January 2013
1 post
When you live in a co-op house, you should not poop with the bathroom door open, no matter how alone you think you are.
November 2012
2 posts
This is so bad. I am literally wearing a scarf today to cover up a cat hickey.
I’m so cold. It’s so cold here in my new house. I left a glass of water on the counter, then came back to drink it, and it felt like it had been in the fridge. The water in the shower doesn’t get warm enough. I am in my clothes, a bathrobe, and a hat and I’m still cold. My nose is cold. I’m getting sick. All snuffly, headache-y and sore-throaty. I thought at first it...
October 2012
1 post
I’ve been presenting myself pretty androgynously and asexually lately. Mostly because I’m completely confused about my sexuality. It literally varies by the day. So I’m fine with not dating anyone until I figure myself out, but every once in a while, I miss that little rush you get when someone pays you extra attention.
Except I guess what am I talking about—I got hardcore...
September 2012
1 post
Not talking
I haven’t been talking in my sleep at all lately. I’ve found that I only really talk if I’ve been conversing with someone right before I sleep and if I get a solid amount of sleep.
That’s not really interesting, it’s just an explanation for why this blog has gone straight south. No offense to those people who live south of other people.
August 2012
4 posts
Road trip
We’re in Omaha right now. The Midwest is a total bullshit place of farms and corn. Look what great stuff the white man did for these once-savage lands.
I just applied for a job as a union organizer in New Haven.
Seanen (Alani’s husband, who I am traveling with) is an absolutely outrageous person. He enjoys talking to people and doing ridiculous things just to see what their reactions...
Remember your nightmares
“You have to help me to remind you guys to keep remembering your nightmares”.
Who is ready for this?!
Remember the first post I ever made? Where I said that maybe I’d record myself talking in my sleep and blog about it? Of course you do. You remember all of my blog posts.
I have done it. I have gotten a tape recorder, I have figured out how to use it, I have slept, and now here is the result.
It was so strange to listen to myself on tape. I’ve known I say and do crazy things in my...
It is probably obvious to everyone that I’m having a really hard time getting blog posts written. I’ve done a grand total of 1 since I’ve been home. This is partly because my blog is based on my life in Spain, and (hallelujah) I am not there anymore. (Fra, I will say again, you are one of the only things I miss).
I have become a big ball of laziness since I’ve been home,...
July 2012
2 posts
Francesca, I know you want a post!
I cannot gather all of my thoughts into sentences that make sense. But I will try.
Fra, I saw mozzarella en carrozza at a deli here and I had to try it. It was not good. I will make it for real someday for all my friends.
I have been emailing with the girl who will be the auxiliar at my school next year. She’s from Washington state, way on the other side of the country. She says her level...
You cannot use the United States and America...
mylifeasafeminista:
The United States is one country, whereas America is two continents with a myriad of unique cultures, languages, geographies, and more.
June 2012
5 posts
I said goodbye to Julian, the English teacher, and his wife last night. It’s the last time we’ll see each other before I leave Spain. He has basically become my Spanish dad in these past few months. I like his wife a lot too, but I’m not as close with her because we didn’t spend the entire year at school together.
I gave him a hug, and immediately started crying. I gave...
Krissy, I keep thinking of you on your last day at school, and Andrea, after reading your post, I am thinking of you at work on a day you don’t want to be there. And Brenna, I’m thinking of you walking outside when it’s too hot out, and Travis, I’m not sure what you’re doing, but I’m thinking of you, too. And loving you all, and hoping that everything gets...
Last Day
Wednesday was my last day at school. The official last week is next week, but I don’t have any classes because of various activities the kids are doing, so there is no point in me going.
I got several cards from the younger kids, including an actual homemade yearbook from the freshmen. They pasted their pictures and each wrote a comment, and at the back wrote summaries about various things...
Inconsequential things
Yesterday at school I heard two new additions to the Spanish “I shit on _____” swear construction:
Me cago en vuestras almas: I shit on your souls
Me cago en su mierda: I shit on his/her shit.
On an unrelated note, I’m getting along much better with the teachers at school. I feel much more comfortable there. I’ve even spoken some Gallego to some of them. Because I do...
In the past two days I have talked to Andrea and Travis and Krissy and Gina. I am one happy gnome.
May 2012
16 posts
Love me!
Sooo I should probably just ask for help when I need it, so I’m going to. Remember how when I left for Spain, I was afraid that you (my friends) would forget me? Maybe you don’t remember, but I do. I’ve been feeling like a gloopy glob of doo lately and miss my friends, and I guess honestly, a little bit, I do feel like you are forgetting me.
Now. This has absolutely nothing to...
Here I come!
I am coming home July 30th, in the evening. So get ready!
Now I just have to survive slightly under two months without any cats.
I have so little self-confidence and so little energy left.
