Angry Expat re-post

Hey everyone, I know I owe you all a post about Amsterdam, but this is an important issue that I want to spread the word about. I don't have the best things to say about the program I work for, I just lucked out by getting placed in a fantastic school that looks out for me when issues like this come up. A lot of people in my program are not getting paid even though we come here with student visas that do not allow us to find other work legally. Liz, a fellow auxiliar living in Logroño, La Rioja, has written a post about how we are quickly approaching the holidays and she still has not been paid for the last three months of work she's done.

"As most of you already know, I am in Spain on a teaching grant from the Spanish Ministry of Education called Auxiliares de Conversación or English Language and Culture Assistants. I wrote this long blog post last March with my thoughts on the program. So much has changed since then, and now I am going to tell you what I really think. I would say about 95% of people who do this program do it because they want to live in Spain. Not because they want to be teachers, not because they want teaching experience, not to help little children learn about English language and culture. Sure, that may be part of it, but I bet you the main reason is because they want to live in Spain, and it's one of the only ways to live legally in Spain as an American. And you know what? The Spanish government takes FULL advantage of that.

Our contract says that we are to work 12 hours a week and be paid 700 euros a month as a stipend from October 1 to May 31. Really awesome, right? The program also tells us that we should come with about $1000 saved up to live off of for the first month until we get paid at the end of the first month, around November 1. However, it is almost Christmas and many of the auxiliares around Spain have still not been paid. The program has been around for years, and yet, this issue comes up every year. Not with every region, but for many. Last year in Andalucía, my school just paid me every month and then kept the checks when they finally arrived from the government, but after all the budget cuts going on, few schools are willing to do this. After so many years, how can the Ministry of Education still be so disorganized?

Thousands of foreigners come to Spain every year with this scholarship, it is not a small group of people who is affected. And thousands more apply and don't even get a spot. This program has become extremely popular, especially in the States as an ideal post-college pre-real world second study-abroad opportunity. The Ministry of Education knows this and knows how much we want to be here, and I think they take advantage of that by making us put up with a lot of bureaucratic bull****, knowing that we can't and won't do anything about. Not getting paid for 3 months? It's not like we'll stop working and go home. We can't even afford a flight since we've used all our savings to live off of. Want to complain to someone about it? The majority of government don't answer their phones or emails. Ever."

Read the rest of Liz's post at her blog, Memoirs of a Young Adventuress.

What do you guys think? I've been lucky that my school can afford to pay me and the other assistant out of pocket while they wait for the government to reimburse them, but the fact is that they just should not have to do that. We'll see what happens...

It's beginning to look a lot like...

...Christmas!!! Finally! It's Christmas time in Madrid and I could not be happier. Christmas is and has always been my favorite time of the year, because it really is The Most Wonderful Time of the Year. And this year, I am even more excited than I usually am, because this year I'm going home! Living away from my family in Chicago is something I've done since I was five years old, so for me, December comes, school lets out, and I go to Chicago for the holidays. It's normal, it's my tradition, and I love it. But last year, I didn't go home. Mom came to visit me, and we had a great time, but we both decided that it just wasn't the same... so away I go!

To begin the holiday season, at work we celebrate Día del Maestro, and in our school we celebrate in style. Our lunch began just after school ended last Monday and we all got to eat lots of delicious Spanish foods while we talked and discussed our patron saint of teachers. Like last year, we are again playing Amigo Invisible, or Secret Santa. In this lunch we drew names, and the game starts tomorrow! This is one of the things I will miss the  most about this school. There's such a buen rollo there. We all get along and enjoy staying at school until five or six in the afternoon just to hang out and have a good time.

On Sunday, a few of my friends came to my house for an early Christmas party. We also played Secret Santa - my friend Emma got me a few key pieces that every good hostess should have: a cute tray, napkins, tea, and a cute cupcake-shaped sugar dish. Everybody brought something to eat (I made mulled wine and spinach cups), we exchanged gifts, and watched Christmas movies all night. I think being of the Friends generation, I always imagined this was what "growing up" would be like.

Now there are only fifteen days between me and heading home for Christmas. How am I handling the wait? Well, on Thursday I'll head to Amsterdam for a long weekend (thank you, Spanish holidays) and then I'll come back to a week of work, a weekend of shopping for presents, and a trip or two on the Navibus, I'm sure. To help you guys aguantar until Christmas, check out my video from last year's lights and fireworks:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVzCliL1Pwk&w=560&h=315]

...and some photos from this year's Christmas decorations:

[slideshow]

Felices Fiestas!

