We interrupt this programming to bring you this update:

December 26, 2011 by · 1 Comment

Cat taking a vacation.

Well, at least that was what was supposed to run on the 26th, but due to my trip to a retirement village, the wilderness of the Grand Canyon and too much booze and gambling in Vegas, it never got published. Sorry. Hope you didn’t get too concerned for me (let’s be honest, you were too busy eating Christmas cookies).

I’m just home from the American Southwest and so jet lagged, I didn’t recognize a student, so I’m going to put off writing for today. Just in case you’ve missed me the past two weeks, here’s an interview I did for Easy Expat a few weeks ago.

Last year’s Christmas was me dragging my suitcase to school and the Christmas luncheon,  a multiple-hour delayed flight to Dublin (with a few tears because it had been an entire year since I’d seen my family), driving along the southern half of Ireland with a nasty sinus infection, a sicky NYE and the following drug-induced Sex and the City marathon while Amy slept it off, another delayed flight to Berlin and catching up with friends.

The morning after arriving back to Spain, everyone moped (and online shopped) about the slump after the holidays. I haven’t even stopped to rest! I exclaimed, though no one found it amusing.

But, alas, even this busybody is looking forward to a few weeks at Grandma and Grandpa’s senior citizen living center in Phoenix with trips to the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, Vegas and Tombstone (Kike’s request, not mine) peppered in.

I thought I’d leave you all with a few morsels to keep you nibbling while you’re stuffing yourself with Christmas goodies, but I just don’t care to. It’s my 19 days off of school, and I plan to relax. So there.

That is all. Enjoy your holidays, friends.

Filed Under: Uncategorized ·

Mother of God.

December 20, 2011 by · 16 Comments

I have a lot of “Ooooh Guiri” moments. You know, when I do something SO American, I wonder how I’ve survived four years living outside of the Grand Old Republic. Something along the lines of saying swear words when there are other unknown English speakers around, like drinking in churches at a small town fair (wait, that wasn’t me), like telling a bouncer we didn’t want to go to his bar because it smelled like onions (wait, that wasn’t me either).

En fin, my “Oooh Guiri” moments are like dumb blonde moments.

Today was no exception. Faced with no grading to do, a clean house and a good night’s sleep behind me (grandma!), I chose to  being all Christmas-y. My first stop was to Plaza Nueva and the city’s Nativity Scene.

Housed in the salmon-pink palace that dominates the square, the city’s official belén tells the story of the annunciation, birth of Christ and the adoration of the Magi. Using fancy lighting, adobe-looking villages, figurines and constructing the entire town of Bethlehem, the most important moments of young Christ’s life are immortalized. With the diorama comes the line that wraps around the building up towards Plaza del Salvador.

For all the visual learners out there…

Christa and I had little to do, so we marched towards the camel-ridden zoco in Encarnación before continuing onto an artisan market in a tucked-away plaza in Macarena. I badly needed cash, so my next stop had to be the Ronda Histórica, a busy road that rings the center of the city. The stream of people in front of the home of Sevilla’s most important virgin (oh, and this song) made me scratch my head, so I took out my money, got in line and stood on tip toe to see how much longer I’d have to wait to see baby Jesus again.

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Filed Under: America, culture shock, guiri atope, Hey Macarena!, Holy Week, living abroad, OOPS, religion, Seville, typical Spanish · Tagged: , ,

Three Ways to Beat Holiday Blues Abroad

December 17, 2011 by · 10 Comments

Author’s Note: I was overwhelmed at the personal responses I got from my last post, from friends and other bloggers alike. I am by no means giving up on Spain or planning a move home, but I merely wanted to make people aware that leaving one’s home country and striking out elsewhere has its downfalls, too. Even moving to a different city in your state can bring on feelings of isolation and homesickness, so it’s only natural that doing it all in a different country does, too. I woke up with a better attitude after having spilled my guts, but your words of encouragement certainly helped. As they say, a mal tiempo, buena cara.

Ho, ho, ho, I’m a huge Scrooge. Despite my usually cheery personality (please excuse my last post), I am not listening for sleigh bells or roasting chestnuts over an open fire (though I do love snacking on them). In fact, I chose to come to Seville because there was no snow, no Santa Claus and no Black Friday.

But what to do when everyone thinks the days are merry and bright, and you’re hoping for lumps of coal in your stocking to match your mood? Beating the holiday blues, especially when abroad and missing your family (and maybe even a few corny Christmas specials), can be as easy as finding your American friends and clinging onto what American traditions you can. So, amigos, without further ado, your holiday sneer cheer.

Bake until your mini primer burns out!

Although I’ve loathed Christmas for as long as I can remember, I remember all of the afternoons spent baking with my mother and sister in our kitchen growing up. Sugar cookies, chocolate chip for my dad, anise-laced wafers, fudge fingers, Mexican wedding balls – Nancy laid down a schedule and we stuck to it, often hastily stuffing my father’s christmas cookies into a tin and not even bothering to wrap them on Christmas Eve before Mass.

