María is 4 and she is a really nice little girl.
Blake and I have heard quite a few things about the month of August in Madrid. It is supposed to be the most unbearable month of the whole year when it comes to heat. This is somewhat hard to believe considering the heat in July. All of the tourists leave and the Spaniards tend to take their vacations (2-3 weeks is the usual,) so the city is left virtually empty – like a ghost town. For this reason, August is supposed to be the worst month to find work. Businesses actually close and put a sign in their window for the whole month saying “Cerrado de vacciones”.
Luckily, Blake and I haven´t seen hardly any of this yet. For some strange reason, the weather has been wonderful these past few days. On the 1st of August, there was a cold front that came through and it hasn´t really left yet. A few days ago, it was so cold in the morning that I had to go to work wearing a sweatshirt!
Aside from the weather, the tourists seem to be thinning out, but not as much as we thought. Our little street is still packed with people, and the businesses are all still open.
Last but not least, work is more plentiful now than in July! It´s great...Blake and I have had so many job offers that we had to start declining them quite a while ago. Right now, Blake is working for two people. He has a job in the morning, every day, with a guy around our age. He seems to like teaching him because he´s easy to get along with, etc. Blake´s other job is every night for two hours with an older guy that he doesn´t like as much. This older guy seems to be a little bossy and wants Blake to do a whole lot more work than what he is getting paid for. It´s only for 10 days though.
I really like my jobs this month. My work ended with the twin girls – thank god. They were getting a little too tough to take. The day before my job ended with the girls, I recieved a call from a man offering me the same type of work for only 2 hours each day. I took the job, and as it turns out, I´m really glad I did.
I am currently working with his two kids – María, who is 4, and little Pedro, who is 3. The kids are extremely well behaved!!! The little girl holds my hand to show me things, and she always wants to play with me, and they both give me hugs! (Quite different than getting spit on and being called “ugly” all the time by the twins – ha!) It might help that the mother is there while I teach. I don´t think she works, which is kind of nice.
María is soooo beauiful! She looks like Christina Ricci´s character in the movie “Mermaids” if you´ve seen it. She has black hair and big eyes, and her mom always dresses her in these cute little dresses with her hair done really nice. María is definitely a “girly girl.” She always wants to play house, etc. She even gets Pedro in on it. Almost every day we play house together and María is the mother, little Pedro is the father, and I am always the daughter – ha, ha!
Pedro is really cute too. He seems to be kind of small for his age. He is only a year behind María, and he´s like half her height. (Maybe that´s normal...I don´t know.) Anyway...he is always wearing little polo shirts with a matching pair of shorts, and he is so funny. He keeps himself busy and usually gets tricked into playing teaparty with María and stuff like that.
I think their family is kind of wealthy. I ride a bus from a metro station to get to their house, and I have to go through mansion city to get there. It´s really beautiful because you can see the Madrid skyline on the way.
My other job is with a guy named Julio who is about my age. He is really nice, and we meet twice a week for two hours to talk. (He pays me for talking! I just can´t get over this.) Anyway...I really like talking with him because we get into these debates and it makes the time go by so fast. He is really interested in American culture, and I think he thinks we are all sick with money fever. He works for Amnesty International, so it seems he´s really left wing, which is great for political discussions.
I think he´s going to be a pretty good friend. I plan on asking him and his girlfriend to hang out with Blake and I sometime. I´m sure that would be really fun.
My last job is only one day a week, and because it´s on Saturdays, I think it will be the first job I give up if I´m able to. I work for a guy who works in medical research – specifically, he works with NK cells and tries to identify which diseases they protect against. Anyway, he is going to a convention pretty soon, and he needs to speak English. We have conversations...or at least we try to anyway. He is incredibly boring. I really don´t mean to be so blunt, but I had to try soooo hard to keep my eyes open the last time I met with him.
There is one last job opportunity that I have. I still need to talk with the woman, but she wants me to come to her house for one hour a day to just speak English to her 2 year old. I guess she just wants her go get an ear for English. I´ll give you more info on that later, I guess.
Other than that...the roommates seem to be staying another month. Luke and Ryan were looking around for apartments, and weren´t able to find another one for the same price. They ended up signing a lease through the month of August.
We´ve been having a lot of fun on the weekends. Last weekend, Ryan had some friends come down from Paris. He had gone to college with these people and now they were living in Paris, I guess. Their names were Cher-sue and Ansley. We went out with them to some clubs and bars and had a pretty good time.
This weekend, there is supposed to be a pretty big party in a section of town called Lavapíes. I´m not sure what the celebration is, but we are going to go and check it out.
Next weekend, Blake and I are planning on going to Bilbao, the capital of the Basque Country. I´m really excited about that. We´ll get to go to the Guggheim (I know I spelled that wrong,) and we will probably make a weekend trip out of it.
Anyway, I think that is all I have to say for the time being! Hope all is well with you guys! Talk to you later...
Private Notes
Jeronimo, Luke and Ryan...mispronunciations, staring, etc.