Wine Country

As you may or may not know, Spain is pretty famous for its red wine. Most of it is made in the Rioja region of Spain which is in the north, just south of Bilbao. So, when my family decided to come for a visit, it was only natural that we decided to make a trip to wine country.

My dad, mom and brother Drew came to visit me for a week. And luckily, since I put in a bunch of extra time preparing the Easter gyncana, I got to take the week off to spend it with them. First they came to Sevilla where we got to see the Royal Alcazar, the Setas in Plaza de Encarnacion and Parque Maria Luisa. They also got to meet Javier, the 19 year old Spanish son of my coworker who is coming to live with us this summer. We went for a lunch with them at a restaurant called Modesto that lasted over 3 hours and was extremely filling. Then, on Monday they got the chance to come out to my school with me. So, I got to show them where I work and let me meet all of my students and coworkers. I think my favorite part about that is whenever one of the students would ask a question, they would direct it at a specific person. For example, one student would ask "What is your favorite color to the daddy?" or "What is your favorite animal to the mommy?"

Puppy at the Guggenheim

After spending time in Bormujos, we had to head to the airport to catch our flight to Bilbao. In Bilbao, we took a funicular to the top of the city and saw some amazing views, then ate a lot of delicious pintxos. Pintxos are tapas on pieces of bread. The next day we got to go to the Guggenheim. It was just as cool as the first time and I'm glad I had the opportunity to visit again. After the museum, my dad and I went to go get our rental car. The man in the shop said that we were getting a van and my mom had ordered a mini van, so I figured ok, sounds good. We went to the garage to pick up the car and BOOM we got the biggest car in the history of the universe. I am pretty sure this car is for creepy men to "sell candy" from. Anyway, we drove up to Azurmendi for lunch and the car managed to stall out a ton of times. We even had to have an old man help us turn it around on a hill. So, during lunch I called the place back and asked if they had any smaller models. We went back and traded the car then headed to Elciego in the Rioja region.

Back to Azurmendi for a second- it is a small winery that has a tour then lunch at it. The food we got there was delicious. We had beef, fish, potato-leek soup, croquettes with pistachios and dessert. The views from the winery (set on a hill) were amazing!

Our hotel in Elciego was called Marques de Riscal. It is a winery and luxury hotel that was designed by the same man who designed the Guggenheim. After getting checked in we decided to look around the hotel and find a place to have a glass of wine and relax. We then got ready for dinner and went to a restaurant called Asador Alameda in Fuenmayor which was delicious, but a bit too much food for night time.

The next morning we got up to do our big day of winery tours. We went to R. Lopez de Herrida Vina Tondonia winery first. This winery was very traditional, even down to having their own cooper (barrel maker) on the premesis. Luckily our tour was very small and we even got to see their "cathedral" where they keep the best wines that are aging. The cellar was pretty moldy, but we found out that the moldy environment helps the wine to age to perfection. After having some wine in their tasting room and purchasing a couple of bottles, we headed to Roda, the winery next door. We didn't tour here, we just tasted their wine. The tasting room was in a cave, so it was pretty cool! Then we went to Laguardia where we got to go into an extremely old winery called Carlos San Pedro Perez de Vinaspre. The owners son gave us a tour and even pulled wine out of the vats where it was aging to let us taste. After these two tours, we worked up quite an appetite. We went to a restaurant in Laguardia called Mayor de Migueloa and had an amazing meal with a funny waitor. After that, we headed to our hotel to tour the winery there. It was much more modern than the other places we saw- full of stainless steel barrels and machinery- so it was nice to see a different way to make wine. Andrew and I got to go to the spa and have massages afterward, which was super relaxing. That night, we went to dinner in our hotel where I had some delicious meatballs and potatoes.

On Thursday, we only went to one winery. It was called Bodegas Ysios and was extremely modern. The winery was built in the early 2000's by an architect called Santiago Calatrava. He is very famous in not only Spain, but the world for his unique style of architecture. After seeing the modern process of winemaking and buying a bottle, we headed to Logroño for tapas on Laurel Street. The food was amazing and they were even having a promotion that for every tapa you bought, you got a tiny envelope that you opened and (maybe) won a free tapa somewhere else. My mom won one, but we didn't end up using it. After tapas, we drove to San Sebastian to return the car and get to our final hotel. We got to Hotel Londres just in time to have an hour on the beach then see the sunset. That night we ate at a place called Branka which I highly recommend!

The weather didn't stay in our favor for going to the beach on Friday. It was really cloudy and foggy. So, besides our big lunch at Alkelare (a post that is going to be separate cause I have pictures of all of our courses), we did a lot of sitting around and being lazy. Saturday we climbed to the top of Monte Urgull or Jesus mountain as I like to call it. The views from the top were great, but probably would have been better had it been less foggy. Then we saw Saint Mary's Basillica in the old part of town and got some lunch. We relaxed for the afternoon since a lot of things closed during siesta, then headed out for a pintxos dinner for our last night together.

