Summer in the city

I’m starting this with no idea what I want to say. I suppose I’ll start with the fact that I’m pretty sure I’m going to Japan this September for three months. I have no idea why but it seems just like the drastic measure in order at the moment. Although I love Seville, I need a break.

I have probably never been so up and down as I have since I moved here. The highs are high and the lows are not very nice at all. I suppose it’s better than a steady pace of boredom but I also suppose it’s not ideal. There are days when I love it all, the lifestyle, the language, the people, work, the weather and so on. Then there are days when it feels incredibly lonely and like I’ll never properly fit in at all. Friends are always changing, because it’s a bit like living in a holiday resort – nobody stays for very long, except me and a couple of other stragglers.

Part of me wants to stay and see it out until I’ve got a pretty good grasp of the language and comfortable as a teacher and with a solid group of friends. And part of me says fuck it. I’m a bit stagnant here, drinking too much, not speaking the language as well as I could and generally a bit broke and lazy and crap. That latter part was the one that made me apply to Japan, for a bit of a shake-up. Flights paid, job and apartment sorted, and a three-month contract. Enough to see if I like it and travel a bit, not too long if I don’t like it. I imagine the culture shock will be immense – going from lazy, siesta-filled, beer-drinking Spain to suit-wearing, punctuality obsessed Japan.

Meanwhile, I’m drinking too much, not speaking the language as well as I could and generally being broke and lazy and crap. Nah, actually, July has been my busiest month this year and was last year too, which conveniently coincides with it being hot as hell. Classes filled with kids whose mothers think they need the extra English during the summer. I was dreading it but it’s the adults who are more of a pain.

No romance to report, at least nothing worth writing home about. A revelation of love from a friend has been the height of drama so far this summer, and he’s buggered off home now so my life has been simplified somewhat. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. The LOTC has gone into hibernation once again.

And so future plans: home to Ireland before Japan, leaving for Japan mid-September and return to Ireland just before Christmas, if I am not sacrificed as some sort of insanely tall white woman demon over there, and then in the New Year, who knows?

 

 

Some news, but mostly just scones.

I decided to wait until enough dramatic things had happened to post here again, in order to make it appear as if I have a fascinating life. That didn’t really work out so I’m just going to go ahead anyway.

First and foremost, I have a niece! The most perfect little thing in the world. The day she was born I was so hungover I couldn’t move, speak or eat until 10pm at night. “Well my darling niece, where was I when I heard you were born you ask? I was lying in last nights clothes, including my shoes, in my sister’s spare room with zero memories and an overwhelming feeling of shame!”

The preceding night had been somewhat of a catastrophe. Thank God for sober older sisters to inform you of everything that happened – including me trying to start fights in the queue for the bathroom. When I emerged from the cubicle with everyone giving me filthies, the only Spanish I could muster to yell at them was “Todo bien?!”, which means “Is everything ok?!”. Hardly fighting words, really. Also on the walk home I made a joke, which I can’t remember, to some passers-by, who didn’t laugh. “Some people have no sense of humour,” I turned to shout after them, and fell over.

I also visited jolly old England to see my sister and had a splendid time indeed. Lots of eating scones and drinking wine and general jaunting around the countryside. Coming from Spain where the people could literally push you over in the street without saying sorry or excuse me, the English are ridiculously polite. I found myself talking to anyone and everyone just because I could understand everyone though – must keep working on my Spanish.

Shrewsbury

Chester

Afternoon tea

I wasn’t lying about lots of scones. The day after the ones above, I made my own, which meant we consumed enough clotted cream to guarantee an early, obesity related death.

