Week Two

Silly me, I thought that once I finished my first week I would have figured out my routine and would actually know what was going on. Ha.

For starters, the kids are never the same two classes in a row. For example, one of my kindergarten classes are always little monsters. The first time I was in there, five of them ended up in timeout. But Friday, they somehow transformed into angels- they were all sitting still, paying attention, and when we played charades they could all tell me their daily routines in English! (I wake up, I wash my face, I brush my teeth). 

This week was full of additional surprises though. Tuesday, everyone kept talking about convivencia. I had no idea what was going on, and the only explanation I could get was that we were all going to a park the next day. Turns out convivencia is basically a field day. All the students in the school go to a park, infantil to one, primary to another, and secondary to a third. The best part is that the students plan all the activities (the 6^th graders run the 3^rd grade events, 5^th with 2^nd, 4^th with 1^st) so the teachers really just hung out, enjoyed the sun, and ate the delicious sandwiches the school provided for us. The students get really into it, making trophies and medals for the younger students. The activities seemed pretty similar to American ones- tug of war, a treasure hunt, a three-legged race, and flag football, but minus the football. Instead, all of the students just ran around trying to grab each others flags (flag tag I guess?).

The primary students and teachers
(I'm on the left side a couple rows back)

First grade teachers

The next mystery event of the week was the teacher´s dinner on Friday. We left Tudela at 8 to take a bus to Corella, a small town about 20 minutes away who were having their fiestas this week. (For perspective, Corella is a town of about 8000 people. Tiny. Like the size of Atkinson tiny!) We arrived a little before 9, and the streets were already packed with people. You could barely walk down some of the tiny streets in the old center of the town. Our dinner reservation was for 10, so we spent the next hour and a half or so barhopping (turns out reservations aren't quite as punctual as they are in the US, since no one seemed particularly concerned whether we arrived at 10 or 10:30). Everyone was  in traditional Navarran white and red, bands and music in the street, and toros de fuego (a puppet-like “bull” that runs through the streets shooting off sparklers).

The World Through a Child's Eyes

Today one of my co-teachers was introducing me to her kindergarten class She told them that I lived really really far away, and one little boy looked up and asked, "¿Ha venido de Zaragoza?" "Even further," she told them, and a second kid asked, "¿¿Pamplona??" If you're not familiar with Spanish geography, Zaragoza is a big city about 50 miles from here. And Pamplona, the capital of Navarra, is about the same distance away. It´s crazy seeing the world through these kids' eyes: Far away means you can't walk to it. The distance between the United States and Spain is incomprehensible for them.

I guess, though, it's incomprehensible for me, as well. Every time I've showed one of my classes where the United States is on a map of the world, I'm amazed by how huge the Atlantic Ocean is and by how far away it seems. Our world can feel so small thanks to international flights and the internet. I still text my friends and call my parents and it's easy to forget I'm 3500 miles away from home. Distance is a funny thing.


In other news, a 3 year old told me I was guapa today. He also grabbed my hand as soon as I walked into the classroom and insisted on sitting next to me the whole class. Now if I could just find a 23-year-old who feels the same way ;)

Fiestas de San Mateo!

If you've ever heard of La Rioja, chances are its because of its wine. So what better time to make my first trip to La Rioja then during the Fiestas de San Mateo, the festival celebrating the grape harvest each fall? I live only maybe 10 miles from La Rioja so I knew I had to visit at some point this year. But it wasn´t until one of the teachers at my school mentioned Friday afternoon that we should go to Logroño (the capital of La Rioja) this weekend for the San Mateo festival that we bought our train tickets for a spur-of-the-moment perfect weekend getaway.

Official logo for San Mateo 2013

Logroño was all decked out for the festivities. Every store window we passed had bottles of wine in its display window, even this children´s clothing store. My favorite was a sheets and bedding store that had huge four-foot-tall wine glasses filled with burgundy sheets and clusters of grapes.