1 tag
15 minutes of just staring at each other.
Today I tried to do a presentation about US food for the 12 year olds. I was all by myself, without a teacher. They couldn´t be quiet for one minute. I sent some kids out of the room for throwing pencil cases, and finally, with 15 minutes left, I turned off the powerpoint in the middle of it and told them that we would sit in silence for the rest of the class. That is what we did. I folded my arms...
Ok, I admit
The last post I made about f-ed up ESL dialogues was not really anything special. The dialogues were pretty strange to me, but apparently you all have dialogues like that with some frequency.
This, however, is one of the most horrifying things I have ever seen.
http://www.manythings.org/b/e/2061/
Today was the last day of school for the seniors. Do you know what they did? They stood out in front of the school and played the bagpipe and drank, beginning at 10am. They had an entire shopping cart filled with alcohol and mixers, out there boiling in the sun. They took a break at 2pm to eat shrimp in the school cafeteria, then went back out and continued drinking.
When we left at 5pm, they...
So last week I discovered that the absolute worst place to be on a warm Saturday morning is the bus station in Lugo. It is full of outrageously creepy old men.
I was picking my friend Mickal up, and I got there ten minutes early and her bus was ten minutes late, so I ended up standing there for twenty minutes total, which the men take as a sign that a girl is not there for vehicular reasons.
Two...
The principal has given me permission to stay at the school through June. There was doubt that she would let me because she is a fanatic about insurance and legal issues. When I told the English teachers today, they made the loudest sound I had ever heard them make, in the form of “YAAAY!”.
I will not allow myself to be flattered by this. They love to get out of work, and when I am...
Ohhh butts.
I was just asked to participate in the project they’re doing at the school where the teachers and students are re-creating famous paintings.We are going to do some Degas dancers.
This is cool because people are asking me to do things and acknowledging my presence and humanity.
On the other hand, it is not cool becuase now I have to shave my legs. I have been growing them (my legs, that is)...
1 tag
Slighty-off dialogues
They are not the worst dialogues ever, but they are just wierd enough to be totally unnatural and if I overheard these conversations, I would assume these people were aliens.
They are from http://www.eslfast.com/easydialogs/restaurant.htm just so I give credit where credit is due.
A: Lunch was delicious. B: Thank you. A: What kind of soup was that? B: It was tomato soup. A: That tasted so...
Hey guys,
I’m sorry I haven’t posted anything recently. (Or maybe I have, I just feel like I haven’t.) I know how excited I get when I see one of my friends’ posts on my tumblr feed. And I’m sorry I am not providing you with that joy. That’s not me being arrogant, it’s me saying I love it when I see your posts.
I am a plant without water right now. I can...
In total, I will be at school for 8 and a half hours today, plus one hour on each end to commute. The amount of class I will give will be 15 minutes at the very end of the day.
I feel utterly unfulfilled at this job, and I feel empty in general. And I can’t even cry because you can’t cry out emptiness.
I just checked my email and the program assigned me to Andalucía for the upcoming year. I think I am going to stay in the US next year, but seeing that word written there makes me maybe think twice. We’ll see.
On Saturday night we went out to bars. At one point, we were entering one of our favorite bars, which is almost at the end of a wide covered hallway off the side of the street. (Does...
I am so utterly sick of not understanding anything, and by extension, not being about to say anything. When I come home, I am going to talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. And talk.
4 tags
Tips on how to conduct yourself with foreigners
I haven’t written in a while, so here is a doozy for you.
Here are some tips about how to act towards foreigners. This is mostly a conglomeration of my experiences that may be common among foreigners. But keep in mind:the majority of the foreigners you deal with will not be me. And people have all kinds of preferences. These are just guidelines that most sensitive people might already know,...
April 2012
16 posts
Hey, I should show you Lugo!
It is where I live!
Lugo is a small city (about 70,000 inhabitants), but it has one super-cool thing, which is the only fully-intact Roman wall in the world. It’s wide enough on top to walk around (it’s about a 25 minute walk the whole way). Here are some pictures:
aerial view, obviously.
view of one of the houses near the wall. You walk around the wall and can...
The idiot train has made a stop and let off a passenger. It is me.
I am off the idiot train, but I still have my idiot baggage and I’m unsure what is in it, but at least I am no longer on that train. (You never know when you are on the idiot train, you usually just have the suspicion).
Why have I been let off of the idiot train? I will tell you, even though I don’t want to, because...
3 tags
Earth day activity I did
With the 14, 15, and 16-year-olds, I did an Earth Day activity that went quite well. I attached a copy of it in case anyone in the world cares. It is for ESL students, but it could work well and be even more fun in the kids´native language.
It was actually a self-running discussion with the 16-year-olds. AND they were all interested and paying attention and speaking English the entire time....
