Sunday was a great day. We took a
spontaneous trip to Alicante with Alicia’s parents, and although the weather,
typically, wasn’t as warm as it had been the rest of the week, it was heaven to
get a bit of sun and smell the sea air. We took the 11am bus, arriving just
after midday, which gave us five hours to explore before the bus home – the
round trip costing only ten Euros each.
When we arrived, Alicia and Lina
led the way to the castle, having been before. It’s easy to see why Alicante
has a reputation for being a tourist city, as there are restaurants, bars and
cafes all along the sea front tailored especially for this purpose. Coming in
to the city on the bus, all we could see was row upon row of high-rise
buildings. Nevertheless, the sea front and harbour are still beautifully kept,
and it’s a lovely place to spend the day.
The entrance to the castle is via
a long metal tunnel embedded into the hillside the castle dominates, and up a
lift to the top. It’s not a particularly spectacular construction in itself,
but it’s worth a visit for the impressive views across the city and over the
brilliant azure sea expanding infinitely across the horizon. It was liberating
to be in the open air looking out at such an endless expanse, soaking up the
sunshine, and it suddenly struck me how lucky I was to be living my life like
this.We spent a long while at the castle taking in the views and the atmosphere, before finally succumbing to hunger and making our way back into town. There was no shortage of places to eat, but it was more difficult than you might think, our group consisting of one person who couldn’t eat gluten, one who didn’t eat meat, one who didn’t eat fish and another with a bizarre phobia of tomato ketchup. However, after wandering the central streets for half an hour we found a perfect little cafe with outdoor seating, charging ten Euros for bread and olives, a starter, main course, dessert and drink. Needless to say, we were there for most of the afternoon and could barely move by the end of it.
After we’d finally finished lunch
it was nearly time to make our way back to the station, which we did by slowly
meandering the sea front and browsing the market stalls selling jewellery and
knickknacks. The bus brought us back to Murcia at just after 6, by which time
we were all ready to go home and recuperate from the busy weekend.
On Monday morning I got up early
to give me time to go for a run before Linguistics at 1pm. It was a miserable
day – grey, cool and threatening a downpour. Nevertheless, I managed to make it
home dry and just had time to wash my hair, get ready and grab a bite to eat
before setting off for campus. Once again, Ali and I arrived to find only the
Erasmus students standing outside the door; once again, the lesson had been
cancelled without our knowledge. Since we were now in Week 4 and had only had
two lessons, this was starting to get annoying.
In an effort to make use of my
otherwise wasted trip to campus, I went to the print shop to get a copy of yet
another Erasmus form I needed to send back home, which for some reason I hadn’t
been given in the Erasmus pack from Exeter. Stopping off in town to buy the
week’s essentials, I made my way back to the flat to get some work done before
I had to leave for my first teaching job at 4.30.
Knowing my poor history with
regards to directions, I left myself ample time to get there. In consequence,
it wasn’t too much of a problem when I got to the right road and couldn’t work
out how the building numbers worked. Eventually, I asked at a bar, where I was
told that the ‘II’ that was written at the end of the road name didn’t actually
refer to the house number, but to the fact it was the second part of the
street.
Despite my confusion, I still managed
to arrive ten minutes early. I gingerly rang the bell of what I hoped was the
right flat, and announced myself to the woman who answered. I must have been in
the right place because the door was buzzed open, so I took the lift up to the
fourth floor and emerged onto the landing, where a friendly-looking middle-aged
woman was waiting in the doorway to one of the flats.
She introduced herself as Mariluz,
the lady I’d been in contact with via email up until then. She was warm and
welcoming from the start, and we only had a short conversation before she was
happy for me to start teaching her sons. When she asked me what I was going to
charge I suddenly became nervous and realised that the twelve Euros an hour I
was asking for (below the sixteen Euros recommended by the website) was quite a
lot of money to ask for if I was going to be teaching there for three hours
every week. Since I didn’t yet have any experience of paid teaching jobs, and
since I felt it too much to ask of this nice lady struggling to look after three
sons, I agreed to do the whole three hours for thirty Euros – a nice
compromise, I think.
My first student was
fourteen-year-old Roberto, who was just at that awkward stage of adolescence
when it’s beginning to be seen as uncool to work hard in school. Nevertheless,
despite his initial unwillingness to talk in full sentences, preferring to use
short answers or revert to Spanish, I eventually got him talking, answering
questions and doing grammar exercises. For next week, I need to think of some
kind of interesting way I can possibly teach the tenses and the multiple
meanings of ‘still’, ‘yet’ and ‘already’ to a fourteen-year-old boy.
Next up was the middle son, Sergio,
who’s twelve years old. He seemed quieter and more focussed than his older
brother, and had several books and sheets at hand for us to go through. The
third son, Guillermo, who’s nine, still has the lively interest combined with cheeky
distraction that comes with his age, and was a pleasure to teach. We spent the
time going over hobbies (particularly the word ‘skipping’, which he had
difficulties in pronouncing, so I turned it into a game of ‘who can say it the
most times the fastest’ until he grasped it). Around halfway through the lesson
I realised we’d been doing high-concentration tasks for long enough and decided
to go through the colours with him using the colour-change felt tips I’d
brought with me; this was a hit.
