Monday, December 17, 2012

It's not like getting paid is important, right?

I started work here in Spain on Oct. 1.
Today is December 17.
And I just got paid for the first time.

I hadn't received a dime for 2 1/2 months' worth of work until today. But this is Spain, after all, and knowing that there has been some pretty serious economic instability plaguing this lovely nation, I expected some delays. But I didn't realize payment would be pushed back as far as it was. There's been speculation that the Extremaduran government was trying to put off paying us until January to keep our salaries off the 2012 books -- with our pay included, the government hasn't complied with its budget.

Only after some other auxiliares mounted pressure on the Extremaduran government via angry, desperate letters and appeals to the press, we got paid. Ah, the power of bad publicity.

Story about our delayed pay in the "Hoy" paper of Extremadura.  Source
Speaking of bad publicity...

Apparently our lack of pay is normal around here, sadly. Read this New York Times story about how working and earning money aren't necessarily mutually inclusive for Spanish employees.

Un saludo,
Teresa

Sunday, December 16, 2012

A Spanish lesson

I came to Spain under the impression that I had a pretty good level of Spanish. I was far beyond basic survival Spanish. I knew enough to have a conversation more complex than the classic "what do you like to do?" and "tell me about your family." I knew more than simply enough to get me in and out of trouble; I could talk about politics, natural disasters and poverty.

Source
I'd grown accustomed to the Costa Rican accent (or lack thereof), Central Americans' more formal way of speaking and their vocabulary. There, car is carro, place is lugar, drive is manejar, juice is jugo and everything is lindo (cute, pretty, adorable, nice).

Then I came to Spain, southern Spain to boot. I've passed through periods here when I've lost all confidence in my Spanish. There have been multiple conversations in which I haven't understood a single word because the accent and colloquial usage of Spanish here is impossible at times. It can be soul-crushing.

Story of my life. Source
Here, car is coche, place is generally sitio, drive is conducir, juice is zumo and everything is bonito

But it's recently started to get better - right on time. Former auxiliares in Extremadura had warned us that it would take until Christmas to start feeling comfortable. Before coming, I didn't believe that.

Now I do.

So, while we're on the subject of Spanish, I'll give you all a quick lesson.

Read this list of words and while doing so, think of the appropriate English translation.

Compromiso
Fatal
Embarazada
Confidencia
Disco
Molestar
Constipado
Caramelos
Preservativo
Club
Actual
Jersey

Your translations are wrong, I would guess, unless you've studied Spanish at a level more advanced than middle- or high school language courses. The words above are "false cognates," meaning they look similar to English words but have different meanings.

Compromiso = commitment
Fatal = this can be "fatal," as in "deadly," but it's more commonly used to describe something terrible or awful

Embarazada = this is a classic Spanish 101 newbie error. Not "embarrassed," but rather "pregnant."
Confidencia = a secret

Disco = nothing to do with flower power or flared pants anymore. Disco is short for discoteca, a nightclub. It is a true cognate with "disc."

Molestar = nope, not referring to sexual abuse. This means "to bother."

Constipado = I learned this one here in Spain, as it's winter at the moment. This means "congested." "Constipated" is extreñido.
Caramelos = this doesn't necessarily mean caramels, although it can. More often, in Spain at least, caramelos are "candies."

Preservativo = in Spain, this is not what enables canned soup to last for centuries. That would be a conservante. This is a condom. My British roommate once said in an oral exam that she doesn't like how many preservativos are put in food. Laughter ensued.

Club = not a regular nightclub, but rather a place to see lady parts.

Actual = I commit this error often. This means "current," while "actual" would be real.
Jersey = You won't find names and numbers on this - it's a "sweater."


That's just a sampling of tricky ones. There are many more.

Here's to learning and improving every day.

Un saludo,
Teresa




An ode to CouchSurfing


Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, if you’re reading this, you should probably stop now.

Really, you’re not going to like what my roommate and I did last weekend.

I know you’re still reading this post because my warning has piqued your curiosity, but really, I can’t imagine this will make you any more comfortable with the way I travel. 

We found a stranger on the internet.
We asked if he had an open couch or two.
We let him pick us up from the airport on the Spanish island of Mallorca (Majorca in English) at 11 o’clock at night. 
We stayed at his house for two days and let him feed us fajitas and serve us wine.

And it was awesome.
CouchSurfing is awesome. 

Nice and literal. Source
Does what we did sound incredibly, you’re-just-asking-to-get-murdered-with-an-ice-pick crazy? Absolutely. But sometimes when traveling, you have to take risks to reap rewards.

