Today in Spain...

Alright....so here´s the deal....I had a really cool blog for today, but the usb port in my computer in no se functiona at the internet cafe, and there is a creepy morocan guy checking me out, so I just want to leave. The blog for today shall be posted tomorrow. Love you all. Adios.

Alright...here´s the real deal:
Now that Matt and I have found a place to live…the job hunt continues. Matt, as expected, is having a lot more lucky than me. As it is he speaks fluent spanish, and I…well…don’t. Basically…he’s handed out 25 resumes and yesterday got a call from two restaurants, and today…he’s working at one and tomorrow he has a “try out” at another. This whole Spanish job thing seems a lot more lax than in the States. You just hand in your resume (usually they ask for your picture, which I thought was weird until I started to notice there are some of Spanish people who look like the dregs of the earth, and all of them seem to have a scruffy dog or two in tow) and then you wait and see. No applications to fill out, no formal interviews, they just call you to work for a day and see how you do. Welcome to Spain I suppose.

As for me, I’m finding hard to go into restaurant and hand in resumes (even though I have drawn one up in spanish thanks to my handy dandy dictionarrio and 501 verbs book!) because I know if they turn around and ask me something in spanish I now I probably won’t understand and will stand there in that owe so embarrassing “no comperndo” silence. However…all hope is not lost. I have a couple of hot leads on some language schools looking for teachers of English who are native speakers…no TEFL required! I also saw this tour guide thingy for Erasmus students in Granada. It says “seeking students of all nationalities” so hopefully that means they won’t ask me for papers.

As the work hunt is slow, I have to admit…I’m a bit board. I suppose I could go out and do something, but that almost always involves spending money, which doesn’t fit into my budget. So, seeing as I didn’t have Matt to entertain, today was laundry day! I went down to the store to buy detergent and realized once I got there that I had no frickin’ idea what “laundry detergent” was in Spanish. Hmmmm….so I proceeded down the aisle with all the cleaning stuff…good plan, I thought. Then, out of the corner of my eye I spotted a bottle with clothes on it and the word “ropa” which coincidently in Spanish…wait for it…wait for it…means…clothes! Now then there was the task of tackling which bottle to buy as there were a lot of different ones. Being my mothers daughter, I immediately thought 3 euros was too much, and targeted the cheapest bottle, at 1,25 euros I thought that wasn’t bad, my only concern was that it didn’t say “ropa” or have any clothes on the front of the bottle, but I convinced myself that was because it was the “generic” brand.

Now armed with my bottle of Spanish detergents, I headed home to tackle Matt’s stinky socks and my dirty t-shirts. Upon getting home I first thought I should let some stain soak in this stuff before I was them, as I was again too cheap to buy stain remover. When I poured the pink goo over the stain…the strangest thing happened...some kind of chemical reaction. It was like the detergent knew there was something there that shouldn’t be and started foaming at the mouth. I thought…wow this stuff sure does the job. It was only after I had rubbed it into all the various stains that I begun to realize the skin was pealing off my fingers. It didn’t hurt or anything, I think I just reacted to the oils on my hands or something and just burnt the very top layer of my skin. Well...never mind…I thought. Off to do the laundry upstairs.

The next task was tackling the washer, because…everything was in Spanish. (Quelle surprise!) Well I figures out what colors and whites where and just set it to the normal setting and then tried pushing and pulling at the knob…and nothing. I then tried pushing all the random buttons that seemingly meant nothing to me, but I thought they may at least mean something to my laundry. At one point I was so frustrated and ready to admit I was a stupid American and ask for help when I just pushed in a button, and didn’t bother to push it back out again. After a couple of seconds it started. Typical…I thought…everything in Spain is a bit delayed.

About 40 minutes later it was done, so I tried opening the door. I didn’t open. Alright…so I tried pushing more random buttons and turning the knob, etc. etc. and nothing happened expect I started a new wash cycle. I quickly turned the dial to “stop” (still trying to figure out why that was the only thing in English…oh yeah…for people like me!) and sat there in a stupor. After a while, I tried the door again. Low and behold…it opened! I then realized the button I pushed to start it what the on/off button, so I just had to push it to off and then wait an absurd amount of time before it would let me open the door. Again…welcome to Spain, where everything will get done manana.

After doing a couple more loads and waiting for it to cool down a bit outside (it was at least 100 degreed Fahrenheit today, I swear) I decided to walk up to the Alhambra again (Matt and I walked up there a couple days ago) and take some photos. After speed walking up the steep path (which made me fill really fit) I was feeling rather uninspired by the loads of people still milling about. I got a good photo of the Sierra Nevada, but that was about it. I thought that time of day would be gorgeous, but nothing was right – the angle of the sun was even annoying me. Maybe it is more spectacular if I would actually buy a ticket to go into the sights, which I plan on doing, just not today.

I then walked back here and now am sitting on the terrace drinking a bottle of red wine to myself and enjoying the evening. It’s already 8:30 and the sun just started to peak behind the horizon. If you’ve gotten to this point, I thank you for reading all the way through my laundry adventure. Talk to you all soon. Lots of love, hugs and kisses!