Coffee in Plaza San Lorenzo. I didn't bring any stimulants with me to Sachiko's house, so I had to go out, though I am trying not to even spend 1.20€, because I will be getting along on about 300€ this month. Nice salary, eh? And that's if each of the three students I presently have continues with the current number of classes every week. I have had a myriad of responses to my ad in Jerez, but nobody is biting. Perhaps they think 15€ per hour is too high. That is the only reason possible that so many people have not responded back after I told them the price. Pitiful, eh?

Well, I am not dispuesta to lower it. That's because I am sure there are just barely enough out there to pay what I'm asking. I just need to do more advertising if I want them. At present I don't.

Aside from yesterday and today, when I have to come in to Sevilla for classes with Marcelino and Paco, I have been hiding away from the world, happily alone, at Geoffrey's place, where I moved all my things last Tuesday. It has taken several days cleaning to clean out the dust, to try to fight the ants and the mice. Part of the mice fighting operation has been to try to fill holes in the walls and clean up areas they could possibly be nesting in, in the house. I don't know if Geoffrey will like a woman doing stereotypical things and interfering, but I washed his previously cleaned clothes (which sit for weeks or months on end, improperly put away, and gathering dust and mouse droppings) and wrapped them in plastic. Geoffrey is a bachelor working very hard on fixing the major infrastructure of his crazy house, and no one can expect a guy under this circumstance to do more than wash his clothes and throw them in a pile somewhere. Maria watched me one day do 5 loads of laundry. After I woke up from a siesta around 7, she called me to her window by the clothes drying patio and offered me a coffee and some cookies. She is totally wonderful, this lady. She has the hugest sparkle in her eye and appear to have a lot of energy. She is 86. She speaks directly, and says what she means, but politely, and still with tact.
I still have not beat the mice. I have banished them from what I'm using as my bedroom though, after waking up at 3 one night to see a mouse perched on a beautiful old framed print of English countryside, and chasing it into a hole in the wall near the head of the bed.

But I've made bread in the halogen oven, a strange little thing that sits on the floor and has a British plug that has to use an adaptor, and requires the fridge to be unplugged for a while.

I am desperate to start working on my projects - the first real things I have done in my life. All the rest has been some kind of bullshit, I sometimes feel. The first things I intend to actually use to develop my own business, doing something to earn a living that I feel comfortable with and don't hate. With the house partly under control (still glue on cardboard with slowly rotting food in the middle, sitting in various places, still no mice) I finally got the courage up to start. There's no point in drafting more patterns until I can get a sewing maching, and with my money stolen (last week a whole month's salary - 500€ - yes I know, pitiful) it's hard to think about doing that yet.
But I got a box of plaster, and the next day, came across the ingenious idea of buying a cheap pair of shoes from the Chinese store (despite its political incorrect sound, that's what the stores full of everything cheap are called here, "Chinos", because everything is from China and the owners are Chinese). I found a cute pair of totally crappy pumps that fit the width of my foot perfectly but of course scrunched my toes into a crippling position, and bought them. I tried to communicate with the Chinese lady in Spanish, saying I wanted to buy the stained and dirty pair of flat white cloth display shoes for 3€ instead of 5€ marked on them, because I was only going to "dañar" them anyways (pour plaster into them after olive-oiling them). I don't think she understood. She found a good pair, and I told her again that I wanted the dirty ones, but for less money. No dice. So I got myself the 10€ discounted ones. One shoe is still anxiously waiting for me to remove the cast, when I get back to Jerez tomorrow.

How totally happy I am in Jerez right now. I don't really want to meet anyone, do anything, I just want to be alone in a very quiet house, surrounded by mostly abandoned houses and swallows and bats, and make shoe lasts.