As the page turns...

I still have three months left here, yet in a few clicks of a camera, a few swigs of badly mixed drinks, a few long nights and a few raw goodbyes, it'll be over. This book will be done, the present unfolding European adventure will have folded for good (or at least for two years). My story has been a wild one, more twisted, painful and rewarding than I could've ever predicted. I hope I will be able to say the same for the epilogue.

Closing out the final chapter of my Tales of Twenty-some Countries will be harder than it was to introduce the pursuit. But the epilogue is nothing to cry about. I've accepted a two-year graduate assistant position at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, my alma mater, in the New Student Enrollment office.

I'll help coordinate, plan and implement orientation programs for new students, with special emphasis on international ones. I'll develop and direct an international-student seminar, run an English language group, arrange meals for foreign students with local families and create activities to increase interaction between foreigners and Americans. As part of the deal, the university is going to pay me for that job and even pay all of my Educational Administration Master's degree tuition. That's hard to pass up. So is finally being around to kiss my little gang of nieces and nephews, to join in family dinners and to dress in red on fall Saturdays with friends in Lincoln.

Even so, the decision hasn't been an easy one. I've had to turn down an opportunity to teach next year in the sunny, palm-tree lined coastal region of Spain that was just named the "world's best place for the good life." I guess I've chosen "The Good Life" over "the good life."

I believe our lives should read like a book. We are the protagonists in our own stories, and we must drive their course. There should be progress, excitement, inevitable lulls, a climax and a denouement. A good story has forward motion, a maturing plot and evolving characters. Happy endings are great but only if someone trudged through a patch of thorns in shorts to get there. I've recorded my narrative here, including my battles against the proverbial thorn patches that scratched me to sh**but ultimately left me better off. I hope to pen a happy ending here, too.

I've made a decision to keep moving and advance my story. So, here's to continuing to write one heck of a tale.

Nobody said it'd be easy.

I was freshly 18 when he and I met at a party in a new friend's basement. You know, one of those places with the low-slung ceilings, mismatched furniture and a keg on ice. I had plans to move to the dorms that week and join the college scene as a smart-but-social co-ed. I didn't want a boyfriend. But he was tall and skinny and had shaggy brown hair. With those three characteristics, he met all of my teenage girl criteria. And so, he was mine before he knew he was mine.

I can map the trajectory of our relationship according to the evolution of his haircut. At first it was long, far past his ears, unkempt and chill. So was our relationship. It was fun and carefree. We partied, crashed on friends' floors and made beer-fueled memories we couldn't remember the next morning. Then he cut it. It was still long, but it was above the ears. It was still cool but more serious, more suitable for a degree-seeking 20-something. Our fun fling took a similar twist toward serious. We began saying "I love you" at the end of every call and increasingly chose Netflix and frozen pizza over drunk non-memories. With every inch he cut off, we inched closer to middle-class suburbia and joint tax filings.

Five years in, I moved to Spain to work for what was supposed to be a one-year deal. As part of that, I was traveling, teaching, making new friends and drinking wine and coffee. (Both were drinks I'd always adamantly despised before. They stain your teeth. They taste like shit.) And so, ours was a slow, undetectable decay, like a tumor that goes unnoticed until you're saying your last goodbye. I found myself embracing everything around me in Europe and embracing a life without him. I call B.S. on the "absence makes the heart grow fonder" line. With every Skype call missed, we grew further apart. While I was gone, he became a career man, a slacks-and-button-up man with his own health insurance and 401k. Meanwhile, I became even more of a lost soul. I was overqualified to be unemployed post-Spain but too clueless to know what I wanted to do. 

I can't pinpoint when exactly I questioned going back to Nebraska to settle down, but it seems I came to a fork in the road. One path was full of curves, bends I couldn't see past and neon warning signs. It promised to be exciting but full of risk and uncertainty. The other path was straight and narrow, lauded for its smooth surface and suitability for cruise control. It was The Path by any rational standards. It was safe and comfortable, The Sure Thing that everyone searches for. I spent days, nights, mornings, evenings and middle-of-the-nights telling myself The Path was the right path for me. 

When I finally chose The Wrong Path, I cried. He cried. We cried, but rarely at the same time. It always seemed like he was grieving when I wasn't, or vice versa. I grieved in private, at 2 a.m., 3 a.m., 4 a.m., as the unrelenting cadence of motorbikes outside my barely-there street-side window kept me awake.