CouchSurfing is a social network that links travelers with hosts willing to let them stay for free, assuming the freeloaders will offer some sort of cultural insight in return. It’s a way for footloose nomads to meet other like-minded souls.

As far as I know, there are no background checks, no official verifications that the person you’re staying with or the person who’s staying at your house didn’t just get off a train after chopping someone up with an axe. But perhaps that’s the allure of it all: meeting someone completely new, with nothing to go off of except for an internet profile that can either be sincere or entirely fabricated. 

This could be your host. Source
As it turns out, Samuel, our host, had a sincere profile, and to our knowledge, he hasn’t murdered anyone with an axe or an ice pick. 

That's Samuel on the left, of course.
He was ridiculously gracious. Ridiculously gracious. As I mentioned, he picked us up from the airport late at night even though he had to work in the morning (he’s a lawyer).

He opened his home to the fullest degree possible, allowing us to hang around by ourselves while he was at work.

He left coffee mugs, coffee and a giant breakfast muffin on the counter on our first morning there.

He drove us around the beautiful Balearic Island of Mallorca and waited patiently as we took way too many nonsensical photos of trees, signs, sunsets and ourselves from more flattering angles. 

I believe this is the town of Valldemosa.

Valldemosa

We stopped at a lookout point to catch this sunset.

Portals Vells cove

Portals Vells cove
He answered a mountain of “how do you say that in Spanish?” questions from us (he spoke impeccable English).

He took us to his workplace on a Saturday so that we could print off our bus tickets because he didn’t have a printer at home.

He took us to the most amazing, traditional Mallorquin (the adjective describing people and things of Mallorca) restaurant that looked exactly like what I would expect from a Spanish grandmother’s home. They (Restaurant Hostal Ca’N Marió) served the best food I’ve had in Europe, no doubt. 

Frito mallorquin, a typical dish made of meat, liver, blood, potatoes, onion, red pepper and tomato. It was fantastic. We also had wonderful stuffed eggplant, but we don't have a photo.
Arroz brut, a rice dish similar to paella but with broth, and green peppers with lemon, which is apparently typical of Mallorca.
Entrance to the restaurant.
Then, he tried to not let us pay for dinner.

That, my friends, is the epitome of CouchSurfing.

We, two young American women, came to stay at his house, and he treated us like platonic, longtime friends. No funny business. No shameless attempts to snag a foreign girlfriend.

I’ve travelled around a decent amount for someone my age. I’ve stayed in lots of great hostels and a fair share of rotten ones.

I’ve been to London, Paris, Rome, Lisbon, Madrid, Sevilla, Florence, Munich and a ton of other amazing, straight-off-a-travel show places.

But one of my best travel experiences thus far in my life was in Mallorca, a charming plot of land off the eastern shore of Spain.  

View Larger Map  

And it was great because we hung out with Spaniards. Speaking Spanish. Doing things that real people who live on the island do. And that’s what I’ve wanted this whole whirlwind year in Spain to be all about. 

So, maybe, somewhere else in the bowels of the interwebz, you’ll find a cautionary tale about a CouchSurfing host wielding an axe. I can’t imagine there’s nothing bad out there about the experience.

But keep in mind that if you don’t go out on a limb, you’ll never reach the fruit.

And “adventure is what happens when you just did something stupid” (Professor Bernie).

And lastly: “Yes, risk-taking is inherently failure-prone. Otherwise it would be called sure-thing-taking.” – Tim McMahon   

Profound, eh?

Here’s to that proverbial limb. 

Un saludo, 
Teresa

Also, as a sidenote, anyone who tells you to avoid Mallorca in winter is a fool.

The harbor in Palma de Mallorca.


Wednesday, December 12, 2012

A whiny open letter to Ryanair


Dear Ryanair,

No, I don’t want you to hawk calling cards throughout the entire flight.
No, I don’t want Giorgio Armani or Calvin Klein perfume.
No, I don’t want an allegedly sexy charity calendar of the Ryanair crew (I peaked at the cover as the cart rolled by, and I wasn’t impressed). 

This is not an image from the calendar, unfortunately (or fortunately) for you. Source
No, I don’t want overpriced cognac, even if I do get one free with the purchase of another.
And no, fellow Ryanair passengers, I don’t want you to clap when we arrive. Our safe landing should be treated as an expectation, not a victory.

Ryanair
Source
I just want to sit in my tiny seat and try to enjoy what’s sure to be an unenjoyable journey.

But no, Ryanair, I will not stop using you, given your ridiculously cheap prices and stripped-down service.

So I guess I’m just a whiny blogger with a problem I refuse to fix.

