Our second week living as an ex-pat in Spain

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I can’t believe we are fast approaching the end of our second week here in Spain- how time flies when you are a jobless bum lol. It’s weird to think usually we’d be gearing up to fly home now and feeling tremendously sad about that, but instead we know we remain here indefinitely… (gosh that sounds a bit like we’re holed up in prison or something). Well it’s been a bit of an up and down week for us, but mostly ups.

The start of the week has been very much job focused so we’ve spent a fair amount of time travelling around the Costa Blanca handing our CVs into training centres and giving them our best Spanish phrases (Greg) and best smiles (me). The problem we face at the moment is most places only tend to have one or two teachers on their books and the term has already started therefore they aren’t really looking for new staff. But there is always the chance that a teacher leaves, or they get extra demand for classes, so we won’t start to panic just yet (I already did that by day 3 of being here). We still haven’t really decided where to totally base our job search so it means we’ve been to Cartegena in the south one day and Alicante in the North the next. Poor wee Charlie thought he was getting a rest at last! There have been a few mishaps along the way, mainly that we didn’t really think about the fact these towns still follow the traditional siesta in the afternoon, so we’ve been rocking up to centres at 3pm only to realise they don’t open again until 5pm, doh. And then there’s our sat nav…. It is a sat nav in name only, and needless to say hasn’t been our best companion or navigator. The battery only lasts for about half an hour, it then won’t charge when using the in-car charger, it takes about 15 minutes to actually calculate a route and if you happen to take a wrong turn, it fails to re-calculate the route for you. When you do eventually manage to re-calculate the route, you realise it is taking you the same way again even if that road is closed or doesn’t seem to exist! So finding the schools has been an adventure, and mainly a result of sheer luck.

At the same time, we’ve been in touch via email with a women who had contacted us a while back about the possibility of setting up some new classes in a school near Murcia. It sounds interesting and it’s great to have a contact, but our only concern is that it is about 50 minutes away from where we are living just now, and it isn’t on the coast either (we want to live on the coast rather than inland). But being the people we are, we’re pretty loyal and if she offers us work then we’ll more than likely take it. We met her at the weekend and it sounded quite positive so fingers crossed. And it sounds like Murcia actually has quite a lot going on so our task for next week is to go and visit it and see whether we can see ourselves living there or not…

As well as the teaching, those of you who know us well will understand that we’ve been keeping an eye out for additional opportunities too. We don’t mean pimping ourselves out (although that may well be my next option if we can’t get work lol) but starting our own little business in the hospitality industry. Eventually we want to open up our own place (like the 100,000 other expats who move to Spain) but in the meantime we’ve been thinking about some smaller business ideas. We had been particularly thinking about a stall in the local market, or selling handmade products to local bars. It seems the laws and taxes in Spain may make this quite impossible for us though, especially as foreigners but watch this space…

The weather has been an unexpected surprise for us since we arrived, as it has been really cold. Now I know you will all be sitting in your houses back home with the central heating cranked up and looking outside at the snow and gail force winds thinking “shut up, THIS is cold!”, but it really hasn’t been great here either. Okay it’s not been minus 5 or anything, but at 4 degrees with a biting wind, it doesn’t make it the warmest. And bear in mind we don’t have central heating or carpets, and the houses are deliberately built to keep the heat out not in. So it’s been rather chilly to say the least. Next week the weather is meant to get a bit warmer at 15/16 degrees and we had a brief glimpse of what the weather will be like when we were able to sit out this Sunday afternoon in the sunshine without big, heavy jackets on. You still see the Brits on holiday who figure they need to wear shorts and t-shirts because ‘it’s Spain’ but I guess they think it is hot in comparison to the UK. Maybe we’ve gone soft?? It's been hard to resist the lure of the bar and a little cerveza or two, but we know we need to try and save our pennies for now and keep a clear head. but we still manage to partake in a little 'copa de vino tinto' every once in a while...

So the last thing that happened to us this week is we unexpectedly adopted a dog for a few hours. It all happened on Wednesday night when we had been out for a walk and were just heading back when I saw a sign on a lamppost about a poor wee dog that had gone missing. I was telling Greg about it and saying it was a shame when the next minute this little dog that looked the same as the one in the picture came toddling over to us. We looked at it and then the picture and back again as we realised this was the missing dog! Greg picked it up and took it into our garden while we tried to contact the owner. It was a lovely little sandy coloured dog, albeit quite hyperactive and it wouldn’t sit still the whole time we had it! Eventually we got hold of the owner who said they would try and get to us by 8pm (it was 6pm at this point) and so we had to entertain this dog for 2 hours, constantly throwing a ball back and forth for it to catch. Eventually the owner appeared but the dog had disappeared again! It must be a master escape artist as it managed to find some gap in the trees to escape from our garden too. Luckily it appeared a second later next to the owner who thanked us and then walked the whole three houses down to where they live!! Oh well that was our good deed for the week and gave us a little taste of having our own dog.

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