I could've had it all - a nice house, a stable career, a handsome, loving husband who would kiss me before leaving for work in his new sedan. Instead, I moved back to Spain, where I rent a bedroom in a furnished apartment and earn a pittance at my part-time teaching job. Here I'm seeing the world, gaining Spanish fluency more each day and challenging myself to build a life as a young woman who doesn't identify as the future Mrs. Anybody. 

It has not been easy, but in life we're liable for the decisions we make and the hearts we break. I broke my heart and his heart and our families' hearts, and that weighs on me every day. I struggle with my decision, and having faith that I made the right one is a daily challenge. Months after calling off our wedding, moving on remains an ongoing pursuit. We've relapsed too many times to count, done the familiar dance of exes caught somewhere between committed and not.

There are days when the allure of The American Dream eats at me like a parasite I can't shake. We tend to measure life by a quantifiable system of metrics, and accordingly, I'm failing. We assess success by hours worked, children raised, money earned and cars owned. The intangible victories - challenges overcome or fears conquered, for example - don't count for as much. I recognize that. I don't expect everyone to understand my choice, to legitimize my lifestyle or to encourage my wanderlust. But I do hope that they respect my decision and the guts it took to make it. Maybe he and I will be Us again someday. Neither of us can say for sure. I still love him, but for now, I've chosen to live instead of to love - to live out my dreams, to not let them be dreams at all, really. So here's to having the courage to follow my instincts and the confidence that I've pursued happiness, even if in the end, I could've found it right in front of me.

Adventures in teaching

Kids say the darnedest things, and even more so in a foreign language. Sometimes my students' questions and/or comments catch me entirely by surprise, and I have to maintain composure while I think about how I'm going to address *insert taboo topic here*. Every day is an adventure. As an auxiliar, my job is as much to teach the English language as it is to teach the way we use the language (and the way we don't use the language.)

In a recent class with 14-year-olds, we were reading a news story about Samoa Air's charge-by-passenger-weight ticket policy. We were debating about fairness, discrimination, obesity, etc. My students kept using the term "fat people," i.e. "fat people have to pay more" or "it's unfair to fat people." I decided to give them a lesson about the intricacies and subtleties of  English (I wrote before about the loose Spanish PC code here): We don't say "fat people," I explained. Instead, we say "overweight," "large," "obese" or "big." This small lesson somehow morphed into a much longer, much more uncomfortable discussion. One student asked what we call "los negros" (black people). I explained that we typically say "African-Americans," which then prompted the "so why do you say 'white' but not 'black'?" follow-up. Good question. I had no sufficient answer. Then a girl asked when we say "n*****." She was 100 percent sincere. I was admittedly shocked and had to think for a bit about how to explain such a delicate word without actually repeating the word. I told them that it's incredibly derogatory and offensive, and I advised them to never, ever, ever use it. "But why do we hear it in music and movies so much then?" Another good question. Another unsatisfactory answer from me.

After all of that, just when I thought I was off the hook, a girl mentioned African immigrants selling sunglasses, watches, ice cream and other goodies on the beach. A student raised his hand and, again 100 percent sincerely, asked if I could explain the difference in pronunciation and meaning between "bitch" and "beach" because he couldn't hear any distinction between the two (I wrote a bit about that here). So, I got the go-ahead from the teacher, and I explained it. What. A. Day.

Here's to students keeping teachers on their toes.

Un saludo,
Teresa

"This week in errors," Issue 3

This feature publicizes the week's most epic/memorable/blush-inducing language fails. This week's issue focuses on students unknowingly saying/writing wildly inappropriate things.

1). In a class, my students were playing "20 questions" about celebrities to practice asking questions about and describing personal characteristics. Nicki Minaj came up (if you don't know who she is, look here), and one of my students asked the student describing her if the person being described "had a big ass." I couldn't believe what I heard, so I asked him to repeat because I was sure I'd heard it wrong (like the time a student said he made a mistake on a PowerPoint because he "was wrong" and I thought he said he "was drunk"). He repeated, and sure enough, he confidently repeated "ass." He didn't realize that was a bad word because he'd learned it as an equivalent to "culo," which technically it is, but it's stronger in English.

2). This comes from one of my roommate's students. Look at #3.

