♫ rusowsky - Johnny Glamour (w/ Las Ketchup) ♫

rusowsky was born in Valladolid (I doubt if he'd claim much allegiance to here though). Great album, awesome tiny desk too. From the Madrid group rusia-idk.

Las Montañas

There are a few known ways of temporarily boosting your foreign language knowledge. One of them is alcohol (scientifically proven, see: Dutch Courage).

Another way is social pressure. I do this by BlaBlaCar, which is basically convenient hitchhiking. Living in Valladolid, I'm stationed in a terminus by which I can access Madrid, Cantabria, Asturias, even Galicia with relative ease by car. Train is possible, but also usually expensive. The bus is the usual option, but kind of lame. To take a BlaBlaCar means scheduling a trip with someone in advance, who picks you up to essentially share the fuel's cost. From my conversations with them, with the cost of fuel and public transport options, it's not a money-gaining venture. Spaniards take regular trips from city to city, for work and/or family, hoping to share the time and money with other travellers such as myself. With how European cities are tightly put together (as established by millennia of pre-globalisation civilisation and growth!), it's the perfect system. There is really no comparison to Uber either - drivers have never cancelled on me, and they've all so far been chatty, neighbourly, even with my broken Spanish. On my way back from Segovia, I was directed to a music conservatory to be picked up. Naturally, I asked - my driver was a composer, and massive fan of the opera. Instead of dropping me off normally, he left me at a a concert hall where a big concert was about to start. Now, I may have slightly exaggerated my musicianship, especially for expensive tickets like this, so I walked home instead. But I will never forget that Spaniard's intense passion for Rachmaninoff.

More recently returning from Astorga, the pick-up location was, strangely, a couple kilometres outside the main city, at 11:30pm on a Sunday (not even the wind moves in Spain then). I was to be at a service station which was, I soon realised, closed. It was penguin cold, very dark, and in the forest en route, I was trying to remember if wolves were around in Spanish countryside. Regardless, my driver was prompt and super friendly life raft, picking me up in his RGB Tesla with two others. Reflecting back, I would have been well out of ideas and phone battery if he had not arrived then. In these BlaBlaCar's, I'm usually with other Spanish speakers for 2 hours, or more. At this point in chat, one has progressed very far from the "Cómo Estás" and "Soy de Australia" lines. It tests you very much, and I pat myself on the back for lasting these trips with decent talk the whole time.

The THIRD option in Spanish knowledge acceleration is by adrenaline. To be honest, this one is less effective and more thrilling. At the snow this weekend, Manuel was teaching me how to use the toes (puntas) to snowboard backwards (hacia atrás!). One is supposed to look up, not down, to determine where you're going, and to relax your arms. But the key is to use your hips (caderas) to lean forward, and to flex your knees (flexiona las rodillas). Manuel is telling me these instructions while I'm trying to translate the words and the instructions simultaneously. He then tells me "now you're lonely!" which is a little too existential for my liking, before realising he is translating "ya estás solo" into English, more appropriately meaning "now you're by yourself" but then I fall. Later on, as I'm attempting to teach my friends who have never snowboarded, I'm trying to remember all the words for directions, and parts of the body. I get to watch my friend Laura head straight for the fence while I patiently ask myself how to say "use your heels" in Spanish. (It's 'usa tus talones'.) RIP Laura

Laura, Mi, Lucia, Nerea

I LOVE snowboarding I am VERY BAD at it

casi

Taking my jar of Vegemite to the club

My Vegemite is low and it's getting dark. Out of all my plentiful earthly pleasures, deprived of Vegemite I am weaker, more serious, lost at sea. No one likes it here, save for one German who gave it a 4.5 out of 10. A Swiss tried to convince me that their 'Cenovis' is superior, they are of course dramatically wrong, but it is better than Marmite. The Swiss version also comes in a colgate tube, like it's medicine, or something to be squeezed.

Teaching so far

To be honest, I've had it sunbathingly easy at work recently. Recently, I had one week with genuinely half of my classes cancelled or otherwise postponed. That's something like 7 hours of class time. I am of course, meant to be at the school preparing materials, and the infrequency of the classes leaves me at the school/travelling there for a lot more than 7 hours, but regardless it's a very easy time. When I feel little pressure from the teacher, the kids are more or less attentive, but also highly active, I have a killer time making a fool of myself and everyone else in the classroom. Fun = Learning

I still have trouble with one class. The class is really disruptive, the teacher is sporadic, clearly exhausted from the behaviour, and thus uninspiring. The 70's-constructed room itself has worse acoustics than a car park - every kid's gossip to another, every summoning of the '6-7' at the back of the room echoes around the room seven times. I've noticed that it can actually be physically painful to concentrate, to get a point across in that class. While it would be perfectly possible for me to sit back and actually just 'teach' passively, even dissociate - I always go in trying to begin again. It's simply too much time with an able group to waste away. The trouble is, even the teacher appears to be against me. At least, with whatever I'm trying, she does the opposite. Sometimes she is chatting to me, telling me something about Spain I usually know. I feign interest because I feel like this is a conversation we should be having with the kids. There are even times when, once we have fought for the attention of the class and they are silent, she will literally turn to me and just start chatting. Of course the kids are going to go back to their chaotic baseline then.

So it's an ongoing challenge. As as a teacher at the moment, I'm clearly liked (which is genuinely not hard if you show any interest in their lives at all), but not respected to full. I'm a fun person, even a role model to some, but I'm not even dramatically older than some of them, meaning I struggle controlling behaviour. Sometimes I need to remind myself that I can, actually tell them what to do. This is somewhat of a revelation, I've never really had this power before and I gotta be careful with it. Equipped with 20 crazy Spanish kids I could certainly rob a bank and blame it on their parents. Watch this space.

The best Spanish phrases, expressions, words gifted to me as of recent:

• ocho por el culo te la entocho (eight, shove it up your ass - except it rhymes)
• cinco por el culo te la hinco (similar story with the number five)
• estoy atope - I'm hyped, I'm fired up
• 'cual?' instead of 'que?' in Valladolid.
• *con esto y un bizcocho, hasta mañana a las ocho (*With this and a cake, until tomorrow at eight
• sér mas pesado que vaca en brazos (to be annoyed, literally "to be heavier than if you were carrying a cow in your arms")
• Si la luna es bonita, más bonita es el sol. Pero una mirada tuya no tiene comparación. (rhythmic pick-up line and heart-melter when said to my lovely co-workers)

The farmers were angry at the government/world this weekend, playing darude sandstorm with their horns through the middle of the city. Effective!!!