El Vino, las Tapas y la Burocracia

What a busy, fun-packed week I’ve had! As ever, I’ll try to cast my mind back to last Saturday (which seems oh so long ago) and pick up where I left off.

So, Mary and Krista arrived from their village, Villarrobledo (which is actually in the province of Albacete, not Cuenca, but still not too far away) at about 10.30 on Saturday night. They were staying for three nights; Krista on the couch at mine and Natira’s flat, and Mary at Corinna’s place.

The main purpose of their trip was to keep an appointment they had in Cuenca’s Oficina de Extranjeros (Foreign Office) on Monday morning to get their NIE (Número de Identicación de Extranjeros) , which is basically a certificate with an identification number on it that says you’re a resident of Spain. Of course, the secondary purpose of their trip was to have a weekend away in a different city and come and see us, which worked out very well!

However, in terms of getting their NIE it was a wasted trip. I managed to get mine last week (having tried and failed three weeks earlier, and then making an appointment), but for the ex-comunitarias among us (i.e. all of the language assistants in our little group apart from Corinna and I, who are fortunate enough to be residents of the European Union) it’s a long and gruelling process to say the least. As well as all the paperwork, photocopies of important documents and more paperwork that EU residents need, Jaclyn, Natira, Mary and Krista need a private health insurance plan that includes a repatriation clause. And yes, that is just as unsavoury as it sounds – it basically means that their insurance must state that if they ‘come to any harm’’ (i.e. die) while they’re in Spain, the US government will cover the cost of getting their bodies shipped back to the States. Lovely, isn’t it? As well as this, they also need a photocopy of EVERY page of their passports – even the blank ones – and photocopies of pretty much every other piece of paper they own.

If this had been clear originally, the girls would’ve been able to have all the relevant documents ready in time for their appointment. As Spanish bureaucracy would have it, though, nobody is informed of anything and instead, they think it’s much more fun to keep confused, nervous foreigners with looming visa deadlines guessing. You’d have thought that after their failed appointment on Monday, for which they’d had to wait three weeks, the lovely chaps at the Foreign Office might’ve recognised that they were largely to blame for the misinformation and scheduled them another appointment for the earliest possible date. Not in Spain, though. On the contrary, they had to ring up again and were given an appointment for another three weeks’ time... in Natira’s case, just four days before her visa runs out.

From the tone of the last two paragraphs, you may already have an inkling about how I feel about Spanish bureaucracy. Just in case you haven’t, though, here it is in black and white: it is unfriendly, unhelpful, unreliable and inconsistent. If you ever decide you want to live in Spain, you have been warned!

Anyway, enough about bureaucracy (as fascinating as I’m sure you’ll agree it is). On Saturday night, myself, Corinna, Krista and Mary went to our new favourite bar, El Quinto Pecado (The Fifth Sin) for some wine and tapas. It is obviously a hotspot in Cuenca, as every time I’ve been it’s been absolutely heaving. I can see why; unlike most bars in Cuenca which give you a mere small plate of free tapas with your first drink, El Quinto Pecado brings you a different, ever more extravagant, platter with every drink you order. I’ve been there several times now (and each time I’ve had several drinks!), and never have I had the same tapa twice. It’s like Christmas every time you order a glass of vino blanco (my new favourite tipple, since Spain doesn’t appear to do vodka and cranberry juice)! We’ve had everything from garlic king prawns to chicken escalopes on crusty bread with tomato puree (very Spanish), to mini burgers and chips, to goats cheese and tomato with balsamic vinegar, to fried eggs with some of the tastiest meat I’ve ever had (I think it might’ve been lamb). Each drink is only 2 euros (regardless of whether it’s wine, beer or Coke) and I can’t help but think that the food you get with it free of charge more than counteracts the cost of the drink. If you can’t be bothered cooking and a few drinks is what you’re after, I would definitely recommend El Quinto Pecado as the best place to go to kill two birds with one stone!

One of the yummy free tapas in El Quinto Pecado

After El Quinto Pecado, we moved onto a Latin American bar called El Rodeo, which was ever-so-slightly seedy but a good laugh nevertheless. We wiggled our hips to the contagious salsa music in the basement until about 3am, when we got too hot and decided to get some fresh air. At this point, the famous botellón which I spoke about last week was still going fairly strong, and the Plaza España was littered with empty bottles, cups and plastic bags. I felt a wave of sympathy for whichever poor soul had the job of cleaning up the destruction the next day.

