Abono and a bit of Bono

"I'm not afraid of anything in this world.
There's nothing you can throw at me that I haven't allready heard.
I'm just tryin' to find a decent melody,
A song that I can sing, in my own company."

Lyrics courtesy of U2, listening to one of their later albums (the only one I know)one afternoon before catching the several trains to my English Classes south of Madrid.

I am a full working resident of Madrid now and all the signs are there. I have a season travel card called an Abono which lets me use the Metro, the busses and Cercanias which are local trains that connect the capital with the suburbs. The Abono is essential to the equipment of an English teacher as apparently the focus seems not so much on how many classes you have but where they are and how long it will take you to get there. The considered rule is if it takes longer than the class to get there then howabout nooooooooooooo. TEFLers should invest in a B1 for classes a little further away but worth it if 'block hours' or intensives. What ever those are I'm not sure I have coz I have to travel 30 mins south of the city from Atocha for 3 hrs of class Mon-Thurs which would be worth it would it not be for the following: They keep on changing my classrooms, sometimes I don't have one at all, sometimes I'm locked out of the area I'm supposed to be teaching in and I don't have any facilities at my disposable. I'm lucky if I can use the whiteboard baisicly. Which whilst nigling at first has now served to well and truly piss me off. Options are being considered.

The other sign that I am part of the urban system is that I have taken up the habit of going for Curry nights with the girls. It is one of the highlights of the week as somehow 5 mins after our international group has got together, our conversations decend into something that you might generally watch on Sex and the City - it's hilarious and I love hearing all the stories brought to the Indian table. Best place for random cuisine and an immense scene - Lavapies, Madrid. Go there, it's cool. The last place we went to was a small little colourful joint with old pictures of Ghandi and the Himilayers on the wall. It was extrememly hippy and had a lovely cosy atmosphere. Amongst the Indian dishes they offered were Thai and proclaimed 'European' dishes also.

As I am now officially a commuter again, I am getting through an awful lot of books. I'm finishing off at the moment 'Long Way Down' by Ewan McGreggor and Charley Boorman. I watched parts of their journey back in March when I was staying on Guernsey. There is an immense sense of adventure with those two that somehow for me became all the more real with the insight into the workings of a famous 'celebrity'. There I was watching (reading now) a guy I ascociate with 'Trainspotting' and fancied in 'Moulin Rouge' talking about how fascinated he was with the African landscape, how moved he was at landmine injured children, how frustrated he was with the road conditions and how dedicated he was to his wife and daughters. This wasn't an article in Hello magazine saying 'newsflash' Ewan McGreggor loves his wife - this was an insight into a celebrity's life and mind. Something we as the public aren't privy too although we are under the constant impression that we are. Apparently we know everything about them, we know who they are, who their familly is and what they do thanks to the constant barage of photoinfo we are subjected to. But we know nothing about them and have no right to either. They're famous because they are good at something and we should be satisfied with that - not famous for the way they live their life and who they live it with. What I am left with is the incredible respect I have for Ewan McGreggor by the touching ties he has with his familly and friends (and a little bit of laughter when I see his fragrance ad) but I long for the same sense of adventure now.

When in Guernsey, my friend who was my host, and I imagined how amazing it would be for us to go riding deep into nowhere we've known before and how we'd manage. But that excusrsion I think is saved for another time at the moment. Now though, working for the weekend, feeling a little bit trapped in the city, I crave something to make the weekly rat race worth while. Geographiclly I find Madrid very closed-in anyway. To the north we have the mountains and south becomes a bit of a waistland. But I know the landscape here has so much to offer, especially compared with Britian. Even the sky here looks wider than in the U.K. A couple of weeks ago I was all set up to enjoy what the mountains had to offer in an excursion with my fellow TEFLers named 'Treetop Adventure'.