The girl meant to say "hold me" or "pick me up" ("cogerme" in Spain Spanish), but in parts of Latin America, "coger" means "f***," so when she searched "coger" in a translator, that's what she got.

Un saludo,
Teresa

North American Language and Culture Assistants: Application advice

As much as I want this blog to be a record of my adventures and misfortunes in Europe, I also want it to be helpful for potential North American Language & Culture Assistants who are drowning in questions about how everything works. To all ye applicants out there: The tales of mindblowing bureaucracy, late payments and the general lack of efficiency on the part of the Spanish government are all true, sadly. But the good news is, despite speculation that the dead-broke Spanish government would cut the auxiliars de conversacion program for next year, they haven't done so.

The application officially opens Jan. 8 (it opened in early November last year). You should start your application right now. Yesterday, actually. In the spirit of the season, I put together a nice list of application tips to help you on your way.

1. Don't expect to be placed in Andalucia, Valencia or Madrid
Because everyone wants to, and your odds just aren't that great. Not to say it can't happen, because it obviously does for hundreds of auxiliars every year, but hundreds of others end up in regions that they haphazardly listed as their third choice because they just knew they wouldn't end up there (I'm pointing to myself). I applied for Valencia first, inspired by photos of sun-soaked beaches and crazy parties. Then, because Andalucia, Valencia and Madrid are all in the same region group, and you can only choose one from each group, I put Cataluña, home to Barcelona, as my second choice. I listed Extremadura third, having never even heard of the place. Guess where I ended up?

Aw, Valencia.     Source

2. Don't expect to have a better or worse experience than your friend/cousin/brother/sorority sister did. 
Because it just doesn't work like that. There's so much variation between regions, schools and students. A friend who spent last year teaching in Madrid said her students were half-human, half jungle animals. I've heard of an auxiliar in a rural region whose students refused to participate because their parents were pig farmers, and they didn't think they needed English to take over the family farm (disclaimer: My dad's a farmer, and there's nothing wrong with wanting to take over the farm. But there is certainly something wrong with not wanting to learn.) I've heard stories of teachers practically bolting out of the room as soon as the auxiliar arrives, forcing the auxiliar to teach the class solo while the teacher has a café con leche in the breakroom. One of my friends is basically a live sound machine that only gets used when an English passage needs to be read. So keep all of that in mind.

This could be you.    Source

3. Don't expect the schools to follow the rules
Because they don't. According to the rules, auxiliars aren't replacement teachers, and we're only supposed to work 12 hours a week. We're assistants ("auxiliar" means assistant), but some schools treat auxiliars as teachers while the real teachers chat outside, presumably about their students' beast-like behavior. You may very well be teaching classes on your own. Fortunately, I've been placed in two schools that use me well but don't abuse me. Although I do teach full lessons by myself, the teachers are in the room with me in case I need them. I actually prefer it that way.

Best image that came up when I googled "clueless teacher."

 4. Start saving your money now
Because you'll need it. You'll likely work for two months or longer before getting paid. As I write this, it's late November, and I haven't received a dime. Apparently the auxiliars who applied through the British Council recently received an email saying they should get paid in December, but the date is thus far undetermined. I don't know what that means for we Americans. Fortunately, I anticipated this, and I have a cushion so that I can travel freely without obsessing over my dwindling funds (although I am still kind of obsessing over my dwindling funds). You'll need at least $3,000 to live and travel for the first two months if you want to do it right and eat more than ramen noodles.

Source

5. Read current and former auxiliars' blogs
Because you'll need their advice. Start here, although some of Liz the Young Adventuress's tangles with pissy Spanish funcionarios (government workers) will make you think twice about joining the mess. This blog outlines late payments and lies from the government. This one details lots of the quirks of Spanish culture from an American's perspective. I just stumbled up on this one today, but it looks like it's packed with useful tips and engaging writing.

6. Follow the application instructions 
Because you'll need them. Without them the application is downright nonsensical. Even with them the process is downright nonsensical but to a lesser degree. If you scroll toward the bottom of this page, you'll find a link to a "how to register online" document and a "program manual." Both of those are invaluable. But you'll likely still be confused.