After visiting and promptly leaving a couple of bars in La Calle (they were so packed you literally couldn’t move, and just squeezing your way through the crowds to the door in order to escape was an ordeal), we wandered back in the direction of El Quinto Pecado, where one of Cuenca’s nightclubs, Caché, is. It struck me when we rolled up there at about 4am that at this time in Britain most clubs would’ve closed about an hour ago, but Caché was just warming up. We danced until we got fed up of the smoke (we were basically standing in a cloud of it and my eyes had begun to sting quite alarmingly) and retired at 5am. Thankfully, Spain will be bringing in the smoking ban on January 2^nd 2011 (they want people to be able to enjoy one last smoky New Year first!), and in my opinion, it can’t come soon enough. As we were leaving Caché, people were still arriving and the club showed no signs of winding down for the night. How do they do it? I doubt I’ll ever know...

Bottelón at about 2am

The next day, despite slightly sore heads, we managed to rise at a respectable midday. After dousing myself in all the sweet-smelling shower products I own to get rid of the stench of stale smoke that had permeated my skin, hair, clothes and bed sheets, we set off to the old town. Krista and Mary, who hadn’t seen it before, were suitably impressed and did lots of ooh-ing and aah-ing and taking photos. It was a lovely day, and I found I didn’t even need my cardigan, let alone my coat, as we were wandering around.

On Sunday night, all six of us went out for a few drinks to – you’ve guessed it – El Quinto Pecado, and it was lovely to have us all together. On Monday, after the girls’ failed attempt to get their NIE, Jaclyn, Mary, Krista and I treated ourselves to a Chinese meal, for which we were the only people in the restaurant. Much to our amusement, at the end of the meal (which was at about 4.30pm – we’d gone for a later lunch) the Chinese owners were looking at their watches and tapping their feet. As we finished our free shots (it’s a Spanish tradition to get free liquor at the end of a meal) they were even putting their coats on and said very pointedly: ‘Tenemos que ir’, which means ‘We have to go’. Right, that’d be our cue to leave, then! It seems even Chinese Spaniards are Spanish through and through when it comes to the importance they place on their daily siesta...

 From left to right: Jaclyn, Krista, Mary, Natira,
 Corinna and me

With the weekend well and truly over, and Mary and Krista headed back to Villarrobledo, it was time to knuckle down to work. This week at school, I’ve been teaching my classes about Halloween. I made a rather impressive presentation on Powerpoint (even if I do say so myself!), with pictures of Halloween-y things like ghosts, witches, bats, haunted houses and vampires. The idea was to build their vocabulary while at the same time interacting with them instead of just talking at them. I even had a slide with some photos of Halloween costumes that I’d found on Google Images, and a list of adjectives which could be used to describe them. With bated breath, I showed them each picture, praying that it would provoke the desired reactions. In most cases, it went down very well. The girls in particular squealed with delight at the picture I’d found of a baby dressed as a devil (‘cute’ was the desired adjective here), and there was predictable uproar from the boys when I showed the picture of the leggy blond in high heels and a rather short black dress (she was supposed to be a witch, I think, but one can never be sure. The desired adjective here was ‘sexy’).

By Thursday afternoon, I had done the same presentation about 8 times and was sick of the sight of it, not to mention hoarse. I’ve had a bit of a cold and a sore throat (I blame the smoky bars) this week anyway, so I wasn’t particularly in the mood to raise my voice, but unfortunately I have to in order to drown out the persistent chatter of the few trouble makers in each class. I’ve discovered it doesn’t matter how engaging and interactive you make the content of your lessons; some children just don’t want to learn and don’t give a monkey’s about English. If I could weed them out (or gag them, whatever) my life would be a lot easier, but such is the bane of every teacher’s life, I suspect...

