just thought i would let you know

...that i did indeed have beer and calamares on the terrace, in Plaza Tirso de Molina....where I spent the whole afternoon acquiring rather fetching suntan marks.

Today is the beginning of a 5 day fiesta....and I am very excited about going to Salamanca to drink lots.

That is all

Liv x x

The sun has got his hat on, hip hip hip hooray!!!

After weeks of schizophrenic weather (at the beginning of March I was wearing flip-flops, and 2 weeks ago it was pissing it down and freezing), Madrid, courtesy of global warming, has finally decided to join in with the whole "summer" thing.
Like the UK, Spain is set to experience a scorcher this year....so I am busy trying to figure out the best place to escape the heat come July and August. With predictions of 35 degrees and above, Madrid´s desert climate is not really an option!!

So....now I have to try and remember what I have been up to over the last month.

Well, my mother came to visit a coupe of weeks ago and brought beautiful English weather with her which reminded me of home, and didn´t make me feel homesick in the slightest. A little visit to the Roman city of Segovia and a yummy lunch of cochinillo (teeny-tiny-weeny baby pig) was delicous.
My brother (the bigger and bossier one) is coming to visit me this weekend, and in order to repay him for all his male-chauvinistic rants over the years I am going to drag him along for a girly weekend in the university town of Salamanca....which is famous for its... ahem...relaxed nightlife. My New Year´s resolution to cut back on the beer is very difficult in a country where it´s cold, refreshing, cheap, and usually served with free tapas.

I have been busy grabbing every opportunity to speak Spanish that I can, which mainly involves crashing Spanish parties and making the poor guests listen to me.

May is fiesta season.....(Madrid alone has 15 bank holidays a year), so I am going to spend most of the next month partying in the street to celebrate some random saints birthday, or something similar.
However, I am harding back to the UK between the 17th and 22nd May, so would be lovely to see people, whoever is around.

I´m about to run out of credit at the internet cafe, so must dash (and anyway...the sun is beckoning and giving me "beer and calamari on a terrace someplace nice" cravings.

I hope that everybody is well....and that the blog is enough to let you all know how I am. I am rubbish with email.

Hasta luego cara huevos

Liv x x x

I am probably the worst blogger ever

Very sorry. It´s been nearly 2 months now, and I dont even have time to write a proper long entry.

Needless to say I have been working like a mad woman, and after a minor emotional breakdown brought on by lack of sleep and students pissing me off, I am beginning to feel normal again.
I have had a crazy couple of months......leaving the house at about 6.30am and getting home about 9pm 6 days a week. And I also seem to have the "I can´t say no to anything that might sound like it could be fun" disease, so I have managed to utterly wear myself out, resulting in me being unable to get out of bed one recent Monday morning.
However....after only a few days of actually getting some rest and staying in of an evening after work, I am feeling my usual splendid self!
This is also helped by the glorious weather - I went to the park on Sunday and had to go and sit in the shade because I was worried about getting sunburnt.

So...new things with me......

I have become a bit of a yoga addict - I go without fail every week (twice if possible) to enjoy the natural high that is brought on by Koodiyookigoogoo yoga (or something like that). It chills me out and makes me feel better about not doing any proper exercise. I can now also chant in both Spanish and Sanskrit, (which is useful) and my Spanish "body" vocabulary is really rather good.

I am now 23. I had a lovely birthday full of fun and practical presents (including a can of baked beans and a pair of knickers) and a birthday cake with candles at 8am. My students did not learn any English that day.

I went to the theatre. Which was interesting. It was a comedy about love and sex and was performed at such high speed that I just sat there looking abit puzzled while everyone around me roared with laughter. An interesting experience though.

I am making plans for Semana Santa (or Easter to us normal people). It is a BIG deal to all the Catholic peeps in this neck of the woods, and I get a whole week off work, so some day trips a little further afield are required. I cannot wait.....mainly because it means I won´t have to get out of bed until maybe...ooh...8am, and can eat all the seasonal delicacies that I am sure will abound.

I have not been robbed recently. Although someone on the metro did try...but I was quicker than he was the little bugger. I now leave the house expecting to come back empty-handed.

