2 headed shark attack....

.... is the name f the film I'm currently watching. Its as amazing as the name suggests.

Anyhoo, today I went to see my pony friends hooved and footed. And here's the questions(s)

1. Where would you draw the line at, for riding I mean. I love it more than anything else in the world ever. But, when do you say its time to stop? My Mum quit after her car accident, she can't risk any more damage to her back and neck. But she misses it greatly. One of the Instructors at my old year broke her back falling off onto a pile of bricks. She was warned that any more damage could result in her being in a wheelchair for good. But she still rides. I wonder if it was me, whether I'd carry on or quit. Riding's an addiction pure and simple. A guy today fell from a horse, not the horses fault. He was doing a stretching exercise and simply lost balance and slipped. Turned out that he recently recovered from being in a wheelchair. Wouldn't that make you think. Yeah. I'll stay away from high-risk sports. I wonder if something like that might make me quit.
2. Do you think animals can feel guilt? Or shame? Or is that anthropomorphising a bit? I ask because when this rider came off and was paralysed unable to move, his horse stayed by his side. He could have wandered off anywhere, but stayed a few steps from his downed rider. The instructor was busy with injured man, so I nipped into the school and grabbed the horse. Poor Bo, instantly buried his head in my armpit and just looked so sorry and guilty, I had to keep petting him to cheer him up. 

My beautiful ship is all fixed again! :)
Remember this?

Its now repaired and back to normal. Opens again to the public on Thursday. 

I love *my* ship :)

Its a bit ridiculous that after a 10 hour sleep, and having been awake for just over an hour, I'm ready to do back to sleep.

I'n sure people told me there was a drought in the UK. How comes its rained virtually every day since we've been back?
This is all deadly familiar. Applying for jobs I fear I won't get. Feeling desperately unqualified for everything. Looking at jobs and dismissing them. I felt like this when I returned from Derby. Do you remember? Feeling lost and lonely and missing what I had.
Mum keeps on at me to go back to the NMM or apply for shop work, I don't want that. But there's that niggling feeling that perhaps thats the best I can aim for.
Welshy scorns me. Tells me I'm pathetic for feeling this way. How can I tell him when he doesn't understand? I don't want to. Am I imagining all this and being stupid and girly?
I don't want to go and work in the City and commute. I hate that. I feel it raising my blood pressure being jostled and pushed by busy rushing people.
I wish I could get a decently paid job locally and not commute. I want to leave London and not return. I want to be secure somewhere and not leave home and be forced to come back within a year or so.

This gloomy weather gets me down. I need to snap out of this and readjust to being at home again, being dependent on Mother's whims and moods. Convince myself that she's wrong and I can do more than what she expects of me. And wait for Welshy to come home and see what happens.......

Home again...

I don't even understand what's going on with Blogger now.

Anyway. I'm home from Spain. I'm absolutely heart broken about this. I love that Bumpkin Town. I love travelling 14 hours to get home. I love walking through the town square and being besieged by kids calling me.
I miss 2 euro bottles of wine and the honesty system in Anai, which led to us racking up whats possibly a 50e if not more bar bill because we kept forgetting to pay. I miss warm freshly made bread from Ogipan. I miss crazy people singing and dancing on the streets at 6am.
I miss three day weekends and I miss going to Calahorra for riding. I miss the sheer friendliness of the people. And the insanity of fiestas for Domestic Pets.
So why am I home? Two months earlier than planned?
We resigned. Our boss was crazy, forgetting to pay us, paying us a LOT less than what he initially promised when we left the UK. He dropped classes on us with no warning, meaning we had no plans ready. He interrupted classes and insisted on talking Spic to them.
Cracks appeared in mine and Welshy's relationship. We bicker a lot, but our arguments became serious. Drunkenly several times we discussed ending it. Sometimes I felt like there was a distance and I couldn't talk to him like I've always been able too.
It was hard. We're both independent people, we both drive each other crazy and we need our own space from each other. Suddenly we couldn't do that. We worked together, we lived together. We had no other friends, we couldn't go out without each other. The only break I got from him (and vice versa) was when I'd go for an hour to do a company class, or when I went for 3 hours on a Friday to ride.
It was stressful. He decided we needed to come home for our sanity, for our relationship to survive. Our boss had taken out a small argument with me, out on my class of 4 year olds, nearly reducing them to tears.
He blamed Welshy for him having to take a class, and both of us going home. That Welshy should have checked and confirmed this class with my boss. My boss has been taking this class since Feb. Three Months. As far as we were concerned there was no mistake with the timetable, but my boss felt there was. Conviently forgot that it was his class and then blamed us for it.
We fought that night and on Wednesday two weeks ago, I woke to the sound of Welshy writing his resignation letter. Mine followed shortly after. Our boss ignored the emails even though we knew he had read them and on Friday we were on holiday in Lisbon - a beautiful place - and we forced the issue, offering to go at the end of the week, to not work a notice.
Monday night we got the reply that he would meet us at 8am and discuss it. Tuesday 8.45, he knocks. We sign our resignation letters and that was it.
We took a weeks holiday in San Adrian and then drunkenly, sadly returned home a week ago.

