28 September 2003 ---JOURNAL ENTRY TWENTY-FIVE---
Sunday morning, cloudy and rainy off and on, listening to Chris Robinson from the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, California from two months, drinking a cup of coffee. I just finished preparing my lesson plans for this week's English teaching. Things are going well.".
First things first, my first three visitors from the Motherland are due this week! KC, OZ and Russell, they are going to get some serious props when they step through my front door. I've lived here for six months now in this flat and I'm really excited to accept some friendly faces into my "other life" here...they don't know it yet but there will be a 20-pack of beers in the fridge waiting for them upon arrival and I'm going to throw a party for them at the bar below my flat on Thursday, should be cool!
So, I had my first real European holiday earlier this month, just got back a few days ago. I went to Lanzarote, a small Canary Island off the coast of Morroco. Assiyeah and I had 10 days there and it was fantastic. The reason I called it a European vacation because I distinctly got the impression it's the kind of place that Europeans go to get away from Japanese and American tourists! It was hot as hell, a desert sticking out of the Atlantic, and it used to be a bit more verdant but six consecutive years of volcanic eruptions tend to slow vegetational progress down quite a bit.
What were the highlights, you ask? Well, for one, I actually went swimming in the water, a few times and it was great. Going to El Golfo, and Playa del Papagayo (that's the picture on the homepage now), having fresh fish for lunch and great seafood soup, and of course, if you look above, the Cactus Garden. They had over 1400 kinds of cacti, it was amazing, I totally enjoyed it. And we relaxed, afternoons spent finding the right spot on the beach to read and sleep and chill out. I read four books in 10 days, them being:
Bill Bryson "Down Under
Nelson Demille " Talbot something or other"
Gigi Levangie "Maneater"
Kurt Vonnegut "Slaughterhouse Five"
So, you can see I had my fair share of downtime, it was great. On an employment note, I have a meeting with a language school tomorrow morning about teaching two American History classes. It's like a university but not quite so prestigious but the money is good and it's close to my house and the time is just right so I think I'll take it happily. Hopefully I'm not too out of it because I have my now weekly Sunday night English teacher gathering of 3-6 guys which begins at 7pm for NFL football in an Irish pub and might not end until 1am but I love it. Too bad my team ain't too good this year but hey, what can ya do, right?
