Monday, October 20, 2008

Phew...

For those of you who haven't heard me whine about it, I've been working on a scholarship application. What I'm applying for is called a Fulbright Teaching Assistantship, and the location to which I chose to apply was Madrid, Spain. If I get the award, it will pay for me to travel to and live in Spain for 9.5 months, beginning September 15 of 2009. My responsibilites would be to help teach English in a public school in Madrid.

The application was quite intense as the award is understandably competitive. Anyway, I finally turned it in today, so for the first time in several weeks I can take a deep breath. Phew. The application requires two essays, a statement of purpose and a personal statement, both of which were brutal to write. Pretty much the last thing I've wanted to do the past week is sit in front of the computer and type. Long story short, I'm planning to post quite a bit in the next couple days to make up for it.

As for now, here's a little sample of living in an international house. Let me set the scene: Rico, (you'll remember he's the German fellow I met in the street who told me about the house) has taken it upon himself to make small but important renovations to the house. Today he built four extra sets of shelves in the kitchen, and it looks great. I helped him a bit this evening. He's a very good carpenter, but the tools in the house are crap. So, after he finished sharpening the rusty old hand saw with a file, he began to saw through a piece of wood to make a shelf. In doing so, he cut himself. These are his exact words.

Rico: "I saw me in the leg" (pointing at a bleeding gash on his lower right quad)
Andrew: (cracks up laughing)
Rico: "This is not funny." (pours alcohol on the cut)

This episode made me vow to always keep a pad and paper in my pocket. No more english blunders will go undocumented!

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