So now what? I don't want to go back to the NMM. Welshy doesn't want to go back to Car Counting. So we're both signing on and applying for many things. The mother is pleased/angry that we are back, take your pick. She keeps talking about how she cant afford to keep us and how we need to do work about the place. Chores. I bite my tongue and try not to remind her that The Brat lived for a year on the dole and didn't pay rent, how he never helps about the house and how he can't be expected to help now as he's working, but yet I was still expected to do chores while I was working. Nothing changes there.....

I want to go back. I miss the lifestyle, the bumbling struggling attempts to speak Spanish. I miss going to different Spanish cities. I miss going to Camp Nou and the Bernabau. I miss discussing the football with the little kids. I miss playing with my Toddler students. I miss the fact that we didn't go out on an evening until 2am, instead of coming home at 12 and thinking I've had a good night. I miss coming home at 3am and seeing little old ladies just heading out for their night of fun to get started.

I miss the dust, the boredom, the being bemused by the culture and eccentricities of it all.

Welshy is visiting Wrexham now, it will do us good to have this break from each other. We'll see what happens when he comes back.

Yes. Here you can buy Barca crisps. Or even Real Madrid crisps if thats more your thing.

There's a new giant sweety shop thats opened up here over the xmas break. Still not sure i'm down with sweet shops selling pickles, onions and olives. Doesn't seem quite right.

Urk. Talking over last nights events and wondering why I stink so much of smoke, I realise that I drank a hefty amount of wine last night.

Not bad for someone who hates it normally.

Its 1am, me and welshy have just performed "Head, shoulders, knees and toes" on a table in front of a baying audience.

The town is full of fire. I can see at least 7 from where I am. We have returned from our invited party where we ate chops, TDR risked Pig Cheek. (horrible looking, greeny and reminded me of a cross between bacon and intestine).
My glasses got smashed by a misplaced football pass.
A man kept leaping through the BIGGEST fire shouting "Viva San Anton! Viva San Adrian!"

(Apparently he is the patron saint of animals)

Anyway, we left that about midnight. Walking by Ogipan Welshy gets hailed by a student. We join his party Welshy is told that "You speak English well. Not very Well, but well."

The man who's party this is, is trying to ride a fold up bike on one of those giant cotton reel type things, the kinda that you get in factories with cable on.
He earlier was trying to walk along it and nearly got run over. His girlfriend tried it and fell, hitting her head with a crack. She seems ok. 
Me and Welshy are curious as to whether we are the responsible adults in this party. 
Its fun shit like this that makes me love Spain and love this crazy ass town we live in. Surely nothing this fun can happen in a city like Madrid or Barca?
Its time to do some dancing I think.....

I am probably the only retarded person who is capable of walking into a fucking huge fuck off sign on a motorway. We were walking along the Road of Death to Calahorra, and I was looking down at my shoes, wondering if I should stop now to take a stone out, or should I wait a little longer till I was across the roundabout.

Looked up a little too late.... BANG..

Fucking OUCH!

TDR was full of concern. Welshy has seen too many stupid accidents of mine to be concerned and merely fell over laughing. I had a lump, a small cut and my nose hurt like shit.
I got across the road, laughing at my stupidity and then shot a lot of shit out of my nose. Certainly cleared me out!

Anyway, we had a little potter and dinner and then a walk amongst the old town in Calahorra.

Today I was cordially invited to "Fire Day". by one of the locals on Sunday. He announced that there will be much drink and much food.

I fear the fire I saw the other day was a prelude to this and I shall be burnt at the stake and eaten while the locals let their tails out of their trousers and dance about with pitchforks.

"Come to Spain Charby, its hot here."

Today its a whopping 2 degrees. In England its currently a heady 5....

After a day chilling out, I took TDR on a tour of the town today while Welshy got on with my Stats thats due in tomorrow.

