Lisboa

For the benefit of a loyal reader who complained that my last two blog posts didn't have enough text (erm, that'd be you, David...), here is the promised lowdown on the Portuguese Capital!

Portugal is one of the countries most affected by the current
economic crisis, this piece of graffiti calls for a general strike.

I'd heard mixed reviews about Lisbon before I went, with some people saying it had a 'lot of character' and others describing it as a dirty, unexciting dump. I'm definitely in the former camp. I mean, it's true that Lisbon isn't exactly Paris and it isn't jam packed with tourist attractions, but that's really part of the charm. It has a slightly less-than-polished appearance in some places, many scrawlings of grafitti and yes, some parts of the city are a little dirty, but it was a refreshing change from the cities where everything is pristine but manufactured to extract as much money out of you as possible.

And some of the graffiti was cute!

There's also a lot more to see than you might imagine.  When you think of other European capitals, you conjure up images of many famous landmarks, but I didn't know what was in Lisbon until I went there.  It turns out that there's a 14th Century Monastery, a fortress built in the early 1500s, an old castle and a very beautiful main square just off the Rua Augusta.  There are also a number of miradores throughout the city which offer breathtaking views over a mish-mash of old and new architecture, often a rainbow of colour against the backdrop of the sea.

The Mosteiro dos Jerónimos

Me at the Torre De Belém

If that weren't enough, Lisbon has an amazing amount of museums, the vast majority of which are free!  It's perfect if, like me, you're interested in seeing a bit of everything, but admittedly, some of the collections are sparse and perhaps a bit too niche for everyone's taste.  Like my friend and I decided to have a wander round the Gallery of Modern Art, which had some really strange pieces, such as a blank canvas entitled 'Painting of A Ghost' - we didn't appreciate that very much!!  Happily though, there was also a great, free exposition on Second World War Propaganda which captured our attention a bit more.

This was my favourite!

I don't think I'd have liked the war very much...

I also highly recommend going on a daytrip to a place called Sintra, which is 40 minutes on the train from Lisbon.  A lot of hostels and tour operators offer this to tourists as a bus tour, but it's ridiculously overpriced and our friend from CouchSurfing advised us to go to the train station ourselves and buy a return ticket for 5 Euro.

All the trains are covered in graffiti too, I don't know why, but
I have a bit of a fascination with it!

Stepping off the train was like stepping into a fairytale.  Lord Byron wrote in 1809:  'I must observe that the village of Sintra is the most beautiful in the world' (and probably another 1000 lines of text if his poetry is anything to go by) and I reckon he wasn't far off the mark.  It's so quaint, beautiful, colourful and historical, I fell in love with the place after 5 minutes.  The only other time that's happened to me was in the Parc Güell in Barcelona.

The first thing we did was take a wander round the National Palace, which looks nothing from the outside, but is pretty magnificent on the inside.  It's all ornate ceiling decorations, fancy chandeliers and collections of those painted, glazed tiles that Portugal is so famous for.  Even better, you get free entry on a Sunday morning, so it's worth taking it easy on Saturday night and getting up early!

And if you think the National Palace is cool, just wait till you head up the road to the Palacio Da Pena.  It's a Moorish Castle built in 1840, which was unlike anything I'd ever seen before in my life.  The best part is that people have worked to preserve the inside just the way the former Portuguese royal family left it!  Definitely worth a visit.

Arty shot at the Pena Palace!

Bienvenido a mi vida...

Saw this and it made me laugh cos my students swear A LOT.  I actually found myself in a class the other day saying:  'Can everyone stop saying "joder" and "cojones" and just get on with it?!'

No te preocupes por nada, porque cada cosita que haya, estará bien!

Note to self:  listen to more Bob Marley.

'Cuatro Horas En El Autobús'

I took a flight to Lisbon last weekend (blog on the trip forthcoming!) and my book of choice on my way to Barajas was 'A Week At The Airport' by Alain De Botton. I quite liked the idea of him taking up residence in an international hub, observing the people (I worked for a brief stint in Glasgow Airport and can attest to the fact that some of them are very, erm, interesting characters) and learning what their behaviour tells us about life. Unfortunately though, I didn't spend long enough in Barajas to make any witty observations about it, I just spent four hours on a bus getting there.

