If one should feel the need to give oneself a good shaking (I am not sure why that would be the case, but you never know. Perhaps if one is really annoyed with oneself or has some self-disgust)... Well, just come to Sevilla, get on a bike, and ride around. You will be thoroughly rattled good and quick.

Finally I am back in the hovel, and have taken a shower after riding in one direction far out of the center, and around the circumnavigacion road and out of the centre again in the other direction. Then after walking around finding and not finding English academies out in Nervion, which looks like any other city, and not like Sevilla, with shopping malls, finally I rode back in on the far side of the cathedral. I decided to go stop in at Oscar's bar, but he is gone on holidays this week.

Now I am looking at a pile of plums which were 2 kg for 1E. I wasn't interested in a large amount for ridiculously cheap (which of course turned out to be half bad, half green), but the guy is notoriously kind of a dork, so I gave in and said, "vale, quizas puedo hacer mermelada." Don't know what I'm thinking trying to make jam out of plums in the hovel, while I'm in the middle of trying to find work, but you know. These things are in one's blood. One of the things I inherited that I am not rebelling against, really.

Finally I get it. I have to walk in to places and take a paper copy of my CV. Yesterday a nice English man explained this to me. They may get 600 CVs e-mailed from places like Guatemala, so they don't bother looking at them unless they have to. If someone nice walks in the door and they need someone, they'll take them. So I made myself get up at 9:00, went to the internet bar and printed out a bunch this morning. Despite repeated ignoring of the "zoom" section which is the same word in the Spanish Microsoft Office, and printing it out on 1/4 of the page numerous times. At least the cute Latino guy was nice and kept trying to help me despite my idiocy. Then spent the morning pounding the pavement. The morning was nicer than tonight, because it was all in the centre, but by 1:30 I was sweaty and exhausted, so I decided to treat myself to a glass of wine in Santa Cruz (the tourist neighborhood) on one of the most touristy streets, on a table under the orange trees just hiding the Giralda. I lost myself in Chinese-Spanish for a while.

My friends in Sevilla are two people who work between 12 and 15 hours per day, and an artist who keeps a nutty schedule. The other people I meet or get a chance to shoot the breezes with tend to be waiters. This is a good source of "friends" for foreigners or as yet totally unstable people like me. The waiter at Tomato cafe wanted to talk about languages when he saw me studying Chinese.
Then I stopped by a tiny clothing and accessory shop with really awesome stuff, that I've been in long ago. This time the lady for some reason wanted to know about me, and when she found out I'd been here for a while and was now looking for work, and was Canadian, she suddenly wanted to look after me. She offered to let me know if she knew of anybody who needed kids looked after, in case I ended up needing nanny work to pay the rent. She asked if I sewed and said she might be able to give me a bit of work helping her. She also offered to let me know if her Swiss friend needs her apartment sat for a good chunk of the year. She was about my mom's age, and said she'd gone to live in Paris once many years ago and remembers how it was. She told me "animo! you'll find something!" and not to be timid about asking anyone. Sometimes all it takes is one person to tell you not to be afraid; to give you permission, and tell you you'll eventually make it.