Source

7. Only submit necessary documents
Because you want to work smarter, not harder. There's a lot of misinformation spread among auxiliars regarding what you do and do not need to send in with the application. Supposedly some things are going to change regarding this year's application. I can't confirm or deny that, but I can tell you that last year we didn't need to submit a background check or doctor's note with our program application (you do need a state or FBI check and a health clearance for your visa application if you get accepted, but WAIT TO GET THOSE!) I sent a background check from the city police and a health form because word on the street was that I needed to, even though the instructions didn't say I did. It turned out that I didn't need them. (Keep in mind I'm American and don't know how it works for auxiliars from other countries.)

8. Send in your application on Jan. 8
Because that's the first day you can do so for 2013/2014. Last year, the app opened Monday, Nov. 7, I believe. I started the application Nov. 8 and submitted it Nov. 11. I was applicant No. 642, meaning 641 people got location assignments before me because placements are first-come, first-serve. Submit the online portion before getting the letter of reference, if need be, because you can send that in later. Also, don't waste a lot of time filling in information about merits and work history because that stuff has no influence on your acceptance/rejection. Your application number is what matters, and you want a low one, so the sooner you apply, the better.

Source

9. Don't expect to find out where you're placed by the date the government gives you
Because the government doesn't adhere to deadlines. The application closed in March, and I believe we were told we'd get our placements in late April or early May. On May 22, I got an email saying I'd been accepted and placed in Extremadura, but I wasn't told specifically where. I had to accept my ambiguous placement as a prerequisite to getting more information. I accepted May 26 and was given the names and addresses of my schools June 5.

Source

10. You don't need to speak Spanish to teach English, but you should
Because this is Spain. Officially, auxiliars are supposed to have an intermediate level of Spanish, but many don't because our job is to speak English, after all. But being able to speak Spanish helps immensely at school when you're trying to make copies or find the restroom (although the restroom situation was a bit spotty for a while for me.)

11. Lastly, join the Facebook groups
Because it's good to commiserate together. You'll need a forum to curse the system and make a friend or two. This year's group for my region is Auxiliares de Conversacion 2012-2013 Extremadura, and yours will probably be named similarly. It's a valuable resource; I met one of my roommates on there.

So, that's that, applicants. Scared yet? Don't be. This program certainly has its want-to-pull-my-hair-out qualities, but putting up with the bad stuff has been worth it thus far, for me at least. I've had an amazing time teaching, learning and traveling, so realize you'll have to take the bad with the good.

Are you a current or past auxiliar with wisdom to add? Are you a potential applicant with lingering questions? Let me know in the comments section. 

Un saludo,
Teresa

I guess I'm a teacher now

So, as you likely know by now, I'm here to be an English language assistant. I work at two schools in a town called Miajadas, which is about a half-hour drive from Don Benito, where I live. Because I don't have a car, my transportation situation is quite complicated. Even complicated might be an understatement. My mentor has organized a network of five teachers, including herself, who bring me to/from school throughout the week. I also take the bus a couple of days a week, when I don't have to be at work until late afternoon. I only work 12 hours a week, technically speaking, but I spend many more hours than that at school, hanging out between classes or waiting for a ride.

You're wondering, "What does she do when she's in class?" Good question. Because I'm an assistant, I have no hand in developing curriculum, determining what we'll cover in class, grading or disciplining students. That fun stuff is left to the teachers. My role, in its simplest form, is to talk to the kids and get them to speak English. Sometimes it's like pulling teeth - understandably so, because it can be intimidating to converse with a native speaker. I know the discomfort. 

At the public school, I teach English, social sciences and math. I've got a pretty good handle on English, but the other two subjects are by no means strengths of mine. However, I prepare and improvise quite well. My students are in their first, second and third years of ESO, which would loosely translate to sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth grades in the U.S. My youngest students at the public school are about 11 years old. I think my oldest are 15 or so. To be candid, when I was assigned that age group, I cringed. They're getting acne. Starting to like girls. Getting clique-y. Reaching puberty. However, I'm happy to say I've been pleasantly surprised. The kids in the first-year ESO classes are actually quite cute, and they're under the impression that I'm funny. They might even think I'm slightly cool, but I can't say for sure. The older students are pretty good, too. In general, they haven't yet hit the "too cool for school age," although a few of them make it clear they'd rather not be in class.