Thanksgiving 2011

A few weeks ago, my work friends eagerly asked me when Thanksgiving would fall this year, due largely in part to the success of last year's celebration. So once again, the fourth Thursday in November came, and we got together again to enjoy a large, delicious, all-American meal.

This year we held the dinner at my friend Lidia's house in Alcalá de Henares, a small town outside Madrid and just next door to the town where we all work. When the turkey was cooking away in the oven we took some time to enjoy a pre-dinner snack and drinks. Lidia is from a small pueblo outside Granada, and ever the granadina, she opened her fridge and offered us three different types of Cerveza Alhambra, to be opened with an Alhambra-marked bottle opener, and to be served in Mezquita glasses. María referred to this as "Lidiasgiving." Lucky for me, Alhambra is my favorite of the widely-available Spanish beers, second only to Moritz, a beer from Barcelona and only available in Catalán-influenced areas. Bummer.

Anyway. A few Alhambras and potato chips later, dinner was ready. Again, I was in charge of the kitchen, and for dinner we ended up with a 3kg (6.6lb) turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and vegetables for eight people. There were, of course, lots of leftovers. The turkey this year came out much better than last year, and I think it was because of the difference in size. The giant turkey last year was overwhelming and I overcooked it a bit...not so this year. Also, I managed to make gravy that wasn't a slimy mess! Hurrah!

My most impressive feat, however, was making a pumpkin pie. I went to Taste of America, an import shop in Madrid, and bought a pie tin, evaporated milk, and a can of packed pumpkin. Wednesday night, I very carefully followed the recipe and came out with this beauty:

Not bad for my first attempt! Everyone seemed to really like it. Unfortunately, even making my own pie couldn't convince me that pumpkin was worth eating, and I still hate it. Oh well. As we began dinner, my friend Mirella asked if I was going to say anything before we ate, so I raised my glass and proposed a toast. I told them, "even though I'm sad to be so far from home and away from family on Thanksgiving, estoy en casa y estoy con familia."

Shana's super simple spaghetti

I love to cook. When I'm home, my mom and I cook all the time, from old favorites to weird new recipes. While I might not be the best cook in the world (yeah right), I have a lot of fun when I cook and this is my all-time favorite thing to cook because it's super easy to make, it always tastes good, and it makes me feel like I'm at home.

You will need:

• Pasta of your choice (I use spaghetti, obvs)
• bread (duhh)
• butter
• olive oil
• tasty, fruity red wine (another duh)
• a spoonful of sugar (makes the medicine go down)
• oregano
• salt & pepper
• 1 big can of crushed tomatoes
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 shallot, chopped
• garlic (your call - I use loads), chopped
• red pepper flakes (optional)

Preparation

To begin, heat some olive oil and a bit of butter in a large saucepan (or a giant pot if, like me, that's all you have) and toss in the chopped onion, shallot, and garlic. Cook these until the butter is fully melted and all the ingredients are soft and semi-translucent.

Then, pour in your can o' tomatoes. I like to use crushed tomatoes because I prefer a chunkier sauce (plus it tends to be more tomato-y), but you can use pureed tomatoes if you like a smoother sauce. Remember - the onions will cause chunks in your sauce if you cut them too big or don't cook them long enough!

Now, the fun part. If you haven't already poured yourself a glass of wine, do it now, because I'm sure you feel like you deserve it after a good onion cry. This part - spicing up your sauce - is entirely up to your tastes. I usually take a few sips of my red wine before pouring the rest of the glass into the sauce.* At this point, I add the sugar, oregano, and salt & pepper. I also add a generous amount of red pepper flakes here because I love the fight between the heat of the red pepper and the sweetness of the wine and sugar. But again - this is your sauce.

Make it your own! Let this sauce simmer, uncovered, for as long as it takes to get to optimum viscosity. Ten points for that word! I don't like to start cooking my pasta until my sauce is simmering, so they finish at around the same time. After draining the pasta, it goes directly into the sauce so every noodle can bathe in tomato-y goodness.