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Having complained of a boring romantic life for the last few months, I can finally identify with the saying ‘Be careful what you wish for’. Although this may sound positive, really I’m just surrounded by awkward situations that are making my life no fun at all. Exhibit A is one of my past students who I get along well with, who has been sending strange flirty emails with lots of winky faces and bad English. A bit crap since we were friends and I don’t know what to do. Exhibit B is an ongoing drama with a workmate who is probably my best friend here, and which is really making me rather miserable. So really I’m just losing friends left right and centre. The Irish boy who I talked about before unfortunately leaves a fan club of American erasmus students in his wake wherever he goes. There’s no competing with cheerleaders really, is there? It’s all thoroughly disheartening.

The end of this month will mark my one year anniversary with Seville. A mental year in which I’ve lost a few brain cells and gained pounds from daily beers. I’m completely torn as to what to do next. I have been thinking more and more about going back to Ireland or to the UK to try and have a crack at this journalism business. And other times I’m enjoying myself so much I can’t think about leaving. There are downsides – teaching can be a bore sometimes, I’m perenially skint and other petty complaints but the lifestyle of sunshine and having a decent social life outweighs the negatives most of the time. Decisions, decisions.

Drivel.

A Saturday night in is always a good idea until it hits about half eleven and I start thinking how, in fact, life is short and I should be out having fun. Must distract myself with some waffling.

I woke up looking at that this morning and thought ‘Oh, shit’. If it was rainy Ireland I’d be perfectly happy to while away the day in bed nursing my hangover but as an Irish person living in a sunny country I feel obliged to get up and do something. Which I did, and realised a number of things. Firstly and most obvious was that I was, in fact, still drunk. Secondly, I was supposed to go to a nearby town with a friend for a day trip at 10am, and it was now after 12. And also that I had minimal memories of last night, but did recall calling a guy I know ‘Jamón’, which is the Spanish for ham instead of Ramón which is his real name   (because I was having trouble forming words and not because I’m really funny), vague inklings of dancing in Demo, and drinking beer in my sitting room at 7 in the morning with *code-name alert* John.

So it was another Saturday of flashbacks, lashings of coffee and food and bumming around Seville with a hangover with my friend who I was meant to go away for the day with – turns out he woke up approximately 15 seconds before I did so I didn’t feel too guilty.

All tapas bars here try to cram as many items as physically possible onto their walls, including photos of legendary bullfighters like this one:

You just know he had no trouble with the ladies.

Highlights of the week:

One of my students, who is more camp than a row of tents, declaring that his lifelong ambition is to duet with Christina Aguilera, but “thin Christina, not fat Christina”.

Another, when asked what he likes to do to relax, answered with a wanking motion. I chose not to give him the English word for that.

Realising I have a large, unmissable hole in the arse of my tracksuit bottoms that I wore out two mornings in a row.

Deciding with work people to change our local, as the bar staff make monkey noises when I walk in and the cook, who has one tooth, grins out and waves at me like I’m in a zoo. It’s great being tall and pale in Spain.

Reading an application form at work by someone wanting to take classes and stay in the academy accommodation – under allergies and phobias, she wrote “A phobia of wood in its natural state”. A tree?

And so, with every possible thought in my head unnecessarily typed out in detail to benefit absolutely nobody or nothing, I shall retire. If only I had my own portable eye mask for sleepy time..

A weekend

If you want to hear about someone else’s weekend in inane detail, please continue reading.

Friday night was spent in watching films and eating salmorejo, not even close to eventful. Though I did wonder while watching The Descendants, does anyone really actually fancy George Clooney? A productive evening.

Saturday was breakfast with a workmate and a day trip out to a town very close to Seville which is the site of the biggest Roman ruins in Spain, or the world or something. Insert your own statistic here really because I can’t remember. It was a pretty little town and after exploring we had a boozy lunch. The sole barman/waiter/cook/proprietor was absolutely locked but gave us free beer and a Ferrero Rocher each because he felt bad that he had no desserts. Bless.