The PLM (Pamplona – Logroño – Madrid) bus line is the cheapest and most convenient option for me to get to the Spanish capital. At just under 30 Euros per a return  ticket, I can afford to hop down for the weekend or book flights from Barajas without breaking the bank, and the four hour journey is just about bearable if I'm adequately equipped for it.   

I equipped myself for my last journey with the following things:

1. An uncontrollable urge to sleep, owing to having to get up at 6am to catch the bus.
2. A book to read when it turned out that I would repeatedly wake myself up from bouts of fitful sleep by smacking my head against the window.
3. A cheap new mp3 player which will never replace my beloved iPod, complete with a 'relaxing playlist' which (infuriatingly) cannot be played in anything but alphabetical order.
4. A pen and paper, just in case I had any ground breaking ideas during the journey. (I didn't.)
5. A nutricious breakfast of two magdalenas and a bottle of Lemon Kas.

We set off at 7.15 and the first thing I noticed was that the opening scenes of 'Apocalypse Now' were being shown on the screen in front of me. Slightly disconcerting. My hazy, morning brain then realised that my bus driver friend had given me a copy of the very same book to read, and I wondered if it was a strange co-incidence or if Spanish bus companies have some sort of affiliation with the apocalypse. Even more disconcerting.

So I shut my eyes to block out the scenes of destruction in front of me and managed to fall asleep for a little while, propped against a makeshift pillow fashioned from my scarf. Happily, I am fortunate enough to be one of those people who can sleep just about anywhere, but sleeping in places other than a bed often comes at a price. After an hour, I felt like I'd been beaten up – I had a crick in my neck, a pain in my back and a sore head from its repeated contact with the window.

When it became apparent that sleeping more wasn't a very good idea, I tried to eat my 'breakfast' without the bus driver seeing me in his mirror and without getting crumbs everywhere. That was a fail on both accounts.

Next, I got my book out and tried to concentrate on reading. Some of the information on Heathrow Airport I was learning was interesting stuff, but my little book had pictures and the woman next to me was reading the Spanish Penal Code. It was time to jump on a more intellectual bandwagon.

'I know', I thought, 'this crappy mp3 player does have one saving grace, it came pre-loaded with the “Complete Works of Shakespeare.”' Geeky as it sounds, I've always wanted to say I've read everything he wrote, particularly the sonnets. (I studied sonnet 18 in high school and fell ever-so-slightly in love with him.)

Sexy.

So I fired up the music player, searched through some folders and brought up sonnets 1-10 on the tiny little screen.

Sonnet 1

* scroll *

'From fairest creatures

* scroll *

we desire increase

* scroll*

 That thereby beauty's

                                                 * scroll *

                                                                  rose might never die...'

And that was about as far as I got before I gave up and went back to sleep again until we pulled up in Avenida de Americas.

Carnival

So the past couple of weeks have been un poco locas, owing to lots of work, things to organise, trips and of course, carnival.

It turns out that people allow you to sit on
the Carnival Throne if you're foreign...

Carnival is a fiesta I had never celebrated before and to be honest, I wasn't very sure what it was all in aid of. One of my students told me that it's about letting your hair down and enjoying yourself before giving something up at Lent and it turns out he was right, it is something along those lines.

Basically, in the olden days, you had to use up all of your good food and drink before Lent came along in order to ensure it wouldn't be there to tempt you. And no-one could think of a better excuse than this to throw a big party and don some fancy dress, not least the Spaniards.

The interesting thing I found about celebrations here is that the fancy dress isn't an individual thing, whole groups of friends go out and buy exactly the same costume. So you'll see 24 bottles of San Miguel walking towards you, 10 Rihannas dancing along the street and 20 brides walking down a makeshift aisle. It's quite an experience.

And the fancy dress isn't very much like what you'd see at Halloween in the UK or the US, where everyone tries to be desperately sexy. Just check out our outfits if you don't believe me.

'Boy Scouts on Tour 2012'

Un poco de gramática...

