Dear Hostelworld.com,
You have been a kind friend and advisor for some time now. I´ve come to depend on your advice on where to stay and I enjoy knowing you reccommend places where the staff are knowledgeable and will provide direction about things to do. However, I think our time to part ways has come. I´m sorry. I can´t. Don´t hate me.
You see, last night (well, this morning) some very drunk, aggressive and vile 18-year old Australians and a Glaswegian who was old enough to know better came back to their roome (read:shared with us) at 4am and decided they had no need to be quiet or kind. Instead, they decided to talk about their travelling companions sexual proclivities, unpack and repack their bags, swear and throw things around. Now, we tried asking them to keep it down, but things just got ugly--the drunkenness was a significant contributing factor, I´m sure. As was their age and obvious inexperience with the world as a whole. So, they swore and yelled at us and called us C***S and Effing Yanks and spoke disparagingly about the Spanish and basically made me really dislike them. In the middle of the night. Grr.
This morning, interestingly, they weren´t willing to use the same language or epithets to my face. In fact, when invited to use the C-word a much as they wanted, surprisingly they seemed embarassed. Imagine that! They were like little children caught with their hands dirty or mouth full of ill-gotten candy or whatever.
So, hostelworld.com, the time has come where I will no longer require your services. While the chance to meet new people is awesome, that´s just as easy in various other places and situations. However, I´m not required to spend time with assholes outside of the room if I don´t want to. And that´s the difference, really. So, anyway, thanks Hostelworld for the fun times, but I bid you Adieu!
Sincerely,
Meredith Porter
Tired Traveller
Grouchy-from-lack-of-sleep, Madrid.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Sunday, February 10, 2008
2 CDs, breakfast and coffee--a perfect day, really.
Well, hey there--what's been going on, you ask?
Many apologies for delaying this post update. It's been on the weekend 'to do' list for a while now, but the time just seems to fly by these days and I also kind of forgot.
Firstly, Happy 26th Birthday Fraser! And a belated Happy Birthday to Mom and Dorothy as well.
We're well into month 10 of being here with only 16 weeks to go (no, I'm not counting down...LOL) and I've finally found my stride at work, we're regularly going out to have good and fun times with good and fun people, the weather has shifted and I'm starting to feel good. It was like 14 degrees here yesterday! How awesome is that?!
It's always the way, isn't it....? You finally settle down and develop some good relationships just in time to start thinking about leaving...
Mike's job comes to and end next Friday and then we're off on our trip! And what a trip it will be--on the 19th we fly from Bristol to Madrid, where we spend 2 nights. We then fly from Madrid to Fuerteventura, which is the smallest of the Canary Islands, which are just off the coast of the North Africa--sunshine, sand, sunburns and beaches, here I come! After 5 nights in Fuerteventura, we fly back to Madrid at 11pm to crash in the airport for a few hours, in time to catch a flight to Berlin. We're with Clare there for 3 nights, at which point we fly back to Bristol on the 1st of March. Woot! You would think, with reading this, that we've been scrimping and saving for months. In reality, each flight costs 25bgp. That's right, people. It's costing us just under 125gbp each for 5 flights each, including the taxes. God, I sooooo love discount airfare. Also, WestJet is LYING when they say they're a discount airline. There's nothing discount about it costing more to fly from Edmonton to Vancouver than from Spain to the coast of North Africa! Gah! Anyway, I am totally jazzed about getting out of dodge. I need some time where my thoughts don't automatically go to what's to do at work on Monday. By Sunday afternoons I've generally just started to shake off my worry and anxiety about my caseload, just in time to head straight back into it less than 24 hours later.
When we come back Mike's back to the grind of finding another temp job for the few weeks we'll have left. Hopefully it won't be as mind-numbing as what he's been doing thus far... Also, we've given up the second room we were renting. This is for a variety of reasons, some of which are TOTALLY GROSS, so those with weak stomachs will want to skip down a couple paragraphs.
Those of you that know us well know that while tidiness is not necessarily the order of our home, we are generally clean people. Well, we had the most DISGUSTING experiences with our place recently. Firstly, when we rented the second room back in July, there were some pieces of information that were rather deliberately left out, mostly because it make our situation look considerably more pathetic than it already was, and that's really saying something! When Alan ripped the ceiling out of the room to air the beams out, it was discovered there were some mushrooms growing between the floors. Now, to understand why this didn't make me instinctively run screaming from this place, you need to understand what damp is like. It is pervasive and all-encompassing, despite any efforts at cleaning and airing things out. It sometimes takes t-shirts 2 days! to dry on heaters and radiators. 2 days! Well, a couple days after Alan ripped out the ceiling in July, I was having a shower and reveling in hot water. And, because I don't shower with my glasses on, I couldn't quite figure out what was in the corner of the bathroom. Until I got out and put my glasses on and FREAKED OUT 'cause there was a bigass mushroom growing in the corner of the shower stall. That's what prompted the ripping out of the shower that was previously mentioned. So, this disgusting issue was dealt with during the summer. Or so I thought. 'Cause it seems the shower issue has returned, with mushrooms again growing in the bottom room. And so I've had enough of that. No more spare room. And I assume our bathroom will need to be re-destroyed when we go on vacation next week. Whatev.
