¿Donde Estan Los Ladrones?

For those of you who don´t speak spanish, that means "where are the thieves?" Well, i´ll tell you, they are running around with my wallet and causing some difficulty in my life.
There are signs all over the internet cafés, warning people that thieves operate in this zone (literal translation). I am always so careful, and i thought I was being careful on Sat. when i came in here, but I guess not careful enough. Instead of holding my stuff on my lap, like usual, I put my bag under my chair, attached to my chair and my LEG. In the 15 minutes that I was checking my email, before I went on to do my business (banking, etc, for which I needed my purse) they crawled under my table and chair, unzipped my bag, took out my purse and ran off. All while it was attached to me! (good it was or i would have lost my house keys and phone too, when they ran off w- my whole bag). I usually don´t carry my credit and ATM cards with me just for that reason, but I put them in that day to do my accounting.
Well, as you can imagine I went sheet white, running down the street, ready to prosecute any suspicious character. But of course, it was all in vain. When I tried to call my boyfriend, Corbin, back in the states, to get help (waking him up in the middle of the night), the operator wouldn´t let me call that number collect. Well, I told her what I thought. "I´m sorry ma´am, there is nothing I can do. Can I help you with another call?" I wasn´t very nice. So I ran all the way home with my backpack and sandles, like Lola, from "Run, Lola, Run" and got home in time to deal with this all before they started spending money from my account.
Corbin, of course, came to my rescue and gave me bank numbers and such. I called and cancelled all my accounts. In the end I only lost $80 cash, my driver´s license, my jamba juice card :( and some misc. stuff. It is a total hastel, and for those who don´t know, my purse was stolen out of my car in Santa Cruz in July so i just went through this ordeal. But I guess the bright side is that I am getting good at the process.
The worst part is that I have to find a new place to live in the next 3 days and with no money, it is hard to convince anyone to rent to me...especially in my broken spanish, but I´ll figure it out. And I´m building character... I think.

On a lighter note, I got my unicycle shipped over here (thanks, honey) and I have been loving the obstacle course of riding through the city at rush hour, through all the busy people walking to work and the mad taxi drivers. It has been great.

Ok, off to see where I can get money wired to me...wish me luck.

Too Little Time

I feel like I am always running these days, but those of you who really know me, know that generally, when I am really satisfied, that is the way my life is going.
The TEFL course that I am taking is 2/3 over and it just gets more and more intense. It is nice to be learning and see improvement in my teaching. All the students are like one big happy family now. We are all usually at school for 12+ hours a day, stressing out together, fighting over the computers and trying to figure out the photocopier. It is fun to watch everyone grow as a teacher, and each major project we finish and turn in calls for a beer (although I often bail out on the offer in order to sleep and try to get a workout in the next morning).

Speaking of working out, I have decided to take the apprenticeship with Firefly Dance Co. in NYC starting in January. That puts a slight shift on everything around here. First of all, I want to not only stay in shape, but get into better shape so when I start training many hours a day, I won´t end up hating it or worse, injured. Also, the knowledge that I am only here for another 2 months and not some indefinite length of time changes the way I see everything. I need to decide if I want to stay in Barcelona after the course ends in 10 days or if I should move elsewhere. I have made some friends here, but no one I´m really attached to. I have a couple people I´ve made plans to do an english/spanish conversation practice exchange with, and I don´t really want to leave that, but I could find that again fairly easily, I think, cuz there are tons of people here that study english and want native speakers to practice with.
Housing here is expensive and there aren´t really jobs for Americans like there are for EU folks, and even those are hard to come by because there is so much competition. If I can´t find work and I am just going to study spanish, paying city prices is kind of ridiculous, but moving again is a pain and staying in a hotel while i get myself situated again is also a cost i have to take into account.
It´s all so tricky, and my plan to stay for 3 months now seems silly because this extra 7 weeks after the course is a long time but not really long enough to get a job and support myself.
If anyone has advice or info or encouraging words, feel free to email me or put comments on my blog page.

As far as interesting things, I went to the First Annual Barcelona Contact Improvisation Festival last weekend and it was nice. I met some great people and apparently there is a pretty happening CI scene in Barcelona. (For those of you unfamiliar, contact improv is a dance/movement form that can´t be explained and has to be experienced). It took place in this beautiful place just outside of the city, and we could look out the window, through the beautiful mountains at Barcelona and see the Meditteranean beyond, glowing at sunset. It was beautiful. The people that lived in this place didn´t own it, but were just "squatting" (staying there illegally) and were almost totally self-sustaining, growing their own food and creating space for community activities. About 25 people lived there and it was amazing. Quite a nice old, 3-story building that i think used to be part of an old hospital or something. It was a memorable experience, although there were moments when I felt really out-of-place. I think that is normal with all new people, new customs and languages.

