Spanish Bride (don´t be alarmed, its not me)

My friends Isabel & Domingo got married a couple of weeks ago so I thought I´d post a pic of the lovely pair! Stunning! The wedding was beautiful, held in a golf club just outside of Sevilla. It started at 7.30pm, I left at 5am and I was one of the first! The Spanish don´t sleep! They also don´t pay attention to the "don´t mix your drinks rule" Hordourves served on the terrace with glasses of sherry, entrees served with white wine, mains served with red wine, dessert served with champagne, dancing with open bar of your choice of spirits, understandably 4 rums later and its no suprise I lost my phone (found it next day) and I lost my keycard (found it at 6.30am in a very usual place that I swear had nothing to do with me). Rum is a real memory killer let me tell you that. should stick to Vodka, you get a nasty headache but at least you don´t forget where you are!

Olé Olé Olé

So the Feria has past, a grand event for Sevilla. It goes on for 1 week, starting on Monday night for the alumbrado which is at midnight when the 1000s of lights of the puerta, the big entrance are lit (turned on we have electricity now!) and then all the lights in the streets. It continues till the following Sunday, all day and all night, only dead from about 6am till 11am. During the day the streets are filled with horses that look like the ones at “El Caballo Blanco” (any sydneysiders who lived through the 80s can´t forget that) and glamorous men riding them, dressed up in Córdobes costume sometimes carrying woman in flamenco dresses riding side saddled on the back. Inside the casetas, there is live Sevillanas bands, (the only music to be played at feria!) lots of drinking, eating and dancing the typical sevillanas that goes with the music. Literally the whole city gets into it. The streets are dead. ALL of the shops and offices close from lunchtime and most workplaces give you 1 or 2 days of to go there all day. That’s if they are open at all, lots of places just shut down for the whole week. And most women dress up in flamenco dresses. The beautiful colours of the dresses through the Feria are amazing. I chose red for mine, it was too overwhelming to chose a colour so I decided on a classic style & colour. But walking through the feria I just couldn´t stop looking at all the dresses. “Oooh I like PURPLE!”….”Oooooh Look at that orange & green one!!”” “look at that girls comb/frills/sleeves /” etc etc. It was endless! Now I fully understand why most girls from here have more than one flamenco dress!

So…..I present to you…..Kristy in her brand new, very own, made by Marcos´s Mum, Flamenco Dress!!!!!!!!

Marcos took about 1 million photos of me including one on the toilet (“Oooh look how cute you are on the toilet in your dress”) which is not going to see the light of day. It feels great to wear cause it fits me like a glove and the frills swish when I walk. And swish overtime when I dance & spin! Love a good swish.



In these photos I am posing in the courtyard of my new place, it has lots of plants which is nice.

I got into a bit of dancing this year again, there are particular steps to follow but if you are dancing with someone who knows what they are doing, and they warn you when to spin you can pretty much wing it. Each Sevillanas song has 4 parts, each of which has a different little routine to do. People that join in half way never know which part your up to and I must´ve fooled one little girl (no more than 8) who asked ME where we were at in the dance. HELLO didn´t you see me spinning the wrong way before. I´m LOST! I can barely tell the differece between the 4 parts only that in the 4th part there is a hell of a lot of spinning and isn´t recommended after a 2 jugs of rebujito (sherry). However, the end of each part (4 parts to each song) is very dramatic, you spin, throw your hand into the air and yell ole (ok maybe I am the only one that yells ole) and it finishes on a particular beat, one which I ALWAYS manage to miss, probably due to my tone deafness, I end up yelling Ole 10 seconds after everyone else. The spanish love to see a foreigner giving sevillanas a go and I was being passed around from one fancy footed spanish guy to the next.

Well it was great fun and the rebujito (sherry) hangovers were well worth it. I´ll be pondering around the house in my dress methinks, definately can´t wait till next year to wear it!!

xxxx

Olé

Here is a typical shot of Feria, glamorous women ride around on horses and the little striped top houses you can see behind are the casetas. Not everyone gets dressed up but it is very common to do so, and so much fun! Ole!

Marcos´s mother made me a flamenco dress for this years Feria !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The dress is pretty much finished except for a few touch ups and I am so excited!!!!!!!!! Its BEWDIFUL!!!! For those who don´t know what the feria is, the word feria means “fair” so its like a town fair. There is one part with your typical rides, money sucking games and fairy floss but you don´t have to go to that part. The other part, which is full of “casetas” little houses. Which actually look like little houses. They are decorated in “feria” style and like a house they are all private. You have to know someone who is a member, (or know someone who knows someone!) of one to enter. Fortunately if you are here a while you will always be invited by workmates, friends etc. Inside, they are set out like a bar, with a dancing area and lots of tables, you can eat & drink The typical drink is manzanilla which is a white sherry, this is pretty hardcore by itself so its usually mixed with lemonade, this mixed is called “rebujito” and served in platic shot type glasses. It seems to be the only time the spanish folk feel in the mood to get wasted so there is lots of drinking and lots of dancing “sevillanas”

So I´ve got the dress. I am just going to give you a sneaky peak cause you can´t see it in full until I have the mantoncilla & peineta in place (scarf and hair thing) not to mention the humongous flower that gets propped right on the top of the head. So when I am ready for Feria I will post more pics. I´ve gone classic, with the red colour and spots! Thought it only fair for my first one!