The second DISGUSTING thing that happened was damp+futon = GROSS! We had to get rid of our futon and buy a new bed. Turns out, with all the rain, cold and lack of light, our futon rotted. EEEEEWWWWW. I COULD NOT figure out where the faint odor of damp was coming from in our place--now, once you've smelled it, you forever know what that is. And Mike and I went as far as wiping down the walls with bleach and vacuuming and everything. What we didn't do was bother to look between the futons, mostly because it just didn't occur to me. And yet, there it was. So, out to the garbage dump (here it's called the Tip) that went. And now we have a new bed with lots of storage underneath it, which actually kind of negates our need for the second room in the first place. And I will NEVER live in a climate like this again. That was so disgusting.
Kent, Karen and Jennifer Phillips are coming on the 29th of April, and now I'm not sure what's going to happen with that, but there was NO WAY they were sleeping in a room with a ripped-out ceiling and mushrooms in it. God. Why does this life have to be such a humiliating joke sometimes...?!
Anyway, onto less gross things:
There are some major changes happening at my work right now too, with a team and case management restructure in the works and various people leaving and some new ones being hired. All good things, I think, but it makes for some serious chaos and leaves the weekends earmarked for essential 'fun time' to get me through the following week. If things has been different, if Mike had been able to find meaningful and gratifying employment and if things were better with family back home, I would totally be looking at wanting to do the final 12 months of my contract. But, that's not the case and I'm looking forward to being back as much as he is, really.
I know y'all have had a rough run of it, so don't swear at me for saying this, but I've totally missed the snow and cold. All we get here are some fake flakes that don't even try that hard and gray sky with nasty rain. Yuck! Also, I miss everyone a lot. Communication is really quite easy from over here, I know, and a phone call isn't as momentous as it used to be for people overseas, but nothing beats a coffee face to face or family meals or a drink with friends. I really wish everyone was here!
Anyway, switching gears to thinking about something that doesn't make me feel morose... I would like to tell you a bit about 2 of my coworkers, Joss and Julie. All of my coworkers and all of the people I've met here have been really, really fabulous but these two women are the ones I've learned the most from on a personal level so far. Both work for the Learning Disability Team as Care Management Support Workers--basically, they do the same job as Social Workers since they were redeployed, but they get paid significantly less and used to be hands-on support workers for the majority of the clients we now provide outsourced services to. They've been working alongside each other and the rest of their team for quite some time--if I had to guess I'd say they've been colleagues for around 12 years. Both have these massive families--Julie has 3 kids and too many siblings, cousins and nieces and nephews to count, and Joss, despite just being 45+, has something like 6 children including step-siblings and about 12 grandkids. Both work part-time as they have (as you can guess) significant family obligations but they're around 3 or 4 days per week.
To give a bit of context, the team I work in is structured into 4 main physical parts in the section of the building we work in. The first part is the wing to the right of the staircase--this is where the Managers (Bev, Geoff and Billy and Billy's PA Denise), psychiatric staff (Dr Pande or Temporary Psychiatrist and Kirsten and Patty, the Medical Administrators) and kitchen are.
Down the corridor is the second section, where the Adult Placement Scheme (Sandra, Chris, Jane Doreen and incoming Manager Catherine) Administration (Steph, Sarah, Rhiannon, Julie, Karen) and the psychologists (Sean, Ruth, Mary and Aubrey), Speech and Language (Ruth), Occupational Therapy (Richard) and Physiotherapists (Elspeth) have their offices.
The third section is Team Room 1, which has 6 desks, 4 computers, 3 laptops, 4 community nurses (Kath, Nicky, Julie and Jayne when she returns from Mat Leave), 2 Social Workers (Carole and Jenny), 1 Care Management Support Worker (Bridget), 1 Administrator (Jane W) and 1 new finance worker (Joanne).
