I am smarter than I think...well maybe.

So it has been brought to my attention that I actually spelt "ninth" correctly and the stupid english teacher at the spanish school of my student has no idea! I really doubted my grasp of the english language quickly now didn´t I!

However did everyone know that "12th was spelt twelfth??????????? I was spelling it twelvth! OK now that I write it, it looks stupid but how the hell do you say twelfth??? Its really hard, the spanish students are not coping with that tongue twister of a word.

We are now looking for a new piso (apartment/flat) and Marcos has re-named me Victoria Beckham cause he reckons that I am a princess and only want to live in a mansion, as I have ruled out many a scabies infested flat in the first 30 seconds of seeing tit. Although yesterday we saw a flat (also scabies infected) and before we even walked in the door Marcos said - about the landlord "oh my god this guy has rotting teeth, we are so NOT getting this flat he could murder us." So he is ruling flats out on account of the state of the landlords teeth, no wonder we are having trouble finding something!

So the search continues. Wish me luck.

LIFE UPDATES

After not hearing a single peep from any of my applications from the past few months, on the day I arrived back in Spain I had 3 interviews. Very exciting but revisiting the nightmare that is a job interview in spanish. I do it anyway - always a fun story to tell when you make a fool of yourself. The first one I wore my recently deemed "lucky" 2 for the price of one pair of "leather" shoes I bought in Chinatown, Sydney. Lucky indeed, those dodgy plastic, don«t go near an open flame, shoes rip your feet up and leave you unable to walk. I was so nervous during the interview that I was breathing way to fast to be normal and could barely speak without sounding out of breath.... They asked me what I could "offer" them but used a strange word for offer that I had not yet heard so I had to say I didn«t understand..."Please explain" I came in with an "I can firstly offer fluent english ha ha ha, cause clearly spanish is not my strong point." Very smooth interview manner KP. Anyway.....then the freaks CALLED ME BACK FOR A SECOND INTERVIEW....freaks!!!!! I mean - I would so NOT hire me! Second interview went swimmingly, after an extended unemployed lunch at one of the americans house and feeling the confidence that only a couple of glasses of chardonnay can bring, I charmed the pants of the boss, made a few jokes, one of them being that he was a typical spanish male which thankfully he laughed at - that could of gone very wrong indeed. Unfortunately the pay was shit and I had my sights on another job in a HUGE company that even has their own human resources department, a rare thing in my working life. So good news - Got the job! After three painstaking interviews and a "test" that involved designing a fake car ad. In the test I misread a word in the instructions and made a complete fool of myself ..... Tell me people, without a spanish/english dictionary, what the hell do you think the word "silhouetado" would mean???????????????????????????? And then if I tell you that in spanish, an "ado" on the end of a word is like the "ed" on the end of an english word.......Thats right SILHOUETTED. So of course I did some lovely silhouettes of cars in my ad and when presenting my creation to the boss I am met with an "Um. Where are the cars???????" Supposedly silhouetado DOES NOT MEAN SILHOUETTED - keep that in your memory for later eh.

So anyway, the good news is that I got the job, I can«t start yet though cause it has bought o MORE visa dramas and I have spent the past 5 days at the foreign office here. There are no words to explain the mad house that is the foreign office - It opens at 9am and people start lining up at god knows what time, I arrived at 7.30am and there were already hundreds of people there. All I had to do was ask a question at the information part. You have to line up to get a number to then wait to be called. I got seen at midday. Thats a good 5 hours waiting to ask a question. There are hundreds of rowdy Romanians as they have recently joined the EU and they form their own line. Police get called cause there are punch ups, they scream and shout and one romanian entrepeneur woman sells coffee and sandwiches! One day I arrived at 9am (opening) and didn«t get seen till 2.30pm. The foreign office toys with your emotions and I hate it.

So in the meantime, apart from enjoying being unemployed I have taken on a few english classes to pay for my extravagent tapas lifestyle. I AM COMPLETELY SHIT AT TEACHING ENGLISH AND DURING EACH CLASS IT IS EVIDENT THAT ITS A MIRACLE I EVEN KNOW HOW TO STRING A SENTENCE TOGETHER. They ask me questions I can«t even answer. For example. What is the difference between they and them????? Who the hell knows that????? I pretend that I know the answer but I don«t know how to explain it in spanish - I am getting away with the farce so far. One of my students asked me to go over the forms of the verb "have" I mean I REALLY STRUGGLED. I have, you have, she/he HAS - oooh TRICKY!!!!!! I had, you had, she/he had all the same YAY! One of my students got a red mark in her book at her school cause I taught her how to spell "nineth" incorrectly. I spelt it ninth!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am going straight to teacher fraud HELL!
It was quite funny last week, one of my students, a mother of about 40, was trying to say "sitting" but she kept on saying "shitting" it was really funny, she was saying, "he is shitting at the bus stop" I let her say it a few times before I corrected her then I told her what she was saying!