I am actually earning some real money. This is very exciting for me....as I am always poor....and I must remember not to spend it all in one go on ridiculous things like Spanish omelette and flamenco shoes.

I think my travel feet are getting itchy again, so I am busy planning a summer full of Spanish fun. I can´t wait to pack up my rucksack, get on a train and explore the country for 7 whole weeks! If anyone is out this way then, let me know and I will come and find you. We get the whole of July and August off, so I won´t have to be back at work until September. Yay!!

Ok, so that is me for now. I have to go now and chant my way to enlightenment in Yoga class.

Lots of love to you all.....and of course besos

Liv x x x

perdon!!!

sorry.....will post a proper blog very soon i promise!!

i am alive and well and very busy...will tell you more about it soon

liv x

January.....is turning out to be rather odd

Hello All

Well once again apologies for leaving it a whole month until my latest update. I think that this will be the case from now on - Im so busy that I just dont have the time to while away my days on the internet!! Anyhoo....it means I can save up months worth of news to entertain you all.

And Enero is proving to be an interesting month indeed. Ive been back in España for only 3 weeks (after a lovely xmas - was splendid to see you all tios) and have managed to compile a little collection of amusing "anecdotes" if you will to help you get through those post-christmas blues and pretend that there isn´t a hurricane raging through the UK. The weather here is super btw, was wearing sunglasses today because the sun was so strong!!

Anectode Numero Uno - My New Stalker.
Aaah yes, my number one fan, Francisco the devout Jehova´s Witness who seems to have fallen pasionately in love with yours truly and has reduced me to hiding behind the vending machines at the train station at 7am.
It all began innocently enough......I was sitting on the platform minding my own business when the chap next to me (about 50 odd and harmless looking) offered me his newspaper to sit on because the bench was so cold. Bless. I said no thank you, but my accent alerted him to the fact that I was not Española and we had a little chat about where I was from and what I did. Then he got on his train (the one that arrives 5 minutes before mine) and I thought nothing more of it.
But.....Monday morning - he comes running over to me and shouts "Olivia Olivia!!! Please....I must get my train now, but I want you to have this", and he thrust a little black Bible into my hand and jumped on the train. Abit odd, I thought. But then I opened the Bible and he had decorated the front page with love heart stickers and had written "Olivia and Francisco, forever in love, I will always be here for you and we can experience Christian love together". Followed by his telephone number. Now I was scared. I spent the next few mornings managing to hide from him by moving around the platform and standing behind a very fat man, but on Friday he found me again and gave me another book, which, despite my protests he pressed into my hands. This one was entitled "What the Bible really teaches us" and was a Jehova´s Witness scaremongering book. And yes, the front page was decorated with love hearts and Bible quotes saying how God wants us to be together.
Now, flattered as I am, I think this may be just a teeny bit inapproriate (albeit bloody funny) . On Monday, I think I´ll take the books with me and bash him over the head with his own Bible. That might get the message across.

Anectode Numero Dos - Guru Guru Wahje Guru
Despite the fact I, as a rule, loathe exercise, I have taken up yoga with my friend Rachael. I have done yoga before and I thought I knew what to expect - abit of Salutation to the Sun here, a bit of stretching there, all followed by a nice relaxing kip at the end. But I was not bargaining on the yoga teacher to be an ultra-spiritual, ultra-hippy yoga guru.
We did chanting. And we had to roll around on the floor with our tongues poking out. Then we had to sing. And that fact that the whole lesson was conducted in Spanish and they were burning some kind of incense which actually made me quite high, I got the giggles big time. But, I will be returning - mainly because I think the Guru knows what she´s on about but also because it gave me the best sleep I´ve ever had afterwards. So.....I shall be attending 3 hours of super spiritual yoga every week, and if I come back looking and chanting like Buddha re-incarnate, then you know why.