I´m starting to be really convinced about this whole global warming thing. I´ve been reading some articles and it has been raining here like never before, flooding in some places and after the latest "natural" disasters in the states and other places...we are really messing up this planet. There was just an article today in The Guardian about Antartica and the temperature change down there, and how if every year the ice melts a little, it warms the whole planet up and causes a chain reaction because we need the ice to reflect the sun, or it´ll just keep getting hotter, and melt more ice and have less ice to reflect the sun....and you can see where that is leading. We´re in deep shit, I think.

So the moral of the story is, make the most of today, and don´t take your friends for granted. I think those are the lessons I´m learning.

I think that is all for now. It seems I am usually tired and running and every phone card I buy to call you guys back home has a problem. If you want my cell number, email me and i´ll send it to you. I´ll be back in the states for xmas and then I move to NY dec. 30, 2005. Crazy.


Much love,
Louise

Half way done

The TEFL course I´m taking is proving to be more time consuming than I had originally anticipated. I was warned that it was intense, and although difficult it isn´t, there is a lot of work and keeping up on the tasks is important.

So far I have learned a ton and am really glad I am doing this. When it will come in useful, I am not quite sure, as I have decided to move to NYC in January, but I´m sure at some point it will. I will probably be living over seas again after my one year contract with Firefly Dance Co. ends in Dec. of 2006.

As for adventures around here as of late, there haven´t been many. I´ve been the nerdy student I always am when I am in school. And I have been grateful, too, when other students stumble in 2 hours late and still drunk.

For one of our projects we are supposed to interview a English student (a local that takes english classes here--they are the people we practice on and they pay only 1 Euro/hour for classes). Well, this project is a one-on-one teaching project (to learn to do private lessons). The guy I got just so happens to be a native of Argentina and is also an actor and comedian. Well, I am thrilled to have something in common with him. He was telling me about a circus/theatre company in from Amsterdam for the week. So Wed. night we planned to meet and go to a show. (I called him up and just straight up invited myself--can´t be shy when you are low on time). Well, I hadn´t heard from him by 9:30 and the show was at 10pm, so I went home because I didn´t have directions to the place. I was feeling sort of depressed and lonely. Just as I was brushing my teeth and getting ready for bed, I got a text message from him saying he´d be late and he´d sent directions to get there. Well, I made myself leave the house again and go be social. Unfortunately, it was POURING rain. (There have been articles in the paper about how they haven´t had this much rain in one day in 100 years<---bad translation from spanish to english). And the worst part was that this was mostly an outdoor festival (with no circus but lots of music and theatre). Well, I stayed for awhile until my stomach ache got so bad I could hardly stand (they´ve been really acting up lately, :( as well as a return of headaches). And I never found this guy (can´t blame him for not going out in that weather)...but I wasn´t going to let it get me down, so I sang¨"I´m singing in the rain" all the way to the metro station. When I got home to my door (really the door to the unit I live in and I live upstairs 4 flights up) there was this couple standing in the doorway saying their sweet goodbyes. They looked rather frightened when a wet rat in a red coat showed up.
That was my only attempt to go out this week.
But tonight starts the First Annual Barcelona Contact Improvization Festival, so I am off to go get wet on this camping/dance event. More on that later.

Cheers to all. Much love and I miss you guys. I was looking at some pictures of S.F. on someone´s computer yesterday and I got very homesick.
And good news--Corbin is coming to visit me here for Thanksgiving. Happy day!!!

Through the glass door

Well, the first week at school was madness. There is so much work in this program , but nothing could compare to the madness of music school. It is very thorough work and I like learning again.
The other students (14 total) are all wonderful, all from the US, UK and Australia.

Last night was the first night we all went out together with all 14 of us. A big first friday celebration that went crazy. We went to a restaurant that was owned by the host person of one of the students, Dan. We all met and walked down there. The food was good, good wine and we talked and talked and it was fabulous to really communicate with other traveling and like-mined people.
Unfortunately, towards the end, Dan thought the door was open, but really, in his drunken state, he didn´t see the glass and walked right through it. A loud crash silenced the room and there was blood dripping everywhere. He ended up being quite lucky and only cutting his hand and leg. He was being drunk though, and refused to get into the ambulance and it was wild. Finally, 5 of us walked to the hospital and waited while he got stitched up. Finally, at 5am, the adventure ended, but it was rather wild,

More later,
my computer time is up.

Decisions

So now that there are pictures posted of my aerial stuff (thanks to my computer savy boyfriend--i tried to post pictures myself and failed), those of you who have never seen an aerial silk performance will have an idea of what i am talking about.

