January 2012
18 posts
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I Have Leveled Up in Spanish!
The other night, Darío and Ernesto were over for dinner and they kept correcting me on my (non) usage of the subjunctive verb form. At first I was annoyed, but then I realized—if they are bothering me about this extremely technical, extremely bullshit facet of Spanish, I must be getting pretty good!
Also, this morning, I rode up in the car with the math teacher who made me cry last week....
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Letter to a Sad Boy
So last night, one of our friends came over for dinner and afterward, as we were all cleaning up and he sat at the table by himself, he became sad.
“I want someone to listen to me,” he said.
“We are listening to you, and have been all night,” we told him.
“No, not like that, I mean really listen to me.”
Yes, ok. I recognize your very human pain. But without...
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Spanish Unemployment
I often complain about how few hours I work here, but when I look at the big picture of employment in Spain, I should be happy to be doing anything in Spain. The general unemployment rate is 24% and “roughly one in four Spanish workers is unemployed, [which is] twice the rate in the rest of the European Union” (http://www.cepr.org/pubs/Bulletin/meets/496.htm).
It’s even worse...
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Who hasn't cried in a school bathroom?
I locked myself in the bathroom at school on Tuesday and cried. This is a tradition as old as the profession of teaching and as old as secret places where no one can see you. Here is the reason I did it:
After lunch, I introduced myself to the French teacher who is substituting for the regular teacher for a few weeks. She said noticed that it must be very hard for me to understand people here. I...
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No More Justifying
So I’ve been holding off on losing my cool about the country-wide attempts (and successes) at repealing reproductive rights in the United States. I told myself ‘this is just happening because it’s an election year, things will calm down in a few months’. But this article and this one, too have hit the exact right nerves for me to get really mad. I’m not rationalizing...
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A List of Feminist Songs
So here is something that I’m actually truly embarrassed about and don’t tell people unless I have to: I really like reggaeton music. Scratch that. I love reggaeton music. I just love dancing to it. The genre, however, is rife with misogyny and basically encourages sexual assault, as does much of mainstream music.
SO WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU ARE A FEMINIST AND ALSO LIKE MUSIC THAT YOU...
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Portomarin, the city they moved when they dammed...
Well, ok, they just moved the church and rebuilt the city. But still.
Nothing really happened in Portomarin, we just sort of walked around and took photos, so here is a “best of” revue. The river:
That is the old bridge in comparison with the new bridge. The old bridge is usually underwater.
IN PORTOMARIN, YOU MUST NOT BE A RECENTLY SHIPWRECKED MAN CLIMBING ASHORE IN...
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Horse bones
I went to veterinary radiology class with my roommates this morning. The topic was horses and the bones they have. I didn’t learn a damn thing.
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Our visit to a deserted village
After lunch at Isaura’s house, we walked to a nearby deserted village. I was so excited to go, and I’m glad I’ve finally gotten to poke around one of the many deserted villages in Galicia. I would have liked to try going inside the houses, but Isaura and Vera were there, so I figured it was best not to.
The village was a few houses on either side of the road. Isaura said that...
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The Landlady's house in Paradela
So we spent last weekend in super-rural Spain in a village with a population of about 40 people. On our way there, we were stopped several times by cows crossing the road.
This is Paradela:
It has one bar:
A hairdresser’s:
And a grocery store that is completely unlabeled. We went there with Vera and you walk into someone’s front door and inside is this:
Vera talked with...
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Oatmeal and Things a Cool Girl Said
I had oatmeal for dinner tonight and Francesca came in the kitchen tonight while I was eating it, gave me the most horrified look I’ve ever seen, and asked me what the hell it was. I guess she’s right; it does look like this:
and I was eating it. Except mine didn’t have the X and the stockphoto on it. Apparently nobody in Spain or Italy eats anything like it.
Anyway, our...
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Gifts from the New World
I NEED to set some sort of rule for myself that says no feministing after 9pm, because I keep reading it at night and getting way too worked up to sleep. I am currently trying to calm myself down with quiet acoustic guitar songs and scratching my own back. (With my feet, obviously, as my hands are typing).
I went to the bookstore today and bought a copy of a Spanish feminist magazine they have...
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Another long, boring post for you--this one is...
Its taking me a little while to get back into the swing of speaking Spanish again. If I stop taking myself so seriously for a second, it’s funny to listen to the tiny pause while the Spanish person I’m talking to tries to figure out what I just said. For instance, trying to say “you scared me” to somebody, I said “you said me a fear”, and there was the tiniest...
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Second day back at work
Hello! Yesterday was my first day back at work after Christmas vacation. After a 24 hour trip (luckily on this trip I did not spill an entire cup of coffee on my pants like I did on my trip in September. Just one noodle this time.) I got to my apartment here at 10pm Monday night and had to be up at 7am Tuesday morning, so needless to say, I was tired and grumpy. But people at school seemed...
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Second post!
I’m doing it! Look at me! I can commit to something and follow through! Celebration photo:
It’s something we found in a paella once.
Ok, but now here’s me actually following through: first I will tell you what I’m doing in Spain. I’m a classroom assistant in English classes at a high school:
it looks like that. It has 130 students and is in a lost mountain town...
