I had to be at school at 8.30am the following day and after having checked out the bus I decided to give it a go. I left my flat at 7.30am (when it was dark... Is it dark in the UK at 7.30am? Perhaps I'm just not used to seeing this light of day!) and got to the bus stop for 7.45am. The bus sat at the bus stop for ages and I promptly got to school five minutes before my classes started.
I put up my announcement on the noticeboard for private lessons and photocopied a good few others for other places around town. I spoke to one of the teachers that I'll be working with who said she would like private lessons. We've looked at our timetables and established a time that we can fit in the lessons, and also the days that she can give me a lift to school.
I walked back from school, which took me about 35 minutes, grabbed some lunch back here and then met Annalisa on the beach. Dunia had got in touch with me and we'd planned to meet at 7.30pm to discuss her children's tuition - she said she'd been busy up until then.
At 8pm she turned up with one kid in tow and took me back to her house. We sorted out when we can give the kids lessons (both of the young children, twice a week for an hour - 4 hours for €200 a month). Her husband got back and said he'd like lessons too and we said we'll sort that out on an ad hoc basis as and when he fancies it. Her flat was an absolute palace and her children absolute angels. She's educated them so, so well.
Whilst I was there a friend of hers called and said she would like lessons for her children too. She called me this morning and asked the price per lesson. I said €15 and then went down to €13 and she said she'd speak to her husband and call me back. I just hope I'm not spending all my time speaking English and not practicing my Spanish enough.
I mentioned to Dunia that I'd quite like to learn how to windsurf and she said she bought all the equipment and didn't go because she was one of the only women. I said I'd go down and grab some information today and text her and perhaps we'll go to that together. That would be really nice.
Dunia dropped me back to my flat at about 9pm (prime example of how friendly people are here - she didn't really know me at all). I was going to chuck some food on but Alberto got back just as I got in, got changed in a rushed manner and was heading out with his buds.
He invited me so of course, I accepted and we went out for tapas with about 6 of his colleagues from the airport. Alberto's 30 next weekend so it wasn't a big party and the oldest guy there was 48, I think. It was just nice to sit and talk, drink, eat and socialise. They told me that the prices of planes back to the 'peni' (peninsula) are about five times the price of a journey into Melilla so that people are encouraged to stay here. They said they're about €1,000. I was shocked and for the next hour or two was just thinking about Christmas and how Chris was going to manage to come over and go back. About three hours later I found out that they were winding me up. Grar! But they had me going for ages, I almost cried thinking that I wouldn't be able to come back and at the prospect of not seeing Chris for the whole year!
At about 11pm we headed to the 'Puerto deportivo' where there are 4 bars but it's the liveliest place in Melilla! More of Alberto's friends met us there, including the head of the airport (I discovered that Alberto is the second head of the airport) and also the head of Iberia. Good contacts! The place was pretty empty until about 3am when it really started to fill up and we headed back home about 4am.
Alberto really looked after me and saw that a lot of the time I wasn't understanding. He would come and sit next to me and explain slowly and when I scuttled off to the toilet during the night he was worried about where I'd got to.
I love my new housemates!
I don't work Fridays so it's the start of the weekend for me - but that's not such a good thing when you don't really know anybody! Back to my friendly newspaper I go!
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