I said back in January that I wasn't quite sure how the whole teaching thing was going and I admit I still have the odd moment wondering what the hell I am doing trying to explain grammar to a bunch of teenagers. Happily, though, I'm feeling a lot more comfortable in the classroom these days and an experienced teacher told me that she liked the way I taught, which really boosted my confidence! She also said something very interesting though, which was that it really shows that I've studied a language before.  A lot of assistants arrive into her class with no idea of how grammar works, nor what the main problems with language learning are, which is a real shame.  In my humble opinion, you can't really teach a language very effectively if you've never tried learning another one.

In fact, I often really wish I could speak better Spanish to understand why some of my students make the mistakes that they do. Sometimes the only way you can explain something well is by making reference to your pupil's mother tongue and I don't know about anyone else, but I get frustrated when I can't do it!

That said, there are some things that I'm beginning to understand better as I learn more about good old Castellano and I'm noticing some mistakes that seem to recur across all age groups and levels. So here, for the benefit of teachers, Spaniards and anyone who can be arsed reading it, I've compiled a list of the 10 most common, and thankfully really easily fixable, English errors.

Top 10 Really Easily Fixable English Errors en España

1)  Pronunciation of 'u' in the Spanish way instead of the English way ('oo' instead of 'uh'). Remember   you're not having a Boorger King after a game of roogby. You're having a B-uh-rger King after a game of r-uh-gby.

2)  Using prepositions lifted directly from Spanish. One that could cause some quite unfortunate misunderstandings is saying 'to dream with someone' (soñar con alguién) rather than 'to dream of/about someone.'

3)  Forgetting prepositions altogether. If I had a penny for every time I have heard a student saying 'I listen music', I'd be a millionaire. 'Escuchar música' in Spanish; 'listen TO music' in English. (See below for a further list of examples)

4)  This is a strange one and I don't know why it happens, but ALL of my students used to mix up 'trip' and 'travel' (not any more, of course, because they've been constantly reminded of the difference!) 'Trip' is the noun and 'to travel' is the verb. Simples.

5)  Making sentences with the verb 'to like.' Again, it's also very simple. The rule is that there are three things you can put after the verb – a noun, an infinitive and a gerund. So I like music (noun), I like singing (gerund) and I like to play guitar (infinitive). [Note here you play the guitar and don't touch it!!]

6)  Describing the purpose of something. Many of my students used to say 'a pen for write' rather than 'a pen for writing' or 'a pen to write.' Again, the gerund and the infinitive are your friends.

7)  Mixing up (one of those awful phrasal verbs which means 'to confuse') 'for', 'since' and 'during.' 'For' and 'during' describe how long something happens/happened for, the former with a period of time and the latter with a noun. So I have been writing this for 10 minutes (time period) during my lunch break (noun). 'Since' tells you the point in time at which the action started and can be used with either a noun or a verb. I have been here since the morning (noun)/ I have been here since you arrived (verb).

8)  Pronunciation of the letter 'z'. This is perfectly understandable because there is no equivalent sound to the English 'z' in the Spanish language, but to speak like a native, you must perfect the sound that LL Cool J makes in the 'Control Myself' video. Skip to 3.12 and repeat after Mr. Cool J - Z, Z, Z, Z, Z, Z, Z... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1CbL1Vxjzw.

9)  Superfluous 'thes' in sentences. For example, saying 'the last week' instead of 'last week' or going to 'the bed' instead of simply 'going to bed.' Remember you can usually omit the article in English unless you want to really emphasise the noun.

10)  Putting 's's on the end of irregular plurals. Children, not childrens. Sheep, not sheeps. Women, not womens. Et cetera, et cetera...

Verbs where preposition is used in English and not in Spanish

indicar – to point out                              quitarse – to take off

huir – to flee from                                   poner – to put, to place, to turn on

saber – to know, to know how to         yacer – to lie down

mirar – to look at                                     platicar – to chat, to talk over

llevar – to take away                              esperar – to hope, to wait for

pagar – to pay for                                   sacar – to take out

pedir – to ask for                                    entregar – to hand over

criar – to raise, to bring up                    averiguar – to find out

destacar – to stand out                         apagar – to turn off

caerse – to fall down                             encender – to turn on

Che!