Frosty is a Baller

Last Friday was the last day of work before Christmas break. For about a month prior to this day I had been teaching my kids how to sing Frosty the Snowman in English so that they could sing it in front of their parents. By the grace of God they actually learned every word of the song. It was fantastic. But, I had to dress up like Frosty for the presentation. I forgot I had to dress up so Danny (A teacher that I work with) and I found some trash bags and some other crap, and I put it on. So, we looked like jackasses, but whatever... It was for the kids. The kids were really damn cute, as you can see... And they sang the song (almost) perfectly. Again, it was fantastic.

After the day was over we got our money and went home and... Um... Balled...

This isn't related, but...

Juan Carlos is totally throwing up the double

Kings in a Castle

This weekend Brendan, Jonnie (Brendan's brother), and I decided to make a little excursion to a tiny town called Belmonte to see a castle. So we took a bus and arrived there at about 5 P.M. We saw the castle in the distance, so we walked through the town, up the hill, to the castle. On the way the only people that we saw were groups of children doing random crap like dropping rocks on the street. We talked to one group of children that asked us where we were from, to which Brendan replied the U.S. then one of the kids called us liars in spanish. As you very well know we are from America, but for some reason they didn't believe us, then the kid said something about Homer Simpson, then we went our separate ways. We made it up to the castle only to find that it's closed for the winter season... So we walked around it and found a place that we could climb the castle wall, so Jonnie and I climbed up, but it was raining a little bit, so when Brendan's turn came the rock was really slippery so he couldn't get up. Jonnie and I checked walked around for a bit inside the wall and decided it was the sweetest fucking thing ever. Then we used Brendan's shoulders as a stool, and got back down off the wall and walked back down into the town. We walked around the town for a while then went to the bus stop to see when the next bus was... According to our interpretation of the bus schedule the next bus was at 6:30 A.M. So basically, we were screwed.

Throughout the rest of this post there are a lot of instances of us walking through the city of Belmonte for periods of time ranging from 30 minutes to an hour. So I'm going to just say WALKED to take up less time. So, when we found out we had 12 hours to kill until the next bus so we WALKED.

It was dark now, and the castle was illuminated by giant lights that we figured were automatic, due to the state of the castle inside the walls (Didn't look like there was much upkeep during the winter months). So we walked back up to the castle, found an easier place to scale the wall, scaled it... Then, we used an old bed frame as a ladder to climb onto the innner wall of the castle. We all made it up and we walked around the castle for quite a while. It was rad. Just the feeling of standing somewhere where people used to stand a long time ago is kind of a cool feeling. The city lights looked amazing from the viewpoint we had. Pretty much everything was perfect. We found a place to sit by the gate and just sat there, feeling awesome. While we were sitting there we heard a car, thinking it was just another car driving by on the road at the bottom of the hill we didn't do anything. Then Jonnie looked out of an arrow slit and saw the car parking at the front of the gate and said, "Oh shit." So we ran. We ran back to the place that we climbed in, jumped down, and ran down the hill. We relaxed a little after we thought about it, we figured it was just someone going up there to make out or something. Then Brendan turned around and the lights on the castle were off, then we heard yelling, then (we think) we saw someone running by the wall we just climbed down. So we ran again, this time into the city.

We eventually found a bar that served food that was open so we went in, got some sandwhiches and killed as much time as we could just to be out of the cold. After about an hour or two we...

WALKED

It was about midnight by now, and we were pretty tired, so we went to a park and found a dry spot under a tree and took a nap. That lasted about an hour then we all got really cold, so we WALKED.

Eventually we got tired again, so we went to the bus stop and tried to sleep a little bit, but it was getting really cold. None of us brought any super warm clothes because we thought we were going to be out for a couple hours then go home. And we got really cold again. So we squeezed into a phone booth to warm up. But the phone booth had a ton of vents and openings, so it didn't work very well. So we got the great idea of insulating the phone booth with cardboard. We put cardboard on the floor, over every hole, and a big one over the door to block the opening. Right as we were starting to sit down the policia drove by. Stopped. Came back. Got out of the car. And asked us what the hell we were doing. Luckily Brendan and Jonnie are really good at Spanish, so they explained our situation, they asked us where we were from, the usual repetition of Idaho commenced.
Cops - "Where are you from"
Us - "Idaho"
Cops - "Ohio?"
Us - "No, Idaho."
Cops - "Iowa?"
Us - "No, Idaho, it's next to Washington."
Cops - "Oh."