See you soon,
Teresa

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Weekend in Salamanca

It´s neat when you get to experience a place you’ve taught about in class: In one of my social sciences classes, we’ve spent weeks discussing various aspects of medieval life, from trade to professional guilds to religion. Medieval universities arose out of a desire to provide a higher level of education outside the scope of the church, and one of the most important universities established at the time was the University of Salamanca in Salamanca, Spain. Coincidentally, a few days after that lesson, a friend (Sam, whom I met studying in Costa Rica) and I headed for Salamanca.


View Larger Map
Beautiful medieval street of Old Town.
Salamanca has an awesome history, and it’s reflected in the buildings and streets of Old Town. As an American, from a relatively young state to boot, even Boston’s 17th century roots seem ancient. So there´s something really cool about wandering through the venerable heart of a city like Salamanca, which was around before Christ.


We walked through a hulking cathedral (The “Old Cathedral”) whose construction stretched for more than a century (from the 12th to the 14th) and spanned two distinct architectural styles. We checked out the campus of the oldest and most significant university in Spain, established in the 1200s. We watched the 18th century Baroque main plaza (“Plaza Mayor”) evolve from a quiet daytime crossroads to an evening hotbed for couples, tourists and locals drinking coffee.

Plaza Mayor
Old Cathedral

Old Cathedral

Old Cathedral

View of Old Town from across the Roman bridge.
What we didn’t do, however, was experience the city’s infamous nightlife. Being the country’s premier college town, Salamanca is synonymous with fiesta. On Saturday and Sunday, we had plans to out for a bit, at least, after taking a quick rest in the hotel after a long day of aimless wandering. Needless to say, we never made it out of our beds. Guess I’ll have to make it back to Salamanca someday. What a shame, eh?

Un saludo,
Teresa

Travel details: 

How we got there: We took the Saturday morning Alsa bus from Merida, Extremadura, to Salamanca, with a 9:50 departure and roughly 2 p.m. arrival. One-way ticket was about 19 euros. Round-trips go for about 37 euros. The Salamanca bus station is about a 15-minute walk to Old Town. Travel tip: If there’s a direct bus to your destination, but the departure time isn’t ideal, try taking an earlier bus or train closer to your destination and connect from there. The direct bus to Don Benito, Extremadura, didn’t leave until 3:30 p.m. on Monday, and I didn’t want to hang around that long, so I took the 9:50 a.m. bus to Merida and caught the 3:10 p.m. train to Don Benito. (I had to walk a mile between the Merida bus and train stations and ended up making it just in time, but in the end the stress on my heart and my body was worth getting home earlier).

Where we stayed: Our plans to CouchSurf fell through, so we made last-minute, day-before-arrival reservations at the Don Juan Hotel, whose name was admittedly a turn off, but we were desperate. We paid 52 euros total for two nights and two people. The place was nice, clean and quiet. If you´re looking for a party hostel or a let´s-meet-wanderers-from-all-over-the-world experience, the Don Juan is the absolute wrong place to go. But if you want something cheap, clean and well-located, it’s a great option. It’s in Old Town, about one or two minutes walking from the Plaza Mayor. The woman working (not sure if she was the owner) was great; she called the customer service line of Sam’s phone company because Sam couldn’t remember her access pin, and customer service calls in Spanish are soul-crushing.

What we did: We spent most of our time walking, which is lovely and free. We went inside the Old Cathedral, which is free, but if you’re on a legitimate Spanish vacation, it might be worth paying a tour guide so you learn something. We paid 3.75 euros to get into the Pontifical University building, mainly so that we could go to the top for the views. There’s a “museum” of sorts about the history of the school and a video, but both were virtually impossible to understand without spectacular Spanish. As far as we could see, there was no English. We wanted to check out the inside of the University of Salamanca buildings, but they’re closed on Sunday afternoons (I don’t know about mornings). Keep that in mind if visiting the university is a travel priority.

Pontifical University
Views from the top of Pontifical University

Facade of the University of Salamanca. There's a tiny, tiny frog carved that you're supposed to find for good luck. I couldn't find it without help.
University of Salamanca frog
The frog. Source
Where we ate: The beauty of Salamanca is that it’s ripe with cheap places to eat and drink. We got good-sized coffees (good-sized for Spain, pitifully small for America) for one euro at Tutto Benne, in the Plaza Mayor next to the tourism office. They also have good, big ice cream cones – two euros for two flavors. Tons of restaurants offer menu del dia (daily lunch specials) for 10 euros or less, so if you’re on a budget, don’t pay more than that. We ate at Merlin restaurant near the university, and it was good. Nothing spectacular, but you can’t expect spectacular if you’re paying the equivalent of $13 for three courses (albeit small) and a drink in a touristy town.

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