Feliz Navidad!

I'm starting my Christmas adventures today. I have to head to Granada tonight so I can get the bus early tomorrow to the airport and then its Granada --> Barcelona, Barcelona --> Vienna. Were staying a few days in Vienna then heading to a smaller college town in Austria called Graz. Then taking the 8 hour train ride to Prague for New Years and then Budapest and then back to Vienna to fly back January 6th. I'm very excited although its definitely weird not being with family.
Also, today I had to dress up as Santa at school, I wasn't fooling anyone except the three year olds. I think about 30% of the kids started crying at the woman covered in black paint because she was supposed to be the black wiseman, pretty hilarious/a tad racist.  Anyways the kids put on a little play and sang a song. I have videos that I will upload later. But for now here is a picture....

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Bringing back the nose ring

Today I decided that I missed my nose ring that I had so I went to go get it re-pierced. Definitely a different experience that getting piercings done at home. Not to say that it wasn't a clean place but when I pointed out the ring I wanted, instead of getting one in a sealed plastic bag, she just pulled it out of the box with her hand. The piercer did disinfect it but I was a little bit sketched out. At the end they just handed me a sheet of what to do to clean it, they didn't give me any stuff to clean it with but my roommates told me I could go to a pharmacy and pick up the spray. It was an experience but here it is!

Malaga

This weekend and friend and I took off to Malaga for two nights. We stayed in this great hostel right down by the beach and luckily it was t-shirt weather so we took advantage. I definitely want to go back once its real beach weather. We ended up meeting 2 Australians and hung out with them for most of the time.  We walked around the city for a while and last night we found a bar that was playing the Barcelona vs Real Madrid game. Barcelona won 3-1! Over all it was a great trip but I only have a few pictures due to complications with the memory card on my camera.

Puente #1

So this week I've had already five days off, I had work today, and then I have another four days off. I literally don't know what to do with myself. I may take a trip up to Madrid for the next couple days, but it depends on whether or not I'm going to see Red Hot Chili Peppers in Madrid next week. They are celebrating the equivalent of our independence day here, Dia de la Constitucion. I have seven classes left until Christmas break, I feel like I'm ripping off the spanish government this month because they're paying me about 70 euros (about $100) a day this month.
This past weekend a few friends and I went to a town outside Jaen called Linares to go Bowling. We debated whether or not to take the bus, we wanted to walk from the train station even though we had no idea where the center of town was. It was a good thing we took the bus because a. we started walking the wrong way and b. it would have been a solid hour of walking up hill on roads like this...

It was a pretty view though...

And then we got to bowling and I think I bowled 3 or 4 strikes. Our team was on fire!

Belgium is awesome

Me and two friends went to Brussels this weekend and had an amazing time. We only got one day to walk around the city and then on Saturday night we went to a music festival. I would love to go back and spend more time there. The people were really nice and the beer was some of the best I've ever had.

Some more cuteness

Today was one of my students birthday so he brought in a cake and we had a little party for him. He's turning three, so adorable.

Juande, the birthday boy!

Also..

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!! 

I'm looking forward to a skype session with the family :)

bodylooks

Got my hair did at a salon called bodylooks. Its right near my piso and I was a little nervous because I had no idea if they were any good or not. It took 3 hours but it ended up coming out nice and it was only 50 euros for full highlights, a cut and wash and dry. I took a picture while I was waiting for the highlights to set in.

1 trabajando y 2 mirando

So these guys came to the school today to fix the cracks in the cement stairs we have on the patio. One of the teachers looks over to the other one and says, "clasico, 1 trabajando y 2 mirando". Which means 'classic, 1 working and 2 watching'. Apparently this is a common saying in Spain, I wonder why the economy is doing so bad...

Also, just wanted to give a shout out to my dear Mother today. Love you!

I just want to be a resident so I can do resident things with my friends!

Today I went to the foreigners office to finish up the rest of my resident card paperwork. Since I had to take the whole day off from work to do this I took a picture of my number

And then I took a picture of the surprisingly stereotypical looking gypsy sitting next to me...

Parque Boulevard

I go running in this park. It's has that big fountain in the middle and around the whole park is a running/walking track. Theres also a big green area where kids play soccer and theres a skate park. Might head down there right now actually and read my book since its really nice out today.

Really?

They're building this new museum here in Jaen and I walk by it everyday and think to myself 'that has to be the ugliest building in Europe'. There's no windows, its massive, it looks like someone widdled it from wood and its just big blocks put together. I guess it used to be an old prison and maybe they just didn't want to do much renovation to it....

Where o where?

A few friends and I are thinking about our travel plans for Christmas and here are some of our options right now. Can you guess where from the pictures?

technical difficulties

my memory card on my camera is experiencing technical difficulties at the moment, so I can't post a picture but what I CAN do is give you the link to a pretty hilarious youtube video. Enjoy

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_YQpbzQ6gzs#!

heres what I did today

And I cleaned my room. 

and the rain begins

HEY MOM! I need my winter coat pleaaasee. <3 

happy (belated) halloween!

Granada otra vez

Sorry I havent been blogging this week, I got pretty sick after feria and haven't been doing much but this weekend me and 4 other friends went to Granada again this weekend. It was fun we only stayed one night so we went and got tapas and then went to a little reggae concert and then to a night club that was pretty mediocre. Today we walked around and went up to the mirador san nicholas again and took some pictures. It was a pretty laid back weekend. Here's a few pictures...

