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.

It is cold tonight in Jerez. There was no swarm of swallows and bats around sunset which made me wonder if there is going to be an earthquake or an apocalypse of some kind. Very weird not to have them.

After I slept this afternoon I washed some clothes and as I was hanging them out, Maria came to the window. From the way she talked I wondered if she thought I was someone else. She said the others had left and didn't even say Adios. It must be confusing for her with Geoffrey only coming here once in a while. I tried to explain to her last time that I'd be back and forth between here and Seville but living here in July.

I planted some tomato seeds in one of the many pots this afternoon.

There is going to be a major battle with mice and ants. There are probably nests of both in various places. If they are not gotten rid of the house is just going to fall down. There is a little bit of a fight with dirt from just general decay - the falling off paint on all the outside walls of this and other houses nearby. When the paint falls off it leaves the sandy structure of the walls bare to just crumble away. The sandy stuff and chipped paint accumulate with the wind in corners and then get blown into the house. I tried to sweep and get rid of the stuff outside that could blow in and have bleached everything according to internet instructions to get rid of ants.

If I had the card reader for my camera I would show pictures of here. But I think it is locked inside Sachiko's friend's suitcase, which I inherited. I've opened and closed it many times, but the other day the combination lock finally must have gotten moved the wrong way and I can't open it.

Jerez water is hard, while Seville's is actually quite nice. My hair is all weird and my tea doesn't taste good. The electricity eventually has to be fixed as it is still on 120V or something crazy like that, while the rest of Europe has long ago gone to 220. Actually Geoffrey said back a while ago that he tested it and it was more like 135. The normal switches are not wired right now, I forget why. The electricity is coming in through the front suite and it is just a bunch of extension cords going along the floor and drilled through holes in the walls. You have to unplug the fridge for a while to use the oven (which is a freestanding little groovy thing, very low on energy - there is also a normal oven which is not plugged in to anything and looks like it has travelled from the UK). You also have to unplug the bathroom light to start the washing machine. As you can gather, he has a lot of work to do here.

The azotea - rooftop patio - is totally overtaken by lichen. I am wandering around on the grubbiest floors my mother could imagine, barefooted, because my feet have been swollen lately. The internet will only be on for a little while longer. I lay on the cushions on Geoffrey's bench made of pallets. There is bird shit on the cushions but I don't even care. The sun is setting and the crumbling and peeling paint buildings are orange. Swallows dive right near me. Swarms of them are screeching all over the sky. Pretty soon the bats will come out. The bathroom door is always open, it leads up to the patio. I have a dark tan, my hair is all messy and I have hours of sweat dried onto me and am dirty but I don't even care.
Barrio San Miguel my new home. There is electricity (though it is rather unconventional at this point), no restrictions on water, gas for tea and a washing machine washing my clothes. There are no sounds except it and the swallows.

What a relief it is to be in a house of young women with suitcases here and there. I don't have a lot to do until tomorrow evening when I teach Patricia in Jerez, then back here again Friday morning for Zaizi. I will not be teaching them in the summer either, I just found out. Which means I have a lot to do today, though it is all ambiguous: figure out how to survive.
Make some posters, try to figure out other ways of making a living... (I hate that it is so random for me... that I have to think up something, rather than just have something occur to me that I'd like to do).
Take Faro, who looks dejected after imploring me for some of my tomato and aguacate sandwich, for a walk. Go talk to Maria, maybe try to get Paco to do something about the computer he sold me that has to be turned off and on again or fiddled with every time I want to connect to the internet.

Even Marcelino is away Wednesday to Sunday this week.

As far as my former housing situation, I don't know if a debriefing will help me, but this is essentially it: Take two people who are generally nice and not all that bad of persons, but who have problems trusting others in general: one who is very nervous and has an aggressive sort of energy at times, who figures that she has complete say over all details since it is her home, and the other who is unable to be anything but polite when someone is giving her this kind of energy which sits very poorly with her. They do not mix. Disaster ensues.

One thing my family is incredibly mistaken about me is my so called 'easy going' nature. Polite to a fault, yes, able to suppress large degrees of displeasure, yes; able to hold in a huge amount... yes, until I cannot stand it.

This blog's name will have to change or I will have to start a new one because I now live in Jerez.