Moving Day

So we moved out of palace number 1 and into palace number 2. We signed the lease on the same day as we moved in (and out of the other place) so things were a bit hairy. We had been looking for a new place to live for quite a few months after our landlord decided to increase the rent by 100 euros a month. Looking for a place to live was an absolute nightmare. We saw literally about 40 places. It was amazing some of the places people were trying to rent for outrageous prices. We finally got something nice, albeit small (50m2). 1 bedroom, basic furniture, small private interior patio in a good area of town at an acceptable price for what it is…however we saw some doozy´s. One place looked like the hostal room in that movie “The Beach” in Thailand where that guy kills himself, one had a kitchen that consisted of a sink with 1 single hotplate plugged into the wall sitting on the stainless steel part of the sink. That’s IT. (god knows where you´d put the cereal in your underwear draw maybe?) The fridge was in the hallway and the washing machine in the bathroom. One place had this ingenous (aka HIDEOUS) wall unit, to put the wedding cristal I suppose, but look here, looky what we have, no its NOT a wall unit, pull out this draw and it’s the BED. The bed pulled out of the wall unit in the loungeroom!!! Then in the bathroom, the bidet (god in 25m2 why the HELL would you put in a bidet!) was INSIDE the shower! Marcos exclaimed to the lady who showed us “Wow, that’s um…interesting” and she said “yes the tiles are very unusual.” SHE THOUGHT HE WAS TALKING ABOUT THE TILES!!!!! He said “no, um I mean how the bidet is INSIDE the shower.” The worst part I suppose was the hideous furniture. I mean I don´t mean to be picky (I am) but most of the places looked like Grandma had died and they decided to leave it as a shrine to her. Complete with huge pictures of Jesus over the bed. No amount of Ikea shopping could cover that shit up. OK so maybe we were a bit picky. Marcos did refuse a place cause he thought the landlords teeth were scary. (They were!!)

ANYWAY, so we got this new place, signed up and moved in the same day. It was a perfect day for a move NOT. Domingo de Ramos. (Palm Sunday) The first day of Seville´s Holy week. The day is known for people to get really dressed up and for the woman to wear new dresses for the first time. The processions start passing through the streets and it is literally IMPOSSIBLE to get through. But of course we had to get through. No choice there. No cars allowed, so I fluttered my eyelids and convinced the manager of the local supermarket to let me borrow two shopping trolleys. There was no time to shower and we proceeded to move through the crowds with the shopping trolleys looking very much like gypsies that had just robbed a house. (well that how everyone was looking at us anyway) Imagine, Mardi Gras. and trying to move house from one side of Oxford street to the other. Its kinda like that, but instead of floats with men in leather pants with the ass cut out the floats are of Jesus.
The pics are stolen from the blog of my friend Sarah, who explains the whole idea of Holy Week much better than I could. Its one of the processions going past during the day. There is music played from a band that follows and the float is carried but a whole heap of men hidden underneath. The floats are heavy! And the men are strong! The move in unison taking little steps and with the music the floats look they they are swaying and dancing themselves.
Here is a pic from Sarah´s blog of the costaleros (the name of the men that carry) practising in the street (they train all year)

Tarjeta de Residencia!!! Yipppeeee!!!

First things first - I AM LEGAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes it is all very exciting. After 1 ½ years of waiting, papers, money, papers, papers and more money. Its FINALLY been approved. It ALMOST didn´t happen. After losing my job, then getting a new one just 3 days before the papers from australia were meant to be handed in I was told that due to the new job – I had to re-apply. After a wee 5 hours waiting time each day for about 4 days, it was sorted out, and then after 1 ½ months….THE CARD! Oh The Joy!!!! The Joy!!!!! Now I don´t have to hide from police! Now I can go to the doctors! Now I can rent DVDs!!!! Now I can TRAVEL without threat of incarceration!!!!! I have been wearing it around like the prize it is as you can see in the pic.

Here is a pic of some of my fellow workmates. The guy is Juan Luis but everyone calls him JuanLu. If you say his name in a really aussie accent (which I do I´m no good at J´s) his name sounds like one loo. I told him this and he is very proud. He has beers at lunchtime. He would be a good aussie. Darked haired chica is Macarena, any cries of eeeeehhhh Macarena oh! are frowned upon – understandably so. Spain is very embaressed about that song. Macarena eats as much as I do. Curly haired chica is Reyes which means “Kings” She is a spanish version of Edwina Gould with the same laugh and everything. She has beers after the gym. she would be a good aussie too. In the pic she is being choked by the others with my furry scarf. They all ride bikes to work like me.

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