My Days

So the feeling of being on vacation has started to subside and my days here are becoming more regular.  Generally Monday through Friday I get up around 7 and catch the bus at 8:15.  I usually arrive at the bus station in O Grove around 8:45 and sit at the station cafeteria for about an hour or so to have  cup of coffee and some breakfast before class starts.  Class ends at 1:30 and by the time I catch the bus and walk back home I usually walk in the door around 3:00.  Jonathan and I usually then have lunch together.  Sometimes he'll have it ready, sometimes we'll cook together, and then sometimes there's leftovers ready for us to reheat.

We spend out evenings together going for walks, playing cards, go to the beach, or watching a movie or an episode of Mad Men on Jonathan's computer.  Sometimes we will run into Pontevedra, the next town over, to run errands or take pictures. 

On the weekends we usually spend a lot of time with the family here.  On Sundays there are usually big lunches at both Chelo & Gonzalo and Margarita & Monolo's homes.  We usually just eat with whoever asks us first :).

Spanish Classes Update

My classes have been going very well.  Every day I feel more able to express myself and make it through a sentence without stopping several times to conjugate verbs.  I really want to begin speaking Spanish at home with Jonathan, but it proves to be really frustrating.  Sometimes we will use Spanish together for periods of 30 minutes or so, but usually one of us gets frustrated, gives in, and starts speaking English again.  Perhaps in another month or so we can switch over to Spanish full time.  I am still in the first level.  I have gone through and reviewed all of my verb tenses and am working on better synthesizing all of them in both written and oral comprehension. I still feel challenged by my classes and am really enjoying them.  The other students in my class move in and out on seemingly a daily basis; the average student stays in this school for only 2 weeks or so.  Currently, it is is two young German girls, and an older Finnish man.  When new students have started they have all had previous experience with Spanish, so it isn't frustrating to have new students.  My teacher seemingly continues forward with things I haven't yet reviewed and they just get absorbed into the class; I haven't yet had to sit through the same lesson twice.

The bus schedule has changed for the fall/winter season and decreased the number of runs they do on a daily basis.  So on class days (Monday through Friday) I have to take an early bus into O Grove (45 minute ride or so).  I usually sit in the bus station cafeteria, have a cup of coffee, watch the news, and study until class starts.  This morning, for the first time, the waitress at the bus station just brought me my coffee as I like it, without me having to ask.:)

New Addition!

Lookie What We Got!!  I put it together all by myself! :)

Why Hello, Welcome to My New Home!

Raxo, the town I a currently living in is situated inside of an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean.  In Galicia, the region of Spain I am currently living in, there are 5 similar inlets, which are referred to as the Rias Baixas.  The people here say that when God rested on the 7th day he dragged his fingers through the Rias Baixas, creating this series of inlets.  This is a view of Raxo, taken from the balcony of Monolo and Margarita's home.  The rafts seen out in the water are farming shellfish.  They all have ropes hanging from them down into the water for the shellfish to grow on.

A view of our apartment building.  Note: our balcony is the one on the first floor, to the left of the balcony with the blue for sale sign.  This spring I want to plant flowers in the boxes, like the balcony two floors up from us, with the red umbrella.

If

If you stand at our front stoop, by the black car above and look to the left, this is your view.  There are a series of restaurants and a hotel here along the beach.

And if you look to the right, this is your view.  Upon on the hill there used to be a forest, but they are currently in the process of making a development for wealthy people :(.  The green and yellow bins to the left in this picture are for garbage and recycling.  They are situated throughout the town.  Garbage collection is not private here.  Municipal workers collect the garbage from these bins several times a week at about 9pm.

This is the foyer to my building:

This is my front door:

When you first enter the apartment, this is your view.  To my right is my kitchen, to my left is my living room, and if you continue on down the hallway are the 2 bathrooms and 3 bedrooms.

This is my kitchen.  It came with all of the basic necessities.  This is the first time Jonathan and I have ever had a dishwasher (domestic harmony at last :).   

This is my living room.  I like to sit at the table on my computer and look out at the ocean:).

This is the view from my balcony.  If you sit out there in the morning the sun is very direct.  Jonathan and I like to sit out there at night and play Briscas (Spanish card game).

My bedroom:

My Bathroom. Please note that I am now the proud owner of a bidet.

Spare bedrooms:

My First Day at School!!

