Hey All!
Warning! This post may cause the reader to become overcome with extreme jealousy, read on at your own risk! Lol but seriously... things are pretty awesome over here. One of the teachers that evan will be working under hooked us up with an awesome deal and we are so lucky! Our 'flat' (since everyone here speaks british english) is very big! First of all it is furnished, and it isn't super modern or anything but it is very clean and well kept. We expect to have many visitors because we have four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, a dining room, and a living room. Everything is fairly spacious except the bedrooms (the master bedroom is good though). There is a TV in our apartment but I can't figure out how to get more than one channel, at least it's a sports channel so at least I don't have to understand what they say to be entertained.
So far, from what i have seen most people here hang their cloths to dry (even our hotels), which I don't understand because it takes so freakin' long for things to dry here. So we have a washing machine but, of course, no drier. We hang our laundry to dry on some ropes that go out of our window!
We are on the third floor of our building and luckily we have big windows in the living room and bed room because we have a beautiful view that overlooks.... wait for it.... the beach! :) Yup, we are RIGHT on the beach! The downfall is that our beach isn't very nice for swimming, but it's only a five or ten minute walk to get to the best beach in town, so i don't complain too much. I think Evan liked the beach at Vigo a bit more because the waves were bigger but this is still amazing. At night it is so beautiful because you can see the lights from Vigo across the water! It is still had for me to get over the fact that we get to be here for eight months and that it won't just end in a week or two. Anyway, the cost of our place is 350 euros plus utilities which will be between 50 - 70 euros on average we have been told. Our place rents it for quite a bit more in the summer months but apparently it is pretty hard to find someone to live in it the rest of the year. The biggest downfall is that we don't have internet and we will not have it in the foreseeable future. At this moment, I am sitting in a cafe, drinking a water really really slow... Anyway we are working on it.
It is strange to get used to stores here because you can't just go to Walmart and get everything you need. There are fruit stores and bakeries, and electronic stores and movie stores and well you get the picture. There are 'supermarkets' but most of them are very tiny and they only have packaged goods and a small selection of meet and fruit. But we have pretty much everything we would need close by. It drives me crazy that everything closes in the middle of the day! Why do I always pick that time to go shopping!?
Also, lots of people told me that everyone in Spain speaks english and I have since discovered that this is like saying everyone in Canada speaks French. Nobody speaks english!
I bought a comic book because I figure that it will be a good way to help me learn. Im on Page 4.
Anyway, I better go make sure Evan isn't drowning in the ocean... (and Christy, I really hope I don't have strange creatures populating our apartment) besides, my water is almost gone.
PS. I am so sorry that I didn't take any pictures, and I forgot Evans iPhone which is the source of all our pictures until we can buy a camera (Evan doesn't think we need one, so I'm working on him) I will try to remember to put lots on for next time!
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Friday, September 23, 2011
Adventures!
Still in Vigo but heading to Ponteverda tomorrow!
First of all I just have to wonder out loud what the deal is with tuna and pickled asparagus?? Last night I ordered a salad. According to the menu it was supposed to have tomato, lettuce, egg, carrots, apples and onion. This was the most normal salad on the menu. Unfortunatly, when I received my salad I discovered that the sneaky chef added a whole freakin' can of tuna and a big long pickled asparagus! Fine. I ate it. (well... except the asparagus cause it was kinda gross...) THEN, this afternoon, we had breakfast (because we woke up at eleven again) and I ordered a sandwich that was basically a wierd BLT sandwich. When I took my first bite, to my dismay, there was... (you guessed it) tuna and pickled asparagus. WTF? Both times they added it and both times it was not on the list of ingredients in the menu! This time I picked it off because there is a time and place for tuna, which does not include interfering with a BLT sandwich.
Anyway... Enough of that! On recommendation by Evan, I will save an entire post in the future to the driving and parking habits here, so look out for that in the future. Instead, I will tell you about our trip to the beach. In an effort to be more adventurous, we decided to walk to the beach, which, even though we are only three blocks away from the ocean, was supposedly an hour's walk away. Turns out it was two hours but who's counting? Anyway, it felt great to walk along the beach(water is colder then a pool but not as cold as California) and lay on the sand (which was amazing and soft by the way) while Evan played in the ocean for an hour or so (I forgot my bathing suit). The walk back took a little less time since we knew where we were going. But back to the beach... you know how there are nude beaches in Europe? Well it turns out you don't have to find a special 'nude' beach to get the experience. ...!... Actually it wasn't that bad... but seriously! The top half of a woman's bathing suit is not a necessity but an option over here.
