Ah...it was great to be back where a girl can get herself a cupcake and go line dancing even if it isn't the popular thing to do. Many thanks to the good people at Camp Erin & Amelia for their endless hospitality. When my flight landed at JFK, I decided to embrace the Brooklynite guts in me and get loud. So I headed to the taxi station and announced, "I'm going to Park Slope. Does anyone want to share a cab?" Now this might not sound like much of an effort, but in the 3 years I lived in Brooklyn I [View Full Entry]

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Hello everyone! Hope you all had a fabulous Thanksgiving. Our week has been busy with celebrations, but we saved the best for last. Yesterday Sage and I threw a dinner party for 7, finally giving us reason to use the gi-normous dining room table. I hesitate to refer to our dinner as a celebration of "Turkey Day" because there was no turkey present. (Spanish turkeys must be made of gold or some other precious metal to merit the 30 euro/kilo price.) But...with a few subsitutions here and there, we managed a pretty traditional eat-until-you-might-explode American feast. Desperate to imp [View Full Entry]

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Hello loved ones! Hope you all enjoyed Halloween. For days we've been preparing ourselves to celebrate a non-holiday in Spain, but much to our surprise Halloween is definitely catching on in Andalusia. As part of my job is to impart cultural tidbits from the US, Jason (the other American at my school) and I decided to don some traditional Halloween costumes and show the students how it's done. We tried to stick with ordinary ideas, a witch and a knight, because although young people here know of Halloween, they couldn't seem to understand that costumes don't have to be scary or [View Full Entry]

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Wow...when I told you all that life in Spain is a bit more laid back, I had no idea to what extent that is true. I thought, surely when they say I'll be working 12 hours a week, they really mean I'll be in the classroom for 12 hours and then I'll have other informal job assignments. Nope. In fact, I looked like a total fool yesterday when I asked if a there was a refrigerator to put my lunch in. I couldn't figure out why they looked so puzzled when I asked, but eventually I realized that I get off [View Full Entry]

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Yipee!! Yahoo!!! It looks like we won't have to be homeless after all. :) On our third day in this fine city of Málaga we have found ourselves our dream apartment. It’s a 10-minute walk from the school where I’ll be teaching, 10-minute walk from the beach and a 20-minute bus ride to the city center. And for all you New Yorkers, here’s the real estate rundown: 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a big kitchen that is separate from the dining room that is separate from the living room (remember when those 3 rooms were separate places?), a terrace, TONS of closets [View Full Entry]

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Our 10-day love affair with a Smart Car for Two must come, as all good things do, to an end. It´s been fun, but it´s time to stop paying tolls and buying gas and instead return to the days of lugging all our worldly possessions on our backs. Yay. We agree that renting a car was a good decision...however, we are more aware than ever of how much we never want to own one. Never again do I want to drive around for an hour and a half to find parking or to fork over 50 bucks a day for tolls! [View Full Entry]

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Wow. Last time I was in the Basque Region, I was just coming out of the hospital for dehydration and couldn´t eat much other than yogurt and bread. I had heard that the food here was good, but I had no idea how good it could be. Last night we went into a bustling tapas bar (always good that it´s busy) and pushed our way through to the endless platters of appetizers. They handed us a plate and let us pick our tapas by hand. Stuffed eggplant rolls, grilled shrimp with ham, spinach and garlic filled tarts, codfish and potato tarts, [View Full Entry]

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Picture this: Sage and I lounging on the lush, green grass of Retiro Park. Our blanket sprawled upon the grounds near the rowing pond. A nice bottle of bubbly calimocho (cheap wine mixed with soda) to refresh us in the afternoon sun. We were cozy on the blanket, completely absorbed by our books, stopping only to munch on a tortilla (Spanish omlette) sandwich. The leaves on the trees rustling in the breeze and basking us in cool shade. Then...completely unexpectedly, a large glob of Spanish bird poo falls ever so silently from the trees above onto its unsuspecting victim- me. Ugh!! [View Full Entry]

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We are here. We smell bad and don´t look very clean, but we made it. The plane ride was not terribly comfortable (they woke us up every 2 hours to eat), so I think we´ll be celebrating the siesta today before heading out. The room we sublet is adorable, as is our host Simona (from Switzerland). Being the hardcore Brooklynites that we are, we scoffed at the airport taxis and insisted on hauling our luggage through 3 different subway lines across Madrid. With the 20-30 euros we just saved I think we´ll have to splurge on some yummy Spanish treats. Hope [View Full Entry]

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