So today was my first day of Spanish language classes!  They are held in a building through a private company in O Grove, a town 20 minutes from my house by bus.  I arrived this morning and first thing had an exam, to assess my level of knowledge.  Needless to say, this exam went very poorly!  In the first portion I had to self rate my knowledge of the Spanish language.  After that there were exercises for me to complete, conjugating verbs as directed (in the gerund, present subjunctive, past participle, etc, etc.)  Needless to say grammar education in the US is piss poor and I had no idea what any of these things mean!  I remember how to conjugate verbs (somewhat), but had no idea what they wanted me to do.  It was a horribly frustrating exam to take and by the end had convinced myself that I hated Spanish.  So I hand in my exam to a woman, who makes marks all over it with a highlighter (I'm assuming the highlighter meant 'bad'), while shaking her head, saying "no, no, no".  It took all of my self control not to cry right then and there.  So she then explains to me that there are 4 different groups currently in progress, and that I am in between the first and the second group and that she doesn't know what to do because she wasn't want me to be confused in the 2nd group, nor does she want me to be bored in the 1st group.  So she went and spoke to someone and then told me that she was going to place me in the 1st group, and to let her know once I got bored. 

So I then entered a room where a class was already in session.  There was a professor (who I have a major crush on - handsome man with a ponytail) and two other students.  One of them is from London; his parents own a summer home in O Grove and he has decided to take language classes over 'holiday'.  He ate an entire bag of these chocolate cookies during the class (this isn't really relevant, but just an observation I had made during class).  The other is a girl from Germany who is residing in the dorms run through the language program.  We then reviewed the gerund (verbs ending in -ing), reflexive verbs, and vocabulary for the different parts of the body.  Once we started to go through it I remembered all of it from high school.  So hopefully with a little more review time in this class and some extra time at home I should be able to move into the next group.  So despite its rocky start, my class went relatively well!  I have added below a picture Jonathan took of me while waiting for the bus this morning :)

Winemaking in Gonzalo's backyard

I love the way people utilize their yards here in Spain.  Instead of perfectly manicuring their grass, they utilize the space more effectively, growing beautiful flowers (many have yards full of roses) or growing their own food.  Gonzalo, Jonathan's cousin grows grapes in his backyard.  He grows many different varietals of grapes.

So yesterday we spent the first part of the day picking all of the white (Albarino) grapes.

•  After we picked all of the grapes we then sat in the driveway and picked out all of the bad ones (dried up ones, moldy ones, spider webs, unripe ones, etc.).  Many of the older women in the family joined us here and helped to separate the grapes. 

After separating the grapes we all went inside to enjoy a big lunch.  After lunch it was time to crush the grapes, my favorite part.  We put all of the grapes into a large bin and took turns stomping on them.

It was an absolute blast!!  This stomped on mix was left in his cellar to ferment for a day.  We then quickly went out and picked and sorted the red grapes.  Gonzalo uses 5 different varietals for his Tinto wine.

When we returned this afternoon we placed the stomped on white grapes in a press, to remove all of the stems and seeds from the fermented pulp.  Gonzalo has a press, whereas when a crank at the top is turned, pressure is applied to the pulp below, squishing out the juice.  The fermented grape stems, skins, and seeds are later used to make aguardiente ("fire water"), which is a clear 100-120 proof liquor (I find it absolutely painful and the most unpleasurable thing I could ever imagine).

The grape juice obtained sits in a plastic bin for 8 days to ferment and then is placed in a steel barrel until March or April, when it is bottled.

After we were done pressing the Albarino, we stomped out the red wine!

The red wine is barreled in oak with the pulp for 3 days, until it is pressed just as the white wine was.  The juice then returns to the barrel until March or April when it is bottled via a spout out the front of the barrel.

All in all, this was an absolutely amazing experience that I feel so privileged to have been a part of.  All of the family comes over to the house and Chelo (Gonzalo's wife) prepares a large lunch with the other women in the family.  This truly is a shared family experience.  Gonzalo has learned how to make wine from his grandfather, which was taught to him by his grandfather, and so on.

Me and My Boo

So today Jonathan and I went over to Margarita and Manolo's house for lunch.  When people speak I can pick out words or phrases and am able to use that along with non-verbal communication and what Jonathan relays to me to understand what is going on.  Today at lunch I became frustrated and tired of trying to understand what was going on (Margarita told a very long story about one of their daughters and once I got lost, I was just lost).  In some ways it is very isolating to have such limited communication with anyone but Jonathan.

As of 4 days ago Jonathan and I have been married for one year.  In the 5 years that we have been together we have learned a lot about each other and I think that i know him and he knows me better than anyone.  One of my major goals in coming to Spain to live for a year was for my relationship with Jonathan to exist within the isolation that I mentioned above.  I want my relationship with Jonathan to become stronger and for us as individuals to truly become one another's partners, to develop a strong bond and more profound understanding of each other.  Prior to living in Spain there were all of these distractions affecting our ability to truly be and grow together (work, school, bills, etc.).  Here in Spain there aren't as many outside forces acting upon our relationship; we have the opportunity to just be together.  We can go for long walks whenever we want, enjoy cooking and having dinners together, and read next to one another.  Being upset about outside stressors is less of a distraction for improving our communication with one another.  My great hope is that when we leave Spain we will have fully taken advantage of this time together as partners.  I hope that our relationship will be stronger than ever so that amidst the work, bills, school, etc., we will be able to go take a walk together.  When one of us is stressed or upset about something, my hope is that we will be better able to support one another.  I think that in a lot of relationships the stuff in life gets in the way of being truly intimate with your partner.  My hope is that the closeness we share here in Spain will serve us throughout the remainder of our relationship. 