So the good thing about this job is....30 days a year holiday! Hoorah! Thats heaps! i am almost a bludging school teacher!!!! and I don«t have to take them all in August like most people here so bring on the holidays!!!! So if anyone wants to come to visit I am more available to take an exciting side trip! Yippeeee!!!!

OK Much Love to All!
Kristy

HAVE I EVEN BEEN TO AUSTRALIA????

So I am back from OZ, and it kinda doesn´t even feel like I went it went so damn fast. Lots to do every single day although there was lots I didn´t get to do and lots of people I didn´t get to see, or see properly. I was an absolute time nazi instructing Marcos how many hours/minutes/seconds he had to see whatever particular thing then we were off to the next thing. What was good to know however was that all the people I love still remain the same as did our relationships and I could happily slip back into my old life the same albeit with a few more spanish swear words under my belt. Marcos has confirmed that he will definately go to OZ to live in the near future which is great although if he said he wouldn´t I would just have to slap him around the chops a bit till he agreed.

Oh shit the balls gone over the fence, bit of aussie backyard ballgames.

Xmas Day Morning tucking into some champers with Jodes in our jammies - straight from the bottle.... pure class

Watching a spectacular storm come over the blue mountains.

Bit of palm tree swinging action in the Royal National Park.

Marcos making friends with some cutey little skippy. I told Marcos if it was a big red it would have ripped his eyes out.

Welcome to earth cute little happy alien!

My friends Tula & Mark just had a baby. They named him Zac. He is very newborn, very cute and very alien like. But look....he is smiling, I am sure at this age a smile like that usually is followed by a fart or poo but lets not talk about that, lets just talk about happy things, the wonders of life and why this baby has so much damn hair!

New Pink Shoes

here is a picture of my new running shoes. I think it the first pair of real sport shoes I`ve had since i was about 12, and I think they were the brand "apple pie" god I loved those shoes.

Being a runner can be confusing for my image. Today I said to Marcos "I feel like a rum" and he said "OK lets go, get your shoes on" "No, not a RUN", I said, "RUM" He was slightly disappointed at the mis-directed enthusiasm. Rum is the new Vodka, don`t worry, not the bundy rum type of stuff, more like a sweet Cuban Rum called Legendario, that is steeling my heart away from my 10 year vodka relationship.

I taught Marcos a new word the other day, slightly made up by me and one that is bringing a cold sweat to his mothers brow. Its.. "clean dirty" Its basically when something comes out of the dishwasher with some hardened unknown substance, you can´t actually say that its still dirty cause the "dirty" has theoretically been cleaned by the dishwasher so surely any germs have been fought. Therefore although the item is dirty, its actually clean dirty and can still be used without worry of contamination or infection. Thats my opinion anyway, Marcos was disgusted at first but now the term is really catching on.

Exactly 1 month to go till I´m coming home.... Yipppeeeee!!!!!

Farewell (soon) Palacio

Well I am still living in my apartment...not for long though. We were supposed to move out cause the landlords girlfriend got a job in Sevilla. The landlord keeps a "zulu" next to our apartment, which is basically a box room with a bed & bathroom, which he uses when he is in town. So the girlfriend was staying in that until we moved out.... THEN plans changed the day she told her boss "que te jodas" which is a friendly "go f*ck yourself". Understandably she lost her job. So after that we were told we didn´t have to rush so much to move out. We have decided to stay till we leave for OZ (1 month aaargh!!!!!!!) Here is a little pic of the traditional andalucian courtyard that is outside my front door. I sit in here with a little chair to steal internet from someone in the building... Its very pretty and I will miss it when we go.... Farewell Palacio....

Las Americanas

So I joined this "american womens group of Seville" not long ago, at the encouragement of my american friend sarah, its also open to non americans (there is another older Australian from melbourne!), anyone who can speak english, it was just started many years ago by the wives of american army men stationed at Rota. So Sarah also started a spinoff to this group for all the "youngens" in the club and the plan is to meet up once in a while for a big pissup and a good ol time. Thats what sold me, methinks.

So all the younger girls are American, and we are a poster group for the "learning spanish in sevilla" epidemic. All of us came here to learn spanish and all of us now have long term spanish boyfriends/husbands. Actually most of the girl are married, and have been for a while, mainly to avoid the hideous visa/illegal process & associated problems. So we all went out to a few bars in the part of Sevilla called "Triana" drank heaps, ate heaps and had a jolly good ol time. Here is a pic of a few of the girls and me (am eating a montadito . sorry!)

From left to right its Isa, ME!, Hoye, Sarah (the organiser), Amy and Kristen. You can see in front of us there is a keg thing on a table, in this bar each table can pour their own beers, its measured electronically and you pay at the end. there is a screen on the wall that tells you how much you, and all the other tables have had, so you can race other tables. I commented that you could never have this system in OZ cause we would drink like $2000 worth of beer, un-knowingly and then go - shit I don´t have that much money.... it would be very dongerous.

So Marcos just got back from a boys holiday in Sweden, here is a pic of the little hottie diving into sub zero temperature water like the psycho he is. He´ll do anything for a good shot.