It's been awhile!

I know it's been quite some time, so I am going to try and catch you up on everything and not make this too long!


After Semana Santa with Joanna, life went back to normal for like 2 weeks. I was still working on the past tense in 6th grade, a food unit in 1st grade and a clothes unit in 2nd grade. However, since I live in a foreign country, life can only stay normal for a short time. 


The last week in April was the Feria de Abril. This fair was started hundreds of years ago as a trade fair. Farmers would bring their best crops and animals to trade for money or other food/animals. The tradition has lasted so long because it has evolved into a week long eating, drinking and dancing festival. Some things have stayed very true to tradition- the women wear flamenco dresses (this was their best apparel) and men wear their Sunday's best and take women around the fair on horses. Some things have been added such as casetas. A caseta is a tent that is usually owned by a family (extended family too) where food and drinks are served for the entire 7 days, 24 hours a day. The families invite their friends into their caseta and pay for whatever they offer their guests. So, it is a pretty big deal to be invited to a caseta. There are also public casetas where anybody can go and those ones tend to be more fun for dancing Sevillanas (flamenco) because there is space for dancing. I got to experience a few different casetas of friends and coworkers. I got to try a bunch of different foods and the typical Feria drink- rebujitos (Manzanilla wine and sprite-not my favorite!) And I even got to dress up!

Most schools in the Sevilla area take some days off around the Feria so that families and teachers can go and stay out late! So, my school had the Friday of the week of Feria and the Monday after off. Then Tuesday was Labor Day in Spain. So, since I had a long weekend, I traveled to Ireland with some friends. We got to spend a couple of days in Dublin doing a walking tour, seeing the Guinness factory, and shopping. We also got to spend a day in Cork where we went to see the Blarney Castle and kiss the Blarney Stone.  Kissing the stone is supposed to make a person more eloquent, but I don't think it really did anything more that give me a bit of a head rush from tipping upside down.

After getting home from Ireland, I had a pretty exciting week at school. We started working on the end of the year English plays in 1st and 2nd grade. The first graders are going to be acting out one of the stories from their books called The Enormous Carrot. The story is about a family who works together to pull an enormous carrot out of the ground and involves a lot of muscle showing and muscle man music. It is very cute. Then, with the 2nd graders we are doing the play The Ugly Duckling. We added a bunch of parts to the play so that all of the children have a role. There are ducks, parrots, monkeys, sunflowers, butterflies and swans in the show. It is very cute and I think it will all come together after a few more practices.


Ok- so this gets you to the point where my family came to visit me. I am going to end this post and write a different one about their visit cause it was very special and there is a lot to say!