Time Flies

Three weeks in the books, and I already feel like I've been in Jerez for months. Today the head of the English dept. said I could pick up my first paycheck at the office tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to having money for... well anything. I've already got a trip to Barcelona planned out for mid-November, all I have to do is buy the plane ticket. I haven't left Jerez since mid-September so getting out of town for a bit will be nice change of pace.

I'm really loving my school this year. I'm with less classes, but more often, so I can actually get to know some of the kids fairly well. I'm with the bilingual primero de eso (it's like 6th grade) class every day of the week. By the end of the year, I should know those kids pretty well.

I'm also really loving my living situation. Once I get a bicycle, it'll be sweet. It's a little far from the city center to want to walk there every day, but a bicycle will really shrink this whole town for me. Visiting friends across town will be something I can do on a whim instead of something I do on the weekends. The apartment itself is a bargain compared to what I'm hearing other language assistants are paying. I'm paying €115 plus the lights and internet, which only comes out to maybe €140 a month. Lots of other people are paying over €200 per month. My roommates are working out alright. Could be better, but could definitely be worse. I haven't really socialized with them outside of the apartment at all, but then again I can't say I've really felt like I missed anything.

The other auxiliars this year are way different from last year. Last year we were almost all new in Extremadura, and most of us could barely get by with Spanish when we arrived. We had each other and we were a pretty tight-knit group up there in Don Benito. This year lots of people are here for a second year, and almost nobody is a beginner at Spanish. Even the people who are spending their first year here in Spain seem to speak really good Spanish. Most of them did semesters abroad in Spain or South America. Another thing that is unique about Andalucia is that its a more desired (not necessarily desirable!) destination for language assistants. So much so that there is a private company that handles Andalucia placements in addition to the government of Spain. They charge something like $2000 for that privilege, and surprisingly people actually pay it. It doesn't really make good fiscal sense to me, but I guess if some people have the money, there are worse ways to spend $2000 than to get a job in Spain for 8 months. Well gotta go to sleep now. No pictures this time. Rocio pocketed my camera two weeks ago and hasn't been back since!