Long hot summer

Not much has been going on here in Madrid after our travels. We have caught up with friends, met some new people, tidied up, and got back into some sort of routine.

My routine is exactly what it was last summer, and I am trying desperately not to fall into that state of reclusion that I was in last year. I have three major things on my to do list everyday, excluding the errands of daily life.

I will inter mix my routine explanation with some pictures I took the other day at the Nuevos Ministerios Metro station. These penguins are all over town, and I was pleased to find this pleasant little collection while I was running my errands.

My favorite, I love simple line drawings.

1.) Practice Spanish. Better Spanish, better job. Or at least easier to find a job, but I have to be basically fluent in both languages in most jobs of that description. I can communicate, but I am not fluent, and communication is rarely easy. When it is easy it always surprises me. 

I have a good set of Spanish grammer books written in Spanish. Watching the Olympics helps a bit, as the comments are, of course, in Spanish. I am trying to watch Spanish tv (non-Olympic) for at least an hour a day to try to increase my speed of comprehension. I am again trying to slog my way through a Spanish novel. Whenever I can remember to I talk to DH only in Spanish.

 I am painfully aware of how clumsy and slow I am when talking in my new language and it is discouraging. There is a "sweet spot" where you warm up and that words seem to flow almost easily, but you have to get past the clumsy bit first. This includes reading. Sometime I have to just pick up the novel and slog long for a page or so, barley knowing what is going on before I hit the "sweet spot". It is tricker with novels though because my mind has a tendency to wander if I hit a patch of vocabulary that I do not know. Then I have to start all over again.

All of them in a row

2.) Look for jobs.

Anyone who has ever done this knows what a tedious process this is. Add to it that fact that I am in a country in a economic crisis, that 80% of this country is currently taking the month of August off (no this is not an exaggeration) and there is the language barrier. The last thing that makes this search difficult is that there are not many official places where jobs are posted (at least not that I have found). so you end up trolling around until you find something.

I could go back to my other job in September if I want. This is something I would rather not do and does add some terrible motivation to my search.

A Sevilla penguin

3.) Try not to go crazy. Ouff, this one is hard. With everything closed and the weather so very hot, it is going to be 107F° or 42C° today it is hard to make the effort to go out. I like to get things done (ie study and look for jobs) in the morning, which means I either brave the heat in the afternoon or I am a recluse. Something has to change. I will keep tweaking my routine until it does and see if that helps. Going to the center of town and to museums IS always an option. However, as the people of Madrid leave in the city in mass exodus for some reasons the tourists from other countries come here. The museums will be crowded. DH goes out of town next weekend, and I fear for my sanity. I really wish my apartment was bigger, It really can not hold more then four people comfortably, and that is total. Good thing I am obsessed with all things craft, I will have to throw myself into it.

I liked this one a lot too. It is very Pacific Northwest to me.

On hot days in August in Spain there is only one thing to do.

Please keep in mind that this blog is acting as a "journal" for me. Some people read my journal entries as complaining and not as just fact. I am not unhappy in Spain, life is pretty good. I am just blogging the difficulties so that one day I can look back and see how much better things are.