2 tags
Our school begins at 9:40. That is already late.
At 9:39, all of the teachers were in the cafe having coffee. (And by this, I mean five of us, because teachers arrive in shifts, and only those of us who had class first period were there). But that was alright, because none of the students were at school yet, either.
Once we all finally got there, the teachers discovered that none of the four administrators (principal, vice principal, etc) were...
I spent a while this morning looking up pictures of black cats, specifically in sets of three, because that is what I’ve decided I want when I get a stable life and a place that allows pets. Was this a good idea? No, not at all. Now I have to survive today and the next day and the next two months without any cats.
Obviously this is not really a big problem compared to the ones I usually...
More thoughts on English imperialism
As you possibly suspected (but more likely did not think about), I slept in my milk bed again last night. It doesn´t smell, so it´s really hard to work up the gumption to change the sheets.
There was a better word than ¨gumption¨ to use there, but I am forgetting all English words that aren´t useful in bare-bones conversation or cognates with Spanish, such as ¨excursion¨. So please excuse me.
...
Slept in my milk bed again last night.
2 tags
Body parts vocabulary lesson down the drain
The 12-year-olds were outrageously annoying today. They just do not stop talking amongst themselves, ever. And my tactic for dealing with this is to make lessons way easier. Which is probably not good. I had this bizarre yet interesting, I think, lesson planned for having them create towns in the shape of bodies and equating body parts to places in towns, since they are learning the vocabulary for...
Content yet somewhat numb
I never laugh anymore. I only ever realize this when I laugh really hard and it feels and sounds foreign to me. Which is sooooo strange. Because I am me. I think it´s entirely a function of me understanding so little of what happens at school, one of our friends here who makes me nervous, and, I´m sorry, but an absence of jokes about gas in my life. That strange word order kind of warped the...
1 tag
At a quarter to one
I was about to go to sleep and then I spilled milk in my bed. Dammit.
5 tags
Look at me, going to a professional training...
I went to a conference on Friday in A Coruña, one of the biggest cities in Galicia, for language teachers. I went with the special education teacher, who is my friend, a woman who used to teach French at my school, the principal, and a Gallego teacher.
The first presenter was a guy from the US who had developed a strategy for teaching English. He didn’t talk about his strategy, just did a...
The Babies (who in this case are 12 years old)
They can be very loud and annoying at times, but they are the only kids at the school who openly show me affection, which can be really refreshing when I feel like a huge pile of dung. The other kids do show affection, but in much more subtle ways because they have to be cool for their friends and they are also really shy in general.
I usually have an art class with the babies in addition to the...
Lesson plans about important things, for once.
I am a disaster with procrastinating when I need to plan lessons. I internally flop around and whine about how I am not at all trained to be a teacher and have no idea what I’m doing and I want to talk about issues of substance but am not quite sure how.
So I spend lots of time eating snacks and going on facebook and doing laundry and stuff when I should be lesson planning. It got so bad...
Home Alone. Yes!
Man, I do not want my roommate to come home today. I am having so much fun here by myself. I make very quiet messes, like I left a book in the middle of the hallway, because who is going to care? And I don’t clean my plate and cup from lunch, because I don’t have to. And I took up the kitchen rug because I don’t like it, and this apartment is about my preferences right now. I...
3 tags
Spanish Feminist Graffiti
Yay for feminist Spanish graffiti! This one was in Granada,
and these two are in Lugo on the wall right next to the grocery store. In Gallego, they say “onward with the feminist fight” and “death to the patriarchy”. It’s nice to know that there are some people in this city, somewhere, that think the same way I do, except in Gallego.
And just...
Been gone for a long time
Sorry, I guess I should have said I was going away for a week, but it felt kind of arrogant to say so. I’m pretty sure I told me mom, but when I got home yesterday, there was a panicked email from her in my mailbox wondering if I was ok. D’oops.
I went to Andalucia (Malaga, Granada, and Sevilla) for a week with my Italian friend Silvietta. It was fun, but it was definitely too much...
March 2012
24 posts
1 tag
Question tags
Yesterday, I asked Julian, the English teacher, what he was doing in class with the 16-year-olds.
“We’re working on question tags.”
“…What?”
So apparently “question tags” are things you add onto the end of a sentence to emphasize your point, such as:
—You didn’t go to school today,did you?
—She’s tired today,isn’t...
3 tags
Brenna made a mistake by telling me she likes long...
I went to Fisterra this past weekend, or ¨The End of the Earth¨ to the Romans. It was beautiful. I´ll post some photos later.
In a moment of down-time during the trip, I vividly imagined returning home and seeing Travis, Andrea, Krissy, and Brenna for the first time in months. I gave them all hugs (twice) and then we went to the Blue Colony Diner to sit around and say stupid stuff like we always...