At the Catholic school, I work with elementary students mostly, but I have a couple classes with first-year ESO kids. I only help with English courses there. It's hard not to notice the difference in maturity and behavioral control between the ESO students and the elementary kids, who are between 7 years old and 10 or so. The youngins have a pretty good understanding of English (much better than most children their age in the States), but they simply don't behave as well. It's hard to keep them focused, especially when they're just so curious about me. They don't want to read about Javier and Maria's trip through the forest. Rather, they want to ask me, the blonde alien, questions about where I'm from, my favorite sports teams, my favorite color and whether I have a boyfriend (I've been asked those questions a lot thus far in all of my classes). They want to tell me about their dogs, their cousins who live in England and their dad's cousin's uncle's cat's trip to the United States. I'm sorry for the sarcasm here. The kids are adorable, really, but they're just that: kids, and kids will be kids, whether they're in a public school or a private one in Spain or America. They're exploding balls of energy, and if their fuse gets lit, duck for cover.

My degree of control over the lesson varies by class in both schools. In most of them, the teacher tells me what is on the docket for the day, and I decide how I'll teach it. In the English courses, there's usually some sort of reading material to look over and discuss. The formula for the non-English classes varies a bit more.

In the social sciences course, for example, the instructor one day said she wanted me to teach about the geography of the United States. The textbook, which is in English, had a world map but no specific information about my country. So, I improvised. For an hour, the students and I looked at the map, determining where different points of interest were and how they related directionally to each other. I showed them California, Nebraska, New York and Washington, D.C. and explained how California was west of Nebraska, D.C. is east of Nebraska, etc. They told me what they knew about each place, which admittedly wasn't much We talked about the Rocky Mountains (I explained the mountains gave the Colorado Rockies their name), the Appalachians and the varying regional climates. I kept it interactive, making sure the lesson was as much a conversation as a teaching/learning opportunity.

In that class, I've also taught about feudalism. Yes, medieval feudalism. You can imagine how hard it would be to get these kids to care about hundreds-of-years-old work/live situations in Spanish, let alone in English. But it went quite well, actually. I asked for volunteers to read, and I corrected pronunciation along the way. I also stopped whenever I saw what may have been a tricky word, and I had students who understood the word help me explain it to those who didn't. After we read, I put the students into small groups - each group was assigned the role of medieval lord, priest or peasant - and they told me what their place would've been in society. Did they own land? Did they pay taxes? Did they work the land? It ended up being a great learning activity, and they had to talk. That's the most important part.

For a math lesson about multiplication, division, addition and subtraction, I used word problems to practice vocabulary and math at the same time. To teach about digit placement (ones place, tens place, hundreds place, etc) I wrote a MASSIVE number on the board. That number was the U.S. debt. I wrote each individual digit from the debt on a card and gave one card to each student. I then asked, "Who has the digit in the billions place?," "Who has the digit from the ones place?", etc. The kids had to recognize where the billions, ones, tens, thousands place was, bring their number to the front of the class and write "billions," "thousands," "ones," etc., above their digit in the correct column. It turned out to be a great interactive activity - and a quick lesson on American debt.

Next week I have to teach about medieval trade relations and the area of triangles and squares. Wish me luck, and let's hope a bit of creativity and inspiration hits me soon.

Anything you want to know about Spanish schools or about my job specifically? Ask me!

Buenas tardes,
Teresa

Tick, tock, tick, tock

To be entirely candid, I'm getting a bit scared. My departure date is really, really soon. And seriously, who is the menace responsible for suddenly speeding up time? I swear a minute has gone from 60 seconds to 30. Days are passing like never before, I'm sure of it.

I feel ill-prepared. I have a long list of items to pick up before I leave. I wonder if, at some subconscious level, I've been intentionally delaying those purchases. My final must-haves run will just make this trip seem all too real. I'm most worried about teaching English. The closest thing to teaching that I've done was tutoring, and I'm not even sure how effective I was at that (I didn't get much feedback). So, I just show up and start shaping young minds without any legitimate credentials? We shall see, I guess.

Buenas tardes,
Teresa

You're asking, "What the heck is an auxiliar de conversación?"

If you're reading this, you're probably wondering why I'm moving to Europe in the first place. Late last year, I applied to be an auxiliar de conversación, or conversation assistant, through the Spanish Ministry of Education. I really didn't know what the assistants did, where they did it or how they lived. As I mentioned in my previous post, I applied to postpone my long-term future as much as to actually land the gig. But lo and behold, I got accepted (it's not that hard as long as you don't have a lengthy criminal history or a communicable disease, I'm told). So what will I be doing?

