Late Nights and Pig Fights

So I've been here for just a little over a week....and I'm already falling behind on posting on here. That doesn't really bode well for the rest of the year....but I'll do my best.

So where to begin?

It's really amazing and it's a phenomenon that seems to be pretty standard with my time in Spain, but time itself has such a weird effect here. On one hand it feels like I've hardly been here a day. And on the other it feels like I've been here forever. So pardon me if everything I talk about today seems a bit scattered....a lot has happened in a very short period of time.

Let's go back to last weekend, shall we? (meaning: my first weekend here over a week ago) I had posted a couple of random stories over the weekend but then failed to mention absolutely anything at all about the weekend itself. So let's try that.

Well, to start off with, I got into Madrid pretty early in the morning. Around 8ish, I believe, which is WAY too early for me. So the Saturday that I got here, I didn't have much on the agenda but to sleep, wake up, eat, take a nap, wake up and eat again, and go to bed for the night. Yet my friends had other plans for me.

As I was blissfully napping away, my friends Marcus and Lupe felt the need to come and wake me up. Which wasn't too horrible I suppose. As it happened, that first Saturday was a huge annual festival in Madrid called "La Noche En Blanco" or "White Night" in English. Basically it's a huge arts and cultural festival with tons and tons of free concerts, free food, free everything. And literally the entire city is out in the streets for the big fiesta. So naturally, we got a big group of people and went out all night long. It's basically impossible to live in Madrid and not stay out until the sunrise, whether you want to or not.

Here is a picture from Noche En Blanco that was taken on Gran Vía, which is one of the biggest and most important streets in Madrid. Imagine Fifth Avenue in New York. And as you can see, it's full of people and lit up everywhere. Quite the spectacle.

And now onto the week itself.

I actually became a bit spoiled at work last week. Our bosses told us that we wouldn't actually enter the classrooms until the second week so that we would have time to "plan" and "reacquaint ourselves with everything." Which basically translated into us sitting in the teacher's lounge all week checking facebook and looking at random websites. But I can't complain, I guess, because it was better than just getting thrown into the classroom without any sort of mental preparation.

And, in my school's typical style, they changed my schedule soon after I posted about it. Not a lot of changes, but they took out all my art classes and gave me third grade science instead. Still, though, no complaints here. It's so much easier to plan this year and actually get to know my kids. I only saw many of my classes last year once a week, so I never could remember all of their names.

And before you think I'm a terrible person for that, you have to remember that I had over 1,000 kids to memorize last year. Try walking into a Wal-Mart and memorizing the names of every person in the store. Then go to about 10 more stores and memorize all of those peoples' names as well. And then we'll talk.

Anywho, this year I have fewer classes, fewer kids to remember, and more time to spend with all of them. So it's pretty great.

I wish I could say more went on during the week, but it was pretty tame. I did a lot of laundry and went grocery shopping. And those are pretty much the highlights of the week.

So now let's move on to this past weekend. (meaning: two days ago)

Once again I ended up spending a lot of time with Marcus and Lupe. Those two are pretty important people in my cast of characters this year and I don't know what I would do without them. Marcus also teaches at my school and has become one of my really great friends. Lupe was in my program last year and is temporarily living in the third bedroom of my apartment. Also one of my really great friends.

So anyway, in addition to those two and my roommate Javi....

(who can be seen here, for those who are interested in who I am living with)

....we also had some of Javi's friends visiting from Salamanca, which is a city a couple of hours away from Madrid. So it was sure to be a busy weekend.

So on Friday night, Marcus and I went and hung out with his roommates and some of their friends for awhile and then moved on to my roommate and his friends for awhile. And before we knew it, it was about 5 in the morning. Which, in Madrid terms, is relatively early for a Friday night. However, my body is still on Oklahoma terms, which meant that I should have been in bed about 5 hours before then. At the latest. So we called it a night and made our way home.

And then came Saturday. After such a long night the day before, I was determined to take it easy. You know, have a nice dinner, maybe stay home and watch a movie. But the fact that I am kind of a pushover is my downfall. I am way too easily convinced to do things, as evidenced by Saturday night.

So at first, Lupe decided to cook dinner for me and another of her friends. Which is fantastic because Lupe is Mexican and cooks the most AMAZING authentic Mexican food that you could possibly imagine. Seriously. And afterwards we decided to go have a mojito at a nice, calm bar and then call it an early night. Which I almost did.

