The Roof Terrace, The Market and The Squat

I'm feeling much more like I actually live in Madrid now. I've settled into the apartment, bought some essentials (a stereo was first on my list), and started my job proper which has gone pretty well. I'm basically teaching the whole of a small financial services company out in a little very well kept suburb in north east Madrid. Its very like the training, but much less intense, with 4 hours of classes Tuesday to Thursday afternoons. I think they all think I'm a bit crazy (my teaching style is very animated) but they seem to be enjoying it. I find myself being absolutely terrified before I start an afternoons lessons, then when they start I go into teacher mode and it goes by in a flash and I walk out thinking that it was a breeze, only to be terrified all over again the next day!

We also realised that we've got access to our appartment building's roof terrace, from which you can see the Palacio Real, the Cathedral, the mountains and the Basillica de San Francisco which is just up a set of stairs behind our building where the local tramps go to sleep unhassled. The terrace is probably the best thing about the apartment, its a great place to have a beer and watch the sunset after work! We had a few people round last night for a mini flat warming, including two friends from Manchester who are hitching down to Lisbon to get jobs on a boat headed for South America.

The Palacio Real and Cathedral from our roof

Mountains in the distance

We all headed out today to see the famous and spralling El Rastro market, led by Melissa who's been in Madrid for a couple of years and knows her way around. First stop was for 'tostas', open sandwiches with various toppings - including a Madrid speciality only for the brave: baby eels - and a hangover fighting sangria from a bustling little place that serves nothing else. Then off into the market, which fills the streets and stretches almost halfway across old Madrid, selling everything from antiques to clothes to pornographic pocket watches. It's absolutely crammed full of people and you have to just flow along taking it all in. We stopped off in near Calle Mayor for chocolate con churros, another Madrid speciality which I still hadn't tried, fried pastry tubes dunked in hot chocolate so thick you feel you might be in danger of suffocation.

Inside the cigarette factory

After a quick stop off at 100 Montaditos, we went down to Lavapies to a massive old cigarette factory which has been squatted and taken over as a kind of huge social centre with a free shop, a bar, gardens growing veg and free classes in everything from Peruvian dancing to Russian (as well as one mysteriously listed as 'Gimp/Blender'). I have no idea how they've managed to make it work but it looks absolutely incredible! A great atmosphere, with people playing music together in the bar and generally hanging out. I want to start doing Spanish classes their and might offer to put on some English classes given my new skill set. I certainly want to find out how it works, I know people who have been trying to start a social centre in Manchester but have hit a bit of a brick wall, but if they came and saw this I guarantee they'd be right back on it. Anyway, I'll write more about this as and when I find out more.

I nearly forgot, I was on the radio on Friday along with my fellow training graduates. The company has radio and TV channels broadcasting to the whole of Spain and we got to be the guests on a show hosted by the guy in the videos they sent us before our interviews, a bit of a celebrity to us (sad, I know). So we chatted away for an hour, and only when it finished did he tell us it had about 400,000 listeners! Seems like a good way to get some experience doing that kind of thing though, and I think I might pitch a show if I can come up with a decent idea.

I don't like rolling all this into one big post so I'm going to try and write something here everyday or at least other day from now on, seeing as I'm only working 12 hours a week for now. Too much happens everyday to cover a whole week in a post!