Ruth in Spain!: First week 'on the job' 1st

Well, hello/hola/kaixo, (am learning some Basque) - once again it's been a while . After my last entry about moving out of the hotel I kind of got caught up with just getting on with being here. I'd forgotten how hard and tiring it is at the beginning of being in a completely new place. Not quite as tough as when I first went to Zaragoza because this time some things are familiar - siesta time when everything is shut; the food, more or less; the Spanish language, more on that later because added to the mix is the Basque language; and cars coming at me from the 'other side' of the road at crossings. Of course, the fact that Barry is staying and not disappearing back to NZ makes a huge difference. How brave I am now to go into bars/cafes etc with him with me. Whew - it's just a piece of cake!

And so, on with the story. Going back to the first week of October because on October 1st I started 'work'. Well, I was at school only on Tuesday 1st because on Wednesday Barry and I went with my teacher 'buddy', Maitene, to Vitoria for the official welcome to the conversation assistants in the Basque Country. It was a very low key affair, mostly in Spanish - some I understood and a lot I didn't. The best part was when an Australian guy, been here for a couple of years, spoke about living in the Basque Country and some aspects of the culture from a foreigners view point. It wasn't so much what he said but that his Spanish was as slow as the Ozzie drawl so a lot of us, with low levels of Spanish language ability understood him. We met a Kiwi from Hawera who is at a school in a nearby town, the name of which I don't remember.

On The 2nd and 3rd we were at the induction in Barakaldo, very near Bilbao. We stayed the night in Bilbao because getting from Azpeitia to Barakaldo was a bit of a mission mostly because we managed to get off the bus at the wrong stop in the town, Eibar, where we had to change buses. We were supposed to catch one bus to Eibar, change to another one to go to Bilbao, onto the underground to Barakaldo. All seemed very simple when we set out but NO it wasn't, not because the directions given to us were faulty but because we mucked it up. It was only that a couple of people picked up from what we were saying to each other that we were waiting for a bus to go to Bilbao and managed to tell us, using Spanish that I understood,(oh the relief) that we had to go somewhere else about 20 minutes walk away. We didn't have 20 minutes but fortunately there was a bar/ cafe right there so I girded my loins, took a deep breath, went in and asked, in Spanish, if we could get a taxi. Lo and behold I was understood and a taxi was ordered. It took a few minutes to arrive and the bus had left by the time we got there. So then it was a round and round Spanish chat with one of the bus drivers about when the next bus left, that it went all around the place and took hours to get to Bilbao but there was the option of the train and where we had to go to get it. By this time we'd been joined by an elderly lady who had also missed the bus. We, the 3 of us, decided to head for the train which was quite close but had to ask a policeman, the only other person in the street, how to get into the train station because all we could see was a wall with the station on the other side and the option of going left or right. I couldn't be bothered with deciding which would be the right way to go when none of us had any idea hence talking to the police. Another successful mission with Spanish completed and we had the directions and got into the station without wasting time, got our tickets and very soon along came the train and about 1/12 hours or so later we were in Bilbao. We then had to find our way to the Metro and once again it was a Spanish language practice session getting directions but we got there and onto the metro and to the venue in Barakaldo in time for the start.

The induction was ok apart from having to sit, for what seemed like ages, listening to a guy from the American Embassy arrogantly assume that he was talking to a room full of Americans who all needed to be told, not just once, that the American Embassy is there to protect its citizens and then to tell us all how to behave in a foreign country to be safe!! Sounded like he was everyones parent before the kids left home, home of course being America. And he referred to this foreign country as Spain when everyone knows that we have to call it The Basque Country. Respect is everything. grrrrrrrr

I did meet a couple more kiwis, one from Invercargill and one from Auckland. The workshops were ok though I mostly found myself wondering how the suggested classroom activities would possibly work in classrooms with 25 - 30 students. I got to hear a lot of Spanish though, some of which I understood. Actually, a lot more than this time last year YAY.

After it ended for the day we made our way to Bilbao and went through another exercise in asking for, and understanding, directions in Spanish to find our way to our hotel. Our budget room - well, we had to laugh. It had all we needed for a night however it looked out at the motorway, a close-up view, not a distant on the horizon view. In reality it passed by our window so we had to make a decision on whether we slept in a hot but quiet room or a noisy but cool room. From memory, it was some of both and all too soon we had to be up and away back to Barakaldo for the final induction morning which was ok. While I was there Barry explored the area, mostly the bar/cafe places, I think.

After it all finished the organisers put on a bit of a talk and pictures about The Basque Country along with red wine with coca cola and an ice cube added. This drink has a name but I don't remember it. Barry was able to come to this and when he said no to the drink because of the coca cola, type 1 diabetes and coca cola are not a good mix, and not being allowed to miss out he got given his straight. He was happy.

After it finished we had a great time chatting with a couple of the Kiwis in a nearby bar until it was time to make the trek back to Azpeitia. Going back was rather simpler than the other way. Just 2 buses and a couple of hours and we were back in Azpeitia. The kiwi we met in Vitoria came back with us because she is staying with a teacher who is from Azpeitia and has family here. This teacher met the 3 of us here and then took us around showing us helpful things like where to go to put money on my phone, surprise surprise - not so simple as in NZ; where to get passport photos taken - need these for my NIE and our intercity bus cards; plus another couple of bars/eating places. All useful stuff and we were really grateful to her. They dropped us at our hotel on their way back to their town that was that. It was an interesting couple of days and my Spanish language speaking has certainly improved.

We will return to Bilbao for a longer visit and do the tourist stuff. We did wander around and really liked the feel of the city, we saw the Guggenheim Museum but didn't go inside. I thought that the building is quite harsh, looks like corrugated iron with nothing to soften it, Barry really liked it and we're both keen to go in for a look. Here's some photos of Bilbao