"Chamome Jessica"

Bo día! Happy New Year!!

It’s been a long and exhausting week, and I admit I’m mostly out of witty comments for this post, but I’m going to make it short and sweet so try to hang in there or at the very least check out the pictures and videos.

So first off, my roommates and I joined a gym on Monday, so you can imagine how that’s going.  We can barely move and every time we so much as sit down in a chair we groan and complain.  Boo you, gym.

Apart from that, the week itself was fairly uneventful.  Well, I guess I take that back.  Some parents held a strike on Wednesday and Thursday in front of our school.  [Long story (kind of) short:  in Spain they don’t typically have substitute teachers, so when a teacher is gone the students just stay in their classroom for that period and do homework or whatever.  Then, whichever of the other teachers has that period free will be on “guardia” and have to walk around to those classrooms and check up on the students to make sure they’re all there and whatever.  Well, way back in October, a teacher was gone and when the “guardia” teacher came in to check on them, 8 of the students weren’t in the classroom – apparently they had walked down the hall to sit in on a different class, big deal, right? – and so she was obliged to write down on the attendance that they were gone.  Anyway, when the head of studies/discipline was notified, she decided to expel the students for 3 days, which is very extreme.  As you can imagine, the parents freaked, and since then there have been protests, strikes, and our school has been in the news.  Some students at school even paid to have some stickers printed off that say something like “I also feel expelled” which almost the whole school has worn.  Drama, drama, drama.  The students have still not served their days, but I’m told they will have to.]  So ANYWAY, I get to school on Thursday and the parents are chanting and doing their thing or whatever.  When I finally get inside the fence where all the kids are hanging out for break, a few of the students start yelling “Jessi! Jessi! Jessi!” which eventually spreads and turns into a loud chant.  Haha, I love my life :)

But ANYWAY, let’s get down to it now.  On Saturday, Leslie, Katharina and I went with our friends Felipe and Carlos to this small town about 30 minutes away called As Pontes (aka, “Springfield”) where we saw an amazing traditional Galician music show, complete with a 92-year-old gaitero bagpipe player named Freixo.  The show was absolutely phenomenal, and one of the most “real” cultural things I’ve seen here yet.

Later on, Freixo chillaxed while the others played for him

After that, we roamed around town, having tapas, drinks, and dinner, and eventually around midnight we made it to what could only be called “the after party”.  Here, all the musicians and close friends gathered where they jammed and improvised and people danced around.  Make sure you pay attention to the way Felipe plays the tambourine in the video!  It's crazy cool.

Felipe (right) was waaaaay too excited to be playing with his idol

 Eventually we got introduced to Freixo and he (ofcourse) ended up falling in love with Leslie and her beautiful blond hair and wanted to take her out on a date this weekend.  She giggled a bunch, but I don't think she actually ever said no.  Freixo will probably be waiting for her at a little cafe tonight.  The language barrier (he only speaks Gallego) would probably be an issue anyway.  Not to mention the age difference.

Aaanyway.  That was my little Galician adventure for the weekend.  I will post an album to Facebook today or tomorrow and attach a link at the right like always (notice the album links have been up from Scotland and Malaga!) so check back in in a day or two if you're interested in seeing more pictures.

So, on top of everything, I've told you before about the Galician language (Gallego is kind of a mix between Spanish and Portuguese, but a bit closer to Portugues) and the troubles it causes us sometimes.  Everybody at this little party spoke Gallego amongst themselves, and as it turns out, our friends Felipe and Carlos prefer to speak Gallego instead of Spanish since it's their native language, so half the time when we're with them they're speaking Gallego.  Fun stuff, like it's not complicated enough trying to understand Spanish!  Needless to say, we've been learning a decent amount of Gallego lately, which is actually kind of perfect since one of my New Year's resolutions was to learn a third language.  I was originally going to be realistic and do French or German, but I guess those two are just too boring and practical.  On a similar note, one of my other resolutions was to learn how to play an instrument (again, the original plan was the guitar or something similar) but instead, they're going to teach me how to play the tambourine!  So that should be interesting.

Anyway, that should be all for today.  Hope you all are having a splendid new year and sticking to all your resolutions!  (Come on guys, I'm two weeks in and have already made progress on THREE! I think this is going to be a good year...)  Also, don't forget that I love getting comments!  So feel free to leave me something or send me an email :)

I leave you with Iron & Wine and "Her Tea Leaves" as the soundtrack for this week:

Adeus!