***The picture is of Andy, (my friend from the states) one of his english students Juan, Kirstyn and then me. We went out of the city and hiked the mountains about an hour N. of Madrid.***
OK, a lot has happened in the last two weeks since arriving in Madrid. I will try to give a brief update on some of it so that you guys feel that you are right here in the action with us… well maybe not that much information, but enough too know a little bit about our highs and lows.
First—Like I mentioned in the last post, we do have “real” jobs working at a bank here in Madrid. Kristyn and I will be teaching English 4 days a week 3 hours a day. The nice thing is that we both work in the same building and we don’t have to travel all over the place to find out students. The bank supplies the rooms, the students and the resources. Are job is just to provide conversational English for each class during their one hour with us. Also, we will have no more then 8 students at a time. The hard part is that each hour we will have a different “level” of English Speakers. This means we will have to provide three different lessons a day. I think the first few weeks could be tough but once we get the hang of it everything should work out just fine. The other bad thing is that we have to travel 1 hour each way to and from the bank. It definitely isn’t the worst thing in the world but that does take more time away from us, and that in the end is not good!
Overall we are both very excited to get going and figure out how this is going to work.
Another piece of new is that I started my first private lessons last night. I am working with two scientists…that is right my friends, SCIENTISTS. They work in a laboratory and do all kinds of tests to find cures for things. It is actually really cool. The IQ’s of these two people blows me out of the water. They are both really cool and nice but the guy looks like Vladimir Putin, which I think is really funny! The first lesson went well I think, or at least well enough for them to schedule a second lesson and that is what really matters J
Other news:
Kristyn and I just signed up for a tourist bank account today. We had to run all over the place and get paper work saying this and that. Then we had to try and figure out what the heck the banker was talking about. It was kind of crazy and stressful. Just imagine two people that don’t look much older than 12 sitting down with our Spanish/English dictionary trying to talk interest rates and monthly balance charges. I am sure that banker new she was in for a long day when we both just kept smiling after all of her questions. To be honest Kristyn really did do a good job working on her Spanish…it was I who had no idea what was going on. Something that I am getting very use to while over here J
Next on our list is to try to set up a landline and then get Internet. Both of these will be tough, especially because we just learned that my buddy Andy (the one who helped us get there and line everything up) is going to be moving to Brussels with his wife. So, soon we will lose them as our safety net and have to do everything on our own. I know it will probably be good for us, but nonetheless it will be sad to see them go.
Ok that is all for now. I hope everyone feels caught up a little on what is going on. Let us know if you have any other questions and feel free to e-mail us. We will get back to you as soon as we can.
Until next time,
Chao
