Wherein Eli plays Spiderman

Today gave us some lemons.


Everything started when my bus didn't show up this morning so I couldn't go to work. I took it as a sign that I was supposed to tackle the large pile of laundry that had been accumulating, so I returned home to spend the day with Carrie doing housework. I sorted my darks and lights, did the first batch without incident, brought them in, washed the next, and so on. By the time the second was ready to hang it was evening. Carrie had left for class, and I was home with the children. The scene is set for suffering!

I locked the door behind me and huffed and puffed the load of laundry up to the roof with the children in tow. The sun was getting low, but there was still plenty of warmth left in the evening air as we strung our linens on our allocated lines. Once we finished, we locked the roof door and proceeded to our apartment.

Upon arrival, I tossed the keys to Aryanna to open the lock. The lock on our door is an old-fashioned giant locking slidebolt, so unless it's been freshly greased, a pint-sized shrimp like Aryanna really has to put her back into opening it. She was having difficulty, so I grabbed the key and gave it a nice big twist and....the SOB sheared off in the lock. Ooh, that's not good for the ol' blood pressure.

Now what? I tried digging the fragment out with the other keys on the ring, but with no luck. One of the neighbors passed by and I explained my predicament to him as best I could in my broken Spanish. He fetched a few tools and took a stab at it, but without success. I told him not to worry about it, and he gave me directions to a nearby locksmith. In the spirit of my father I wasn't quite ready to give up that easily, though.

I took the kids outside for a look at our balconies. They aren't that high off the ground; probably ten or twelve feet at the most. I figured if I had a van or truck to climb up, I could reach the balcony, bust in a window, and be inside. Breaking things is always fun, right? By a stroke of luck, there was a high-topped van parked on a side street, with a few workmen milling around it. Unfortunately, they said they were too busy to help. Apparently spending 5 mintues to help a man and two small children locked out of their apartment in strange country wasn't quite high enough up the priority list to take away time from installing plumbing or whatever. Jerks. Oh well.

The kids and I sat down on the sidewalk for another ten minutes while I pondered the situation. Carrie wouldn't be out of class for another hour and a half. There had to be some way to get up to our windows...and then it hit me. The neighbors had an adjacent balcony about five feet from ours. Woohoo! We went back inside and rang their bell. Fortunately they were home.

Our neighbors are really nice people, at least from the time or two we've met them. I explained the problem and asked if I could climb out their window. They explained that I was mad, but I was welcome to try. Or at least that's what I understood; my Spanish is still 'in progress'.

Perhaps I should back up a moment and explain what I mean by balcony. It's not a really a balcony, it's a protruding window. There's probably a word for it, but I can't remember. Here, a picture is worth 1000 words, etc. The actual window is the one on the left, and there is another that belongs to our neighbor just to the left side of the picture. A semi trailer would just about come to the bottom of the balcony, for comparison purposes.















I crawled out their tiny window onto that little ledge. See the light? I wanted to walk on it, but it was so rusted and crumbly looking that I was afraid the bracket would rip right out of the wall if I put weight on it. Instead I just sort of edged my way over, keeping a hand on the balcony behind me in case I needed to theatrically dangle one-handed over the busy street below. Did I mention I'd been drinking? I'm not sure if it helped or made things more difficult, but alcohol definitely enhanced the experience, just like with driving or operating power tools.

Anyway, I gingerly edged over to my window, fully prepared to put my fist through it if necessary because I could only imagine how much a locksmith would love to charge me, and how much more it would be than some bandaids and a plexiglass pane to replace the real glass currently in place.

Fortunately my day decided to finally smile a bit, and one good pull had the window open. I reached in and opened the bottom window from the inside to give myself something to climb up. After squeezing myself through I jubilantly ran through the house to retrieve the kids from the neighbors.

And now, for some other content: the view from our roof!

What we've been doing

Sorry for the lack of updates. I'd make excuses, but eh, effort. Haha.

We've been pretty much doing the same stuff for the past few weeks (work, school, housework) and I've been hunting high and low for a motorcycle I can afford (unlikely!) or possibly a small car.