I am in the last room, Team Room 2, which has 6 desks, 5 computers, no laptops! (another story another time) 5 Social Workers (me, Simon, Tony, Suzanna, newly appointed Chris), 1 Care Manager (Colleen), and 5 Care Management Support Workers (Sharon, Julie, Joss, Michelle and Christa when she returns from Mat Leave) and 1 Carers Assessor (Jacquie). As you can imagine, things get INCREDIBLY crowded and chaotic mid-week when most people are in--on Tuesdays and Thursdays we regularly have 8 people in that room, sitting on the sides of desks and standing as there are only actually 6 chairs.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH. People who think they have any chance whatsoever of getting rich in public sector Social Work are sooooo mistaken! Really, it's only actually funny if you don't have to work in these conditions...
Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that even though they're the lowest on the pay scales and have no real power, the people in Team Room 2 are the ones that make or break a new addition to the team. The Care Management Support Workers have all been working together for years and years and are the only group that really has an significant shared history as the rest of the team has come and go through time. And Joss and Julie are the ones who have been around and together the longest.
These women are amazing--with their hectic lives you would think they have no time to do things with and for others, but they make it. Both of them take time every day to say hello to everyone, they remember birthdays and significant events and they ask you about how something you may have mentioned in passing as difficult or sad is working out and they always make others lives a priority. And they are kind and welcoming without judgment. And to me, that's amazing. With everything they have to do for others in their everyday lives they still take time to check up with others. And they have nothing bad to say about anyone, ever. With the working conditions we have (and don't forget the 19-space car park--we counted 43! cars in it the other day), it would be very easy for tempers to become frayed and for stupid little things to become big arguments. Yet these women don't let it. They talk out problems, lend support, help with whatever is needed at any time, and generally make everyone feel better about themselves in what are certainly demoralizing working conditions. And they do this every single day they're in, without fail.
In the midst of the chaos at work, Julie has a parent who has just been diagnosed with what may be inoperable and aggressive cancer and Joss has recently lost her closest friend to breast cancer. And yet every day they show up with smiles and good things to say to others and they 'get on with it' with others' problems and daily struggles in mind. And they have been so supportive of us, inviting Mike and me out to do things, giving me lovely cards and gifts 'just 'cause', helping me mend my pants (those sewing lessons seem to have been of little use...), giving me guidance about how to do certain things at work, letting me vent and express difficult feelings, really the list goes on.
As I've said before, every person in the team has made an amazing effort to welcome and support us and they've made this trip and experience totally worth it, but Joss and Julie just amaze me. They give to others without thinking and without asking anything in return. If there's one thing I hope to take away from here and to apply to my daily life, it's the ability to learn how to do that like they can.
So, yeah, that's life right now. Sorry there's no pictures and this post is soooo text-dense. But, the computer is being stupid and I'm wanting to spend some time during today doing something other than uploading photos, so I gave up. I hope everyone back home is well. I miss you guys! We'll be pretty incommunicado for the last 2 weeks of this month but I'll be sure to post pics and deets of our trip as soon as we're back. Also, if I decide to send postcards again, they WILL be posted within the same month of writing. Also, I'd like to point out that this is our 1st year anniversary for this blog. Well, it's on the 26th, but whatev. In that time there have been exactly 52 posts, which averages out to 1 per week. We rock!
LOVE YOU! and lots of hugs to y'all.
Many apologies for delaying this post update. It's been on the weekend 'to do' list for a while now, but the time just seems to fly by these days and I also kind of forgot.
Firstly, Happy 26th Birthday Fraser! And a belated Happy Birthday to Mom and Dorothy as well.
We're well into month 10 of being here with only 16 weeks to go (no, I'm not counting down...LOL) and I've finally found my stride at work, we're regularly going out to have good and fun times with good and fun people, the weather has shifted and I'm starting to feel good. It was like 14 degrees here yesterday! How awesome is that?!
It's always the way, isn't it....? You finally settle down and develop some good relationships just in time to start thinking about leaving...
Mike's job comes to and end next Friday and then we're off on our trip! And what a trip it will be--on the 19th we fly from Bristol to Madrid, where we spend 2 nights. We then fly from Madrid to Fuerteventura, which is the smallest of the Canary Islands, which are just off the coast of the North Africa--sunshine, sand, sunburns and beaches, here I come! After 5 nights in Fuerteventura, we fly back to Madrid at 11pm to crash in the airport for a few hours, in time to catch a flight to Berlin. We're with Clare there for 3 nights, at which point we fly back to Bristol on the 1st of March. Woot! You would think, with reading this, that we've been scrimping and saving for months. In reality, each flight costs 25bgp. That's right, people. It's costing us just under 125gbp each for 5 flights each, including the taxes. God, I sooooo love discount airfare. Also, WestJet is LYING when they say they're a discount airline. There's nothing discount about it costing more to fly from Edmonton to Vancouver than from Spain to the coast of North Africa! Gah! Anyway, I am totally jazzed about getting out of dodge. I need some time where my thoughts don't automatically go to what's to do at work on Monday. By Sunday afternoons I've generally just started to shake off my worry and anxiety about my caseload, just in time to head straight back into it less than 24 hours later.