Brendan told them that we live in Madrid and that Jonnie wsa just visiting us etc. Then they asked, "You live in Madrid?"
Brendan - "Yeah, we're students."
Cops - "What are you studying?"
Brendan - "Spanish."
Luckily they bought it and didn't ask for proof.
After that, they showed us the bus schedule and explained that the next bus was at 3:45 P.M. So our countdown went from like 3 hours back up to 9 hours. We weren't too stoked about this news. They then told us that there are more buses going to Madrid from a town that was about 5 miles away. We asked how we could get there and they didn't know. So Jonnie asked, "Can we walk?"
Cops - "That's pretty far."
Jonnie - "It's not that far."
Cops - "Ok, but it's dangerous."
Jonnie - "Oh, Ok."
So, the cops left without mentioning our cardboard lined phone booth again, and without helping us in any way.

We took the cardboard down anyways, and used it as a seat and kind of a blanket inside the bus stop and tried to sleep again. But of course, we got cold as shit again so we WALKED. We talked about walking to the next town but realized we had no idea where the next town was, so we decided sticking it out in a city would be better than getting lost on a highway through gigantic fields.

We eventually came back gathered our cardboard and set it up as a bed in a corner of a building that blocked the wind. We spooned on our cardboard mattress under our cardboard blanket for an hour or so, then, guess what happend...? We got cold again. Brendan and I couldn't feel our feet. So we WALKED.

On our walk we managed to find a sign that pointed towards the town we wanted to go to. It was about 7:30 A.M. at this point and the bus was supposedly leaving to Madrid at 9:05. So talked about it for a while, couldn't decide if we thought we could make it or not, then we just started walking just to see how bad it would be. We decided it wouldn't be that bad, so we kept walking. Keep in mind that we had barely any sleep, had been walking all night, and were cold.
We tried hitchhiking, but it didn't work. I thought Karma would be good to me after all the hitchhikers I've picked up.

Fuck Karma.

We kept looking at the time every time we reached a kilometer marker, and kept finding out that we were getting more and more behind schedule. But we kept walking. Luckily the highway was a perfectly straight line from Belmonte, and not dangerous at all. We finally came over a hill and saw the city. It was 9:00. We found the bus stop at 9:05, and the Bus to Madrid arrived right on time. It was beautiful.

We got back to our apartment ready to tell Glenn what the hell happend because we figured he was just sitting there all night wondering what happend to us. But we got back and he wasn't at the apartment, then he rang up a little bit later. When he got up he told us that he locked his keys in the apartment the night before, so he was in pretty the same situation we were in. However, he got a much better deal. He went to a club that we go to fairly often in Alcala that is pretty small, so we see a lot of the same people everytime we go there. He got drunk, found a girl that we had met a while ago, met her parents, they got drunker, they offered to let him stay in their hotel room with them. He eventually accepted. So while we were sleeping on cardboard, Glenn was sleeping in a bed with this girl and her parents...

Hope everyone had a good Christmas.
Later.

Poor Righteous Teachers

Last Friday, our night was booked up with the promising opportunity of a night out on the town with the teachers from the Infantil division (which Joel, Adam, and myself work in) of the school in which we are employed. Infantil consists of ages 2 to 6, a reasonably troublesome spectrum to oversee, so understandably the teachers felt a need to reunite outside of the work environment and shed their woes for at least one night.

The dinner began mildly enough, with the usual barriers of language and shyness partitioning us from the rest of the table. However once the bottles were brought to the table and all those around me began to douse themselves the levees were broken and we all became one jolly group. Glasses and bottles were spilled, people crawled under tables, at one point during the night the teachers from different classes were called upon to stand up and recite the songs and dances they had been teaching their pupils. Everyone else in the restaurant at the time probably hated us, but it was OK because we spent our days raising their children-well probably not their children, but you get the point.