When it was approaching 7.45,
Mariluz came in to have a chat before I finished. She’d only interrupted once
the whole evening, to tell me when to do the first swap and to bring me a cup
of café con leche, even asking me my
preferences on semi-skimmed, skimmed and full-fat milk. She seemed delighted
with how things had turned out and put my thirty Euros on the table, confirming
that she’d love to have me back every week at the same time. We got into
conversation about what I was doing in Spain, and it wasn’t long before I was
showing off my party trick of switching into different languages, much to the
amazement of Mariluz and Guillermo. Before I left, she told me again how
thrilled she was with me, and even that she had really enjoyed my emails (which
I thought had been pretty basic!) I seem to have been really lucky in finding
such a lovely family on the first try.
When I got back to the flat, I
cooked myself the remains of some pasta I had in the fridge before meeting my
friends at Smöoy to go to Tandem. This week, we managed to get there early
enough to get on the Spanish table, but there were so many people there that it
was barely possible to hold a conversation with more than one person at a time.
Nevertheless, I did manage to speak to several different people, some of them
on Erasmus, some of them Spanish, and got a good amount of Spanish practice.
The next day, I arrived at my
German Civilization lecture at 9am only to discover that this had been
cancelled too – or rather, postponed to 9am the next day. So, not only had I
got up early for no reason, but I would have to get up early again the next day
too. To make matters worse, I’d been planning on staying for an hour after the
class to get to my tutor’s office when he came in at 12, and now had three
hours to wait. Luckily, I had some notes with me and decided to make the most
of the time by sitting in the library.
When midday came I made my way
over to Juan’s office and waited for over half an hour before realising that he
probably wasn’t going to come. Polly, another girl from Exeter, then arrived
and told me that the form I needed to get signed could actually be signed in
the International Relations office, so I hadn’t needed to wait at all!
Frustrated, I went across to the other building and waited in another queue
before finally managing to get the form signed and stamped by a member of staff
who was doubtful whether she was actually the right person for the job. Resigned to the possibility that it might be
wrong, I had the form scanned at the copy shop and decided to send it to Exeter
to check.
I spent that afternoon tackling
an impossible translation that had been set for my General Translation class –
an extract from a novella to translate from Spanish to English. On the plus
side, I also managed to fit in a Skype call with my parents and my best friend
from home, who I hadn’t been able to speak to properly since arriving in Spain.
My parents have already planned two trips over here – one at the beginning of
March and one in the middle of April for my birthday, since I have no plans to
come home before my course finishes in June. Their first visit, which my nan is
coming on too, is only two weeks away and we’re all really excited. I just hope
the weather’s good so they can get a nice sunny holiday out of it too.
That night, my friends and I
decided to be brave and head to a Spanish comedy night, which turned out to be
a stretch too far for our current level of Spanish. As soon as the comedians
realised we were English we were picked on for the rest of the night, and we decided
to make our getaway in the interval. Not only this, but drinks prices had gone
up as soon as the performance began, making a Diet Coke cost a ridiculous three
Euros. On the plus side, the bar provided free snacks, meaning we could gorge ourselves
endlessly on nuts, fried sweet corn (an incredible Spanish creation, I have to
say), marshmallows and sweets.
The next day, I clambered out of
bed at half-past eight to get to my lecture at 9.15, knowing that there was no
point in getting ready properly for the day since I was going for a run when I
got back. Carole, the professor, and I, waited for the only other student,
Isabel, to arrive, but when it got to 9.30 we decided that we would have to
start. She never did turn up, which is particularly frustrating since the lesson
had been postponed as she had missed the bus the previous day. Nevertheless, it
meant that I could have a really productive private lesson, at the end of which
we had a discussion about the poor level of language learning (particularly
German) in Spain, and Carole told me I should take the Goethe Institute in May test
to obtain an official C2 (the highest level). Considering I already have my C1,
which I’m quite content with, and that the C2 is designed at native-speaker
level, not to mention the fact that you have to pay for this exam, I’m not too
keen. I think I’ll have enough exams to deal with, but we’ll see. She also told
me about a week-long linguistics course in April that she’s keen for me to partake
in, and having looked at the programme I think it could be really interesting.
After German I went straight home
for a run. It was perfect weather for a jog – sunny with a bit of cloud, cool
but no rain or wind. When I got back I just had time to have a shower and do a
bit of cleaning before George returned with Marie Ángelez, who had come to make
lunch with us. Between us, in our tiny kitchen, we managed to rustle up some
fried pastries stuffed with tuna and tomato, and the possibly the largest
amount of spaghetti I have ever seen.
My lectures that afternoon were
both interesting; in one, we focussed on the difficulties of translating
cultural elements; in the other, we went through the novella extract we’d
tackled at home. It’s amazing how many cultural differences there are between
Spain and England, considering how close they are to one another, and both
considered more or less European. Just one example is the concept of a gravel
drive, not to mention double glazing, French windows and even gardens. These
create problems I hadn’t even really considered before in translating.
My second class finished slightly
early but by the time I’d taken a detour to buy stamps, I was back at nearly
normal time. That evening, we just met up for a few quiet drinks, as everyone
had had a busy week so far and we wanted to enjoy the next couple of nights.
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