We wandered about the town, took all of 5 minutes. I took him to see the school, I took him about the fields and we met Grey Pony.

Now, bored I decided to go to Ogipan and get a barra for our tea.
Walk down the street and there are men building a fuck off giant fire in the street and preparing some kinda barbeque. Its so dry here, I'm not sure fires are a good sign. If you hear of a town burning down in the news, that'll be San Adrian.

Either that or they're planning a ritual sacrifice of the infidel outsiders....

This is Spanish Christmas. Well they have recently started celebrating the 25th December as well (the kids tell me that they can have up to three presents depending on how their families choose to celebrate, Xmas eve, Xmas Day and Dia de reyes. [day of the kings]). This is to signify the day that the kings arrived at the manager to meet Baby Jesus.
It also happened to be the day me, Welshy and TDR (who is here to help while my bosses are collecting their baby in Vietnam) arrived back in Spain.
We didn't have any food in our cupboards, so went to Eroski to collect food. Bad times. Eroski was shut. So onwards to Ogipan, now even on fiesta days Ogipan bakery is open as it also doubles as a bar. Not today however.
So we went home and made a makeshift meal out of sweetcorn and mint matchmakers.

So. Traditional New Year round up.

High points of this year? Promotion at the Museum, Getting Olympic tickets (208 days to go!) my holidays to the Lake district and Vegas, leaving the Museum at last and moving to Spain.

I remember at the start of the year somehow knowing that this year would be different, that I wouldn't end it how it started and this has proved to be correct.

My Bucket list to achieve before I am 30, is reaching another target ticked with my slow, unsteady progress in Spanish. Welshy is more fluent than me, but I have been lazy practising. We're hoping to take the equivalent of a GCSE in May.

Our contract in Spain ends in June. I'm not sure what to do next. I kinda like the idea of staying in Spain for another year. Maybe not where we are now, I love the eccentricities of our town but 14 hours to get home is a bit much and its impossible for visitors to come.

If I am to progress onto year 2 of my course I need to try and get a new job, either in England or in Spain. To have at least that first k saved for the fees. I need to get CELTA qualified in order to help my job prospects if I go to Spain. There goes another grand.

But June is a long time away so there is plenty of time to decide whats best then.

Bad points to 2011? I'm not sure really. Nothing that affects me personally too much, of course The Crisis as those in Spain refers to the Economy. The Riots certainly weren't pleasant but nothing to bother me really.

No. I think 2011 is the first time in a long time where I can't think of any real bad point to the year.

So I won't tell it to Fuck Off. I'll wish it a pleasant farewell and now look eagerly forward to 2012.

I had a class today full of boys that love football, their grammar is pretty good but they lack any vocab, they clearly dont care about education at all and happily tell Welshy that they are being forced to repeat years and have been banned from x, y and Z classes.

Anyway we get on Ok-ish with them. For some reason today they all wanted to discuss their muscles and this involved me desperately trying to keep them on track as they wanted to arm wrestle.
Anyone one of them made a pretty unmistakable gesture and the other laughed in that kinda teenage boy way, and said that was why he had arm muscles.
So I whacked in "Wank" into Google translate and asked him if that was the reason.

Apparently he was miming going to the Gym.....

So got up early only to find that my early morning class didnt arrive.
I promised my noisy class that they could try peanut butter and marmite sandwiches this week as part of our food topic.
For the next hour, it resulted in kids running down the corridor to spit out their sandwiches into the toilet.

In our Spanish lesson today, we went and learnt how to play a popular card game with pesatas. Never seen a pesata before FYI.

Basic rules of the game is that you have 4 cards, can swap them once, then have 3 rounds of betting, for high card, low card and pairs. Then you bet on the nearest to 31 and then someone work out who won.
Spanish cards are funny looking. Like tarot cards.

We went out to watch Madrid V Barcelona. The score flattered Madrid.
We stayed out. I got drunk. I fell over in front of some of Welshys students.

This place really needs a decent take away to fulfill my salt craving. We ended up going to the only takeaway in the town where the man serving refused to believe that we were teachers and not working in one of the factories. 

I got a kebab, I asked for it plain, unfortunately plain here seems to mean drowning in salad cream. Gross. I took it home and rinsed every indivdual piece in the water and then felt violently ill for the rest of the night.

They eat thistles here in Spain. Gross.

Public holiday part two this week.

Welshy has a two hour lesson as one of his students is preparing for the FCE exam in English.

Me? No work. I'm slowly getting hammered on Tinto de verano and listening to Cliff Richard.

Yay.