So yesterday when I was up-dating my blog I was trying to remember what I wanted to post on here. Of course, when I got home I remembered a couple more things that I was going to tell about. Just a few little stories that are funny and add to my experiences here in Spain.

After I had arrived in Madrid and had been at the hotel and conference for 3 days and still didn't have my luggage, I had to go back to the airport to track down my suitcases. I went with my friend Teresa who is now in Santiago de Compostela because she was catching a flight from Madrid to Santiago. So we get a taxi from the hotel and we start talking to the taxi driver and we tell him that we are from the States and that we are going to be teaching English. He asks where we were are going to stationed at and she tells him Santiago and I say The Basque Country. He immediately starts in on how beautiful Santiago is and how wonderful the city is...blah, blah, blah. Then he starts telling us how much better Santiago is than San Sebastian and how her experience is going to be so much better. Once again, blah, blah, blah. I tried telling him that San Sebastian is a beautiful city and there is so much to do there. He doesn't want to hear a word I am saying and just keeps going on about how wonderful Santiago is. The part we didn't tell him is that Teresa is 1/2 Basque and desperately wanted to go to the Basque Country. I'm sure he would have stopped the car on the side of the freeway and thrown us both out of the car. This shows the kind of attitude and opinion the rest of Spain (especially Madrid) has about the Basque Country.

Then when Mylene and I were out apartment hunting we found this apartment to go look out. We went and saw the place and it was nice and the room for rent was big and the roommate seemed pretty nice. We were getting ready to leave and the guy started asking us what we were doing here in Spain and we told him we are working in Irun at the Language School. He asked us where we were from and Mylene told him France and I say The United States. He then starts telling me how in the United States we don't speak real English. He says that the English we speak is something completley different and that only British people speak real English. I didn't really know what to say so I mumbled something about us using lots of slang and just that it's different but still English. He didn't want to hear much about that so I just stopped talking and let Mylene do the rest.

And then on Thursday of last week, Mylene and I had gone to the Police Station to try to obtain our foreigner cards and were taking a rest on this park bench. I had woken up late that morning and didn't have time to eat breakfast so I had bought an orange at the market and decided to eat it. I was peeling the orange and dropping the peelings on the ground, which I have seen many Spanish people do. There were about a hundred birds around that I'm sure were going to eat the pieces I had thrown on the ground but the looks I was getting from people were horrendous. You would have thought that I was eating my first born child by the looks people were giving me. Apparently in Spain it's ok to let your children urinate in public places (park, sidewalk, playground) but not put your biodegradable orange peels on the ground.

These are a few examples of how Spanish/Basque people are just crazy. It took me a long time to get used to people here just saying whatever they want and it's something I have to get used to again. Spain makes me have a thicker skin. But I also feel that if they can just say whatever/do they want, I can do the same.

On Monday two very important things happened:
1. Monday was the first day that I actually really enjoyed here in Spain. It was the first day that I felt comfortable being here and confident in my decision to be move here again. I don't know exactly what it was that made me have this feeling but I liked it alot.
2. Monday morning I got up and took a shower and decided that I was actually going to blow-dry my hair and straighten it for the first time since I left the States. I got my little converter set and plugged it in and everything worked great. I have two settings on my converter-high and low. For the blow-dryer I had it on high because it has a higher wattage. After I blow-dried my hair (which took forever) I plugged in my straightner. I started to straighten my hair and then I notice a burning smell. I didn't think too much of it ( I just thought maybe something had gotten on the straightner) and continued straightening my hair. About 15 seconds pass and then I realize that my straightner is really hot and that it's my hair that is making the horrible stench. I put down my straightner and realize I have torched a huge section of my hair. Completely fried. Crispy...just like chicken. I thought that maybe I could cover it up a bit because it wasn't the top layer of hair. And I think that for Monday it was fine. But then I was just sitting here catching up on some e-mails and ran my fingers through my hair and realized that it's more than I thought. The humidity here in San Sebastian is unbelievable and my hair was already frizzy enough but I managed to add a whole other level to the disaster that I call hair. I'm going right now to buy some deep conditioner.