voy a madrid.

I found out two weeks ago that I was accepted to be a Language and Culture Assistant in Madrid, Spain! Since then I have been running around accomplishing the many tasks required of applying for a visa...there are so many parts. I am just about done now, just waiting for my police records (or lack thereof) to come back from Tallahassee where I had to send them to get the Apostille certification, or something like that.

Anyhow, I am going to be teaching young children at CEIP Miguel de Cervantes in a pueblo de Madrid called Valdilecha. Valdilecha is about an hour southeast of the center of Madrid, but I am probably going to live in the city and commute to work.

I haven't yet decided whether I want to live with other auxiliares de conversacion or with spaniards. A mix of both would be cool, but i'm not sure if that will be possible, or work out. I am talking to a returning auxiliar right now about moving in with her and her friend, but I need to see if where they are going to live is close to a bus station that would take me to Valdilecha. There's so much to figure out, but I think it will be much easier to deal with these things once I am over there.

I am a bit nervous to arrive in Madrid and navigate around all by myself. I know it will feel exhilarating to me when I accomplish a small feat like getting on the right train and finding the hostel I plan on staying in.

I will try to update this blog more often from here on. I've been very bad about it. Today has been a very dreary and lazy day. I'm about to go get coffee, because I just cannot wake up! I think it's partly due to the fact that it's been grey & cloudy all day. I have a 40% off Borders rewards coupon that is tempting me in my hotmail inbox, but I know I shouldn't spend $ . I don't know if I can resist using it though. We shall see. xx

Listen & Love.

Streaming of Imogen Heap's new album, Ellipse... :) She is just so talented!

Namaste.

I attended my first yoga class on Friday with my friend April. She has a gym membership and is able to bring a friend to try out the gym, so I went to the class with her. I was a little intimidated by the thought of yoga, because when I think of yoga I think of having to balance in strange positions and consequently making a fool of myself in front of lots of people. My experience wasn't exactly like that though.

I went to bed around 2:45 am the night before because I was hanging out with friends, knowing that I was going to be waking up in about 5 hours for this yoga class. I woke up twice before my alarm went off, probably anxious not to oversleep. I don't get to hang out with April very often, so I didn't want to be lame and sleep in.

Amazingly enough I made it on time to the class, which is a miracle in itself. There was a pretty good amount of people in the class, probably around 15, ranging in age from 20-60+. At the beginning of the class the instructor asked if it was anyone's first time, so I raised my hand and let everyone know it was my first time. A normal person probably would have refrained so as to blend in, but i like attention I guess. After this the instructor informed us all that this class would be an easier one. I had never been to the class before, so I couldn't judge if it was easier than usual, but some of the moves were definitely hard. We did some tricky moves that used muscles in my arms that had not been used in awhile. My arms were soooo sore the next day.

Anyways, yoga was really pretty fun and relaxing. I wish I could start every morning with yoga. I would be in very good shape and have good posture. I think it's all the stretching, but I had great posture after the class, I didn't have my shoulders slumped down like I usually do.

I also finally learned what "namaste" means. We used it in the class as a sort of greeting, so I looked it up online and found this definition:

"Namaste comes from the Sanskrit

word namah te. Namaste is

pronounced Nam-a-stay. In Sanskrit

namah means "bow, obeisance,

reverential salutation, adoration". Te is

the durative of the personal pronoun

tvam, "you". A literal translation of

Namaste (namah te) is thus

"reverential salutation to you." It is

commonly accompanied by a slight

bow made with the hands pressed

together, palms touching, in front of

the chest called Gassho."

(Courtesy of: http://www.lightandlovereiki.com/namaste.html)

I may possibly buy one of those yoga dvd's and start doing it at home. I'll let you know if anything comes of this, such as me beginning to understand the language of yoga.

Summer days

I haven't updated this blog as much as I've wanted to. But here goes. Summer has been going well. It's been a learning experience. I am still only working part time, and just applied for a few other part-time jobs, so hopefully one will work out, cos I need more hours! At least season approaching so I will probably get more.

I want a real job. And I don't mean to say that working in retail isn't a "real job," I just would like to start working at a place where I can start my career and do what I went to school for. I need to make my way into a place where I can get experience and move up to what I want to do. All of the journalism jobs that I have seen require someone that has more experience than I have...so I need to start in a position where I can get that experience.

I just bought my ticket to see Blink 182 next month. I am really excited. I loved them in high school, and am excited to get to see them live with some of my best friends!

(amazing music video by Blink 182 "First Date" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49FWsBf8tWA )

It's about to storm here. I love relaxing and listening to the sounds of thunderstorms. So very cool.

