La vida diaria

Blog posts have been sparse this fall because, well, I really haven't been doing anything worth blogging about! So far my grand travels have been a night in Madrid, most of which was spent in in workshops, and a weekend in Barcelona, most of which was spent in a tiny twin bed in a closet-sized room with a terribly-timed cold. Not to worry, though, this time next week I'll be off on my next voyage: Morocco! In the mean time, here's a little look at what I have been up to, a typical day in my life in Tudela.

8 am: My alarm sounds. Yeah, 8 am might seem like "sleeping in" but Spain's been in the wrong time zone for the past 80 years so its still dark here when I wake up :( 

8:45: Begin my "long" commute to work: A nice 10 minute walk (but all uphill!). Coming home is a breeze though!

Ok, so I cheated and took a picture from last spring.
There are no flowers in November, but I'm not lying about the hill!

9-1: My first four classes of the day, with a half hour break for recess (usually spent having my "almuerzo" or morning snack in the staff room). Today I get to teach my third graders all about Thanksgiving, including how to bake a pumpkin pie and watching the Macy's parade. Note to self: watching videos about pumpkin pie when you can't eat it is not a good idea!

I spent the majority of my day going up and down these stairs...

1-3: Lunch time! I get two hours off, plenty of time to pop on home for lunch and a little relax time (or some lesson-planning if I've procrastinated/a nap if it was a rough morning!).Today, I run into my roommates on the walk home and decide to take advantage of the unseasonably warm weather and join them for a coffee in the sunny square.

3-5: Back to school for the last two classes (unless its Wednesday, then I get to take a nice long siesta). I'm in the fourth grade all afternoon today, doing Thanksgiving again. Today I learn a very important lesson: do not teach your "Countries of the World" unit at the same time as your Thanksgiving unit! The entire class mishears "turkeys" for "Turkish" and stares at me in horror as I describe how we kill and eat all the "Turkish" but that the President gets to pardon one of the "Turkish" and they get to go live in Disneyland. It takes a while to clear that one up. No kids, there is no cannibalism or mass genocide involved in Thanksgiving! Yikes.   

5-7: Descanso part 2. I have another two hours of free time before my night activities commence, plenty of time for a run along the Ebro River. Anyone who knows me at all knows I'm not a runner. At all. But since I live half a block away from a beautiful little park that runs alongside Spain's biggest river, it seemed a crime to pass it up. And getting through a tough workout is just so much easier when you can take in the pinks and purples of the clouds reflected in the still river as the sun sets behind a thousand-year-old Moorish bridge and the red clay hills surrounding Tudela.

7-9: 7 pm finds me either at the Official Language School studying French (Oui, je parle francais! Et vous?) or at a pupil's flat teaching conversation classes. Whether I´m discussing Catalan independence or the Spanish olive oil industry over a coffee or playing Guess Who and Go Fish with my kids, it's hard to really call it "work." French is a different story- some days the struggle of learning French in Spanish is just too much for my language-saturated brain to handle. But more on the trials and tribulations of multilingualism in another post...

Walking to my evening classes

9:00: Dinner time, finally. Today I make a delicious turkey and tomato grilled cheese and curl up in bed to study a little Spanish and read til I fall asleep.

And repeat until Friday arrives and I get a temporary reprieve from my little monsters ;)