So my latest decision is this:
To stay in Barcelona, now that i am finally here, or to move to NYC in January to work as an apprectice with Firefly Dance Co., training on aerial silks and learning other circus-type skills.

I attended circus school for 9 months after college, just on the side while also working full time. I worked hard and really loved it, wanting to continue, but I dropped out because it is very expensive and i prioritized moving to Europe. The irony, is that just weeks before finally moving here, while at Burning Man (a huge, week-long art festival), I started learning aerial silks. The classes were free and offered daily and I got really into it, attending everyday and getting to know the people in the company. We had a recital at the end of the week and i got lots of compliments and felt really good about it. I thought it was just for fun and I´d maybe pursue it later if I could find a teacher in Barcelona, when lo and behold, I was offered an apprenticeship in New York by the director, with whom I had been working at burningman. (all photos on this site were taken at Burning Man, most of them taken by some really wonderful Canadian photographer named Greg).

So I have only a couple more days to sign the contract or not.
Now it seems really simple. Free training in an amazing city full of opportunity? What am I waiting for? Well, I just got here, is one problem, after working and saving and planning and i don´t know if i´ll be ready to leave so soon, but the real problem lies elsewhere. Love is a powerful thing, and my boyfriend, Corbin, doesn´t want to live in NY, but is willing to move to Europe with me.
Can we last if I leave here for three months and then to NY for another year? Only time will tell, but I hope so.

So, I welcome all opinions on my situation. "She didn´t know, should she stay? should she go?" (and can you tell me what that is a quote from?)

Arial Silk

Picures taken at Burning Man by Greg during the Firefly Dance Company´s student recital.

Portrait on the Street

Hey all--

This is only my second morning waking up in Barcelona, but it feels like I´ve already been here a week.
Yesterday, I spent all day walking around, looking at things, trying to find my school that I will start attending on Monday (A school to get my TEFL certificate--Teaching English as a Foreign Language). I found the school, and walked forever to a bookstore to buy my books, a cell phone, find an outlet converter, and buy some bread and fruit, etc.
But things got interesting when I was sitting on a bench in a plaza, resting my feet, listening to my ipod and picking the seeds out of some very sweet, red grapes. A guy sat down next to me and asked to paint my portrait. Well, I know this money making scam, so I said I couldn´t pay anything. He told me (this was all happening in Spanish, mind you) that he was an art student and if I couldn´t pay, that was ok, he would just do it for practice and keep the drawing. So I agreed. We talked while he drew (charcoal portrait) and he was very nice. My spanish is broken, but we understood eachother. Before he left, he said he was going out that night with some of his friends from Ireland and asked if i wanted to go. Well, I don´t know what else I was going to do but continue to wander around alone, so we made plans to meet again at 9pm.

At 9:00, he was right there where he said he´d be. Now, just so you can be in the moment with me, he was wearing the same dirty jean, black t-shirt and backpack as that day, and he has a mullet, as does just about every young woman in this city. (What is with the serious layering of hair and thinning cuts?) We walked around and he showed me various plazas. We ate dinner on the patio at his art school and he was so patient with my spanish. I felt more confident every hour and was understanding more and more of what he said, when he spoke slowly.
We went to a bar called ¨"The Black Sheep" where we were supposed to meet his friends. Only one of them was there, and he was a riot, this guy. He kept trying to spout things off in English, as he told me about his 22 yr old girlfriend and her baby, and about the history of this and that.
We got on the metro and went to the outskirts of town to a smokey bar. Ok, so Irish or not,his friends were all a bunch of heavy metal kids, wearing dark clothes, black eye-liner and all the guys had long hair. They were drinking cheap beer and smoking and listening to ACDC and Metalica, and no one had an irish accent or even spoke English! I was amazed as I looked around and many of the surrounding tables had at least one member who would stand up and play their air guitar, mouth all the words and shake their hair around like a head-banger. I didn´t have the heart to tell them that was so uncool in most circles in the states.
Well, they all spoke Catalán, not Spanish, and definitely not english, so i was totally as a loss between the languages and the noise. Finally, the smoke was making my eyes water, and this guy I was with, Carlos, was very nice and took me outside. He asked if I was tired, and they all walked me the long walk back to my hotel.
It apparently was an early night for around here, as I was back to my hotel before 3am.
I am very appreciative for the tour and how kind and accepting they all were, especially with my poor communication skills in Spanish, but I am not quite sure if that was really my crowd of choice. Interesting, though.

Until tonight´s adventures, I am off to study for Monday´s classes, now that i finally have my books.