Well this is strange, for obvious reasons I’ve never celebrated Thanksgiving, what with it being American and all and me being British, but then I come to Spain and end up celebrating it for the first time ever, because that makes total sense. But anyway I was on ‘beer duty’ and went to Eroski to find, well, whatever I could, I’d been told this new San Miguel 1516 stuff is very good, but they’d run out, so I went for the standard Estrella, and I was walking along the aisle and – hang on – is that Duff beer? As in Duff beer from the Simpsons? Me gusta! So I picked up a few of those as well to take and got on the bus to Vinaròs. It was a lot easier finding Dan’s house this time as last time I’d not only slept through Amposta, I’d actually slept through the stop in Vinaròs and ended up in the petrol station where the driver was filling up, God only knows where I’d have ended up had he kept driving, but I don’t really want to think about it if I’m perfectly honest. So we got to Dan’s house, then from there to Erica’s, an American auxiliar in Vinaròs (which is technically in the Comunitat Valenciana, the only reason I know Dan is because, while he lives there, he works in Alcanar, which is in Catalunya. Think how close Chester is to Wales and you get the idea.) So there was a load of us there having Thanksgiving Dinner, with some Charlie Brown Thanksgiving thing on DVD in the background, had the chicken, had the stuffing, salad, beers, now let’s hit the clubs, and it’s alright for clubs is Vinaròs, some of them practically on the beach, not bad at all, and I think I’m already getting too used to what we English would see as ridiculous clubbing hours, you talk about going to a club before midnight over here and they look at you like ‘are you pissed?’ And then you don’t get back until, well, 6AM is early. So we get back at some time around 7 and then somehow function the next morning on about 5 hours of sleep (okay, afternoon), then it was suggested to go see Morella for the day, well why not? We went to Dan’s tutor’s house, walking past some sort of massive party, and some of the grande-est paellas you have ever seen, then while something was happening with her keys preventing her actually being able to get to her car, or something along those lines, we nipped into a bar to grab a coke to (hopefully) get rid of our hangovers before the journey which was a hell of a lot longer than expected, I figured it’d be a place maybe just outside Vinaròs, but instead found myself going so far inland that I was expecting to see Madrid at any moment. And then the next obstacle: hangover + car + sometimes feeling a bit travelsick anyway = I do not feel good, add to that a winding mountain road with sharp turns and I’m praying to get there soon, I wasn’t the only one though at least, as Kerry said when we eventually did arrive and get out of the car, first things first: get some bloody water necked! Think the coke was a bad choice, but anyway we had our tour of Morella and talk about old! It’s almost entirely within an old castle that has been incredibly well preserved, I’m not sure anything has been done to the exteriors of any buildings and there was all sorts of little traditional shops and what have you, I wouldn’t mind living there if it wasn’t in the middle of quite literally nowhere. At the end of the afternoon we bought a couple of things and headed back, feeling a bit better in the car now after walking around in the crisp mountain air, so we’re descending, descending, descending, what’s with my ear? Descending, descending, this is beginning to hurt now, descending, arrrrrghh!! So I’m basically sat there not being able to hear a thing until we get out of the car in Vinaròs. So yeah, this was a fun weekend!
And I now think that one of the girls in my class is convinced I speak Catalan, my only theory supporting this is that I’m bloody awesome at languages I don’t know, but other than that I have no idea how she’s gathered this, she said “the other day I saw you speaking with the other teachers in Catalan.” Trust me. You didn’t. I almost told her that I would have believed her had she said Spanish, but remember, I don’t speak Spanish either.
And then this week when I was in the mediació room with some of the students, I can’t remember what we were talking about, but it got onto body parts, and one of the girls comes out with ‘naso’ and they all fall about laughing, and I’m just sat there like “well…what’s going on?” Turns out that everyone in Catalunya learns Catalan as their first language (obviously) but then when some Catalan children straight up tell you that to get from Spanish to Catalan, you take off the last letter, that just seems lazy, except in this case where nas is Catalan for nose, but in Spanish it’s nariz, not naso, so that’s what turned out to be so funny, and come to think of it I’m not entirely sure why they were speaking Spanish in the first place.
And I now think that one of the girls in my class is convinced I speak Catalan, my only theory supporting this is that I’m bloody awesome at languages I don’t know, but other than that I have no idea how she’s gathered this, she said “the other day I saw you speaking with the other teachers in Catalan.” Trust me. You didn’t. I almost told her that I would have believed her had she said Spanish, but remember, I don’t speak Spanish either.
And then this week when I was in the mediació room with some of the students, I can’t remember what we were talking about, but it got onto body parts, and one of the girls comes out with ‘naso’ and they all fall about laughing, and I’m just sat there like “well…what’s going on?” Turns out that everyone in Catalunya learns Catalan as their first language (obviously) but then when some Catalan children straight up tell you that to get from Spanish to Catalan, you take off the last letter, that just seems lazy, except in this case where nas is Catalan for nose, but in Spanish it’s nariz, not naso, so that’s what turned out to be so funny, and come to think of it I’m not entirely sure why they were speaking Spanish in the first place.
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