We've got a temporary Russian roommate right now. She's just living with us until her apartment opens up in a couple weeks. I'd say more, but she just moved in yesterday and I've seen her for all of 5 minutes so far due to my work. Updates later, unless she murders us all in our sleep.

The kids are starting to pick up words in Spanish that I don't know, which is frightening. Even more frightening was playing a faculty vs. students soccer game today and realizing just how much more exercise I need. I figured walking everywhere would help me more than it actually is. If anything I'm losing ground. Maybe I need another grueling restaurant job like the Grill.

Carrie and I have been experimenting with all kinds of cheap food and local produce. So far my greatest success has been learning to make tortilla, which is actually a Spanish Omelet and not a tortilla at all, sort of like some of the Mexi night foods I guess, only the whole country is wrong. Maybe I'll put up some pictures later, along with some of the weird motorcycles I've seen.

Speaking of weird motorcycles, I stumbled across an interesting bike on my search. Those who don't care about motorcycles can just leave the computer, or let your eyes glaze over a bit and scroll past real fast...

This beauty is for sale about 30 minutes from me.
















What makes it special? Well, the rear swingarm and wheel assembly is off of a TW200 like mine in the States. The fat tire has excellent street and mud abilities, but is a little squirrely on loose rock and dirt. The TW also has a smaller 200cc motor and the suspension isn't the beefiest. Enter the XT600, the TW's gigantic big brother. The XT has narrower tires that are better offroad but not as good on and wear worse, and not half as fun in the mud or hill climbs. However it has great suspension with long travel and a motor big enough for the freeway. Some enterprising individual somehow managed to frankenstein the two together, making an utterly beautiful motorcycle. I'd imagine it overcomes some of the drawbacks of the TW as well as the XT but I don't know how well that translates to reality. Either way, it looks awesome. Unfortunately Spain has really strict laws about modifying vehicles, and the bike would have to have a technical inspection to be street legal. Knowing how much the Spanish love paperwork and fees, I've decided to pass on this one for the time being. Plus, it was a bit more than I want to spend.

Anyway, I'm tired of typing, bye!

A taste of teaching

Yesterday I had my first experience being a 'real' teacher. Profesor Alfonso had a doctor's appointment, and rather than getting a substitute, he gave me the students' work for the day and asked me to give the lesson. Eep. Fortunately it was only two classes.

I'd love to say it went well, but I'd be lying. First, not speaking enough Spanish makes it REALLY hard to keep the kids in line. Secondly, I didn't know the protocols for discipline, so I resorted to paddling them with a chair leg. No wait, that was what I wanted to do....I mostly just yelled a lot. This doesn't come naturally to me, but it's pretty normal for Spain. When the teacher wants silence he yells at the kids to shut up, in as many words. Every few minutes the volume would start to swell again or they'd get distracted from their work, and I'd yell some more. I didn't want to be that substitute that runs home crying, so I decided to just channel my emotions into anger instead. That worked pretty well. The students wanted to study for a test in the next period instead of doing the work I gave them. We argued about it for a while, and I think I won, but I'm not sure. It's so hard to tell when you are being yelled at in Spanish by 15 different people at once. I couldn't tell if they were really working with each other or just blabbing.

The second class went better. Substituting really isn't in my job description, so I decided after the first class I wasn't going to get gray hairs trying to control the kids. I told them they could study for other classes or chat, and do the assignment as homework IF they kept the volume down. If the volume went up, then I'd put them to work. I meant it too. If there is one thing I've learned from raising kids, it's never, EVER, EVER make idle threats. Win the first battle and the rest get easier, but back down once and you'll pay for it for months.

I talked about 'kids these days' with Feliciano on the ride home. He had a great rant about Spanish parents. Apparently most of them see parental duties as providing food and shelter, while the school is responsible for shaping decent human beings, making the kids do homework, teaching them morals, etc. Obviously this results in less than ideal results and a mess for the teachers. The kids that have more responsible parents stick out like sore thumbs, or rather 'quiet, respectful, studious, helpful' thumbs.

The rest of my classes for the day were a nice rest afterward. I don't think I want to be a teacher after all though!