A change of plans

The family and I have broken up, or at least that is the feeling I am left with. I am not exactly clear what happened, a break down in communication and an abrupt decision that it would be best if I move out and as soon as possible. Perhaps it was not intended to be so soon, as I have recently been told that Spanish have a very direct way of speaking, but when the first thing I was asked Sunday morning was how soon I could get my bags ready I started packing. I would have liked to have talked about things a little and I am a little sad that things ended the way they did.

I find in general I am overally negative about things and I want to focus more on the positive of this situation and say that despite this incident I have had a really good week. One of the teachers I work with more than opened the doors to her house to me and I have really enjoyed staying with her and her family. It is such a delight to eat supper without the presence of the t.v. and to have people interested in trying my ´canadian´ cooking. In the end it will all work out for the best and now I have a week off for the ´Semana Santa´ to explore other parts of Spain and then I will start house hunting. As usual the Spanish do things different and have their Easter holiday before Easter.

Further Gallego investigations:

To pursue my immersion of the Galician culture I have recently joined a traditional Galician dance class at the local community centre and taken a basket making workshop. Since the dance class started in September I have to really concentrate in the class for both the dance steps and the language, but at least the class is given in Spanish and not Gallego.

I was told recently that children don´t like learning Gallego in school and so I have asked a few people about that. It seems to be a bit of a political topic and has made for some interesting English class discussions. The Galician language highlights the divisions within the region of Galicia, as different variations are spoken in the different provinces, and it also highlights a bit of an urban and rural divide as Gallego is spoken more often in the country than in the city. To give you a bit of background, during the Franco regime the language was banned and since then it had been given a grammar and has been brought into the school system. In some schools all lessons are given in Gallego and in others it is a weekly language class. Here in Lugo many people speak Gallego at home, at work and all municipal documents are printed only in the Galician language. I am told the language is similar to the Portuguese spoken in northern Portugal and I am slowly getting better at understanding it. Some of the reasons children don´t like learning Gallego in school are because it is different than the Gallego they speak at home, it is similar and easy to confuse with Spanish and because the grammar rules are continuously being updated and modified. I am quite impressed at the amount of people that speak the language considering it was really not that long ago it was banned. I am told that this is because Lugo is one of the more traditional parts of Galicia. The region is made up of four provinces: A Coruña to the northwest, Lugo in the northeast, Ourense in the southeast and Pontevedra in the southwest. In my discussions I have learned that people from Pontevedra are often referred to as Portuguese, from Lugo as Lugoslavos and from Coruña as Turkish. I have not yet found out the reason for the last. Most people here consider the Corunian citizens as stuck-up and that they have invented their own language mixing both Gallego and Spanish, and that they generally prefer to speak Spanish. With all this there continues to be a Galician separatism movement with a white flag with a blue diagonal stripe and a red star, and apparently an anthem as well.

In high school we used to joke about studying basket making, but now having worked quite hard to make two baskets it´s not so funny any more. I didn´t realize it was so hard and that it would take me over nine hours to make my first basket. A couple weekends ago I walked out to a workshop to learn how to make traditional baskets. There was a very nice, patient man who helped a group of about ten of us weave and shape ´Bimbeo´ in Gallego, or wicker in English into baskets. I found the first day very long, but the second day was quite satisfying to see my baskets finally assembled after all of the work. I felt like little Red Riding hood when I left carrying my basket, walking through the trees, along the river back into Lugo.

My most recent trip was last Saturday to A Coruña for the day with a couple of British students from my Spanish class at the university. I felt like a country girl in the big city and it was a little strange to speak English all day. We visited a fort, the tower and the body museum. One of the unusual things about the city was the pirate theme. I am not sure why skulls and cross-bones were displayed in various parts of the city, maybe it´s part of the Turkish mystery...

Postcard travelling

Last Saturday I got on the bus to Ribadeo because I saw a beautiful postcard of the town in the bus station and I decided I wanted to go there. The day was bright, sunny and perfect for an adventure. For most of the ride going there the bus twisted and turned following the winding path of a river through the mountains towards the coast. I enjoy riding the bus and day dreaming. I thought about the concert I had attended the night previous. It was beautiful concert by the group called ´Batuko Tabanka´ as part of a series of events organized around International Women´s day. It was a simple,yet powerful performance of a group of local African women singing songs while drumming on leather cushions and while they played, they took turns getting up and dancing in front of the group. I couldn´t help but feel how beautiful it was to be a woman watching them.

Arriving in Ribadeo I was a little disappointed to learn that the beaches I saw on the postcards were not next to the town, but rather in the surrounding area (approx. 10km away) and the short story is you need a car to get there which I did not have. I did figure out a way that I could have gotten there using three different types of transportation, but since I only had six hours I decided to explore the town instead.

First I walked along the river to the lighthouse overlooking the ocean for lunch. Then I wandered back into town to look around and I found the old part of town curiously consisted of a labyrinth of small narrow streets. The map from the tourism office had a number of red dots marking points of interest and little else. I found most of the streets were not even marked on the map and they strangely sloped upwards and downwards interchangeably. I found myself wondering how people accessed their houses because often the streets were green with algae from the rain and quite difficult to climb.

On one corner I saw a house with a for sale sign. I was very intrigued by the building that admittedly was in very bad shape, but had a lot of character. I thought about the idea buying the house overlooking the port. It was more of a romantic idea than anything else, but the plants growing off of the balcony and the broken shutters made me want to take a look inside. I watched the house for a while and as I did an older woman wearing a pale pink dress made her way up the steep street towards it. She was carrying what looked like a pail of water and when she arrived at the front of the house she stopped for a few minutes to watch the people strolling along the boardwalk below and then continued to the back of the house. I imagined she was going to feed some chickens or cats, but she kept looking around as she walked. When she stepped back out into the street she stopped a moment to step into the bushes and then continued her descent the same way she arrived pausing a few moments for the view.

