squatter in hot bath water

The other day we drove past an apartment building in my city that was hustlin' and bustlin' with residents. Apparently this wasn't always the case, and still shouldn't be, as this building was never finished or rented out. But nonetheless, there are plenty of people setting up camp in there, sans water and electricity, living life as political protesters, squatters, okupas. I'm no expert on this subject, so some of my facts may be fiction, but here is what I've collected on the subject.
You are a rich Spaniard with a vacation home in Barcelona, which you renovated two years ago, but have since failed to utilize on account of your yaya dying up in the Basque Country in 2008 and some extraneous business distractions. However, this summer, nothing is standing in the way of visiting your Catalan escape, nothing, except a bunch of rasta chumps with dread lock mullets. Upon arrival, you become suspicious when you spot an unhealthy number of scooters parked in your drive way, but in spite of this, you proceed, only to find that your key no longer opens the doors to your own house. You knock angrily. Some shirtless hombre smoking some mota who studies Catalan poetry at a nearby university answers the door. He's accompanied by a whole hoard of them, spongin off your winnings in there, so you can't very well just tell them to leave, but you do anyways.
They respond with some incoherent rant about their social movement which promotes housing for everyone as a right and utilizes "abandoned properties" to demonstrate this. You high tail it to the local incompetent police, who by law can't do much of anything, proceed into a lengthy court process (in which the judge sometimes favors the squatters and looks at variables such as duration of abandonment, condition of the property, etc.), and eventually they are evicted from your property after you wasted your summer in court, spending the money that you had previously set aside for drinking cervezas on the beach. The hombres get a little smack on the wrist and move on to find another vacant site of their choosing to reside in, which they probably had loads of time to look for while they lived in your house rent free all summer. The least they could have done was wash their grimy hair in your new lion foot bathtub.

Check it out....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squatting#The_Movement

So this example isn't exactly the most common or accurate, the more frequent being run down urban buildings and unfinished apartment buildings, but it was a little more entertaining. Upon reading this, I had two dominating ideas enter my thinking.

1. How well could I manage living sans electricity and indoor plumbing? I know I can score free wifi from the parking lot at McD's. This sounds like a good deal....

2. In so many cases life seems to benefit those who sit around leaching off of others productivity, which in a twisted way sort of defines my situation right now. How is it that I was spending thousands of dollars a year to work my butt of in school and am now getting paid to sit around and study what I want and go on free vacations all expenses paid? PLUS I have electricity and water... I think I'm going to go wash my grimy hair and read in the bathtub....


Ok, I just found out that they use generators, they too have electricity.

Hola luna! Martina and I talk to the moon every night and tonight the moon was sad because she has crocodiles in her house. But, the moon is also very nice because she gave everyone so many presents today, flowers, mountains, apples, and crocodiles. Thanks moon. Thanks to Martina! She was so so good today. She gave me the gold medal for finishing my dinner first and I am giving her the Princess award. For the first time since I got here she didn't call me stupid or crazy or tell me that we're not friends. We went to the zoo (which is spelled the same way, but pronounced though ha.) and got a lot of stares, especially when she was on her dad's shoulders, which made her about 8 1/2 feet tall. Minnie con gafas (glasses) was a big hit at the park today. I hope no one was looking out their window while she was having me chase her around growling and wearing a Minnie mask. I got to pretend to be the baby, the mommy, and the princess today, and only had to be the witch once, instead of the whole time like usual. Estoy tan orgullosa de Martina, bravo niña!

Side note: If you're reading this and it's not making much sense. I'm nannying for a family with one little girl, Martina, who is three years old. Her dad (Salva) plays professional basketball for Fuenlabrada, which is one of the teams in Madrid and her mom (Mariona) works as a flight attendant for a Spanish airline.

My dear friend Savvi is coming in a little over a month to be a nanny for a family in Madrid as well, so we're sharing this blog and our grand adventures in Spain.

Once upon a time I was in Rome in a cathedral and was confronted by a hoard of Chinese teenagers holding cameras in their extended hands. I took one of the cameras, thinking that they wanted me to take a picture of them, but the guy took it back and told me no, a picture with you no no no! They grabbed my friend Hannah and put their arms around us and kept yelling at her calling her Britney Spears and switching cameras to get pictures with us. I promise I'm not bragging, I'm not flattered by being mistaken or having my friend be mistaken for Miss Brit these days. They yelled "We love USA, we love Obama, we love him, we love Britney" while they all threw up their double peace signs (I got this one of Hannah, they opted for the lion paw this time).

I told Martina that I'm Mary Poppins, I wish she was as easily convinced.

