First week

I am a little behind again but there is so much going on......BCN (that is Barcelona) rocks!!! I totally love it, love it, love it! :) Some very trivial things about the city: it is pretty big but the feel is amazing -- cozy and homey (is there such a word? If not, I just invented it....); Gaudi is everywhere; the buildings are great; the weather is a little strange; the people are nice; the streets are pretty clean; sometimes the smell of pee hits you in the face (you can see people peeing at night...); metro is great and.............................

For DC people -- the metro here is nothing like you've seen! It is on time (unbelievable, right?!), comes every 3-4 minutes, 5 on weekends (I know you are shaking your heads), people have to open the doors themselves, not the driver (do you want me to stop?) and the price is gooooood (I won't say another word; promise). OK, maybe one more but just to give you one negative point -- the connections are not so good. You have to walk in underground tunnels, stairs up and down and follow arrows to get from one line to another. But I can live with this......

I taught once this week by myself for 30 minutes! :) Could have been better but still learning so won't be so hard on myself. Challenged my elementary level a bit but in the end it was good. Didn't have enough time to finish all my stuff the way I wanted it but it was fun! I learn some Spanish too from my students -- me: How old are you? student: Veintinueve. So we understand each other :). I have to prepare a 45-minute lesson for next week and am pulling my hair. How do I teach grammar without making vocabulary the focus (they don't know much...) and at the same time make them talk and practice?!? Yet to learn this.....

I have a Spanish ID number (called N.I.E.) and I can work with it, open a bank account not like a tourist and so forth. I got a residency together with it because I told the officials I'm staying or more than 3 months -- hopefully! So I've been hearing about Spanish bureaucracy and paperwork for quite some time. I figured where to go, got some help filling the only-in-Spanish form and Thursday morning decided to get up at the extremely early hour of 6:15am. Well it took me 45 mins to wake up....The police office opens at 9am and I have to be at school at 9:55am. So I am obviously running late thinking how there will be a long line of people and I will have to come back the next day....Walking up the street, looking for number 192, there is 1 woman standing in front of a building that looks like it, I ask the police officer outside and he asks me: nacionalidad? Bulgarian (there must be a very long line in the back for Bulgarians or something...). He shows me the corner of the building and says: You wait here and at 9am we open. I am the first person in line at 7:50am?!?! And there is a separate line for EU citizens?!?! Really?! Why didn't I move to EU earlier? At 9am we go in (now the line behind me consists of 5 more people and the line where the woman was -- about 25). I'm the first to sit down (sit down -- yes, open desks) and ready for: you need more papers, come back, we can't do anything.....At 9:05am the guy hands me a paper with some number and I have to go across the street to pay 10 euros in the bank. Come back, wait 5 mins, sit down at another desk and at 9:20am walk out with an official Spanish document with my N.I.E. on it! This is a lot of paperwork, waiting, stress and so forth?! Wow, come the DMV on Four Mile Run Dr in Alexandria.....

With paperwork squared away, I can focus on my course and 1 very important thing: finding a job! I should be meeting with the career advisor next week to go over my CV (resume) and hopefully get the job search going...Here are some random pics of BCN while I walk around. The first one is the building of Oxford House -- where I take my course. Stay tuned for more.