The return bus to Seville had inbred suburbians a-plenty onboard which is dangerous whilst slightly tipsy and making loud jokes at said inbreds expense – “Welcome back to Limited Gene Pool with Noel Edmonds”. Boozy lunches are a bit of a minefield because it means either keep drinking or go to sleep. Bottle of white wine in the fridge from the boss? Why not! At the time it seemed a wonderful idea but as a result my liver isn’t talking to me. After necking the lot I parted ways with my friend and staggered to a pub to meet someone else.

Following much effort to appear more sober than I was and two beers later, we went on to another place where we bumped into a guy we knew. Let’s call him John. The very first post on this blog detailed my New Year’s resolutions – one of which I forgot to include, or perhaps just didn’t want to vocalise. That resolution was to stop drunkenly going home with John, as I had done on numerous occasions since around August last year. It is quite a stupid relationship really, if you could even call it that. In my eyes it is purely fuelled by copious amounts of beer and therefore, ridiculously weakened willpower. I don’t really know if either of us actually truly fancies the other, maybe we just get on well and both happen to be single and borderline alcoholics. And thus it only took 28 days in January before 2012 saw my first resolution being broken. Well played me!

It is more of a silly habit than smoking and yet I don’t know how to break it. We have mutual friends, go to the same places, live around the corner from each other and have been together so many times now it is an actual habit. I might ask Santa for steelier resolve next Christmas.

Anyway, a walk of shame home this morning and after not nearly enough rest, I went to watch football with the same friend who I went to the ruins with (both physically and metaphorically) yesterday. Alas we did not repeat last Sunday which saw us getting absolutely trollied in an Irish bar and him witnessing me “falling in love in front of his very eyes” with an Irish lad – only I could come to Spain and be interested in an Irish man. No repeat appearance of this Irish lad (perhaps he wasn’t quite at the same level of commitment I had reached in our five minute conversation) but food, beer, ice cream and a walk in the sunshine made it almost as good as last week. I’m sensing a blue Monday tomorrow.

No comment

My life is plotted out until June. Fantastic.

Where I live

This is the building in which I live:

The second floor up and the middle window is my bedroom. Yes, I live directly above a German bar, charmingly christened ‘Ingrid’s Malt House’. The inside of this bar looks like a 1960s Irish kitchen. I have yet to confirm which one of the staff is Ingrid but I have my suspicions that she may be a particularly busty and stout peroxide blonde with a buzz cut. You’d think that living over a bar would be far from ideal, but this bar closes at midnight, if not earlier, and never seems to have more than three punters at a time. I think I have seen Ingrid peddling her wares on a dodgy back street, just to keep the doors open.

My apartment has seen a turnover of quite a few housemates since I moved in last June – it leads me to believe I’m in some sort of Truman Show/Big Brother scenario where I’m the sole remaining housemate yet to be evicted. Apart from the evidence of my own sparkling personality, the other fact that makes me believe this is that all of the other people I’ve lived with have been, in a word, bonkers.

Most recently evicted is the German girl (maybe she came for a malt in the malt house downstairs and never left). She liked to laugh to herself whilst in the bathroom and had the most insane kitten I’ve ever encountered. He never grew in a period of four or five months and enjoyed biting my bald workmate’s head.

Then there was first Spanish housemate who liked to take up the whole fridge with a range of spirits, liquors and beers that could rival any self-respecting bar. On Friday nights, half of the bottles would disappear into her room and what sounded like karaoke, mostly Mariah Carey numbers, could be heard through the wall that connected our rooms. She would emerge on Saturday afternoons, one dirty glass and all the bottles in hand – with their contents significantly reduced – and withdraw for the rest of the day.

Since German housemate (along with her nuts cat) has fled the nest, I was hoping for things to settle down a bit. First Spanish housemate has moved to another part of the city and now there is second Spanish housemate. She is a particularly boring banker who spends every Saturday lying on the couch watching gameshows while also on the phone, literally saying yes, no or okay at intervals of about three minutes. My workmate witnessed this one day and came to the conclusion that she is in fact operating the most boring sex chat line in the world.