It was an amazing trip and I am so glad that my family could come and we could experience all of these adventures together.

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!

3 countries in 1 week= great vacation

Last week was Semana Santa (Holy Week) here in Sevilla. I went on a great trip with one of my best friends that I have made over here, Joanna. We decided to go to Bologna, Krakow, Malaga and Granada. We only spent one day in Bologna which we decided was enough time because there isn't a whole lot to see there. We ate a huge Italian feast of bruschetta, a Caprese salad, a Parma ham pizza, and penne arribiata pasta (just for the two of us, in one meal). Then we decided to climb the 500 stairs to the top of one of the leaning towers. Eating that much and then climbing that many stairs was rough. We had to take multiple long breaks to catch our breath along the journey. We made it though and it was worth it- the view was incredible.

After getting down, we walked around the old town a bit and then headed back toward our hotel. The room that we got in our hotel was literally made for the Munchkins of Oz. We were on the top floor and the roof was slanted. I barely fit into the short side of the room and I bumped my head approx. 20 times in our few hours there. Although that was kind of annoying, it was also fun. Our shower was amazing. There were disco lights inside it. We aren't really sure what the function of the lights was, but showering in a pink or blue light definitely made it more exciting!

  The next morning we had to wake up at 4:30 am to catch our flight to Poland. The day started out rough when we realized that we had to walk to a separate terminal for RyanAir to stamp our tickets and look at our visas then walk back. After that there weren't any issues getting to Poland, we even had a person with my name on a sign waiting for us at the airport from our hostel. I felt pretty important. That day we walked around and saw a lot of different districts in Krakow. We saw the old town square, the Jewish quarter and Podgorze (an old Jewish ghetto). We also ate some delicious Polish food including soups and Kielbasa sausage. That night we got Thai massages which was an interesting and relaxing experience. We made friends with the receptionist, Caroline, at our hostel that night because the only other people staying in the hostel were 54 Romanian high school students and their parent chaperons.

The next day we went on a tour of Wieliczka- a salt mine that goes over 900 meters underground. The funniest part of the day was that we were the last people to get onto our tour bus. So, we had to sit in the front seat with the driver and no seat belts. We were pretty frightened the whole way home. We got to tour the first three levels (about 130 meters deep). It was absolutely amazing! There were tons of statues made by the miners that were completely made of salt. There were also a few lakes inside the mine. In these lakes there is a higher salt concentration than the Dead Sea, so anybody who tried to swim in them would just float on the top. We also got to tour the cathedral that is inside the mine. The altar, cross, artwork, pews and chandeliers were all carved from salt. Once we got back to Krakow that day, we were starving and we decided to go to a restaurant that served pierogies. We thought that ordering the mixed platter for 2 would be a good choice so that we could try a few different kinds. Our pierogies came out and there were 40 of them on a boat. Clearly we could not eat them all, even though they were delicious. My favorite was the mashed potato and cheese kind. That night we shared the leftovers with our hostel friends and went out with them.

  The next day we went to Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Although it was very depressing, it was also very fascinating. I learned a lot since our tour guide was extremely knowledgeable. He told me a lot of facts that I did not previously know about the camp. We had the opportunity to tour Auschwitz I which they have turned into a museum of sorts. We saw objects that the people brought with them to the camp and learned more about where the prisoners came from. Then after touring all of the parts of Auschwitz I, we went to Auschwitz II-Birkenau. When I thought of concentration camp and Auschwitz, I pictured Auschwitz II-Birkenau in my head. It was in the middle of nowhere, barren, horrible facilities and the train pulled directly into the gates with no opportunity for the prisoners to escape. After returning to Krakow, we went into St. Mary's Church which is one of the most impressive cathedrals I have ever seen. It was so colorful and if you ever get the chance, you should see it!

The next day was spent travelling to Malaga. We were supposed to arrive in Malaga at 1 pm, but we didn't arrive until 5 pm. It was due to the striking of the air traffic controllers in France. We were forced to stay on the plane for over two hours because the pilot thought there might be a chance to leave. After 2 hours, they let us off the plane to buy food and use the restrooms. Then we finally took off and spent 3.5 hours in the air. When we got to our hostel, we were ready to just sit and relax which we got to do. It was nice to be near the beach and see the water even though it was too cold to sit on the beach.

The next day we had time to tour Malaga and get some fried fish (a specialty there). We climbed to the top of the Alcazaba which are ruins. From the top you could see the entire city and it was a great view. After eating the fish, we walked along the beach to grab our suitcases to head to Granada. We took the bus to Granada and arrived just in time to join up with the tapas tour that our hostel hosted. After eating some great tapas, we went out to some bars on the street that I used to live on when I studied in Granada. It was amazing to be back and brought back so many memories. The only bad part of the day is when we returned to our hostel and realized there was no ladder for Joanna to get up onto her top bunk. The other 5 people in our room were already asleep and we definitely woke them up getting Joanna into her bed. It was pretty hilarious if anybody would have been watching, they would have been laughing along with us.

