First week of work, a boat ride, lots and lots of sun

Have I mentioned that it's hot? It's really, really, really hot. The rumor is that yesterday was, in fact, the hottest day in Barcelona for thirty years. It was in the mid 90s. So, it's hot. Baking your skin into crispy bacon, hot. Melting your leather sandals into your feat hot (seriously. I didn't even realize that was possible, but, my feet are now 2/3 feet and 1/3 black coloring melted off of sandal). The heat would be more bearable, perhaps, if there were many places with AC, but unfortunately AC is not typical here. This heat is unusual so most buildings are not equipped with it-- plus, it's an old city with old buildings, so central air would be a huge hassle to put in everywhere. In our classrooms at school, with the exception of the high school science lab where we have been clustered together the last week for meetings, grateful for the recirculated air. Yesterday there was a lovely grill heated up outside the cafeteria to make us a "barbecue" lunch-- and the smoke and heat served to make the already pretty toasty cafeteria into a toasty hot-box.
Also the walk from the tram line (which we take from the metro line, from the center of the city) is all uphill so by the time we get to school we are all a coated with a thin sheen of sweat.
But, other than baking myself silly in the heat, things have been lovely. Had an orientation week that went well, learned a lot of stuff about my new school. Seems like a great place! Hung up paper successfully in my classroom, with a limited amount of tears and crooked lines. Moved furniture around despite the roasting heat. Ate lots of really good lunches provided by the school. Met lots of great teachers, admins, etc. It's going to be a good school year, I think.
Hopefully, though, the temperature will cool down just a tad. I'm going to melt into a little Beka Puddle. And it's hard to teach fourth grade if I'm a Beka Puddle.
This week I also discovered a beautiful and amazing local public gym and pool that was the nicest public pool I think I've ever seen. You do have to pay for it-- but it is the quality of an urban "club" pool-- five floors of gyms, saunas, pools,'hydromassage', etc. Snazzy. And they have these all over the city! I'm going to go get a monthly pass today.
Yesterday the school treated all the teachers to a little cruise around the harbor here on a catamaran. It was a lovely view and enjoyed some nice sangria. When climbing out to sit on the ropes at the front of the boat, the wind blew up my dress and everyone saw my underwear. Classy move at a meet-the-staff-and-talk-to-your-bosses event. I also thought I was perhaps going to throw up, as the ride was surprisingly bumpy. But I didn't! I consider that a personal success that I made it through the journey without vomiting in front of all of my new co-workers. I think I turned a few shades of green, though.
Then- dinner at an Indian restaurant! Pretty good food- very spicy-- which was good because as great as the food is here, it is definitely NOT spicy. The Spanish (and Catalans) don't really do spicy. So it was nice to have a little heat in the food...although it meant that I proceeded to get EVEN WARMER throughout my body.
I promise in the next post I will shut up about the heat.
Here are some photos of the boat trip and new co-workers. Also, a photo of the mosaic mural outside of our school.
Also- in some other news- I have now successfully been able to find our tiny street in the tiny, cavern-like streets of the old city by myself, at night, on two occasions. On only one of these did I get briefly and hopelessly lost.
In some less-then-lovely news, I saw my THIRD robbery this week. This time, it was a German tourist (who was dressed very much like a tourist) whose wallet was snatched out of his backpocket. Amazingly, he (the tourist) jumped out of the metro and grabbed the robber around the neck and succeeded in getting his wallet back! Earlier in the week someone was robbed directly in front of our apartment-- we heard someone yell and then the thump thump thump of someone running, very fast, down the street. Then every person in the buildings on either side of our street stuck their heads out and started shouting "thief! thief! thief!" as he ran down the street. No one caught him but it was good to see how collectively everyone reacted. The down side, though, was that after the robber was gone our neighbors across the street (whose balconies across the tiny street are almost close enough to touch) started shouting horrible racist epithets after the guy. And then two older couples on two different balconies proceeded to have a lengthy and horrific conversation about "damn immigrants" that was directly focused on Middle Easterners. I will not repeat here the unbelievable derogatory terms that were bandied about. Let's just say-- it was a moment that I wished that I understood LESS Spanish.