The fraulein’s choice of replacement was an Italian girl in her twenties who moved in last Friday. Since that night, I have not once passed her bedroom door – it’s on the way to the bathroom – without hearing the extremely loud sounds of two women in the throes of passion, as well as some frankly disturbing cackling. On one occasion the Italian came into the kitchen in a towel as I was making dinner and grabbed a tin of sardines and two forks and returned to her bedroom. I really don’t want to know.

And thus I think the time has come to live alone. Hopefully Davina will come get me this Friday.

Un día muy agradable

Yesterday was one of those days where you have nothing more in mind to do than painting your fingernails whilst watching a Ryan Gosling film for the seventeenth time, and somehow you end up walking in a very not-straight path home at 5 in the morning with your shoes in your hand and coming in to devour Fruit&Fibre and rice-cakes because its all you have in your cupboard.

When I got back to Seville after Christmas I was sorely homesick. I hadn’t felt that way here before so it was strange. I couldn’t put my finger on whether it was seeing friends over Christmas and missing them, or knowing that I’m going to have a new niece in a month and I won’t be there for the birth, or just Marmite. Can’t get it here.

However as the week progressed and I got back into teaching, things improved. (Until my student who I had a teeny tiny crush on announced in class that he likes “mens”. I was hoping that he was just really dragging it out and was about to announce his love for menswear but alas, he likes boys bums and his English needs a lot of work. Double sigh.)

All this to say that last night reminded me that I really love being here. In the afternoon I sat by the river in the sun with a guy from work drinking tinto verano and chewing the fat. It looked like this:

And then it looked like this:

After students who I had taught last semester called me to go for dinner with them. Pizza, wine, my crap Spanish – it was a beautiful picture. Some bars and beers (and two gin and tonics – this may have been the last straw) later, we all ended up at Demo, my favourite little skeezy late bar. It’s not much to look at. In fact, it’s kind of a kip but it possesses magical powers that make all dignity and memories disappear.

Demo and I have created a lot of history together in the nine short months I have been here. It has been the setting of almost all of my romantic encounters (that makes it sound like a lot; I assure you it’s not), many a hazy lock-in and it has witnessed some of my dodgier dance moves. The bathroom never has toilet paper and to ensure no one can open the door when you’re in there, you have to maneuver an extremely heavy, three-foot-tall gas canister in front of the door. That’s the kind of place it is.

The staff deserve a new paragraph. There is an Italian barman who is probably about forty but extremely hot. There is another barman who wears hipster glasses and scarves and the like, but can be forgiven as he’s a rather nice chap. Then there is my personal favourite, he who I call Rasputin. It doesn’t conjure the best mental image, granted, but there’s an excellent chance that I’m in love with him. Last, and definitely least, there is DJ Shudder. I actually shuddered as I typed that. He is nearly as tall as the previously mentioned gas canister and has about as much charm, but God love him he’s persistent and unfortunately I’ve given in to his charms. Twice. Let’s move on.

I hadn’t been there in a good few weeks and last night I went with my classmates to meet my sister and her boyfriend and their friends. My sister’s boyfriend was surprised that I seemed to know everyone in there and Rasputin, who he knows, called me ‘family’. I’ll try not to analyse this too much – it really isn’t good if bar staff anywhere know you well enough to call you family is it? Also, I plan on having his children so being referred to as a possible mother/sister/daughter/distant cousin doesn’t bode well for our romantic future.

From there we went to a club near my apartment to pay double for a bottle of Heineken and to dance in furnace-strength temperatures to dodgy music and where I ran into a Spanish friend I hadn’t seen in ages. It was all very pleasant, and my Spanish improved with every drink. I may start plying my students with alcohol in class.

And here I am, with five hours sleep under my belt in a very messy bedroom with one rice cake left in the cupboard. It isn’t the most productive Saturday I’ve ever had. Oh well.