One class in particular gets me down. In fact, I dread going every week. I don’t know why they’re so bad; on paper they’re no different from many of my other classes. There are about 22 of them, they’re 15 years old and like all teenagers, they’re a bit silly. However, for whatever reason, I find them above all other classes, impossible to teach. Their level of English is appalling. I have to speak so slowly that I literally couldn’t speak any slower if I tried... and they still don’t understand me. Those who are capable of understanding me usually don’t listen to me anyway, and the teacher doesn’t do enough to keep them in check. The worst thing, however, is their lack of participation. When I ask them a question (and I’m talking basic, basic stuff) they think nothing of leaving me at the front of the class floundering. A roomful of blank faces stare back at me, many of them trying not to make eye contact with me. I understand that they’re embarrassed to speak and that their English is, quite frankly, awful, but trying to get even just one of them to say two words in English is like trying to extract blood from a particularly hard stone. Disheartening is not the word. Despair, I feel, is more fitting.

Thankfully, about two thirds of the way through this hour of torture, I was quite literally saved by the bell when the fire alarm sounded. Fuming, on my way out, I told the teacher exactly what I thought of her class. She seemed surprised when I admitted they were the worst class I had, but agreed that there was no point in my being there if they refused to ´take advantage´ of me. I felt slightly guilty afterwards, as she looked genuinely helpless and kept saying she felt bad and didn’t know what to do. I explained that it wasn’t her fault; we’d just have to think of ways to get them talking. I’m glad to have got my feelings out in the open, and hopefully she’ll be a bit more supportive of me (i.e. she’ll push them a bit harder) in the future. Watch this space...

Thankfully, my private lessons are all going well. At the moment, I have five a week, although it was supposed to be six. A teacher at San José had asked me if I could teach her daughter, but we couldn’t work out a suitable time until she’d checked her daughter’s timetable, so we agreed to speak about it when I next saw her. I’ve seen her several times since that conversation, though, and she hasn’t mentioned it again. I’m not sure why, but I’m certainly not going to bring it up – five private classes a week is plenty to be going on with!

I was nothing short of amazed when a two women, a baby and a 4-year-old child turned up at my door a few evenings ago, inquiring about private classes as they’d heard there were native English speakers living here. It turned out the older woman (who I think was the younger woman’s mother) was friends with our landlady, Felicidad, and that was how they’d got wind of us being here. As I did my best to explain in Spanish that Natira and I both had too many classes already and couldn’t take any more on, the 4-year-old ran around in the lobby outside our flat screaming like a banshee and hammering his fists against the main door of the building. Teenagers might be a pain in the neck, but they’re nothing compared to hyperactive, hysterical toddlers, I realised.

I gave the woman Jaclyn’s number, as Jaclyn had instructed me to send any unwanted pupils her way. I think it was the best move I ever made: it turned out the woman wanted private classes for her delightful son, not herself. As if this weren’t bad enough, she wanted him to have four classes per week. Jaclyn bravely rose to the challenge, but is already finding it difficult to keep the little darling engaged. Despite her best efforts to keep him occupied with fun stuff like colouring in while sneakily speaking English to him, during their ‘lessons’ he usually refuses to cooperate and instead runs around his bedroom throwing things and screeching. If she tries to get him to repeat English words, he refuses, and just says them in Spanish instead. Poor Jaclyn...

Last night, Jaclyn came over and she, Natira and I watched a horror film to get into the Halloween spirit. It’s not something I usually do, and last night I remembered why – I’m surprised I’ve still got my voice intact I screamed so much, and Jaclyn and I nearly broke each other’s knuckles we were squeezing each other’s hands so tightly. Still, it was fun, and a nice way to round of the working week.

Today I’m relaxing and catching up on household chores (incredibly exciting, isn’t it?) before catching the coach to Madrid tonight. Hugh’s plane is arriving at 11pm and my coach gets in at 10.30pm, so if all goes to plan, we should arrive at the hotel we’ve booked at around the same time. I can’t wait to see more of Madrid – it’s such an exciting city and there’s so much to see and do. We’ve booked ourselves tickets to see an exhibition at the famous El Prado gallery, and we’re also planning to go to one of the Japanese restaurants that Jesús, one of my private students, so enthusiastically recommended to me. Monday is All Saints Day and a national bank holiday in Spain (people traditionally use the day to visit cemeteries to place flowers on the graves of their relatives), so it’s a day off lessons for me, which is always nice.

Next weekend, I’m planning to visit Toledo with Mary, Krista and Corinna, although we haven’t made any concrete plans yet. I’m sure I’ll be able to tell you more about it next time.

¡Hasta luego!