When we come back Mike's back to the grind of finding another temp job for the few weeks we'll have left. Hopefully it won't be as mind-numbing as what he's been doing thus far... Also, we've given up the second room we were renting. This is for a variety of reasons, some of which are TOTALLY GROSS, so those with weak stomachs will want to skip down a couple paragraphs.
Those of you that know us well know that while tidiness is not necessarily the order of our home, we are generally clean people. Well, we had the most DISGUSTING experiences with our place recently. Firstly, when we rented the second room back in July, there were some pieces of information that were rather deliberately left out, mostly because it make our situation look considerably more pathetic than it already was, and that's really saying something! When Alan ripped the ceiling out of the room to air the beams out, it was discovered there were some mushrooms growing between the floors. Now, to understand why this didn't make me instinctively run screaming from this place, you need to understand what damp is like. It is pervasive and all-encompassing, despite any efforts at cleaning and airing things out. It sometimes takes t-shirts 2 days! to dry on heaters and radiators. 2 days! Well, a couple days after Alan ripped out the ceiling in July, I was having a shower and reveling in hot water. And, because I don't shower with my glasses on, I couldn't quite figure out what was in the corner of the bathroom. Until I got out and put my glasses on and FREAKED OUT 'cause there was a bigass mushroom growing in the corner of the shower stall. That's what prompted the ripping out of the shower that was previously mentioned. So, this disgusting issue was dealt with during the summer. Or so I thought. 'Cause it seems the shower issue has returned, with mushrooms again growing in the bottom room. And so I've had enough of that. No more spare room. And I assume our bathroom will need to be re-destroyed when we go on vacation next week. Whatev.
The second DISGUSTING thing that happened was damp+futon = GROSS! We had to get rid of our futon and buy a new bed. Turns out, with all the rain, cold and lack of light, our futon rotted. EEEEEWWWWW. I COULD NOT figure out where the faint odor of damp was coming from in our place--now, once you've smelled it, you forever know what that is. And Mike and I went as far as wiping down the walls with bleach and vacuuming and everything. What we didn't do was bother to look between the futons, mostly because it just didn't occur to me. And yet, there it was. So, out to the garbage dump (here it's called the Tip) that went. And now we have a new bed with lots of storage underneath it, which actually kind of negates our need for the second room in the first place. And I will NEVER live in a climate like this again. That was so disgusting.
Kent, Karen and Jennifer Phillips are coming on the 29th of April, and now I'm not sure what's going to happen with that, but there was NO WAY they were sleeping in a room with a ripped-out ceiling and mushrooms in it. God. Why does this life have to be such a humiliating joke sometimes...?!
Anyway, onto less gross things:
There are some major changes happening at my work right now too, with a team and case management restructure in the works and various people leaving and some new ones being hired. All good things, I think, but it makes for some serious chaos and leaves the weekends earmarked for essential 'fun time' to get me through the following week. If things has been different, if Mike had been able to find meaningful and gratifying employment and if things were better with family back home, I would totally be looking at wanting to do the final 12 months of my contract. But, that's not the case and I'm looking forward to being back as much as he is, really.
I know y'all have had a rough run of it, so don't swear at me for saying this, but I've totally missed the snow and cold. All we get here are some fake flakes that don't even try that hard and gray sky with nasty rain. Yuck! Also, I miss everyone a lot. Communication is really quite easy from over here, I know, and a phone call isn't as momentous as it used to be for people overseas, but nothing beats a coffee face to face or family meals or a drink with friends. I really wish everyone was here!
Anyway, switching gears to thinking about something that doesn't make me feel morose... I would like to tell you a bit about 2 of my coworkers, Joss and Julie. All of my coworkers and all of the people I've met here have been really, really fabulous but these two women are the ones I've learned the most from on a personal level so far. Both work for the Learning Disability Team as Care Management Support Workers--basically, they do the same job as Social Workers since they were redeployed, but they get paid significantly less and used to be hands-on support workers for the majority of the clients we now provide outsourced services to. They've been working alongside each other and the rest of their team for quite some time--if I had to guess I'd say they've been colleagues for around 12 years. Both have these massive families--Julie has 3 kids and too many siblings, cousins and nieces and nephews to count, and Joss, despite just being 45+, has something like 6 children including step-siblings and about 12 grandkids. Both work part-time as they have (as you can guess) significant family obligations but they're around 3 or 4 days per week.