This was our conversation. Me- "Martina, I'm like Mary Poppins." Martina- "Oh, can you fly?" Me- "Yeah, sure." Martina- "Yeah, in an airplane."

Martina only called me "tonta" (stupid, but a really mean way to say it) once today, which was a drastic improvement from the nightmare that happened yesterday. She can sense my fear and I know it, so today I took a different approach. When she's bad her parents tell her they are going to put her on the street, and it works, so I'm adopting the same strategy. Our conversation today went as follows. Me-"Martina, you can't throw your toy at my head anymore." Martina- "Yeah, I can." Me- "Alright, well then I can throw you to a street in France. Have fun on your vacation." Martina- "Nooooo, I don't want to go to Frankie's house (her Dad's friend)." Me- "Alright, well what do you want to eat for breakfast in France tomorrow morning, cereal, milk, a banana?" Martina- "Noooo, I'll be a good girl now, I want to eat breakfast here." She wouldn't get in the car, so her mom gave her a blanket and told her to keep warm and then walked away and then I took breakfast orders again and warned her not to let the dogs get her food. She's always really good after that, for 30 minutes. She gave me a manicure with her princess markers and her special treatment, which was slamming my arm on the table repeatedly "to help my nails dry" and drawing all the way up my arm and on my glasses. She's got character and isn't scared of anything (even her 7 foot father), and I like that about her.

I'm attempting to read Harry Potter y las Reliquias de la Muerte (the last book) in Spanish, which is a much loftier goal then I realized when I checked the book out from the library. I now know that if I don't even know what all of the words in the title mean, I probably won't know most of the words inside either.

I love how in all of the dubbed shows and movies here they give all of the people really unfitting deep sexy voices, even the hot teenagers.

This week has been pretty much the same as the last. Gym with Mariona, help with lunch and dinner, attempt to play and speak English with Martina (I taught her how to say stupid ant yesterday while she was dumping sand on the ants at the playground), go shopping with Mariona. I've been growing out my hair all week. When you can say that that is the hardest thing you've done, you know you have it made.

When I think about someone more than food, I'll know I'm in love.

beware of eBay anxiety

It's currently 12:15 and I really want to go to sleep but I got myself into a real mess on eBay. I only want one camera, so why did I bid on two? I don't know, but the competition was just so fierce with both i***i and d**** (ebay names) and they kept outbidding me and I was getting so mad about it, and now I may become the proud new owner of two of the same camera. Maybe I'm lacking in human interaction if I'm getting this competitive with virtual rivals. Shoot, literally.

She asked me if I'm bored.... I'm absolutely not.

Saturday Mariona, Martina and I went up to the mountains outside of Madrid and to the town El Escorial, which is built around one of the historical residences of the king. Mariona wanted to walk around and go inside, but el pequeño monstruo volvió (the little monster returned). I have babysat and met hundreds of kids, but I have never met one with more energy than Martina. Keeping her alive is quite a task because she has absolutely no fear of cars or heights or people or anything that I've seen. We walked around the royal palace/monastery which was scattered with eight year old girls twirling around in their communion dresses and dodging the red lipstick kisses of their tías. We ate lunch at a Spanish restaurant while Martina danced on her chair and pulled on the table cloth and made salt mountains. The lady next to us smoked on her cigarette while we ate arroz con tomates y pollo. I'm glad second hand smoke doesn't usually accompany my meals. We bought churros con chocolate that afternoon, which are really different from the ones in the US and just as good.

I walked around for at least an hour and a half on Sunday searching for the church building in Madrid. I finally found it on the opposite side of the street than the directions said down a little street that also wasn't mentioned. I tried to call the bishop a couple times throughout the week, but couldnt't get ahold of him, which I now know is because he has run off to Uruguay and no one is quite sure when or if he will return. Relief society was taught by a very large South American woman wearing a see through shirt. I couldn't understand all that much, but I don't think she was making very much sense in Spanish either. She stood up front for the entire hour yelling "en mi país el libro de mormon es...." (in my country the book of mormon is this... is that, etc). Her passion was intensified the constant repositioning of her fire red eyebrows that matched her bright auburn hair. Every time someone made a comment (which very few did) she walked up to them and pointed her finger at them and started yelling her country again. Even the woman in the back row who answered her phone and had a fully audible conversations on three different occasions didn't stop this lady. No way. I went back to the bus station with two guys from Sunday school. One was from Venezuela and was completely out of his mind crazy. He talked the entire time about really weird things and kept saying things in Japanese, I was really confused. He asked where I am from and I told him California (if I say Utah no one knows where it is) and then he went on for ten minutes about how I must be stuck up and racist, so I think I'll dodge him next week. Of course there were some really nice people there, but no one I met was actually Spanish.
I went to my first party yesterday, for Pao, who is 3 years old and the son of one of Salva's teammates. I've never felt so short in my life. I heard two of Salva's teammates ask if they could take me to a party with them after, but he told them no and that I'm his daughter now and they're not allowed to talk to me or take me anywhere, and the same goes for his other daughter, so neither of us went.
Martina doesn't like speaking English, or when I do, or when anyone else does, but she's getting a lot better. Yesterday I told her that English is the princess language and she told me "no digas esas cosas!! Princesas hablan español siempre!" Don't say these things to me, Princesses always speak Spanish!" She also asked me if she could play in my room sometime, and I told her that we can when we're friends (because she told her Mom that we're not friends), so since then she has been a lot nicer to me. We make fun of her all the time when she's bad, but she doesn't care, so it's pretty funny.
Today I went to the gym with Mariona like always and now I'm just sitting here with Salva while he watches Lost in Spanish and Mariona lays out in the sun because finalmente, hace calor aquí (finally, it's hot here)!

