A room with a view

OK, not really, but it's an apartment with a view... I have moved into my little flat two weeks ago, and am settling into the daily routine.

The flat is in Gracia, the same neighbourhood as Carmen's house, on a pedestrian street, right across from a market. The neighbourhood is full of squares, shops, cafes and bars, and has a real community feel to it. I have already chosen my favourite stalls in the market for veggies, pasta and charcuterie, as the French say.

The flat is narrow, with an impossibly tiny bathroom and kitchen (only two of us fit in at once), and a cute little balcony that opens onto the street and market. My room is in the middle, and is a very decent size...

I have two roommates -- an Italian architect who has been in Barcelona for a year, and an American teacher who got here about the same time as me. They are pictured above in our first official "family" dinner. We get along great, and laugh a lot...

Work has been a haul -- both of my schools have been giving me classes, and I now have a schedule of about 27 teaching hours a week! My students are at all different levels, and it's been tough to plan them all. Still, I'm having a blast.

Some highlights of my teaching career so far:
- teaching on/in/near/under by getting my two students to stand on/in/near/under their chairs.
- substitute teaching a class of teenagers, and teaching them how to say "Yeah, right!" with appropriate teenage sarcasm (they worked it into a dialogue in the next class!)
- my beginner student, an older businessman, who laughed all the way through our first class as I walked out of the classroom, and then walked back in and re-introduced myself like I'd never seen him before.

A fellow teacher saw me the other day and said, "You're always smiling." It was the first time I noticed it, but it's true. I'm tired and busy and worried about where this adventure is going, but there is not a day that goes by that I'm not happy.

Which is new for me.

Anatomy of a Barcelona Building

When you first walk into a building, you are not on the 1st floor, you are on the 0th floor (that's right, the zeroth floor).

The next floor up is called planta principal (main floor) or sometimes entresuelo (middle ground). Occasionally you will have a building that has both a principal AND an entresuelo.
Are you counting? So far, you've reached the equivalent of the 3rd floor in a Canadian building.
After that, you reach the 1st floor...

This is a useful thing to consider when you are looking for places to live. You will need to walk up a minimum of 3 flights of stairs just to reach the 2nd floor...

And that's the floor that my new place is on. I'm moving in on the weekend. Pictures will be forthcoming...