Tuesday update

I don’t have a clear perspective for this morning’s post, so I’m reverting back to my numbered paragraphs to give some type of structure to my ideas.

1. I’m feeling kind of down this morning. I hate these mood swings that wash over me from time to time, especially the fact that they all tend to revolve around my job. Some things were said yesterday here in the office that really bothered me. The comments weren’t directed to me, but the attitude behind them definitely got me thinking about my position here in this company. For a while now I’ve been walking the fence between finding contentment where I am and seriously beginning to pursue other employment opportunities. I question, however, whether a new job would provide me with the contentment I seek since the office politics/work mentality is pretty much the same everywhere. Obviously a lot of my issues stem from the business culture differences between here and what I’m used to in the States. So many things have gone on here that I find just wrong on a kazillion levels, but to everyone else it’s just a part of working in Spain. Spain is different, as the natives to say here. They couldn’t be more accurate as far as I’m concerned.

Alli asked me about how the siestas work here, so I’ll gladly explain since it all ties in.

The work mentality here generally is as follows:

productivity = the max number of hours you can spend at work in one day

Most businesses here, including mine, operate under a “split schedule.” I work from 9am-2pm, break for three hours for lunch and then come back to the office from 5-8pm. Initially I was intrigued by the 3-hour lunch break, but it’s definitely not as glamorous as it sounds. The worst part of it all is that all split-schedule businesses (supermarkets included) operate during the same hours. So if you need to do some grocery shopping, go to the bank, or run errands in general, you’re s-o-l because everything is closed during siesta time. Only recently have large-scale supermarket chains a la WalMart and mall stores changed their schedules to remain open during siesta hours.
“Intensive” work schedules (8am-3pm) are luxuries only available to government workers, banks or employees with seniority.

2. On a more positive note, I’m down another 1.4 pounds this week. Yay! Slowly but surely the numbers are decreasing. Even though I haven’t been faithfully updating my sidebar, I got in a lot of exercise hours last week- a big improvement on my part. I’m looking to continue this trend over the next seven days and see where this gets me next Tuesday. I’m trying to focus less on the actual numbers and more on the goals that I can control. Nevertheless, I do want to see 215 on that scale of mine by the end of the month. I mean it’s only 3.4 pounds from where I am. Shouldn’t I be able to pull that off? I think so..

3. I’ll be having a Chechu-less weekend, which kind of sucks. Since he’s one of the teen leaders he’ll be off to the teen retreat our church is holding this weekend in some other remote location in Granada. The kids are all really looking forward to it, so I’m hoping they’ll have a great time and learn a lot. Depending on whether or not I have to work this weekend, I plan to go up to Granada myself to hang out with some friends. Girl time is definitely in order.

4. Tons of non-work stuff to do today. I doubt I’ll be able to work out during my break. Hopefully we’ll leave here on time tonight and I can squeeze in a workout before finishing some other stuff I have pending.