I wish I had my camera, I hate thieves.

SAVVI: MY ALOOF BLOGGING PARTNER, VEN AQUI
Only two months till Savvi joins me on this grand extended adventure. I just got incredibly excited thinking about our plans for July. I'm meeting Savvi in London on July 10th and we are going to stay in England for a bit and then go to Norway and maybe after to Morocco and be back in time for my 3 month visa expiration, at which time I will resume life here illegally. But for now, Spain it is, and that's just fine by me. I've been here for 5 days and so far every day has been about the same. I go with Mariona (la mama) to drop off Martina (la niña) in the morning and then we go to the gym. Today we started reading a book, La Princesa de Hielo, in the car on the way to the gym. Well actually I read it aloud and then Mariona tells me what a lot of words mean and how to say them.
UNO MAS! is the phrase that wakes me up in my morning classes at the gym. Today we went to a class, I don't know what it's called, but we danced around while exercising. The ladies there might understand more about what is coming out of the instructor's mouth, but I beat them by a long shot with my comprehension of the American dance music they consistently play. There are some really sweet dudes at the gym who sport a braided variety of the mullet. Next we come home and make lunch (which is the equivalent size to our dinner), which is always really really good (Mariona says "how tasty eh?). After lunch we go pick up Martina from school.
Yesterday she reallly hated me, and before that she was just off and on. She really enjoys telling me to shut up and tells her mom that I hit her. She got in big trouble for this. I don't blame her for being a little hostile, I would be too if I were three and had a strange person unsuccessfully babbling Spanish living in my house. She did tell me the other day "te quiero un poco y mi madre y padre un montón", which means I love (but not a very strong way of saying it) you a little and my mom and dad a lot, which was really sweet of her. I'm pretty spoiled here at my so called "job", and Martina really warmed up to me this morning, so I'm hopeful.
Tomorrow las tres chicas (the three girls) are going to the mountains outside of Madrid and getting churros con chocolate. Salva (el papá) has his last basketball game in San Sebastian, so we are going to go do something fun. I'm excited for tomorrow. I still don't feel like I am in Spain. The city I am in is really residential and doesn't feel very different from the US, but I think tomorrow's trip outside of Majadahonda and my own outing to Madrid on Sunday will remind me. As for now I am trying to win Martina over and sound half coherent when I speak. Right now speaking Spanish feels sort of like when I'm trying to find a street but I keep running into culdesacs at every other turn. I run into a lot of dead ends with words I don't know or have forgotten, but I'm already feeling a lot more comfortable with my Spanish.

VALE, HASTA LUEGO!

El Primero Día- España y Yo

I was greeted yesterday at the airport by my 6 foot 8 basketball playing benefactor, his beautiful wife Mariona, and their little girl Martina. They were not hard to spot. Today I went with Mariona to the biggest gym I have ever seen. The instructor played only English music and didn't hesitate to sing along. It was hard to do the exercises because I was laughing so hard listening to him sing Lady Gaga and Metallica remixes in his thick Spanish accent. No one seems to know that I'm not Spanish, but after they talk to me and I respond by staring at them with my mouth open while I formulate a sentence, I think it becomes quite obvious. I have my own room for the first time in two years, and even better, it comes sans my bratty roommate. I am really enjoying sleeping in a bed for the first time in 4 months, which has replaced the puke green velvet couch from the 1960's I was previously occupying. The accent is a little hard to understand, but I am doing better than I thought and just saying "vale" a lot to sound more Spanish. I got my Majadahonda library card today and am going to watch Yo Soy La Juani tonight. Estoy bien aquí!