In short, we brought the motherfucking ruckus.

By the time we left the restuarant, our destination a nearby bar, most of the group was pretty sauced up and had left behind any memories of their long day spent shouting at kids.

The bar experience began how it usually does for me when we go out with people, that is me doing my best to politely decline vehement offers for drinks from drunk people who are pretty sure I should be drunk too.

We climbed down from our makeshit thrones of pedagoguery and exchanged our deepest fears with eachother concerning our roles in these childrens lives. What if we were doing it all wrong? How were you supposed to teach them if you just end up yelling all the time? What sour injustice swiftly snapped them out of the necessary gleeful years of early childhood and firmly placed them into the faculty's factory at the age of two? It was as if we were getting them used to being told what to do as soon as possible, so that by the time they get to high school they couldn't even dream of a better time if they tried, following the rules would be their past, present, and future. Three year olds didn't need to be told to sit in their chairs, they needed to be able to run around.

That is the frightening thing about teachers, they are fallible humans beings like the rest of us. Yet it is up to them to be the leader of many, shaping and molding young minds from a cockpit that may not be aimed so steadily itself.

I obviously care about the children I work with immensely, but I couldn't help but be jealous at the evident passion of those around me who were so frustrated at the position they were in. These were people who were determined the educate, no matter how much bullshit administration or snotty kids got in their way. These kind of feelings are infections, and thoughts of genuinely dedicating myself to educating these kids rapidly flicker throughout my mind, and the line is blurred between this just being a job and this being what I really care about.

So as all these thoughts were tearing through my mind the night carried on we left the first bar in search of a place to dance. An uphill walk through chilly streets soon led us to a line outside of an unfamiliar place with an unfortunate 10 euro cover charge.

It was well worth it though, we descended into the club, a long corridor packed with people and made our way to the coat check. And there we stayed until five in the morning, the music far too loud to allow any depressing conversation, the laser lights coaxing us to be content with simpler things in life than lofty goals of saving the world.

However, the line between life and work refused to remain distinct, a techno mix of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" blared from the all encompassing speakers as we refrained in succulent irony, "Hey teacher, leave those kids alone".

The Butcher Boys Cleaver is Alive

On Friday while Adam and I were taking part in our usual routine of hanging out in the teachers lounge after lunch until the time came to venture to Comedor to forcefully shovel slop into the mouths of the silverspoon Spanish youth an exciting message came to us.

There was apparently a present waiting for us in the adjacent library which we were to pick up at the end of the day. Knowingly betraying my common sense I immediately began to dream of the possibilities of this wondrous gift. Was it an envelope full of cash that would finally fill the gap between the slave wages we were making and minimum wage? Was it a coupon for the next two months in our apartment for free?

It was a box of food.

And a leg of ham.

These massive appendages are the closest thing Spain seems to have as a national delicacy. They stalactitically hang from the ceilings of supermarkets, their horrendous smell fighting off any confused urge to actually purchase one. Once stripped of the packaging, the item manifested is something very far from any thing that has ever been presented as "ham" before.

There is a petrified glaze over the entire thing, some sort of posthumous swine defense mechanism, a final line of defense against the impending consumption of the long deceased Wilbur. Amongst the vast surface area of this thing, there is not one minute location that looks like something that is fit for human consumption. The fucking toes are still on it.

We plan on unlocking the secrets of this mystic dish this week at work, and maybe one day when we are braver men, we will eat it.

Phone Bill About 2 G's Flat

Actually it was only $1,700. We were collectively dreading the revelation of just how much money we had tallied up on Brock's cell phone which we have been sharing throughout this journey and at long last the bad news has arrived.

Thanks a bunch to all the jerks that we love that felt like we had to talk to them on the phone. Maybe we can get a fund raiser going or something.