We got home around 1 in the morning and I was already feeling exhausted and knew it was time to get to bed. So, off to bed I went. I chose to stay awake for a bit and check through my email and such before I went to sleep. So in comes Javi around 2 in the morning and he is on his way to meet up with the friends from Salamanca. And even though I was exhausted, I agreed to go with him. Like I said, I'm a pushover.

So we go meet up with the friends and head to a discoteca, which at 3 or 4 or the morning is just starting to really get going. And we stay. And we dance. And we hang out. And before I know it, we're leaving to go home and it's daylight. And it's 8. In. The. Morning.

Holy crap.

So all I can think about is getting to bed and sleeping until Monday. And we're walking along Gran Vía (the big main street) and along comes this....

I wish I could say that I was joking. But no. A man (with more facial piercings and dreadlocks than any human being should probably have) was walking a pig. Through the streets of Madrid. As if it were a little dog.

What kind of city have I moved to?

So anyway, Rubén, one of the friends from Salamanca, decides that he wants to pet/hold the pig. And the piercing/dreadlocks guy is cool with it. So Rubén proceeds to pick this disgusting little mini-pig up despite it squealing like it's heading for the bacon fryer. And all I could think was, "Oh, these poor, poor city people."

But that's not the worst part. Oh no. The worst part is when this random lady (potentially an even BIGGER hippie than the pig owner, if at all possible) proceeds up to our group and the dreadlocks guy and screams at us about how pigs don't belong in the city and that we're evil for supporting it.

Now, normal people would set the pig down, back away slowly until hippie lady becomes distracted by some other person committing a crime against the animal kingdom, and then make a break for it. But no. Apparently Spaniards don't work that way.

So all of the Spaniards I was with (5 of them in total) proceed to have a very heated debate with this woman about the treatment of the pig. Such a heated debate that people walking along the street stopped to stare and take in the spectacle of it all. And the debate drags on. And on. And on.

FOR AN HOUR AND A HALF.

Once again, I wish that I was joking. I really do. It was past 9 in the morning at this point. I had been awake for nearly 3o hours straight. At that point I could have cared less if someone was walking a baby human down the street on a leash, much less a pig. And yet somehow I just couldn't pull myself away. It was like a black hole. I was in and there was no escaping it.

So finally, after the crazy Spaniards finished what was quite possibly the most pointless debate in the history of debates, we went to the metro and I made my way home. And finally, after several late nights in a row and one massively annoying fight over a pig in the city, I went to sleep and hardly saw Sunday.

Now, today I entered the classroom and had my first full day of teaching, but I think that update will be best saved for later since this story ended up being so long. I think re-hashing the pig story has fried my brain just a bit and I can't even imagine typing more.

So that'll do for now.

Back To Work

And it's official...summer vacation is officially over. Let's have a moment of silence as we honor our dear, departed free time.

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Just give me a sec to wipe away the tears........aaaand I'm good. I don't think I need to go too in depth on what makes summer so great. Zero responsibility. Sleeping in. Easy living. It's a beautiful thing. And what makes it worse is that my summer this year was extra-good. It involved the padres coming to Europe and all of us making a grand tour of Europe. It involved this guy going home and enjoying 6 weeks of sweet, sweet Oklahoma summertime. It was almost too good. Damn it.

But as of today, I worked my first full day teaching the little niños once again. And I must say, it wasn't all that bad.

Here is a quick shot of my school. Notice how it looks like a prison? Believe me, the similarities go far beyond the bars around the building.

So anyway, I received my teaching schedule almost immediately upon arriving at school. Which might not seem all that remarkable, but (trust me on this one) it is a HUGE feat for my particular school, seeing as how last year I was two weeks into the school year before I even knew what I would be teaching. And I suppose that I didn't even need a schedule last year to tell me that I was in WAY over my head....I taught everyone from 2 and 3 year olds to high school juniors and seniors.

However, all that is leading me up to the beauty of my schedule this year. I will be teaching (drumroll, please) 1st and 2nd grade science, art, and English! Woo Hoo! And only 1st and 2nd grade science, art, and English. I can't even begin to describe how amazing it will be to only have to plan classes for one age group. Let me give you a little scenario so that you can compare and share in my joy for this new schedule.

Last year, on any given day, I might have a 2nd grade science class, a high school senior English conversation class, a pre-school English class, a 6th grade art class, a 4th grade science class, a 2nd grade art class and a 3rd grade English class. Imagine planning out separate lessons for every single one of those grades/subjects. And now imagine only getting to use those lessons for that particular day and then the next day having to plan new stuff for 7 or 8 completely different classes.