This wasn't supposed to happen until the 15th, but it happened today.

Yesterday I came to give a class again to Patricia. Well, I arrived on Sunday night part way through the Eurocup final (futbol). I met Geoffrey at Bar Porron. The next day I helped Geoffrey a little with his rental suite, and went over to Stephen and Patricia's (a different Patricia). Geoffrey's flight back to London left about the same time I had to go teach. I stayed last night here alone.

Well, I would be breathing a big sigh of relief if I wasn't in shock. Sometimes it seems like events really must be due to the stars aligning right or something. A god makes less sense at these sorts of times, because it seems very random. He would have helped you already if he was going to. Then all of a sudden everything just moves at once. On the way down on Sunday night (after have a morning English class with Marcelino and then going at his invitation to the Pena Nino Alfalfa, where he was hanging out with the guys and making paella, which was a whole other interesting story) I text messaged Pepa because I hadn't had a chance to see her that day. I told her that I was in Jerez, that I'd be back the next day or the day after. We had already agreed that I'd leave on July 15th, leaving her with a full month's rent (till the end of July). Well, I didn't really have any choice but to agree because she said that's the way it was, and she's got my damage deposit. She had been really sticky, trying her best to make things difficult for me, when I gave her a month's notice to leave on the 15th. Even though she required a month's notice, she refuses to show the place to anyone new until the former person leaves, and she was going on holiday on the 15th so wouldn't show it till August, but I could not opt to live there part time, between there and Jerez. That was not allowed. So I was going to lose half a month's rent.

So I told her on the way down here that I would have to leave her the damage deposit instead of giving her this month's rent. I have no idea why that was so terrible to her. She wrote back that this was not acceptable, and as of July second, I was no longer living in her house. Come and get your stuff and your deposit, she said.

So I am overjoyed.

I am going to stay at Mara's place and walk Faro a little while she is away, for this week in Seville. Geoffrey had already offered me his place for all of July and so before I left here this morning, I called up a guy with a moving van. I was going to have to rent something anyways, to get my table and heavy 3rd suitcase down here. Rather than moving the stuff in emergency to Mara's house, as I thought last night, I just made the decision as I was about to catch the train back. I have never thrown all my stuff so randomly into bags. Anyways, two Javiers packed my stuff in their van, got us through rush hour out of Seville at 3:00 and past the hills of sunflowers and a Lebrija that is still green, and by 4:30 or so I was back here. Luckily the guy upstairs has his internet turned on and that is why I am able to write this. I will have poor internet access for the next month. I go back again tonight, stay at Mara's with Daniela who is also staying there, so I can teach tomorrow early.

Now I will sweep the dirty terrace by Maria's window (86 year old with a big sparkle in her eye), as she has had to look at a dirty terrace for a long time. Then I will attempt some kind of organisation of my worldly belongings and then get back to Seville, the 3rd trip between there and here today.

I had my first student in Jerez over the last 2 days: a very accomplished financial director who has a 4 month old baby and now is trying for a job with a project Airbus is doing in Puerto de Santa Maria, the next town over from Jerez. My first female student, aside from Inma at the company, a very gentle woman. Her place was a 40 minute walk way out to a part of Jerez I've only driven by or gone by on the train. I had to do that there and back Wednesday and Thursday. 7:30 should be a better time of the day but it still is not very cool. Busses in Jerez run every 2 hours and quit early. Sevilla and some areas south have been an alert for extreme heat. It was supposed to be up to 48 or 49 degrees here one of those days. At 11:00 am on a slightly cooler morning, drinking tea and eating oats is making sweat run.

On the weekend Geoffrey and I watched football games each night, went to the beach and ate good food. When I came back on Wednesday though, the last two days were serious. Teaching, finding internet access in Jerez in the middle of the afternoon...

