Exploring Alpedrete

On Monday, the day after we arrived, Niamh and I were due in the school so we could be introduced to the staff and students of the classes we were to be teaching in. It's only a short walk away, so we were buzzing the doorbell at the gates in no time. Clive, the head of the English department, brought us into an office where we received our timetable and asked any questions that we had. He then showed us around to the classes that we will be in, and introduced us to the teachers, who let us go up and talk to the students and tell them who we were and what we'll be doing. After introductions were made, we sat in with one more class, and we were done for the day.

When we arrived back at our accommodation, we sat at the table and planned what we were going to do with the classes the next day. This included deciding what genre each class would get and planning how we were going to approach the Quest that Colin has given us to do. We decided that Year 9 would get Horror, Year 8 would get Mystery, and Year 7, would get Comedy. 

Later on, Niamh and I decided to get to grips with our new surroundings and take a walk around the town. Having gotten lost the day before, we just retraced our 'getting lost' steps to see if we could find any shops or cafes to go to while we're here. We also took a large number of pictures of the scenery around the town, and, of each other, enjoying what we discovered. We did a funny pose and took a picture of our shadows on the ground, and we could both feel the people behind us, sitting on the benches, judging us.

During our explorations, we were looking for a nice park which we had discovered the day before when we got lost. We, per my leadership, walked up the same road three different times, thinking it was leading us another way. Niamh said it was the same road, but I insisted it wasn't, until we got to the end and, sure enough, no park. So that was Niamh: 1 and Jake: 0.

We planned to meet Phil and Micheal for dinner, but we got to the restaurant early, so we had a look around in a couple of shops across the road, Niamh looking for a selfie stick as she insists she won't go to the zoo without one.

We ran out of shops to look through to pass the time so we decided to just sit in a bar/restaurant and have a quick drink while we waited for Phil and Michael to come along. We're sitting in the bar having two cokes and chatting away, wondering if the small plate of food the bartender gave us was complimentary or not, when all of a sudden we hear some guy speak behind us.

'Fancy hearing Dublin accents in Alpedrete,' the guy said. We turned around and some man was smiling at us. We said hi and got to talking to him, him coming over and introducing himself as Declan and assuring us he wasn't eavesdropping on our conversation about how cute the bartender was.

He told us a bit about himself, him having lived in Alpedrete with his wife for the past eleven years, and actually lives just around the corner from the school we're working in. They were nothing but nice, offering to translate the menu for us and recommending places for us to try around the town, specifically a small burger bar just a few steps down the street.

Phil joined us in the bar, and got talking to our new friends, while Niamh and I ran around to an ATM that we found earlier to take money out as we promised our landlady that we'd pay some of the rent by ten o'clock that night. We walked/ran down, making jokes of how we'd defend ourselves if we were robbed or attacked (none of them that would have actually worked) and we were laughing so much that Niamh tripped over a small sign beside the ATM.

Did I mention how useless Niamh is at directions? If I let her, she'd walk in a straight line and keep going, thinking it's the right way, despite having just come from the right way.

'I'm gonna have to just hold on to your shoulders and point you in the right direction,' I tell her as we walk back around to the bar, after I stop her from walking down a completely different street. I'm beginning to suspect that Colin only sent me here because she needs someone to babysit her and make sure she doesn't walk off in the totally wrong direction.

I actually like the whole 'picking from different dishes' thing in Spain, but before we knew it we were leaving the restaurant to pay our landlady, Niamh and I running out into the rain and saying goodbye to Declan and Jemma as we went.

We paid half of the total rent for our accommodation as our banks would not allow us to take out more at that time and I wondered about drying laundry.

'We uh... have this... sun?' She said, gesturing out the window, and Niamh nearly cried with laughter.

She left soon after, and Niamh and I promptly went to bed, exhausted after the day's events.