Day 2 - 10/8/10 - First day!

While still half asleep, but somewhat awake, the door to the room I was sleeping in opened just a little bit and some light shone through the doorway. I looked up to see who it was; all I could see was the silhouette of this tiiiiiiiny, little body. Out of this little body came a little voice “hola.” I realize that it is the 2 year old daughter that was asleep when I arrived at night. I turn on the light. Cutest little thing ever. She asked me all sorts of questions and told me about her life story (which I mean, isn’t much for a 2 year old), and she followed me around everywhere. She was adorable. Her name is Carmen. I realize that Jose Luis and his family are exactly like my family. My parents were young parents who had 2 boys about a year apart and a girl that was a few years younger. Little Jose’s birthday is even a day after my oldest brother Joey’s birthday, which is a day before mine! I told all of this to the kids and of course they loved it, instant bond. We left the house at 8:35am to take the kids to school; let the kids play in the playground for a little; walked them to the door. During all of this I got to see a little bit of the town and the school. Let me tell you, this town is beautiful. Never heard of it, but the houses are all white with their touches of shades of yellow and orange, and plants flowing past the rails of their terraces and balconies, it was beautiful. Oh, and the school buses? Psh. Top of the line. They didn’t have the yellow buses that “the wheels go ‘round and ‘round, ‘round and ‘round” on. They had excursion buses, the ones that you take long trips on with the nice seats and huge bull-horn looking side mirrors. How could I almost forget? 5^th graders even get their own lap-tops from the school. What?! I couldn’t believe it. Best elementary school I’ve ever seen, and it’s a public school.

Anyway, now it was my turn to go to my school, which is in another town even further in the outskirts of Malaga called Velez-Malaga. We started the day off in the school café. One of the teachers, coincidentally named Virginia, paid for my breakfast and I met a few of the other teachers as well. Of course none of them understood how my Spanish is so good, so I had to tell them my life story, aka my family’s Spanish history. The same story was told about 10 more times that day. After going back and forth between offices and the teachers’ lounge and meeting tons of teachers, I finally got a tour of the 4 story school, with no elevator. As we go from floor to floor the bell rings and kids switch classes. Wow. Half of the students are taller than me, half of the other half are my size, and the other half of that half are like 10 years younger than me. Ha! This is going to be great. The last hour of the school day was spent in a classroom of 11 and 12 year olds. When the teacher introduced me, a bunch of the kids pulled out big poster boards that they had all decorated and signed to welcome me to the school. It was cute how excited they were. Maybe it wasn’t going to be so bad J



Gate to the house.



Since I have to find an apartment to rent, one of the teachers took me to look at the first of many apartments, which was about 5 minutes from the school. It was nice, kind of big, but filled with old people furniture. It was plenty, actually more than I could ever need, but wasn’t exactly something that stood out. Afterwards, I went home with Ana, the teacher that I’m going to be working with and living with until I find my own apartment. I thought that the previous house and town were beautiful; Ana’s house is Uh-may-zing! It’s like a dream! It’s like a house from a movie. It is enclosed with white, brick walls. There is a gate that opens to a front yard that looks like the Secret Garden. The house has a front porch terrace, another side terrace, plants everywhere, a terrace on the second floor, 4 bedrooms, 2 of which have a door that lead to the 2^nd floor terrace, white walls, yellow walls, clay colored tile floors, wooden floors… if you have any idea of what Spanish style homes are supposed to look like, this house is it. It is the most perfect Spanish style home ever. I would be content living the rest of my life in this house. Anyway, she cooked lunch and we ate out on the front terrace. We sat out there for at least 2 hours. The weather is perfect right now. The cat was hanging out there with us in the grass, just rolling around and enjoying the sun. It was good bonding time.



Front terrace.



Part of lunch.

           

            At this point I realize that I have been to 1 big city (Malaga), 3 towns (Cala del Moral, Almayate, and Velez-Malaga), have been let into the lives of 2 families (Jose Luis’ and Ana’s), and a 3^rd family at work. All of this in less than 24 hours; this is what I live for.



Boardwalk view of the beach.



That evening we had to go pick up Ana’s 16 year old daughter, Nora (who I hadn’t really gotten to know yet). From there we went to the beach town Torre del Mar to walk around, look at the outside of an apartment, and to pick up the teacher’s bike from the shop. The boardwalks here aren’t like the typical boardwalks in the US. In the US, boardwalks are full of little stores, restaurants, and bars. Here, the boardwalk is literally just a walkway by the beach. This beach is about 7 km long and said to be one of the best on the Southern coast of Spain. To get to the apartment that we were going to look at we had to walk quite a ways and eventually head over to the streets. I got to talk to Nora a lot during the walk. We talked about everything- our lives, the towns, sports, her friends, we even passed by a music school that her and her sister have been taking classes at for years. Oh yea, minor detail, Nora has an 18 year old older sister that is studying in London right now named Maria. She has the best room in the house, which happens to be the room I get to stay inJ. Right next to the music school building there was a tree that got hit by lightning, some artists carved a violin and some designs into the remains of the tree to make a tribute to the man who started the school. It was somewhat random, but that was part of what made it so neat. We also stopped by an ice cream shop to each get an ice cream that lasted us until we got to the apartment. The apartment building looked pretty nice and wasn’t very far from the center of the town. From there we could see Nora’s dad’s house.

Her parents got divorced about a year and a half ago. It’s kind of an odd story. They were happily married for about 20 years. Ana, for some reason, decided she didn’t want to be with him anymore. She spent the next 5 years trying to get a divorce. She told me that she was very happy for 20 years, but that it just didn’t work anymore. Of course I didn’t ask for any details, but from what she told me, the husband certainly did not feel the same way. When she brought up the subject of getting a divorce to him, he thought she was completely joking. He didn’t want to get divorced. Poor guy. Not that it really matters, but I don’t know how I feel about the whole thing. On one end you have the whole idea of marriage, committed “’til death do us part,” but who is anyone to be obligated to be stuck in a marriage in which they are no longer happy? Hm. Such is life.

Moving on. After that we went to the bike shop to get Ana’s bike. While we were there we almost got hit by a car, almost got a ticket, and almost weren’t able to fit the bike in the car. It was an interesting end to the day. From here we went home and called it a night. It had been a long day.