Saturday and Wednesday were big Spain football nights. It is the semi-finals and we joined the folks at bar Porron, one of the first places I knew in Jerez two years ago - a stopping off point from Olvera on the way to dance classes, and right around the corner from Geoffrey's house. Chairs are crowding the entire front room of the rustically decorated place (wood beams on the roof, antiques on the shelves) with standing room behind them, beside the bar. Families, people of all ages, the folks of the neighborhood are there. They joke with us as we enter, the first night, asking whether we are from France, as we don't want to 'pasarlo mal' there (have a bad time, as Spain was playing France that night). They tie strips of Spanish flag ribbon around our wrists. I believe that if the football team could be fueled by the people's cheering, in this one bar, let alone everywhere, they would win for sure. It would be impossible not to, with the encouragement this crowd was giving. The place continually erupts with Vamos, hijo, Anda ya!, No que no que no (if the other team looks like they might score). Occassionally there are insults to the mother of some member of the opposite team who trips or hits a Spanish player.
They clap, like everyone everywhere does, but they clap more securely, and several times the clapping of the crowd spontaneously gels into 3s, several times with contras (claps by some people, on the offbeat) and once each evening, literally into bulerias. We are both utterly amazed and in awe of the people watching the game, just as much as of the game.

Geoffrey's solar oven plans are evolving, now 6 or 8 reflective squares are set on a decent frame made of recycled pallet wood, and using a heavy iron stand for an antique fan. Some vegetables were roasted close to adequately and finished off a bit on the stove.

He roasted sardines in a special metal box with burning woodchips inside it. The sardines are at their peak now, and these were so spectacular, the mild smoke of the woodchips made them as rich as chocolate - there was actually something reminiscent of chocolate about them.

I was up at 5:30 this morning on the 6:15 train and done my work for the morning now - finally having breakfast at 11:00.

I am having some manzanilla (that is a type of vino from Sanlucar de la Barrameda that is almost exactly the same as Jerez - sherry, except that the yeast is different and the air from the ocean is slightly different). For some reason of snobbery or connection, they only drink manzanilla in Seville. There is a little shop that I finally decided to go in. You get your wine straight out of the barrel. You can bring your own bottle, or buy a plain plastic bottle from them for 30 centimos, and it costs €3,10 for a litre, well, of the Fino, that is. The lady happily told me that she never gets headaches from it. It is not processed like it has to be to be put in bottles. It gets colour or other stuff added to be put in glass bottle for commercial retail sale.
Anyways, I am drinking a bit with my rice, which is finally done at 11:15. I put some manzanilla in the rice too.

I am very happy in the last few days. That is because I've gotten myself out of a month long awful black cloud of feeling I could not tell Pepa I was leaving because I knew she wouldn't like it and had already reacted badly. Anyways, I think she is happier now too for some reason. We are both singing around the house.

I have been very frustrated with my English teaching. It is not something I have a large enough interest in to develop, in order to do it well. It is worthy of an entire career of many years and not like a waitressing job, as many people see it. But I have to, because I need to make a living. I've felt I'm being forced all over again to pursue something very intellectually demanding, that I do not love. But I finally realised I have to do it my way, and then I can get behind it and put enough effort in to do it while I still have to.

I hit on an amazing trick yesterday. Music. I have already used it, but yesterday realised it could be used a lot more. An American former rock and roller teaches English entirely through music, and requires the students to sing. She even has her own textbook that she sells online, and a video explaining.

Well, I went to class with U2, Still Haven't Found What I'm looking for, because it uses the present perfect over and over. Que guapo cancion.... says my student. But after that he starts to sing Girl from Ipanema in Brazilian. After to the original guy who wrote it, singing it (not Stan Getz or Astrid Gilberto), we find the lyrics in English and listen to the "American version". This suits him much better. Indeed he is a Spanish man and learning the words "tall and tan and young and lovely" are quite a bit more suitable than stuff angsty Irish youth sing about. He is really interested in the lesson now.

He tells me that he once knew of a math teacher that taught everything using sex. All the students did really, really well. I decide to use Gloria, by Them (Van Morrison) next time. Beside having hints of naughtiness, it teaches spelling. At least of two very often confused letters, I and A.

Then I stay up till 2 am, going from Big Joe Williams, Big Mama Thornton, to Ella Fitzgerald, and somehow getting over to George Michaels. It ends up being a lonely 80s dance party in my room, being actually nostalgic for that era, which I thought I was pretty happy to leave! With this much hindsight, I see my relative innocence then. In the 80s, I was still happy to be part of the dominant culture in this world, and in fact didn't give it really any thought. Everyone I watch lacks cynicism compared to my peers today. Everyone I watch dances in a simple but gutsy fashion. Ella and George Michaels alike. Nowadays everyone is too cool for that.