In Dust We Trust

A couple weeks ago, while waiting for a coworker at a subway stop in downtown Madrid for a night of bar hopping and clubbing, Brendan Dunne lightly taps my shoulder and directs my attention to a poster crudely taped up at a bus stop. In commanding, bold letters it reads 'Chemical Brothers' with other useful text written directly under it. I neglected to read it. With a little internet research and a surplus of procrastination, I obtained the date of the event, the time, the place and most importantly two tickets (one for myself and the second for Adam Holbert) at 38.50 euros ($56.21 Dollars) a piece.

Sunday, December 2, 2007. Tonight, like most other weekend outings, starts with a bottle and a half of wine (45 euro cents each) in my stomach and likewise with Adam except for his choice, discount, alcoholic beverage was champagne cleverly disguised in a 2 liter fanta bottle. A sobering fifteen minute walk to the bus station, 35 minute bus ride, 25 minute subway ride (a man played a joyous tune on the accordion in the subway), and a 10 minute walk to the Madrid Arena, we arrived an hour after the start of the event. Perfect timing. A short ticket line and hundreds of people still shuffling slowly into the massive building to join up with the other thousands. The faint, distant, rhythmic, beating sound of the bass slowly growing as we reached the entrance. Security guards filed people into single lines to search for weapons however they just patted us on the chest and shoulder and directed us inside. Luckily I remembered not to wear my chest mounted, semi automatic, machine gun or my shoulder mounted anti aircraft guided missile turret. We fought our way through the dense crowed and settled on a fairly close spot just to the left of the stage and a couple rows of people back from the speakers. The opening DJ (whose name I can't recall) was winding down. Humans were still pouring into the already packed floor of this stadium. DJ something or other finished and the sound cut out so only a murmur of people talking could be heard. Five minutes must have passed.

One deafening roar from the ceiling high, tower of speakers silenced the crowed momentarily only to erupt when two figures ran out on stage. They appeared to be brothers... Chemical Brothers.

Anticipation could have been lethal. With the music twisting, distorting, and growing at an enchanted like slow pace, everyone knew what was coming and it was beautiful. The crowed was no longer composed of people. They were molecules of boiling water that bubbled and danced in the giant cooking pot that was the Madrid Arena. Finally, the Chemical Brothers could no longer suppress the electronic disease that would plague every individual to move whether they wanted to or not. The pot boiled over. All of this happened in less than half a minute. An Imax sized screen behind the Dust Brothers controlled us. It displayed for our entertainment high contrasted images of police officers line dancing, sparks that morphed into butterflies and then into graceful levitating humans and the clown. Oh yes... The clown. Bald, tooth decay, eyes that could sense fear and a grin that could scare blind children. He was loved by everyone. His caked white face flashed on the screen, disappeared, and then flashed back in a new location. He was summoned by each bass hit. The music fell to a background sound and we were alone with the clown. He spoke. His voice was thunderous, cracked, and slow to drive into us what he was saying.

"YOU ARE ALLLL MY CHILDREN"

"YOU ARE ALLLL MY CHILDREN"

"YOU ARE ALLLL MY CHILDREN"




..and we were.


The show ended Monday, December 3, 2007 at about 1:30 A.M. The music had faded, although the ringing in our ears was still very audible. The subway was absolutely packed. We were almost unconscious on the subway and when we looked around to make sure we had not missed our stop we realized our subway car was empty. It was freezing outside at night and the little energy we had left would have been put to better use shivering yet we decided to dance in the subway car.



We got back home at around 3:30 in the morning. I was a little late to work.. about 4 hours. Adam stayed home.

Happy Homecoming!

On the 23rd of November, I flew to Minnesota, I have my own reasons for doing this but mainly, its because I'm a jet setting playboy. Well I got back last Friday where the boys threw an impromptue homecoming party. I was having a great time. Being away for a week made me forget just how much fun I have with these guys, but still, something was missing. Adam filled that missing space in record time. I can remember at one point, Adam was walking and talking with his usual swagger, talking shit about Glenn and how he "cant control himself" when he is drunk. Two minutes later, Adam was using the Delta Airlines discharge bag, that i brought back for him from the flight. whats the point of giving someone a gift that they wont use? Everything was going surprisingly well, seeing as this turn of events happened so fast. Then Adam dropped the bag. Nobody sits in the middle of the couch anymore.