I liked a how Cala lilies seemed to grow wild and how the streets were quiet. Looking up at the town from the water´s edge I saw five cats perched on a stone railing. They posed and stretched in the sun just below another railing with the remains of statues of roman goddesses. I had to smile at the scene curtained by blowing clothes hung out to dry because on another balcony I saw the shadow of the head of a black dog watching them. When I looked accross the river I saw the region of Asturias and it felt like it was another world.

To add to the mysteriousness and quaintness of the town on the steps of the townhall in the main square there is a life-size silver statue of a marquis walking down the steps. He is wearing bright coloured clothing with one arm awkwardly raised above his head and I guess his statue is there to remember the building used to be his residence until he was assasinated there in 1809.

My time was up and so I walked back to the bus station to catch my ride back to Lugo.

Quiz Night

Last Thursday it was my turn to prepare the questions for the weekly Quiz night at the local Irish pub. A number of English teachers and English students in Lugo meet and test their knowledge. Should your team win there are also prizes from the pub. I thought I would share my Quiz with you.

Category 1 - Not quite a Shakespearean baseball game (When the question is a quote you need to identify the play and the character)

1. ´To be or not to be, -- that is the question´
2. On what Shakespeare play is the 1960 musical ´West Side Story´ based?
3. ´Out damned spot ! out, I say !
4. How many plays did Shakespeare write?
5. ´What´s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet.´
6. In what country does the story of Hamlet take place ?
7. ´A horse ! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!´
8. Who is the ´shrew´ in the Taming of the Shrew ?
9. ´Beware the ides of March´
10. On what day was Shakespeare believed to have been born and known to have died ?

Category two- Well-known Canadianisms:

1. Where did the first Europeans to settle in Canada come from ?
2. Joe Shuster & Jerome Siegel created this famous comic book character in 1938.
3. What are Canada´s two national sports?
4. Sir Frederick Banting was awarded the Nobel-Prize in 1923 for the discovery of this medical treatment.
5. The bear at the London zoo which inspired A.A. Milne to create the character ´Winnie the Pooh´is named after which Canadian city?
6. What code name was given to the beach where the Canadians landed in Normandy on D-day?
7. This Canadian singer is considered to have the biggest selling album of all time for a female artist.
8. Who is the highest scoring hockey player in history?
9. What is the mascot of the Quebec city winter carnival ?
10. Which Canadian city will host the 2010 winter olympics?

Category 3- People in your neighbourhood (if you live in Lugo) Identify the name and location of the following statues.

Feeling a little more Lucense

Now crossing the two month mark in Lugo and four months in Spain I am feeling a little less on vacation. Every so often I have moments when I realize Spain may not be the country I first imagined. I would like to correct the statement ´the rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain´ and say it stays mainly in Galicia. I crave the sunshine that only seems to peak out from behind the clouds on rare occasions. I am also going through vegetable withdrawal and I believe that one cannot live on meat alone though it seems like some people here do. I think if I am offered another strange part of the pig to eat I will become a vegetarian. To counter this carnivorous movement I have been using the Canadian food guide for a couple of English lessons now as a point of discussion.

I am starting to appreciate now how in Canada we have more space to live in, real houses with yards and how women have more of a sense of freedom and independance. Aside from feeling a little homesick I am still challenged by the language, delighted by the friendliness of the people and intrigued by the bizarre and interesting festivals, so I haven´t bought my return ticket yet. One small puzzling difference between the cultures that I recently encountered while trying to help one of the boys with his math homework was that the Spanish write out their long form division differently and I was unable to explain the example in the workbook, but I could get the same answer.

While teaching English I have had some good lessons and some not so good lessons, which has made for an all-round learning experience. For one of my better lessons I had students describing pictures from a Simpsons comic book I borrowed from the library and I have also had a lot of luck with the card game ´Go Fish.´ The game is fun, pratical and with different themed cards you can also expand the student´s vocabulary. While explaining the game to my beginner class in Spanish there was a bit of confusion because they first thought it was a match-making game. I also had an entertaining moment in another class when a man arrived and told me he forgot his carpet at home. That´s how I learned the Spanish word ´Carpeta´ for binder.

To deal with some of the discipline issues I have had with the boys in the family I am living with I have set up a star reward system. Now rather than being forced to speak English they are motivated, maybe a little bribed to do an English activity with me for a star. When they get five stars they can get a pack of football trading cards, football ´Kracks´ or Pokemon ´Bonx.´ I have found some nice picture books at the library of which the older boy can make simple descriptions and the younger boy can answer vocabulary questions. I am trying to make the language learning as natural as possible. I encourage them to tell me to ´be quiet´ or ´to go away´, and at the playground it was easy to teach the words ´push´ and ´in the middle´ while on the merry-go-round and playing Monkey in the middle. Unfortunately our playground trip did not end so well because we had to go home due to the boys spitting at each other and because the rain turned to hail. I used to think that I would like to have kids one day, but I am now having serious doubts.

While in Spain I am trying to live a little a la espagnole and to enjoy life, so I have tried out a couple Yoga and Capoiera classes and most recently Kayaking. The city offers free recreational activities on Friday and Saturday nights, but most start at 11pm and go until 2am. I have only been to a few because I find the time table a little insane.

I had one small tourist detour last week with my language exchange partner where I was taken to visit an archeological site near the town of Villadonga. On the top of a hill you can see the remains of a Celtic Castro or village. When we first got there I saw a sign that read ´Non pisen os muros´ which I mistakenly translated as do not piss on the walls rather than to not walk on them. Needless to say I still have a lot to learn.