Normally, my spaghetti story ends here, but on the particular occasion that my friend Laura took these photos, we decided to make meatballs and garlic bread as well. If you want to make the meatballs, take a shallot, some garlic, and about half an onion and grate them into a bowl with some ground meat - we used beef, but you could use pretty much anything. I think beef and pork would work best in this situation. Add to that bowl spices of your choice (salt & pepper, etc... of course red pepper flakes. that's-a spicy meatball!), grated parmesan cheese and breadcrumbs (I used ones with garlic and parsley added), and using your hands (ew), mix it all up with one egg. I added a picture of when I mixed the meatballs because I know my mom won't believe I actually touched raw meat by choice. To cook the meatballs, I cooked them in a pan with olive oil until they were a nice brown color, then put them on a pan and cooked them in the oven on low heat for about ten minutes, turning them over halfway through. Once finished, the meatballs also went directly into the sauce with the cooked spaghetti.

To make the garlic bread, we cut a loaf of bread in half to make two long slices, rubbed the surface with garlic, drizzled olive oil all over them, and layered very thin slices of butter across the top, and sprinkled it with parmesan cheese and the leftover garlic pieces. This went into the oven for about five minutes as the meatballs finished cooking and came out crunchy and delicious.

So, there you have it! My not-so secret spaghetti recipe! I make this at least once a month and if nobody is around to eat it, the entire batch makes about five or six meals.

*Don't tell my Uncle Dave about that. He would shut down my kitchen.

Basque-ing

Puente - Spanish for "bridge," a puente is the word used to describe a regular weekend made longer by connecting it to a bank holiday on, for example, a Tuesday. In this case, my weekend was connected to Tuesday, the first of November, or All Saints Day, giving me and my friend Jessie four days to head up north and discover San Sebastián and Bilbao.

Stop #1 was San Sebastián, or in the local language, Donostia. This small beach town was super charming and full of history. When we climbed to the top of Monte Urgull, between the Bahía de La Concha and playa Zurriola (closest to our hostel) we got to visit a small exhibition within a giant statue dedicated to el Sagrado Corazón de Jesús full of history about País Vasco and Donostia.

Our hostel experience here was...odd. We arrived to find the owners of the hostel (a married couple) welcoming us with mini croissants and a chocolate bar, and the guy, Jaime, dressed in a stage turban, winter coat, sweatpants, black socks, and white jelly shoes. He referred to himself as the Sultan of Karpukala (apparently he'd recently been in some sort of play or something) and eventually posed for a photo in the middle of the tiny room with us. The "hostel" was nothing more than a room in the couple's house where they'd installed three-story bunkbeds. We chose this place because it was the cheapest hostel with availability, and though it was really strange, we were lucky to be sharing the room with a group of really nice people who made the stay that much better.

While in Donostia, we basically walked all over the entire town, stopping only for the occasional coffee or ice cream. We took a lot of photos on Monte Urgull and in the old town on our first day out, but unfortunately it was really overcast until our tourism day came to an end. On our last day in Donostia it was warm and sunny, so we just sat on some giant wavebreaker rocks in Zurriola, soaking up the sun before we had to catch a bus to our next stop.

Bilbao (Bilbo) is probably most well known for the Guggenheim museum. One of the travel books I read said that one could refer to history in Bilbao as BG and AG - Before & After Guggenheim. Apparently the construction of the museum really changed everything there, transforming it from an industrial district to a modern and diverse riverside city.

On our last morning in Bilbao, we took the funicular de Artxanda and got to see some incredible views of the city, the river, and the surrounding landscape. The old town in Bilbao was cute, and the Guggenheim was impressive, but this was my favorite part of the trip. Seeing a city in a valley surrounded by cloud-covered mountains reminded me so much of Boone. Of course, in Boone they don't speak Euskera... I only learned hello and goodbye (kaixo/agur) and thank you (eskerrik). Even though the signs were all in Euskera, they were also in Castellano, and everyone in Donostia and Bilbo speaks Castellano as well, so I didn't have any trouble getting around... just didn't get to learn any cool new words or phrases. Bummer.

In writing about Euskadi (Basque Country), pintxos must be mentioned. Pintxos are similar to tapas in that they are a small delicious snack to accompany your drinks, but pintxos differ from tapas in that they include a pincho - Spanish for spike - that is usually a toothpick holding the toppings together on a slice of bread, while tapas could be almost anything. You could look at it this way: pintxos can always be considered tapas, but tapas can't always be pintxos. Squares and rectangles.

We ate lots and lots of pintxos at every possible opportunity. I'll let the pictures do the talking:

Delicious!

Click here to see the rest of my photos from a weekend in the Basque Country.