It was a big day.

After making sure my clothes were ironed and free of lint and I had deodorant on and even perfume and my roommates made a bit of fun of me for wearing heels, I went to meet Fran, the young director of the IT company interested in English classes.

I hadn't needed to be worried about dressing too properly, but it is far better to be overdressed than under, especially when dealing with gente de negocio (businesspeople) and in Spain. I kinda assumed that a bunch of IT guys would be casual, but you really never know.

Fran (short for Francisco) must be about 30. There are 5 people in total in the Sevilla location of the company, which has offices in London, South Africa and Sri-Lanka. The London office has an wide variety of nationalities represented by their workers. Obviously everyone from all the offices speaks English.

It seems like a pretty cool company, really, and is nice to think I can help out these people with a fairly new business. They use open-source software (which is exciting) but work for all kinds of companies worldwide, to deal with their electronic or online content management. This area is still slightly hazy to me, but basically they need to have their data available and organized online, and I suppose this is not a simply task.

Anyhow, it will be good work for me. There may be another company next door in the Parque Empresarial who also need an English teacher. If it all works out and they both want me for the time he mentioned, every week, it would pay the rent. Then I will just need a few more Ernestos to pay for the food...

My hands feel like the skin is dissolving. There are cracks, and they are swollen and red. It is really dry as well as being cold. Que horror, que barbaridad. The "h" is not pronounced, the two r's get rolled, and the emphasis is on the second syllable. The only difference with barbarity is that the "i" is pronounced "ee". That is what the Spanish say when they are disgusted, in this case by the cold.

I finally went to see Maria tonight after meeting with Fran. Maria gave me a huge hug and we talked and got some beers from next door and then some friends of hers came in and more chatting happened. I don't know how she ever gets any work done. This time there were several ladies from Jerez, and one from Madrid here for a market of artesan products which they've invited me to come to. It is the Madrid girl's birthday Thursday and I am invited to that. The guy from the tiny bar next door came over with about 8 huge empty tomato cans for Maria. A discussion got started on what kind of bugs everyone hates or doesn't mind, because one of the ladies suggested Maria put geraniums in the cans, at the door of her shop. She said no, because she can't stand gusanos (worms) which the geraniums here get. The Jerez lady said that she quite liked ratoncitos (little mice). Her husband's family is involved in the Jerez winery Gonzalez Byass and she told us the former boss, an old man, used to give pocket money to his nephews for catching mice. He would put a sherry glass with sweet wine out, and one by one the mice would climb up and drink. The next one would push the previous drunken one out of the way so he could drink and this way the drunken mice were easy to catch.
I never did get a chance to ask Maria about getting in touch with the man who fixes sewing machines, who would have a line on good used ones for sale.