The ATM Eats Debit Cards

It has been a long time coming, but I finally find myself back in Spain after many long years.

A good number of you are probably aware of this by now, but I accepted a position with CIEE teaching English in Spain. This year, I am located in Almeria, which is a small city in the south east of Andalucia. Andalucia is a very large province in the south of Spain known for its wonderful coastline along the Mediterranean.

It was a lot of work to get here. In the midst of my last year of college I found myself writing my thesis and holding a part-time job working mornings at the Starbucks on campus. During all of that, I was applying to every teach abroad program from Fulbright to the Spanish government program. Luckily, I was accepted into CIEE, which is the same program I used to study abroad in Peru two years ago. Now that I had secured a plan for my first year out of college, I spent the summer working full-time at Subway so I could make a little extra money before going abroad.

This extra cash came in handy my first week in Spain. Though most expenses were paid for during my two days of orientation in Sevilla, I was responsible for purchasing my own train ticket to Almeria. Within a few days I had spent all of the cash Euros I had brought with me, mostly on several trips to the grocery store. The nearest grocery store is about two blocks away, but since I do not have a car, it is difficult for me to buy a lot of food at one time. It also did not help that there was not a lot of food in the apartment to begin with. My american roommate was travelling in Morocco for the week and had, understandably, not bought groceries before leaving, and my Spanish roommate has no real need to buy groceries. Every weekend she goes back to her hometown and her father, who is a chef, prepares a week's worth of meals for her which she then takes back to the apartment and freezes for later in the week.

By Wednesday, I was in need of a trip to the ATM. Most ATM's here are the kind that sucks in the whole debit card and holds onto it until the transaction is completed. I had been told by the card company that I would be able to use my old one until the new one was mailed to my current address. Apparently, this information was incorrect because the ATM sucked in my card and would not give it back no matter what I did. Fortunately, I had a second debit card that did work, but I spent the rest of the afternoon calling the international customer service number. It seems that the card was deactivated as soon as the bank mailed out the new one, and I will not be seeing it ever again. It now rests in the bowels of a teller machine and will probably end up being put through some very large shredder.

In other news, my Spanish roommate and I get along fabulously. We share a bathroom and have already worked out a weekly cleaning schedule. She has also shown me around some parts of the city, and on Friday night we went out with a large group of her teacher friends. My Spanish roommate is a secondary school teacher at the school next to the one where I will be teaching in a few days. Though most of the conversation that night was about workplace drama and stories about students they had in the past, it was still a fun night. We spent most of it on a rooftop terrace listening to a soft rock band and sipping beer, the stars to one side of us, and an illuminated Moorish fortress to the other.

My biggest observation about Almeria so far is that the architecture is clearly more heavily influence by the Moorish history of the city, whereas northern Spain has a much heavier emphasis on Roman architecture. I look forward to seeing more of the city. Even though I have explored enough to feel comfortable in my immediate area, there is still a lot more for me to explore.

Tomorrow is my first day at the school. I do not think I will be expected to do much, but I am supposed to meet the headmaster of the school and receive my schedule. Wish me luck!

As an added bonus, here are a few photos of my apartment. Please excuse my messy desk, I am still organizing.