Spain Thus Far (9/3-9/7)

So we have arrived!  We got in late Friday evening (around 4 or 5pm EST).  We flew from JFK, to London, to Madrid, and then to Vigo (the local airport here in Spain).  Everything went smoothly, traveling for that long is just miserable though.  I spent the last week prior to leaving the US at Jonathan's family's home.  It felt like the longest week ever!  I had already said goodbye to my family and was just so emotionally prepared to leave for Spain that it was almost painful to hang out for that week.

When we arrived at the airport several of Jonathan's family members were at the airport waiting for us.  All of our bags arrived (1st time ever :)).  We then went over to Jonathan's cousin Chelo and Gonzalo's home for dinner, where several other family members met us.  We ate tortilla, empanada, fresh bread, and drank wine made by Gonzalo in his backyard (absolutely delicious).

We then awoke the next day at 2:30pm (probably should have set an alarm to avoid jet lag by oh well.  We're unemployed.  Who Cares:)).  We then took the bus to Pontevedra, a neighboring town as there was a festival there.  Apparently several times a year people in Spain celebrate medieval times.  So we went into town for this celebrating.  His family told us that people dress up in medieval gear, but man they weren't kidding.  Everyone was dressed up.  None of the sit down food vendors would serve you unless you were dressed up (luckily we already ate).  All of the little boys had swords.  There were lots of little bands standing around playing traditional Gallego folk music and different dance performances.  There is a bullfighting amphitheater in Pontevedra where whey performed jousting matches throughout the day.  It was really fun.

The next day we went over to Chelo and Gonzalo's for lunch where we saw more of the family.  We spent the rest of the afternoon over there talking and then returned to the apartment to install our wireless router, which another one of Jonathan's cousins, Nico, had set up for us.  Unfortunately there was something wrong with the phone line, but the telephone company fixed it the following day.  Later that night we went out for some tapas and drinks and a local restaurant to celebrate our 1st anniversary.  We then went for an evening stroll around town.  Raxo, the town we live in, is built up onto a hillside, so it is nice to walk along the roads and look down at the beach and waterfront.

Yesterday we met Chelo at the bank.  Prior to leaving we had wired some of our money into her bank account (we got a better rate doing this.  Also, if we just used our HSBC debit cards at the banks here we'd be changed an international fee for each transaction).  So we had the goal in mind of then opening our own account at the bank here and then transfering the money from Chelo's account into our own.  Unfortunately, we were unable to do that because we need to prove residency here.  The bank teller said that we need to register our residency with the town hall in Pontevedra and then with that documentation we could open our own account.  This was not a problem as I need to do this anyways for immigration purposes (so long as Jonathan and I register our residency as a married Spanish and US citizen, I didn't need to obtain a visa).  So Chelo withdrew some of our money for us until we got a chance to do this.  We then went over to the supermarket and picked up some basic stuff.  All of the food is really fresh and produced locally.  Food is also inexpensive here when compared to back in the US, which is pretty amazing (i.e. a good bottle of wine for $7, 6 peaches for $.50).  We then went home and made some dinner.  After dinner I went for a run, which was probably my best ever as I got honked at/yelled at by 3 different Spanish men :).

Today Gonzalo went with us to the town hall in Pontevedra to take care of our registration of residency.  Needless to say, there is as much red tape here as there is in the US.  We need to first do all of this other stuff locally and then go back with copies of x, y, and z.  It's going to be a pain in the but, but will nevertheless be taken care of.

Stuff

So part of my general philosophy about life is to avoid creating "stuff"...to only keep and enjoy those things that are truly pleasurable and to avoid collecting items for the sake of having lots of stuff.  As a result of this philosophy, I hope throughout my life to have less stuff.  Paradoxically, my things become more precious, as I only keep those items that matter.  This also then becomes a source of personal discomfort as separating from precious items is difficult.  Jonathan and I moved to Spain with a fully furnished apartment, yet still had to pay an obscene amount of money to get out stuff over here (clothes, computers, books).  Prior to leaving we had to ship Jonathan's desktop computer, and then once in the airport we had to pay $125 for each additional checked bag (some standard extra bag fee when you fly through multiple carriers - travelers beware!).  Jonathan and I spend a lot of time conceptualizing their things, living a life of both pleasure and peace, and I was so incredible upset by the obscene cost of getting my precious things here!!!