I'm a dreamer.

I want to blog more often, but sometimes I feel I have nothing interesting to say. I don't want to write a boring blog listing off the things I did today, but I want to find the interesting things that would make a good story, or the things that make my life seem more intriguing than I feel it actually is. A lot of interesting things do happen, and often I fail to write them down because in a way I feel that reading about my life would be such a bore, but that is probably how everyone feels at times. There are times when we are so excited about something that we feel the desire to share it with the world, but then there are those in between times when life is just a conglomeration of working, eating, sleeping and then repeating.

I've been thinking a lot about the future lately. I guess that's what happens when you've just graduated from college and are living at home and have one thousand possibilities in front of you. Or maybe only one hundred with the economy and unemployment rate the way they are. I still want an exciting future though. I want a job that is new everyday, that will keep me learning for the rest of my life. I think that's part of the reason I studied Journalism. I will always have to keep reading, researching, asking questions, and opening my eyes to worlds that I never would have seen if it weren't for the desire to explore that world and share it with others.

I am a huge people lover. I love meeting and talking to people, and not to sound cocky, but I have a strange something (I suppose you could call it a gift) of getting people to open up to me. People feel they can trust me, and the truth is they can. I don't have any intentions of ruining peoples lives to obtain success. That's not what I'm about. It's funny though, because I've had random strangers divulge their deepest secrets to me when I am just sitting there next to them minding my own business.

All this to say, I just started reading the book, The Unlikely Disciple by Kevin Roose, and so far in only the first chapter, it has made me laugh out loud more than once. This book caught my attention, because of the way Roose wanted to place himself in a culture unfamiliar to himself and learn about that culture and write a book about it in away that could be critical without being demeaning. The idea behind this book kind of exemplifies the way that I want to live my life. I want to get to know people, hear their stories and share their stories, without seeking to bring the other person down in order to bring myself up. All I want is to get to know what people are really about; what makes them smile, cry, laugh, shout, or run. What inspires them, and what gets them through the day? Their source of motivation.

I long to learn and to love. To accept and to share. I want to be inspired, and be an inspiration.

Newspeak* // An Introduction of sorts

I am currently reading 1984 by George Orwell. When I first started reading the book, right after I finished his other book, Animal Farm, I couldn't get into. It didn't take long though, I am currently 2/3's into the book. It's a very interesting novel that gets you to thinking.

One part of the novel that really caught my attention was the new language that the totalitarian government in the novel was creating, and Orwell's description of it. The new language is called "Newspeak," which was slowly replacing "Oldspeak," the normal English language.

I want to copy this from the novel, so you can get a picture.
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"It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course, the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take 'good,' for instance. If you have a word like 'good,' what need is there for a work like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well-- better, because it's an exact oposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of 'good,' what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like 'excellent' and 'splendid' and all the rest of them? 'Plusgood' covers the meaning, or 'doubleplusgood' if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already, but in the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words--in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was B.B.'s idea originally, of course," he added as an afterthought.
............
"You haven't a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston," he said almost sadly. "Even when you write it you're still thinking in Oldspeak. I've read some of those pieces that you write in Times occasionally. They're good enough, but they're translation. In your hear you'd prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vaguness and its useless shades of meaning."
...........
"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exacly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we're not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need for that."
(Orwell, p. 135-136)
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And you see, this whole idea is very saddening to me. Probably to you as well, if you have a blog & you've made it to this point. Language is beautiful. Words can convey our frustrations, our ideologies, our dreams. Words can take us to a land we've never been to, into the imagination of a writer such as J.K. Rowling or C.S Lewis.

This Newspeak which Orwell imagines, which is created by the government, is a mokery of the true form of English. It wishes to strip the language of its vast meaning so that eventually people aren't able to have any of their own thoughts at all, only the rubbish that the government feeds them. Everyone will have the same thoughts and beliefs about the meaning of life.

I love languages. I've studied Spanish for a long time, and I have learned a little bit of German. I've always been fascinated by other languages and how they are formed..it even helps me better understand the structure of English. I am very fond of words and how they can have different meanings to different people. I love the different adjectives we have to describe a movie, or how good a meal was. I also believe that the way someone speaks certain words can effect how we interpret them. We can be misled by someone's persuasive skills.

**On a side note, I'm sure that Death Cab for Cutie would still manage to turn out beautiful lyrics if they were only left with Newspeak.

Anyhow, I just wish to use this blog to share daily discoverings with you here, such as things I experience, music I like, news that's intriguing, and other such things. Please do leave comments, so long as they're not spam! :)