Up and Down the Town

It was a great first day at Vaughantown!
At 10:00, after breakfast, I walked down to the market with my first one-to-one "victim" of the day.  The market was not a lot different than last year, except that there was no chandelier store!  There did seem to be more underwear stores, though (anyone need a 3 euro bra?). We kept wondering how people could buy these random clothes.  There was no place to try anything on, for one thing.  I did see a local woman, with a dress on over her clothes, looking at herself as the vendor held up a mirror, so I guess they have it figured out.  I don't know.  I think I would rather take the bus to another town to shop.

Nothing like coming around the corner and getting hit in the face by a bra hanging in your way.

We also sought out the post office, so that I could mail a promised postcard to a friend at Lowe's.  When we got back, we met in separate Anglo/Spaniard groups to talk about upcoming activities.  Then I had free time, so I went back to the market to see if I could find a jacket. I did not - but I did find a very cool mural on the side of a little casa rural (like a small hotel).

I have shown this to several people, and they kept saying, "Are you sure it's not real??"

After my free time I had a really interesting discussion one of the Spaniards about the Spanish unemployment system, and labor laws in general.  The guy, whose name is Edi, reminded me a lot of Nic in manner.  He is 27 but owns two restaurants, and is working with some partners on creating some phone apps for different things.  He said that in Spain, employers have to be very careful about who they hire because if they have to fire them for any reason, they have to pay them one month's salary for each year they worked, and then they get unemployment.  So it can be expensive for an employer to fire someone.  He also said that, by law, everyone gets 30 days of paid vacation each year, but the company can assign half of the days as "holidays", and the workers can plan the other half.  On the downside, Spanish minimum wage is about $3.75/hour.

We had our hotel tour this afternoon, but the girl with the good English was not working today, so we got a young girl who looked fairly terrified at having to speak English in front of 30 strangers.  We had to remind her of some of the interesting points of the tour because she didn't have all of the information (or she just skipped it because she didn't know how to say it).

After a hilarious entertainment hour and dinner, we had a pub quiz (trivia quiz), and my team came in second by two points.  Now it's off to bed -  another full day tomorrow!  Tomorrow night I have offered to do a presentation about my home town, and I can get those 3 lbs of BeerNuts out of my bag.