The streets were packed with people (everyone wearing pañuelos around their neck), balloons, street performers, break dancers, drumming groups, traditional music, marching bands, degustaciones (little booths set up around the city center selling a small portion of each dish), and of course wine.

First Week Reflections

The highlight of my week happened this afternoon, when I was walking down the hallway right after recess. The students love to say hi to me when they see me in the hall, but they always say "Hola." And I´ll respond "Hello" always, but I feel like a broken record: I don´t speak Spanish, kids, you have to speak English with me! (I mean, not really, but that´s what I get paid for.) Then today, a group of 3 or 4 girls from one of my elementary school classes not only said hi to me in English ("Hello! How are you?" in an adorable little Spanish accent) but also pinned me against a wall and gave me a huge hug. I have never felt so appreciated in my whole life :)

First Day of School

First day of school is done!

View from the top floor of the colegio. No complaints here!

I'm teaching pre-K through 6^th grade, both Science and English classes, so my schedule every day is totally different. I'm working with different teachers and different students every day.

Today, I had a little bit of everything- a couple 6^th grade science classes, English with the kindergartners, and then English with 3^rd graders. By far, my favorite was the 6^th graders. They know enough English to hold a conversation and were really excited and curious about the US.

3 Days in Madrid

A little late due to internet problems, but here's my post about my few days in Madrid!

This was my fourth trip to Madrid, so I'd already seen most of the famous sights- the Palacio Real, el Prado, Plaza Mayor. But there's so much to see in Madrid that I had no problem finding lots of cool new places! My mornings were spent at orientation (this was technically a *business* trip after all haha how crazy is that?), filling out endless piles of paperwork and learning about BEDA and the Universidad de Comillas where I'm officially a student this year (Imagine all the paperwork you fill out when you start college, plus all the paperwork for a new job, plus all the paperwork for moving to a new country! Residency cards, social security, it never ended!). My afternoons were free for exploring Spain's capital though! Here are a few of my favorite discoveries (or rediscoveries):

Auxiliar de Conversacion (Conversation Assistant)

I am, of course, here in Spain to teach English, and not just to spend my days drinking cafés con leche and cervezas and traveling from one cool city to the next. So, today I made my first visit to my colegio where I´m going to be working 24 hours a week for the next nine months.

I am an auxiliar de conversación or a language conversation assistant, to help the teachers and speak English with the kids. Specifically, I was hired through BEDA (Bilingual Education Development and Assessment), a program based out of Madrid whose aim is to improved bilingual education at colegios concertados (half-way between public and private, basically a private school that receives partial government funding) in Spain. While most of the auxiliares de conversación are placed at schools in Madrid, a few lucky ones get placed in other provinces, like Navarra.

Tudela: I think I´m gonna like it here...

Basically I´m in love. My apartment is amazing. (And will be even more amazing once we have internet and I don't have to hunt for cafeterias with Wifi.)

This is the view from my room:

And the view from our terraza out onto the street I live on: 

Ya estoy en Madrid!

I have reached a level of tired that I forgot existed. I got about an hour of sleep on the flight last night, broken into two half hour segments. This was a huge improvement over my last flight to Spain, when I didn't sleep at all, but today was a struggle nonetheless.
My awesome travel buddy more than made up for the sleep issues though ;) The whole plane situation was a bit of a touchy subject in the Miller household the past week or two. My sister is studying abroad in Sevilla this year through Rotary's Youth Exchange Program (see megnespana.blogspot.com if you want to know more!) and she was insistent that we were absolutely not going to fly together. But as our plans started to finalize, we realized we both needed to arrive in Spain today. And we ended up not only on the same plane, but (and this is actually really weird, since we booked our flights two months apart and through different travel agencies) sitting just one seat apart from each other (the guy in between us let me switch with him so we were actually next to each other). I guess we were just meant to be together on this trip, and it turned out to be the perfect start to this adventure, since we were both co-conspirators in each other´s crazy plans all along. It was only fitting that we got to share the excitement of seeing the Galician coast and watching the sunrise over Spain as we approached Barajas! And I even got Meg to admit that she was glad we were flying together- huge victory!