Yo · ho, · all · together, · hoist · the · colors · high.

My travels start as they always do, I am up til midnight trying not to worryand trying to get so exhausted I sleep on the plane. Nothing makes flying pleasant for me and I don't sleep but the flight is at least smooth and uneventful. After circling for what seems an eternity we land at Madrid bar rajas, which smells of grapefruit. Here I discover I can read spanish, speak some vague approximation thereof but need to be spoken to at a speed which indicates I am a halfwit. the Spanish however are generally pleased at my attempts with their language, however laughable and don't immediately revert to English when they know it, but let me practise. I quickly manage to obtain a pay as you go sim from orange, and then eat chorizo sandwiches in the airport bar whilst waiting for a transfer to the coach station and paranoidly wathing my bags and refusing to buy what look like lottery tickets from a beggar. I have also discovered yet another country where a muffin is still a muffin.

The central coach station is underground and a little depressing but the Coach is rather the opposite. Nothing particularly exciting but the seats are comfortable. The scenery on leaving madrid is as alien to me as the moon. Raised in the green lands of Switzerland it all seems very ...orange( ok ochre) to me. But there's a rugged beauty to it especially as we go through the hills north of madrid, before entering castilla y Leon.

I watch the scenery and wolverine origins in Spanish. We stop for half an hour innLerma, which is fairly non descript and I remind myself off the Spanish word for apple, Manzana.

By the time I arrive in Durango I'm too tired to appreciate in the scenery, but I wake in the morning to see towering peaks on every side of the city. Just about everywhere is 30 minutes from my house and the peop.e of the basque country, I am informed frequently that this isn't Spain, are very friendly and helpful. The weather varies between sunny and too hot, usually when I'm working, and overcast and warm when I'm not. The area is more industrial than I expected but the old town is rundown and picturesque like the Spain you see on postcards.

The first week passes in a blur of bureaucracy. I'm half way through my second week and I have collected a variety of papers I have no where to store because I've yet to have time to go to the stationary store and I still haven't got my contract. No one has yet said mañana mañana but the attitude is endemic.

By week three I’m fairly tired, but coping better than a lot of the others with our workload (heavy) and our boss (Lovely, but a bit scattered). I’ve also coped with one teacher getting fired for turning up to work drunk and freaking his flatmates out all weekend, the washing machine breaking and almost burning the kitchen whilst comforting the freaked out flatmate.

So it’s been a little hard to sit down and just view Spain as spain.

The fiesta has also been and gone I participated a bit and it was fun to see the streets thronged with people. Normally spain is not a binge drinking country, unlike England no one will push you to “have another” and when you want to go home you go home without mockery....

But during the fiesta people stay out till the next morning, sleeping in bank doorways near the cash machines and getting up early to try and out run a bull while drunk.

Yes, yes you did hear that right.

The streets are packed, and I mean packed, vendors set up selling the traditional vendor junk ...and a few fun pieces that are more local and worthwhile. Live music goes on throughout the festival which is very cool, and the days off don’t hurt but I can’t keep up with the level of drinking so some of it’s passed me by, that’s ok there’s plenty of other national holidays and festivities while I’m hear this year.

And watching the bull chase people around the square was kind of fun, but I get the impression I wasn’t supposed to be hoping it caught them?


Anyway although I haven't explored as much as I can Durango feels peaceful and nice, but not particularly intereting. The brief glimpses I've had of bilbao have revealed a spectacular and largely cheap city and the mountainous countryside looks beautiful, I plan to investigate further when I have cash and hiking boots.

Work is hard, but working is good for me, I feel happier than I have in a while and the Spanish manana manana is infectious. So long as I've got my lessons planned for the nextday most things are washing over me at the moment. I need to work up more energy and make myself go out and meet more spanish people, look into dancing and some spanish lessons...but I know I'll go swimming to keep fit the second I've got my first salary (well I'm already going but the pools five minutes from the house so I'll go a LOT when I get enough money for a monthyl membership). Anyway...there's always tomorrow. I'm feeling fairly chill about the whole experience and whilst I have yet to meet the hot spaniard of my dreams or fall in love with the city itself spending a year here will be pleasant :)

I did something incredibly brave and possibly stupid today

I said to my sister those things that you SHOULD say to the people you love and often don't when their out of line fore fear of rocking the boat.

Let's hope it doesn't capsize said boat >.