That's a good question, one I'm trying to answer myself. I've been placed in two schools in Miajadas, Extremadura, Spain, a small town of about 10,000 people in the southwest. One school is Catholic (which is no problem, considering I'm Catholic) and one is public. I don't know much more than that. I've been in touch with a teacher at one of the schools; she's the director of the bilingual department. I'll be helping her with English classes and other teachers with math and history in English. I'm neither a math nor history buff, but I am relatively strong in English, so hopefully I'll have something to offer. I've heard some assistants are treated as such - assistants - while others are expected to take over entire classes by themselves. Considering I have no teaching experience, I would certainly prefer the former, but I will embrace whatever role I'm given. At the public school, I'll be working with 11- to 15-year-olds. We'll see how that goes. I haven't heard anything about my responsibilities at the Catholic school. I do know I'll work 12 to 15 hours a week, split between the two schools. I'll also do private English lessons, which I'm told there's incredible demand for. But I'll have plenty of time for travel, which I'm excited about. I leave Sept. 24 and return sometime next June.

To be entirely candid, Extremadura is about as far from what I envisioned - and wanted - for this experience as possible. I applied to teach in Valencia, a bustling cosmopolitan city on the opposite side of the country, along the eastern coast. When I got my placement, I wondered if I should accept the position. But, with reservations, I accepted, and I couldn't be more glad. Valencia would have been lovely, don't get me wrong, but my primary reason for going to Spain was to improve my Spanish (my mom will tell you I'm fluent already, and I suppose by some definitions, I am, but I have a lot of room for improvement). Valencia is a hotbed for tourists and expats looking to learn Spanish. It may have been too easy for me to lean on other foreigners there. Extremadura doesn't register on a tourist's map, and I'm beginning to think it's a good thing. So I'll have to travel a bit to see "postcard Spain." So what. Extremadura looks charming and welcoming, albeit a bit rural and obscure. In my opinion, it's best described as the Nebraska or Iowa of Spain - the people are unwaveringly proud, but Extremadura isn't a destination. I'm told locals often ask foreigners, "How'd you end up here?" Nebraskans and Iowans can relate - we're naturally curious why people pick our oft-overlooked pockets of the Midwest over Chicago or New York. But we have great people with a friendly disposition, and I expect the same is true of Extremadura. I'm a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, so I just have to trust that this is best for me. On the map below, "A" is Don Benito, a town of about 30,000 people where I'll likely live and commute with other teachers for work in Miajadas, "B" on the map.



Auxiliares have to find our own housing, so that ought to be interesting. There are numerous websites with apartment listings, so it's not hard to find options, but finding viable options and good roommates is another story. Apartments - called "pisos" - aren't what we expect in the U.S. Many of them don't have ovens, dishwashers, dryers, air conditioners or heating units, all of which are staples of comfortable American life. I've heard horror stories of auxiliares living with Spaniards who refuse to turn on the heat in the winter (it does get quite cold in Extremadura - cold enough for snow) and instead live decked out in gloves, stocking caps and coats in their pisos during the winter. Admittedly, I worry about that. But I'm not crossing the Atlantic to live like I do here, so I will live like a Spaniard without complaints (OK, without too many complaints). Ideally, I'll live with a mix of Spaniards and English-speakers so that I'm speaking Spanish at home but at least one of my roomies will understand my challenges as a foreigner. I have some good housing leads, so I'm not panicking just yet. I did come to the frightening realization recently, though, that I have no idea how I'm going to eat because I can't cook. Given that eating is essential for survival, perhaps I should be panicking after all. I can't even cook American food, let alone Spanish fare. Hopefully my roommates can help me with that. Life in Costa Rica was quite different than in the U.S., but my host family and study abroad program shielded me from many of the discomforting realities of foreign life. My amazing host mom cooked for me, I didn't have to find my own housing and I had a built-in support system of other "gringos" who were also dealing with uncomfortable stares on the bus and whistles on the street. Although there will be several other English-speaking auxiliares near me in Spain, there won't be the same organized safety net, but I look forward to the challenge.

That's all for tonight.
Buenas noches,
Teresa
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