C is for Cookie (and calories).

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Filed Under: America, expat, family, holidays, la vida loca, living abroad, misc, Navidades, Sweet Home Chicago · Tagged: ,

An Open Letter to the State of Iowa

December 15, 2011 by · 3 Comments

There was a night that will go down in infamy dubbed the Valencia Bar Crawl night. I was in Valencia, Spain with three girls I’d met on my study abroad program – Megan, Ashley and Anne – and we’d decided to nurse our Ibiza hangover with a few beers on a quiet night that involved more than a few beers, moto rides on slick city pavements and even a male stripper.

But I digress.

The night started by ducking into a brightly lit old man bar – the kind where the bartenders wear crisp white shirts and black pants, and the beer is always cheaper. In our half drunk state, we wrote love notes in Spanish to the bartender’s son, Miguel, and he asked, “¿De dónde venis?”

Ioooooooowaaaaa, said Meg, and I realized I was in the company of all Iowans. All of the sudden, that cartoon bombilla went off over the man’s head.

“Ah, yes, the Iowa of Walt Whitman! I love his poetry. Iowa must be beautiful.”

Iowa’s purdy. From Iowalandscapes.com

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Filed Under: America, coming home, democracy, football, Iowa, Sweet Home Chicago · Tagged: , ,

Disappointment.

December 10, 2011 by · 5 Comments

One of the words in Spanish for hope is ilusión. Simply adding the prefix des-, similar to the American dis-, makes it negative. Desilusión means disappointment.

In either language, it’s a word that conveys a let-down, the crestfallen feeling one gets when something doesn’t work out in the best possible way. My wise friend LA PAINE (famosa por tó Sevilla) once said that living abroad is like being on one of two sides of the spectrum of happiness – either you’re extremely elated, or you’re devastatingly disappointed.

True words on the side of a lottery kiosk

I’m lucky that I tend to hover on on the positive side. I have daily belly laughs (um, hello, my kids discovered the entry in the dictionary on the human body, complete with pictures the same day I had a kid ask me if my boyfriend was Justin Bieber), breathe in an incredible and vibrant city on the daily and have more contacts than my phone can hold. I’ve done what I intended to do – build a life in a different country in a different language.

Now, I’m not one to put all my eggs in the proverbial basket or count them before they’ve hatched, but for the first time in a long, long time, I was genuinely looking forward to something. To a change, to a step in the right direction. And being the cautious one who looks both ways before crossing the street and taking the plunge and even getting out of bed, I was mum about it. I only told my parents after an offer came, spoke about it to Kike’s mother as strictly business.

If luck is all about being in the right place at the right time, I try and get there a few minutes early, simply because I’m prompt. But this Spanish suerte always arrives at the wrong time – in the middle of the school year, just before a big deal falls through, just a pelín off my ticking clock. It’s like I’m constantly running after the trabajo train, resumé in hand, only to be left at the platform.

Storm’s a’ coming…

Desilusión has taken on a new meaning as I’m in the holiday slump, the clouds hanging low over La Hispalense. The clouds in my head have been raining non-stop since Monday night when those flash-flood tears didn’t want to stop. I feel like I’m trapped in a small margin of what I’m capable of – rather than publish or die, it’s CLIL or die these days.

It’s Christmas time in the city, but I’m just wanting to wake up in Arizona on the 22nd already. Seville may boast sunny days atope, but the storm clouds in my head seem to be here for a while.

Filed Under: Andalucia, coming home, ESL, expat, family, kids, la vida loca, living abroad, misc, money, moving abroad, Spain, teach abroad, TEFL · Tagged: , ,

DELE if you do, DELE if you don’t.

December 7, 2011 by · 22 Comments

A la bim! A la bahm! A la bim bohm bahm!

I expected a rousing Thursday! from my six year olds, but instead got “El día del examen de Miss Cat!”

Call it what you want – D-day, DELE-day, Run-and-hide-under-the-Cronómetro-book day, but November 17th was finally upon me. My pencils all sharpened, I hightailed out of work an hour early and took the train to Cádiz.

After nearly a year of toying with the idea, buying the prep books and finally buckling down to study, I got around to taking that stupid thing.

Psst! The format changed. Like, really, really drastically throw-your-stupid-refranes-book-in-the-hogueras changed. But, when I walked into the International House in Cádiz, I kind of didn’t know this, despite Lauren’s warnings and even the Instituto Cervantes announcing it. Alas, there were no books available for the C1 or C2 formats, so I gleefully skipped over the grammar sections and watched an insane amount of news in Spanish. Because, duh, the DELE don’t like no tontos.

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Filed Under: andalú, DELE, Featured, languages, misc, Spain, What's that you say? · Tagged:
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