Pueblos Blancos Driving Tour: Preview

During our 4-day weekend Eric and I rented a car (scary!!!) and drove through five small white towns in the Sierra de Grazalema, which is about two hours north of our town. We drove through the windy mountains, walked through each town, wandered, drank coffee, explored, hiked, and ate many many tapas.

We now realize what a luxury it is to have a car. We were able to pull over and take lots of pictures and see all of these towns, which are inaccessible by public transportation. Here is a preview of our trip, more to come:

Our lovely burnt sienna rental car

First stop: Arcos de la Frontera 

A view from between two hilltop towns

Part of our hike in the Sierra de Grazalema 

More hiking in the Sierra - we saw lots of animals!

The end of our hike: Salto del Cabrero (aka two really cool looking peaks in background)

Friends in Spain

Wednesday night was the 47th birthday of Eric and I's good friend here in Spain. We went out to a local bar with the Birthday boy and some other friends to watch the Barcelona vs. Arsenalt soccer game. The group was comprised of:

- 24-year-old German woman
- 30-year-old Spanish man
- Two 40ish-year-old Spanish woman
- Two 45ish-year-old Spanish men
- Two 24-year-old Americans

All different languages, French, English, German, and Spanish, were flying around the table, along with all different kinds of drinks. There were Barcelona soccer supporters and Madrid soccer supporters (if your a Spaniard your rooting for one of these teams).

I think to an outsider this might seem like an extremely strange mix of people, and it seems that the age and cultural differences would make things awkward. But here in Spain, as I have learned, background, and age especially, aren't prerequisites for friendship. Our friends have kids, have all different types of jobs, and backgrounds but for some reason here in Spain it all doesn't matter. Everyone has been so kind and invited us to be their friends, regardless of everything except that they like us for being us: American, young, whatever. It kind of amazes me.

We spent the night drinking fair amounts of cañas (beer), wine, and at the end, champagne to toast our friend's birthday. It was lots of fun and I went home a little tipsy and very satisfied. It's not every night that I have the opportunity to be around such good, kind-hearted people and cultural diversity. 

I am officially Spanish

Today I had a 3 hour and 45 minute lunch.

'nuff said.

Work

Some days I work a lot, some days I can't really call my work "work". Today was one of those days. I barely worked. One hour of "work" to be exact. Was I bored? No. Did I enjoy it? Yes. Will I have a rude awakening when I come home? Probably.

But I have some time before I have to worry about that. Livin' the dream...

Day Trip: Castellar de la Frontera

Eric and I took a day trip with our Spanish friends (Gerardo and Maria Jose) and their 3 kids and a British couple they are friendly with. We ate a delicious lunch and had some afternoon drinks (do like the Spanish do) outside in the beautiful weather. We then drove up to the castle (castellar) and explored the tiny town on a hill. Here are some pictures:

View of the castle. People still live inside the castle walls.

View from the top of the castle.

Gerardo and Marie Jose's kids, very cute.

Inside the castle walls.

View from the other side of the castle. You can see Gibraltar from here!

Another view of the walls from inside the castle.

Coffee and cake at a shop inside the castle.

Righhhhhhhhhhhhhht

I went to my school coordinator at the end of January and said "its the end of the month, do you have my check?". His response was "we don't have any money", to which I replied "oh, wait, are you joking?".

No, he was not joking. Like many other schools who are working through the same program, my school has not received money from the government to pay me. This is the chain of events: schools in Andalucía send a request to the government (Junta de Andalucía) to become a bilingual school and therefore receive an English assistant, me, to help. The government pays me a monthly stipend. They send all of the money I am supposed to receive for the year to my school in October (the first month that I am working), and the school pays me my stipend at the end of each month.

Since my school never received the money in October they had been paying me with money they received from book sales to the students. I just found out that this book sales money was not theirs. A local book store called Goya sold the books to the students. The school then collected the money for the books from the students on Goya's behalf but had yet to pay them back (it is 5 months later). Yesterday the Goya store owner came to the school to get the money, which they gave to me and I have already spent.

We are working to fix the problem, calling the government and trying to get them to rush the money that should have already been here. I need the money for obvious reasons, its my income, I have to pay my rent, electricity bill, groceries, etc. And luckily the school is in a bind too (since they owe money to the book store) so they have an incentive to help me get paid.

To be honest I wasn't that surprised that this happened. It is pretty awful that the government has taken over 5 months to get the money to my school, but what can I say, this is Spain. At some point, probably after the bathroom incident, I realized that this is the way life works here. I'm just going with it.