Feria video

I think this video pretty much sums up what goes on at the feria. My friends camera takes a small video clip before each picture and then it pieces together in the end. Feria Video

cuteness

Kids came to school all dressed up in their gitana/o outfits and then we had a little party. precious!

also I thought this was kinda funny

View from the castle

Feria

This weekend was the kick off to a week long party/fair that takes place at the fairgrounds in Jaen. They have carnival rides and they have big white tents that restaurants, bars and nightclubs set up. During the day families come with their children to participate it the festivities. The women and young girls dress up in gitana outfits

Me and a few friends walked around during the day for a few hours. Then decided to leave to get ready to come back for the night time festivities. At around midnight, the families leave and the young adults dress up and walk towards the fair grounds to start botellon-ing before the night gets going. Botellon-ing is the act of drinking outside in the street with bottles in throngs of people. Then around 2am the night starts to really get going and people go from tent to tent dancing and drinking until about 7am. The rides are also still open throughout the whole night. I took advantage of the bumper cars and some spinny ride which I immediately regretted.   

Just one of those days...

Im taking to my blog to vent my frustration about today.
So, last night I made a flyer that advertises my services as an English tutor. I refuse to use any of the fonts on word so I spent way too long on finding a font online. After I figured out how to make a table and change the orientation of the writing it was done.
 Woke up today, found the printing place, opened up my document and of course the font was all wonky, the picture didn't come out and the words were all over the page. Walked back to my apartment and took a screenshot of my flyer, walked back spent 15 minuets trying to figure out how to get it to fit the page, it prints...aaand the email is all wrong, I've never even had the email address that I put on there.
Go back to the apartment, fix the email, walk back and realize oooof course its 2pm and its closed for siesta. Walk back, crack a beer, feeling a little better. I wait around for 5oclock walk back to the copy place and my hard drive cord is loose so you have to finagle the cord juuust right for it to connect, that takes a good 10 minutes. It opens, it prints, ooo wait the bottom is cut off and you can't read the email that I just fixed. Finally it prints correctly except for one minor issue...

it printed with the red squiggly lines...whatevss its still readable I'm throwing them up anyways cause I'm embarrassing myself at this copy place.

Thanks for listening. Expect better posts after this weekend.

Granada and Salobreña

This weekend me and two friends went to Granada and a small beach town called Salobreña. Granada is about an hour bus ride south of Jaen and Salobreña is about an hour south of Granada. We arrived in Granada at around 2:30 on Saturday, got to the hostel dropped our stuff and headed out. We first grabbed some drinks and lunch at a restaurant nearby and then we decided we would try and see if we could get into the Alhambra. The Alhambra is a Moorish fortress and palace at the top of a large hill that overlooks all of Granada.

 We got there and all the tickets were sold out but we had the option to walk around a small part of the fortess for free and get to see a great view of Granada. So we had a beer and looked out on to this...

After we walked back down and went back to the hostel, to find out where we could watch some flamenco dancing and my roommate had told me about a place called Mirador San Nicholas which has one of the best views in the whole city. The flamenco dancing takes place in these little caves that are built into the hill. So we bought our ticket and then walked alllll the way up to the mirador, got a litre of beer and watched the sunset. 

Then we went back, got changed, smoked hookah with the other people in the hostel and then headed out for some flamenco dancing. For those of you who don't know, this is a hookah and its used to smoked TABACCO (not pot ;) ) Its a common thing to do especially in places like Morocco. Granada is very similar to Morocco in a lot of ways. 

Here is a little vid of the flamenco

I'm definitely going to take classes, I love the dresses! 

Then today we took the bus down to Salobreña and camped out on the beach alllll day. Couldn't have asked for a better day because the locals were having parties in tents on the beach. All of the women and the little girls had on traditional flamenco dresses and they were cooking food in their tents, drinking and dancing flamenco. They were celebrating Feria which is pretty much a week long party. Feria in Jaen is this week, cant wait! 

Then we had a late lunch/early dinner and ate the best paella I have ever had and watched the sunset.

Thats it for now, its back to "reality", I have to work a whole 3 hours tomorrow with some little kids, I'm thinking we'll play some freeze dance for physical education. :)

Yay! People who speak English!

Yesterday was a busy day. We had an orientation with all the other people who are participating in the auxiliares program who live in the Jaen region. There were over 100 of us which I was surprised by. It was good to meet some other Americans and British people. We already started planning where we wanted to go on trips and decided this weekend we should go down to Granada for the weekend. The orientation was suuuper boring and it lasted about 6 hours but it was worth it because after they served us lunch. We had paella, a traditional spanish meal dish, and then we had a huge chicken leg with potatoes and then flan for desert. And unlimited beer. 

Heres a picture of the paella

After the orientation I went with 2 other British girls to check out their apartments. Their apartments are a lot nicer than mine. They both had marble floors and they were higher up so they had a lot more light. We were talking about our experiences with living with other spaniards and venting our frustrations when it came to communicating with them. Anyways, here is a picture of the view from one girls apartment.

so sick!

And then we went back to our apartments showered and changed and then headed back out to meet up with more people and get drinks and tapas. We ended up at a tapas restaurant in the center of the city, it was down this little cobblestone side street. It was right next to this big church. Here are 2 pictures from that.

Then we headed out to a few local bars and I made the irresponsible decision to stay out until 4am. Getting up this morning was no picnic. 

Playground

I took some pictures of the kids playing on my iPhone. As you can see they don't have a jungle gym or anything so they have to amuse themselves with balls, rocks and dirt. Its pretty entertaining watching them. After recess, we split the group of 4 and 5 year olds up and we played red light green light and attempted to play simon says.

School's in session

Today I started working at the school. I only went in for an hour today just to get settled and figure out my schedule. I'm only working 12 hours a week haha. The school is really small and old but the teachers have figured out how to make it work. The whole school only has 15 kids from ages 3-6 and they're all so adorable! I snuck a picture of them doing work on my iphone...

This is a picture of the outside of the school

And these are pictures of the town.