My first day in Laxe
Tuesday I went with the teacher to the school. I don’t start teaching until next Monday, but I went so that I could learn about the school and figure out where I was going to live. On Monday Mariluz, who picked me up at the airport said I should try to live in A Coruña because the majority of the teachers from the school lived there and commuted every day. Also, she said Laxe is pretty depressing in the winter. It would have been nice if they had mentioned this when I asked where I should think about living over the summer so that I could have worked on finding a roommate or apartment. Anyways, the teachers thought it would be better if I stayed in an apartment in Laxe for the first month and I could work on finding an apartment and roommates in A Coruña. There’s an orientation next week in Santiago for all of the language assistants in Galicia, so my plan is to talk to people there and find information about renting an apartment and finding roommates.
One of the teachers took me around Laxe to look at apartments, which was very helpful. I ended up narrowing it down to 2, both with beautiful views of the ocean. One was very modern and the other not so much. But the modern one, I would have been the only one living in the building and the older one, the woman who owned it lives here with her family, so I chose the older one. It’s perfect for me for just a month. And the woman who owns the building worked in England for 20 years so she speaks English. Even though I’m trying to speak mostly Spanish, it is nice that I could speak English to her if I needed to. Her name is even Emilia, which is the Spanish Emily. There are a few things about the apartment which confuses me. The stove is gas, which would be fine, I’ve used a gas stove before, but you have to manually light the stove every time you use a burner. I have not yet used a burner and I’m a little nervous to do it. Also, I couldn’t get the water warm when I showered today. So I took a very, very short shower. Anyways, back to my first day. As I said, I went to the school but they didn’t really have anything for me to do until the teacher came to look at apartments with me. As I said it’s a longer day on Tuesday, but it’s broken up by a siesta, and there are different teachers in the morning and the afternoon. Mariluz teaches in the morning, and Patricia, who showed me the apartment, works in the afternoon so she wasn’t there in the beginning of the day, but she came in later in the morning to take me apartment hunting. I got a tour of the school in the morning which was practically empty because the teachers in Spain are on “huelga” which is a strike. A lot of the teachers came in anyways, but the students technically have the day off so there were less than 20 students in school on Tuesday.
We went to a restaurant for lunch where I tried more Galician food, more pulpo, of course, as well as some new dishes. There was a seafood salad, which wasn’t really my favorite, it was cold seafood in some seasoned oil. We also had raxo which was some type of cooked meat. I’m pretty sure it was beef, but not positive. I really liked the pimientos which were cooked peppers that had been roasted in olive oil and salt. It wasn’t that spicy at all, which I liked! We also had tortilla Española, which varies depending on where you order it. This had more egg, less onion and potato, which I prefer less egg and more onion and potato, and I like a drier tortilla, so not my favorite tortilla, but still good. We went back to Patricia’s apartment for a little bit before the afternoon classes started since one of the bilingual teachers I will work with is there in the afternoon. She turned on the tv and they watch a lot of American shows dubbed in Spanish. Although I have to say Will & Grace is not nearly as funny without Karen’s voice.
After I met with the bilingual teacher, Patricia took me back to her apartment so I could take a nap while she finished the day at school. After the school day ended we went to a café which has a beautiful view of the ocean. They had Earl Grey tea and they also have wifi so I came back here to update my blog. I'm actually the only person in here right now, although since it's 1pm in Spain, I guess that's pretty early for Spaniards.
Later we went to dinner and I tried more food. We had jamon serrano, which I already knew I liked so I was happy to have that again. Jamon serrano is very similar to prosciutto. We also had more calamari, and two types of mariscos (seafood/ shellfish). We had mejillones(mussels) in a spicy tomato sauce and almarines(clams) in a butter lemon sauce. I ended up staying at Patricia’s apartment the first night since I hadn’t unpacked anything in my new apartment yet.
The view from my apartment
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