To give a bit of context, the team I work in is structured into 4 main physical parts in the section of the building we work in. The first part is the wing to the right of the staircase--this is where the Managers (Bev, Geoff and Billy and Billy's PA Denise), psychiatric staff (Dr Pande or Temporary Psychiatrist and Kirsten and Patty, the Medical Administrators) and kitchen are.
Down the corridor is the second section, where the Adult Placement Scheme (Sandra, Chris, Jane Doreen and incoming Manager Catherine) Administration (Steph, Sarah, Rhiannon, Julie, Karen) and the psychologists (Sean, Ruth, Mary and Aubrey), Speech and Language (Ruth), Occupational Therapy (Richard) and Physiotherapists (Elspeth) have their offices.
The third section is Team Room 1, which has 6 desks, 4 computers, 3 laptops, 4 community nurses (Kath, Nicky, Julie and Jayne when she returns from Mat Leave), 2 Social Workers (Carole and Jenny), 1 Care Management Support Worker (Bridget), 1 Administrator (Jane W) and 1 new finance worker (Joanne).
I am in the last room, Team Room 2, which has 6 desks, 5 computers, no laptops! (another story another time) 5 Social Workers (me, Simon, Tony, Suzanna, newly appointed Chris), 1 Care Manager (Colleen), and 5 Care Management Support Workers (Sharon, Julie, Joss, Michelle and Christa when she returns from Mat Leave) and 1 Carers Assessor (Jacquie). As you can imagine, things get INCREDIBLY crowded and chaotic mid-week when most people are in--on Tuesdays and Thursdays we regularly have 8 people in that room, sitting on the sides of desks and standing as there are only actually 6 chairs.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH. People who think they have any chance whatsoever of getting rich in public sector Social Work are sooooo mistaken! Really, it's only actually funny if you don't have to work in these conditions...
Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that even though they're the lowest on the pay scales and have no real power, the people in Team Room 2 are the ones that make or break a new addition to the team. The Care Management Support Workers have all been working together for years and years and are the only group that really has an significant shared history as the rest of the team has come and go through time. And Joss and Julie are the ones who have been around and together the longest.
These women are amazing--with their hectic lives you would think they have no time to do things with and for others, but they make it. Both of them take time every day to say hello to everyone, they remember birthdays and significant events and they ask you about how something you may have mentioned in passing as difficult or sad is working out and they always make others lives a priority. And they are kind and welcoming without judgment. And to me, that's amazing. With everything they have to do for others in their everyday lives they still take time to check up with others. And they have nothing bad to say about anyone, ever. With the working conditions we have (and don't forget the 19-space car park--we counted 43! cars in it the other day), it would be very easy for tempers to become frayed and for stupid little things to become big arguments. Yet these women don't let it. They talk out problems, lend support, help with whatever is needed at any time, and generally make everyone feel better about themselves in what are certainly demoralizing working conditions. And they do this every single day they're in, without fail.
In the midst of the chaos at work, Julie has a parent who has just been diagnosed with what may be inoperable and aggressive cancer and Joss has recently lost her closest friend to breast cancer. And yet every day they show up with smiles and good things to say to others and they 'get on with it' with others' problems and daily struggles in mind. And they have been so supportive of us, inviting Mike and me out to do things, giving me lovely cards and gifts 'just 'cause', helping me mend my pants (those sewing lessons seem to have been of little use...), giving me guidance about how to do certain things at work, letting me vent and express difficult feelings, really the list goes on.
As I've said before, every person in the team has made an amazing effort to welcome and support us and they've made this trip and experience totally worth it, but Joss and Julie just amaze me. They give to others without thinking and without asking anything in return. If there's one thing I hope to take away from here and to apply to my daily life, it's the ability to learn how to do that like they can.
So, yeah, that's life right now. Sorry there's no pictures and this post is soooo text-dense. But, the computer is being stupid and I'm wanting to spend some time during today doing something other than uploading photos, so I gave up. I hope everyone back home is well. I miss you guys! We'll be pretty incommunicado for the last 2 weeks of this month but I'll be sure to post pics and deets of our trip as soon as we're back. Also, if I decide to send postcards again, they WILL be posted within the same month of writing. Also, I'd like to point out that this is our 1st year anniversary for this blog. Well, it's on the 26th, but whatev. In that time there have been exactly 52 posts, which averages out to 1 per week. We rock!
LOVE YOU! and lots of hugs to y'all.
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