Harold

There's an earlier post on Life in Ciudad Rodrigo about the disappearance of Harold the cat.

Harold looks a lot like Eduardo our other cat. Well he's ginger and cat shaped. I was outside the house in Culebrón one evening, having a smoke when he popped his head around the corner. I presumed he was Eddie and I couldn't understand why he was so nervous. Only when I found Eddie fast asleep on the couch inside the house did I realise that we had a different cat checking us out. It took a long time before Harold abandoned his home near the bins to come inside where it was warmer, drier and with three squares a day. He became part of the household and he travelled with me when I moved to Ciudad Rodrigo but he didn't settle in the flat. Like the Norwegian Blue (beautiful plumage) he pined for the fjiords. He got away pretty quickly.

In the earlier post he's declared missing in action rather than lost and I'm still prowling the streets around midnight and at 6.30am in the hope that he'll show up. But it's now five days since the last sighting and I'm beginning to lose hope; I think he's back around a bin somewhere.

I may well have given up and stuck to my bed in the morning but for the fact that Eduardo has now taken to coming out on the search with me. We stroll the streets together looking for our lost charge/pal.

I just hope that Eduardo continues to trot around and keep close. I'd hate to lose him too. Mind you he's spending most of the night charging around the flat, scratching at doors and generally making as much noise as possible. Cats and flats may rhyme but I don't think they go well together.

Living Away

I am now in my new home in Ciudad Rodrigo, a town on the opposite side of Spain to Culebrón which means that I intend to put the majority of the new post in my Life in Ciudad Rodrigo blog. Please have a look there to catch up on the trivia of our lives in Spain.

The reason for moving was that my partner, Maggie, has been working on a bilingual project in a state school in Ciudad Rodrigo for just over a year. I hadn't been able to find work near her so I stayed behind in Culebrón, with the cats.

Over the summer I was offered a job teaching English to youngsters and adults in the Dublin School of English in Ciudad Rodrigo beginning in the new academic year. I still hung on in Alicante hoping that our roof repairs and general ackling up of the house would be done before I had to start work but no such luck. I had to abandon the house to the builders and cross Spain with the house still, very much, a shell.

The cats and I moved into Maggie's flat just before the start of October. The cats did not travel well and are much less happy here than they were in the countryside but they are not unhappy either and we are hoping that they will get used to the change.

As for me I like the town and it's great to be back with Maggie but we are in dire straits financially what with the roof repairs and with me not earning any money through August or September.  Add to that the strain of any new job and it's all been a little unsettling. But the work isn't bad and even though it's pretty obvious that I'm not a natural born teacher I hope to get better. Fortunately for me, and for the students, the school is extremely well organised so that the process of beginning to teach has been quite straightforward.

Anyway, the main point of this entry was to redirect you to the blog I will be using whilst I'm here in Ciudad Rodrigo

Railway talk

Find out about Ciudad Rodrigo's international standing at Life in Ciudad Rodrigo

First "week" report

I have no idea what's happening in Culebrón. No word from our builders though the neighbour tells me that the chaps have been there a couple of days at least.

Here in Ciudad Rodrigo the cats are still very unsettled and I haven't managed to work out any sort of routine though both the cats and I have disturbed Maggie's.

The people I now work for, Gusa and Adel, have been very welcoming and they have tried hard to make sure that things have been arranged properly for me down to having a contract in place from the get go which is far from usual in Spain. The working environment is really pleasant - clean and light, nice office chairs, working computers, hot water - standard stuff really but slightly different to the work and working conditions of the last three years or so. Now I shower before going to work rather than when I get home.

As to the teaching - well the jury is still out on my abilities as a teacher. I have 19 hours of teaching arranged in different time slots between 4 and 9 in the afternoon (or evening as you Brits would say). There is everything from 7 year old children, through young teenagers and sixth formers and on to a geologist looking for technical language. Nice spread and nice people but also quite a mix of books, styles and abilities to get organised in my mind.