Meagan por la noche: Écija

A town approximately 80 kms northeast of Sevilla en route to Cordoba, Ecija holds a population of 44,000. Well - 44,002 as of Monday morning. Jules and I arrived in what is endearingly referred to as the "frying pan of Andalucia" after finishing up orientation training for our positions as language and cultural assistants under the Junta de Andalusia in Sevilla. From far away, Écija appears simple enough - a cluster of houses and church steeples set up on a hill surrounded completely by countryside; the Spanish consider it one of their many "pueblos blancos" towns found in the south.

I won't lie. I was slightly apprehensive when our bus pulled into the station and dropped us off with our lifetime supply of luggage in this tiny town. We rolled our things to the local hotel that we had arranged to stay at, and took a nice three-hour nap. By the time we got up, it was well past noon. We decided to take a stroll around town after picking up a map from the concierge, and found the town COMPLETELY DESERTED. Granted, it was the middle of siesta - a period of time during mid-afternoon when Spanish schools, businesses and most shops close up from 2-5 pm - but I mean it when I say that NOTHING was open. We started to get a little concerned, but pressed on. As we went deeper into the city center (a matter of several hundred meters; the entire length of the town can be walked in approximately 20 minutes), the streets became tinier and harder to navigate. To make matters worse, we were hardly running into anyone else walking around. I began to panic a bit.

FINALMENTE we were able to find the town center, or ayuntamiento, thanks to Jules' map navigation skills, and discovered that a.) restaurants and modern stores do exist! and b.) they had reopened. After about three hours, we had covered almost the entire city on foot. I had arranged a meeting with my school's director the next day, so we headed back to the hotel to get some rest.

Tuesday was definitely the turning point for us. We got up early to visit my school, CEIP Astigi, where we met my director, Santiago. He went over my schedule for the school year, which is AMAZING. Before I get into it, I want to defend myself here (hah). Our contract with the Junta de Andalusia states that we can only work a set number of hours (12) based on what they are able to pay us (700 euro/month) - still, I am extremely thankful, because we've heard that other English assistant-based government programs have been scaled back severely in different countries. Most people try to find private tutoring jobs on the side as an extra form of income. (Santiago has already asked me to work with his two daughters in high school!)

As for my school schedule, I will be working three days a week (Wed-Fri) from 9 am-1 pm. Believe me, seeing it on paper myself made me want to laugh in disbelief. I had no idea what to expect - I knew I could only work 12 hours at the school, but I wasn't sure if I would be in an English classroom or had to travel to different classes to work with the different age levels: the latter is what it seems most likely to be. I will be working with 3-year olds!!!! (I-3 English) all the way up to the 11-year olds in the equivalent of what the United States recognizes as fifth grade. Plus! I'm going to be working with multiple teachers in different subjects! I am only teaching English to the 3- and 4-year olds, but from first to fifth grade, I get to work with the students in English, music, science (...) and P.E. class! I met my bilingual studies teacher, Jose, who I'll be preparing coursework with. It turns out that his English skills are very minimal, which might prove to be "interesting" at first, but at the same time it will give me a much more hands-on approach to this experience, and allow for my Spanish to improve intensively (I hope).

My first day isn't until Oct. 1, so once I was given my schedule, Santiago sent us off in the direction toward Julia's high school where she'll be working, Nicolas Copernico. We met her coordinator, Angela, who was also wonderfully helpful and is basically fluent in English. She's already invited us to stay with her at her home in Sevilla whenever we feel like it, which we will probably take her up on. Right before we left the high school, we wrote down a few numbers for apartment listings in the area. Ideally, we both felt it would be good for us to live with Spaniards - but after looking at a few different options yesterday and today, we settled on a 2-bedroom piso together close to the center of the city! It's literally a five-minute walk from both my school and the ayuntamiento. The best part is that it has a huge terrace on the roof, which Jules and I plan to use AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE = reading, eating, yoga, tomando copas after a "long" day at work, hah - I might even try my hand at painting if I can get back into drawing. We're moving in tomorrow, so pictures will follow once we settle in and get set up!

I have to say that the entire process in which we went about finding an apartment is such a signature of the Andalusian lifestyle here. We cold-called all of the listings and were able to look at the places that same day. My director at the school insisted on coming with us to show us a place he had found on his own free time, and to make sure that everything was legit. The owners of the apartments also expected us to make a decision in the ten minutes it took to look at the apartment - not because they were impatient or wanted to screw us over (like many of the situations I encountered when finding a place in New York City), but because they knew we were basically homeless and need a place fast. The woman, Maria, who we will be renting from illustrates this in the truest sense. When I called her today to tell her we decided to rent from her, she literally let out a "whoop" into the phone and said she was thrilled to have us (more or less, in Spanish), and that she would get right to cleaning our piso for us to move in tomorrow. So we are over at least the first small hill that comes with settling into a new town. We still have to tackle some legal paperwork that will allow us to stay and work in Spain legally (we already have a temporary, student visa to be here, but in order to extend it so that we can stay for the full school year, we have to fill out a permiso de resistencia).

That's all for now. I'll leave you with a few photos that I've taken of the town. They aren't much, but I plan to take more this weekend. I'm also planning to do a blog on food and cooking (Julia Child-style, meaning drinking while cooking), so look forward to that!