Now let's fast-forward to this year. On any given day I might have 4 2nd grade science classes, 2 1st grade art classes and a 1st grade English class. My schedule the next day will be pretty much the same. And the next day. And the next. Planning is going to be a breeze AND I might actually learn my students' names this year. (Which shouldn't be as hard as it is, since about 75% of the girls are named Maria and 80% of the boys are Alvaro or Pablo)

Now, I will say that I'm a little bummed that I won't have any older kids this year. They were usually really fun to work with and overall pretty intelligent. But just take a look at these pictures of some of my 1st graders from last year (in their Halloween costumes) and tell me that you wouldn't love working with them:

So I've decided that since they are adorable, I can handle working with only them this year. And here are a few more reasons why working with them will be great:

1. I can still scare them. If they start getting out of hand, it's not too difficult to give them "the look" and get them calmed down. This doesn't work so well with older kids.

2. They love me. Pure and simple. In their eyes, I'm the coolest guy there is. And who am I to argue with that?

3. They're not that smart. Which is fantastic, because I'm not either. No more planning science lessons about electricity and magnetism. No more sex education. No more being unable to answer complicated science questions. I'll feel so much more intelligent this year.

4. They don't start class until 9. Again, this is another reason you might not appreciate. But trying getting out of bed at 6 a.m., making the hour commute to work, and giving an entire 8 a.m. class, all before the sun comes up. It's no fun. But it's not my problem anymore, because these kids don't start until 9. Which means I get a whole extra hour of sleep. Which means that I will be considerable nicer to these children.

5. They're adorable. Now, I know I already said this one. But it's worth repeating, right?

So anyway, it looks like it'll be a pretty good year. As of now, I'm excited about my schedule. Give me time and I might change my tune, but I don't think that'll be the case.

Loving, Leaving, and Starting Again

Well, folks, I think it is safe to say that last year was a massive failure. In terms of blogging, that is. The whole two posts that I took the time to write from Spain last year really served well to document my time abroad. As long as you weren't curious what happened after September.

I suppose I was somewhat justified in not blogging all the time. I was constantly working either on homework for my masters or stuff for the classes I taught at my job. It was a busy year and finding time to blog about it all just wasn't happening.

But all that is about to change.

Here I sit in my apartment in Madrid once again, about to start year #2 in Spain. I never really would have expected a second year here had you asked me last August, but things just kind of fell into place that way, as they always seem to do.

So now I'm here again with MUCH more free time on my hands. I'll only be teaching this year, so that pesky masters won't get in my way anymore. Which should be awfully nice.

In any case, I think it would be appropriate if, before starting this new year of experiencing life abroad (and actually blogging about it this time), I did a little recap of last year. Which should be about as close to impossible as anything else I've attempted on here.

But here's my method. I've looked through all of my pictures from the last year (okay, so maybe I kind of glanced through them) and chose one picture from each month that I think pretty much sums up that particular month. I'll give the background story for each picture and with each story, you should more or less get a feel for the year in general. I guess we'll see if it works.

August - This picture is of some of my lovely friends (from L to R - Jorge, Kayla, Annie, Jacek, William and me) in Valencia, Spain. I was lucky enough in the beginning of the year to take a little "Intro to Spain" trip to Jávea and Valencia on the Mediterranean coast. While there, I got to see several of my friends who had studied at OU and just enjoy being in Spain. It was a fantastic way to start the year. I didn't yet have any responsibilities and just had two full weeks of relaxing. Not exactly how the rest of the year would be...

September - This is a picture that I had posted previously when talking about the roommates in my first apartment in Madrid. Yes, I said "first apartment." I'll get to that.

But in early September, things didn't seem like they could be any better. I had seven roommates (Gaby and Simón from France, Saila from Finland, Gigi from Italy, Maite and Guillermo from Spain, and Kayla from Oklahoma) and things were busy, but it was all so dang exciting. Meeting all these new people and having all these new experiences were just incredible. Everything was so new and I was loving life.

October - A lot of things happened in October and it was difficult to narrow my choice of photo down to just one, but I chose this picture for two reasons. But first, the back story. At Halloween, Kayla and I took a trip to Paris, France to visit several of our friends: Jacek from Germany, Jorge and Gloria from Spain, and William and Marc from France. It was an awesome reunion and we had the best possible time. One of my favorite trips from the year, without a doubt.