Anecdote Numero Tres - Los Niños
That´s right people - I am teaching children. On a Saturday. Now this is interesting for 2 reasons - 1, I don´t like children very much. They make too much noise and on the whole don´t really have anything interesting to say. And 2, I tend to get really rather drunk on a Friday night.
Therefore my kids classes have been interesting affairs to say the least. But so far this is what I have learned:
Talking to a bunch of 8 year old brats about guns, bombs and whether you would prefer Roberto Carlos to murder Britney Spears or Shakira is guaranteed to keep them interested.
Ditto with Wink Murder, or finding out who has a boyfriend/girlfriend and who doesn´t.
Turning up totally unprepared and still a little pissed doesn´t seem to hinder my performance at all....in fact I think it adds to it.
Never underestimate the power of Simon Says when you don´t know what else to do

There have also been several other amusing incidents, but I´m not sure I should put them down in writing. But all in all, I am having a very fun month of weirdness, which I hope will continue (well, tonight I´m off clubbing in Chueca, the uber-gay part of Madrid, so I think I can safely say that I will have some weirdness to report).

Vale, chicos. I must be off, as I need to get some food before the shops close in order to deal with the early-morning hunger pangs that I know will hit when I get home in the wee hours.

I hope you are all well, and please leave me little notes on my blog....then I know if anybody is actually reading it!!!

Besos

Liv x x x

Apologies.....

....For my lame blog efforts. It has been nearly a month since my last entry. There are several contributing factors to my blog tardiness:

1 - I do not have a computer of my own
2 - I am out of my house for about 14 hours each working day
3 - I never get more than 6 hours sleep a night
4 - I am always tired (see numbers 2 and 4)
5 - I have discovered that extreme tiredness makes me very hyperactive and I cannot stay still long enough to compose a blog entry worth reading
6 - Madrid is so fun, that spending more than 30 minutes at a time in an internet cafe seems like a very boring way to pass my free time. There are cañas to be drunk, tapas to be eaten and fun to be had.

But, today is Friday, I have the afternoon off, and therefore actually have the time to write this as well as do all the other things that must be done before I head home on Thursday for the festive season!!

So...where to start?? Well, the parentals paid me a little visit last week which was of course lovely. And not just because I got taken out for dinner and had Christmas presents bought for me - it was nice to see them too, obviously.
The Madrid sky pulled its finger out and decided to shine and sparkle brighter than it has done in a long while. I tell you, it´s almost worth getting up at 6am every morning in order to see the sky just before sunrise - it´s a deep velvet blue, that turns first yellow and then bright bright blue by 9am. And not a cloud. But....it is bloody freezing. A splendid, crisp cold that makes you want to brave having a caña in the beer gardens, all wrapped up in as many layers as you can fit under your jacket. But it´s also the kind of cold that splits the skin on your fingertips and turns your nose and cheeks a fetching shade of pink.

Believe it or not, I got robbed again. But this time, it was a pickpocket-on-the-metro affair. I got my wallet back though.....the culprit was a teeny-tiny woman who wasn´t really in a position to argue with me and Eugene when we caught her sauntering down the metro platform with my wallet down her trousers. It would seem that blonde hair and pale eyes mark me out as a foreigner only in negative ways, so the change in hair colour is booked for when I go home next week.

Work is going well - I am slowly settling into the routine of it, and the whole teaching thing is getting easier and less stressful, which is always good.

I am going home on the 21st for a week and I CANNOT WAIT to do nothing but eat, drink, sleep, eat some more, drink some more, maybe sleep some more for 8 whole days. Will be good to see all the friends too of course!!

So......have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and I will be back on line in 2007.

Besos

Liv x x x

Look here Mister, I am NOT a bloody cat....

....or a dog, or any other kind of animal that can be clicked at, whistled at and (much to my disgust) hissed at.
It would seem that even in a cosmopolitan city like a Madrid.....a head of blonde hair in a sea of brunettes is a health hazard. A change of colour is required if I want to get through the rest of the year without slapping/punching/screaming at the offending chicos.

anyway...rant over.

Madrid is still lovely - the Christmas lights are up and ready to be switched on, the weather is cold, crisp and beautiful, and there´s a festive smell in the air. Yay...I love Christmas. Can´t afford it though....so will make do with just eating too much.

Lessons are still going well - hard work, and I think I´ve finally managed to pick up the bug that has been doing the rounds which makes the whole exercise just that little bit harder, but on the whole everything is great.

Speaking of bugs, my head is all fogged up and I can´t really think of anything else interesting to say...so I´m going to go.

Hope everyone is well, wherever you are

Luego

Liv x x x