Other news... siestas are in effect even this far north. Stores are closed for three hours during the afternoon and open until 9ish or later. There are lots people walking around even at 10pm which is kind of cool and fun to be a part of.
Things are, for the most part, cheaper here (like a one liter bottle of water for a quarter (counting the exchange). And I just tried a Kit Kat bar, ready to be disappointed (because in the states Kit Kat's taste like cardboard), but it is actually better! Mmmm... European chocolate...
I would love to fill you in on more interesting facts but i gotta go cause my handsome interpreter wants the lap top...
Oh yeah... here is a picture I took at the beach, its not very good because it is so humid that it's hazy.
First of all I just have to wonder out loud what the deal is with tuna and pickled asparagus?? Last night I ordered a salad. According to the menu it was supposed to have tomato, lettuce, egg, carrots, apples and onion. This was the most normal salad on the menu. Unfortunatly, when I received my salad I discovered that the sneaky chef added a whole freakin' can of tuna and a big long pickled asparagus! Fine. I ate it. (well... except the asparagus cause it was kinda gross...) THEN, this afternoon, we had breakfast (because we woke up at eleven again) and I ordered a sandwich that was basically a wierd BLT sandwich. When I took my first bite, to my dismay, there was... (you guessed it) tuna and pickled asparagus. WTF? Both times they added it and both times it was not on the list of ingredients in the menu! This time I picked it off because there is a time and place for tuna, which does not include interfering with a BLT sandwich.
Anyway... Enough of that! On recommendation by Evan, I will save an entire post in the future to the driving and parking habits here, so look out for that in the future. Instead, I will tell you about our trip to the beach. In an effort to be more adventurous, we decided to walk to the beach, which, even though we are only three blocks away from the ocean, was supposedly an hour's walk away. Turns out it was two hours but who's counting? Anyway, it felt great to walk along the beach(water is colder then a pool but not as cold as California) and lay on the sand (which was amazing and soft by the way) while Evan played in the ocean for an hour or so (I forgot my bathing suit). The walk back took a little less time since we knew where we were going. But back to the beach... you know how there are nude beaches in Europe? Well it turns out you don't have to find a special 'nude' beach to get the experience. ...!... Actually it wasn't that bad... but seriously! The top half of a woman's bathing suit is not a necessity but an option over here.
Other news... siestas are in effect even this far north. Stores are closed for three hours during the afternoon and open until 9ish or later. There are lots people walking around even at 10pm which is kind of cool and fun to be a part of.
Things are, for the most part, cheaper here (like a one liter bottle of water for a quarter (counting the exchange). And I just tried a Kit Kat bar, ready to be disappointed (because in the states Kit Kat's taste like cardboard), but it is actually better! Mmmm... European chocolate...
I would love to fill you in on more interesting facts but i gotta go cause my handsome interpreter wants the lap top...
Oh yeah... here is a picture I took at the beach, its not very good because it is so humid that it's hazy.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Here at Last!
So. It has been an interesting week full of craziness. Everything from Air Canada threatening to strike the day we left to me getting really sick three days before we left. But it is all fine because we are finally here. (and when I say that i mean Vigo, Spain) We still don't have a place to live so that will probably fill a good amount of our time in the near future and our internal clocks are a tad bit off (to say the least) but it is awesome to be here finally. Flying in was really cool! It is so green here! Looking out the window you could see dark green hills with light green patches and little clumps of houses in the light green patches. Our hotel is pretty cheep... only 52 euros per night and its pretty nice, just really small but I hear we better get used to that. I haven't figured out what the little toilette sized sink in our bathroom is for, so if anyone wants to enlighten me, go for it! Going on a walk, at three in the morning was fantastic because we pretty much had the whole street to ourselves. Some streets are cobble stone, a lot of the buildings are really old with cool architecture and we even saw an orange tree! I am going to work on getting a camera so I can post lost of pictures but for now I have one that I took with Evan's iPhone out of our window:
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