore, which ones have I missed out?

But I won’t be staying there long… ‘cos I finally found a flat, and’ll move in this weekend = awesome. I’ll blog with some more and photos once I move in – but the important information = no cats but no pool either.

Cats are not in my good book right now – one of them just lept on my keyboard and broke the ‘t’ key… yup that’s right, no sooner do I get the ‘k’ fixed than another one gets done…. ggrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

In similarly annoying news – work, after telling me on wednesday that if I ever need to work a Saturday I’ll get 2 weeks notice, today told me I have to give a three hour private lesson tomorrow – particularly annoying as Vicky is coming to Madrid and we were going to meet up for the morning. Anyway, I hope this doesn’t portend of things to come.

For the formula one fans out there (not sure what the plural’s for) we had an interesting digression in yesterday’s lesson talking about the Alonso Hamilton thing… I’ve seen several large adverts in the metro with a McLaren car which have been graffitied with a little speech bubble coming from the cockpit saying “Puto Hamilton” and mentioned this to my class, who were amused and said – Spaniards don’t hate Hamilton, they hate his dad – because whenever Hamilton wins there he is on the screen grinning like an idiot, but when he doesn’t win he’s nowhere to be seen. Not entirely sure what that means but anyway.

On a somewhat connected sidenote the person I’m living with works for a company that sponsors McLaren and has a hat signed by both of the drivers.