So anyway, my two reasons for choosing this picture: 1) Because Paris has become one of my favorite cities in the world, if not my absolute favorite, and being there in the fall was beautiful. 2) Because at that point in time (at the end of October) Kayla and I were reaching our breaking points. We had begun to realize that our living situation was less than ideal. (Okay, it was horrible. 8 people and 1 bathroom? Pure insanity.) We saw that we had almost no free time due to the demands of our program. And, if we were both honest with ourselves, we were probably both a little homesick. So we really needed something good in our lives to bring us back from the brink right at that time, and this trip was just exactly what we needed. Kayla and I talked later about that trip and agreed that it was a turning point for the year. Who knows it the year would have ended up so great without it.

November - I think this picture is somewhat self-explanatory, but I'll give a brief explanation anyway. Four of us from our program (Kayla, Alicia, Amanda and myself) all decided to have an American-style Thanksgiving celebration. We just couldn't imagine a year without it. And if all of us couldn't be at home to enjoy our mothers' home-cooking, then we would make the best of it. One of our friends from Valencia (Susana) offered her house to create this massive feast, and I think we did a pretty good job. And all of the Spaniards agreed with us.

December - I was lucky enough to be able to fly home at Christmas and no picture is better than this one of me with my nephew to represent how great that trip was. At that point I had been in Spain for five months, and I needed some family time.

January - Soon after returning to Madrid, I made another trip to Valencia to visit all of our great friends there. We had a really big gathering of OU people and just had a great weekend. This trip was also needed, because right after getting back to Madrid, I think I was missing home just a bit. And being around all of our awesome friends that we had met in Oklahoma, I felt much better about things.

February - Over the year, things just got better and better in all aspects. I found a new, much better apartment. I was getting much better at managing out time for homework. And things at my job were becoming really fun. This picture is of me and some of the other teachers I work with during Carnival. It's strange getting used to all of the crazy Spanish traditions and it was always a good time. The reason we're all dressed up is because Spaniards use Carnival as their time to dress up in crazy costumes instead of Halloween, when the only acceptable costume is something very scary. That was a fun day.

March - In March, around Spring Break time in the US, Spain has Semana Santa, or Holy Week in English. During that week, the country basically shuts down. In Semana Santa, you have two options: One is to stay in Spain and enjoy the festivities, because there is a lot going on at that time. But we chose Option Two, which was to travel outside of the country. So a group of us did a tour of Italy for about 10 days. We started in Milan, then went on to Venice, then Florence, and finally Rome. This is us in front of the Coliseum. And what an amazing trip it was.

April - Otherwise known as Birthday Month. Kayla and I have birthdays that are only a few days apart, so everyone in our program was nice enough to throw us a big joint birthday party. And it was incredibly fun. And it really made me realize what amazing friends we had made over the year.

May - Another Spanish holiday and another Spanish costume. In May in Madrid, there is a holiday for the city's patron saint, which is Saint Isidro. Madrid has a traditional costume, which my Spanish friend Adriana and I are modeling in this photo. Adriana also worked at my school last year, and we were required to wear these costumes. It was really cute to see all of the little kids in their little costumes.

June - This is the month where everything paid off. This is a picture from our Graduation Day. It's a picture of every single person in my program. It was a really great group of people and I made a lot of great friends. A lot of them are back this year with me, and I'm excited about that. And I'll definitely miss those who aren't here again.

What's also cool about this picture is that it was taken in the chapel where we had our graduation ceremony. The chapel is part of our university and it is around 600 years old! People like Miguel Cervantes (the guy who wrote Don Quixote) have received their degrees here, and now I've joined their ranks!

July - Perhaps my favorite picture of all! In July my parents came to visit me in Madrid and I couldn't wait to get them here. After a few days in Madrid, we then went on to Barcelona, Paris, and Rome and it really was the trip of a lifetime. It was my parents' first time out of the US and I was so excited to show them all of the places that I've come to know. This picture is of us right after Spain won the World Cup. We watched the game at a big outdoor area in the middle of the city with thousands of Spaniards and enjoyed the celebrations that went along with it. And, of course, we wore our Spain colors, as you can see here.

So, as you can see, it was an incredible year. It's almost hard for me to describe just how amazing it all was in such a short space (if you can call this short!). But it really was wonderful year with all of it's ups and downs. I learned a lot and made a lot of great friends who I know I will have for the rest of my life. And I had the experience of a lifetime.

But now it's time for Spain Round 2. And it's time to make way for some new experiences and some new friends. It's time to start again. And if this year is half as good as the previous one, then I know that I'm in for some fantastic times.

Tomorrow starts my first day at school and the start of my year. I guess we'll see how it goes.