We were off to an obstacle course set high in the trees of a National Park north west of Madrid. I was extreemly looking forward to it - it had been a long time since I'd done anything physical and it was just what I needed to get me out of the concrete and into the green. Everyone was aprehensive about the heights we'd have to overcome but I didn't share their concerns, at first. My reasons were that I seemed happy enough to the chance of a group outing and that I was always doing this kind of thing as a kid and I enjoyed it then. We arrived to get kitted out with harnesses and clips I'd worn a thousand times before but then slowly my attitude towards the activity started to change. The catalyst was a small expectation of mine - that there would be monitors on the stations in the trees to make sure we doing things correctly. Guess what - this is Spain and Health and Safety isn't really much of a concern out here. It started a quiet aprehension in me. After signing my life away to not sue them if..., we underwent a 10 min training session. 5 mins on what to clip on to what wire and which way it should go and 5 mins of going round a dummy 3 station course not 2 metres of the ground. There was a big group of us and it seemed to take ages for all of us to get through.

Lining up I was one of the last to go. I had deliberately placed myself there - the course was obviously single file and we were only allowed 3 people to a station and I did not enjoy the thought of having a backlog of people waiting to go if I was going at a speed they didn't like. I was managing quite well, my initial concerns were with clipping myself into the correct places in the correct way and crossing the wire and getting off the zip wire was whilst a little bit cumbersome not impossible. I trundled off to the real thing, the least challenging course out of several inc. one marked 'extreme', with a small section of our party. I was in a nice order, right in the middle - there were people I could follow but people behind me so I was not the one 'trying to keep up'. Suddenly the height hit me - shit. I'm not feeling too safe up here I thought, even though of course I was strapped in to everything properly. The rope was wobbly, the wooden planks were shaking, the possiblities of what I thought I could physicially achieve were being challenged. A constant internal dialogue was going on: I'm not a screamer, I don't voice my fears I just get on with it. I thought, 'why does this seem so hard, I used to do this kind of thing so easily, I must keep on going, I can do it.'

There were people at the back of the line that were seriously struggling and those that were in front decided to hang back at certain stations to help them along. The change in line lead to me being in front. For some reason it was extrememly unsettling to me to be put as 'leader'. There was no one in front showing the way, it was all down to me - if I did it wrongly - the consequencs could be dire. At this point my only thoughts were of sort of stopping this and getting off the ride. I felt assured that most of the others were thinking of doing the same thing. We noticed an escape ladder ahead - and I focused on that. It didn't seem like the end but I got down anyway, relieved on firm ground. However the rest of the group decided to go on. A monitor came up to me and told me I could go back up the ladder if I wanted but by this time, the wobbly group had established a sort of pace and the idea of me trying to insert myself into that when already feeling shaky didn't appeal. I just kept on thinking if I could do it in my own way, at my own speed, with none of them being part of my own challenge then I could get through.

I hung around until they completed the course and some of them were scared but happy they'd completed it and some of them were less scared than they thought they would be but happy they'd completed it and then there was me. This great pretender - coz I felt nothing of what they were talking about. It was one of the group's comments about this trip being a great team-building exercise that made something click inside me. It wasn't the hieght, or the swing rope, or the zip wire that was the challenge for me - it was being in that unavoidable line of people and doing this thing as a group. Because I couldn't cope with their way of doing things, I couldn't physically fit in to their system. And I thought well if I can't do that - how am I supposed to cope going around the world all by myself - being away from my friends for so long, from a familiar support network? How am I supposed to survive if I can't stay on that hard narrow course and not automaticlly look for an exit sign?

I have ALOT to sort out in terms of funds for my overland trips, sea voayages budgeting time in OZ and USA, itinaries, back-up support before I attempt to move on. I needed to leave Britain so much I just sort of upped and left without really planning anything. But I had my ideas and I'll stick to those, they just need morphing now to fully work.

Coming back to Madrid in a People Mover I passed wonderful scenery from the countryside. I love those views, they're what I came to see. But it always seems to be at those times that I am just a passenger with someone else in the driving seat. Somehow I have to take control of the wheel.

"I never thought you were a fool but darling look at you.
Cause tears are going nowhere, baby.

Don't say that later will be better cause you're stuck in the moment.
And now you can't get out of it."
But I will.