Day to Day

#1 The Moon Over Camp
#2 View at the Top of My Run in the Mountains
#3 Bad Picture in the Only Bar with Good Beer in Leon(and possibly all of Spain)
#4 Groovy Train Ride into Leon from Camp
#5 Where I Sit at the Entrance to Kitchen With Best WiFi Connection for Blog/Skype Calls
#6 Part of the Walk to "Town" From Camp w/ TEFL Course Friends
#7 Cabins Full of Dust Where We Try to Sleep After Late Nights Drinking
#8 Something I Ordered Without Having Any Idea What I Was Going to Get

This post is dedicated to the day to day experiences of the last couple of weeks. As I prepare to go back to Madrid on Sunday, I realize that there are a thousand little things that make life here quite interesting. I still haven't taken a picture of the storks that populate this area and make huge nests on top of poles and ruined churches. I can't explain the strange mechanical sound they make that comprises an integral part of this camp experience. You haven't seen the comical array of computers that scatter the cafeteria as we fight for bandwidth to skype call our friends and family back home. It's difficult to believe how much beer and wine just 16 students can throw back on a nightly basis.

All this is about to end as we wind down the Leon/camp section of our TEFL training. Many of us will be staying at the same hostal back in the city, but I'm guessing the party schedule will slow down a bit as we slam out the last assignments and study for the dreaded grammar portion of the final exams. It's true that I am amphibious in that when I'm in the city I long for the open skies and green of the country, but am equally excited to return to the city where I can have my delicious cafe con leche on demand and soak up the beautiful architecture and unique style of Madrid.

I've got wifi where I'm staying for at least the next week, and then I'm off to a remote town about an hour and a half south east of Madrid called Ucles where I'll be teaching four weeks of summer camp in what looks like a monastery straight out of Harry Potter. I'll be thankfully very busy planning lessons and dealing with spoiled Spanish children so that I won't miss home so dreadfully much(I'm aware that this is a lie, but shhhhhhh, I'm trying to trick myself). I really appreciate the great comments I've been getting on my posts. It helps me feel less lonely as I try to sort through the complication that involves living in two worlds: home and here. Keep up the communication so I'll be motivated to snap more pictures and share what's going on.

Bright Ideas

#1 Cathedral in Leon at Night

#2 My New Home Girls at the Country Bar in Matallanas

#3 Top of the Mountain Overlooking Quaint Villages/Drunken BBQ Night

As an enthusiastic sort of person my life has been peppered with some bright ideas. From marriage at a young age to the more recent event of trapsing off to Spain for an indefinate period of time, I've been afforded a great deal of adventure as well as awareness of my faults. I seem to thrive on finding out for myself what people mean when they say something is difficult, but worth it. This trip is proving no exception to that rule.

When you set off to lead a nomadic lifestyle for a while you become, well, nomadic except that you lack the experience that beduoin tribes have been accumulating over the centuries. So far I've spent maybe 3 1/2 weeks of homless wandering and I find it taxing. I've been enjoying the ridiculous American luxury of living alone for the past year, and it's been a shock to find myself secuestered for two weeks in a small mountain town outside Leon, Spain in a cabin with three other women. If the hot water is even working I have to deal with schedules. Can you believe it?

Of course, along with the delicate dance of coordination, I get beautiful mountian views, runs along the river Torio past the abandoned monastery, and two incredible Spanish cooks to make me some delicious down home tortilla espanola with ensalada mixta for dinner(at 9pm, mind you). Poor me.

Part of my brilliant plan includes a TEFL certification course that has been compressed to fit into four weeks of June. This means five hours of class everyday by some extremely compentent teachers from what is called the Canterbury Institute based in Madrid. I was concered it might be below my level since I already have a teaching degree, but at the same time hoping that it would be the perfect refresher and intensive English grammar boot camp I need to teach at the summer camp in July, and possibly classes back in Madrid, or even some junior college ESL when I get back to Chico. Besides some confusion and frustration inherent in traveling and life overseas, it's proven the latter, and I'm not exactly getting perfect scores on class quizes. Who the hell knew a subordinate clause could function as an adjective? I'm actually a grammar geek in Spanish, so while most of my classmates are groaning, I'm secretly fascinated with such questions. Yes, I'll never exactly be one of the cool kids.

I'm reminded that the very reason I love travel is the same reason I hate it. GROWTH. Keeping yourself in a place where you are safe from all challenge and change means you'll be comfortable, but complacent. I wasn't aware of how that had creeped in many areas of my life, both personal and professional, until this week. Even though I am certainly a perfectionist, I have deliberately chosen situations in which there is no one of authority that I respect who could possibly contribute to my progress. Granted some of that was due to being surrounded(surrounding myself?) with authority figures I could malign rather than those who could mentor. At the ripe old age of 36, it's time to seek situations that will help me move from surviving to thriving in the areas of teaching, music, and even love.

Speaking of which, brings me to another crazy scheme: finding an unexpected love, and carting off to another continent without him. It sounds counterintuitive, but I swear to God it makes some sense. At least that's what I try to tell myself when the mere thought of him makes me choke back a sob at midnight. Logically, I understand that I've got an adventure I need to attempt, and he's got his own life to attend to as well, but damn it, it's difficult.

All in all, I'm enjoying the experience when I take it day by day, and when I believe in the many good things my bright ideas have brought me in the past.

Madrid me mata

"Madrid kills me" is the basic translation for the title of today's blog, and I find it quite relevant. After spending a week in that picturesque, poetic city I really get the gist of that expression. I was assaulted by beauty on a daily basis on every side. Look up and see the blue sky and clouds between the brightly colored facades and balconies with geraniums. Have a delicious cafe con leche in a bustling cafeteria/bar decorated with moorish tilework. Walk down the Calle de Preciados and pop in to a tiny shoe store stocked with stuff I could only find online.

Yipe, time for lunch(2pm)....more later!

Whirlwind

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Is it possible that less than three days ago I was in California tearing it up on the dancefloor with my sweetheart at my best friend's wedding? Doesn't seem like it. Right now I'm on the seventh floor of a funky old building on the Gran Via in Madrid trying to publish this blog on a really slow internet connection. I'm really tired from a late night at an underground gay bar where I was up until 3am with some fellow classmates screaming out the lyrics of 80's music mixed with Spanish pop along with the bouncing crowd.

So far I can say it is a beautiful city, but I can hardly notice that fact as I try to find my way to class, to the cell phone store, and and back to the hostal. It feels like insult to injury to be in the center of so much coolness and not be able to sit back and take it all in. I'm alternately thrilled and horrified to discover how much and how little Spanish I know. I can go anywhere and talk to anyone, but in the midst of a conversation, even intelligent banter, there will be an important phrase, joke, or question that is impossible for me to understand even after several questions. Kind of like a Dali painting nightmare scene. Which reminds me I'm less than a kilometer away from the Prado museum but I haven't been able to visit it yet! Rayos.

In case you're wondering, people aren't blue here, it was just something that happened while my classmates and I were enjoying some canas(tilde on the 'n' like in canyon-a glass of beer) and paella. That's what happened before the bar.

Not the most elegant post, but not bad for five hours of sleep and two days in new country.