The next couple of days we visited my favorite coffee shops, ice cream stores, tapas bars and sights in Granada. We had the opportunity to climb to the top of the Albaycin to see the Mirador de San Nicolas. From this viewpoint, you can see the entire city. After all of the travelling, I am really glad to be back in my apartment and back in Sevilla at work again.

Bilingualism

There are professors here in Spain who do not understand the importance of bilingual education and bilingualism. I cannot see how they can be so close-minded and unwilling to make changes. Looking at data (granted this is from the US, but I am sure that it would apply worldwide) by fourth grade if students are in a bilingual program they are outscoring their non-bilingual peers by many points on state mandated testing. We had one professor tell a bilingual professor that what she is teaching is a "waste of time" and "not worth it" for the students. I was completely outraged to hear this for many reasons:

First- I would not have taken a year out of my life to come and expose your school to English if you didn't want me there. 

Second- First grade bilingual science is HARD! This is the students first exposure to learning an entire class in a foreign language, so yes they probably are going to act up and be misbehaved. They don't understand what is going on, but once they do, they soak it up like sponges and retain it! 

Third- Looking back to a few weeks ago when the director came to shadow my class, I can finally see that there are haters out there in the world of bilingual education. The bilingual program in Andalucia is extremely new, it has only been around for 2 years. So yes, there are still some kinks to work out, but the students that are getting exposure to English at such a young age will know so much more when they leave the school than the current sixth grade students do. 

I am very frustrated that people cannot see that exposure to another language at a young age is an amazing opportunity. As the world continues to get smaller with new technology every day, students will need to be able to communicate with people all around the world. Also, learning a new language also means learning a new culture. Students who are exposed to cultures/backgrounds of people who are different from them are much more likely to be globally minded, creative, independent thinkers for our future. It also helps to break stereotypes that are created. Stereotypes are created because people are not open to things that are different from them, so students who are exposed to different cultures are much less likely to hold stereotypes. 

Anyway, I don't want to continue ranting. I just finished applying for over 23 bilingual districts in the United States for next year. So, I know that I will be empowering young minds and exposing them to cultural opportunities that they may have never had in a typical school environment. I cannot wait to start hearing back from some districts :)

A Normal Week

This week was the first in awhile where I had to work 4 days and go to all of my classes. It was actually nice to return to my routine because I had been feeling stressed out after travelling a lot and not sleeping/eating normally. So, it was great to return to normal.

In school this week, we celebrated International Woman's Day. The way my school chose to celebrate was by having each professor create a stand about a different woman singer. It kind of reminded me of the science fair because all around the school, there were little tables with instruments, pictures and music playing. There was also information about each of the singers, so I learned a lot about random Spanish women that I didn't know before. In my classes, the teachers were teaching songs by the artist they had chosen. Bea chose Adele, so in my three classes with her, we were working with the song Someone Like You.  In Milagros's class, we worked on the song Vindaloo by Ana Laan. Ana Laan is a Spaniard who was born to a Swedish mother and Spanish father. So, she speaks Swedish, Spanish and English. All of her songs are a mixture of the three languages, so it was really fun to listen to the songs. The students loved listening and raising their hands when she switched from Spanish to English- a great listening practice.

In art this week, we were working on landscapes. Normally I only teach art to the bilingual group, but for some reason, the classes didn't switch. Teresa (the teacher I work with for 2nd grade bilingual) wasn't there that day, so I didn't have any support in Spanish. I was kind of nervous that the students wouldn't understand, but everything turned out great. The students who are in Teresa's class and also in the bilingual class were a great help and explained things to their non-bilingual peers if they got confused. Their projects turned out great and the class was relatively calm and quiet the whole time. It was very nice to be in a class where everyone was listening and following directions.

Outside of school, I did a few exciting things this week. On Tuesday, I was in a cooking class with Joanna. We learned how to make Pisto Manchego which is a vegetable medley in a tomato sauce. We also learned how to make Spinach and Garbanzos in a creamy veggie sauce. The food was very good, but the class wasn't over until almost 11:30. If we sign up again, we would definitely choose to go on the weekend or a Thursday night. On Friday, I spent my entire day sitting outside by the river in the sun with a picnic and good friends. Saturday, I went to the First International Beer Festival that is being held here in Sevilla. Saturday night I went to my friend Hannah's house for crepes and wine- which was great besides having to evacuate the building for a fire on the fifth floor in the middle of our dinner. Today, I volunteered at a 10k race. I handed out food and drinks at the end of the race to the runners. I really liked it, but next time I would prefer to get up later than 6:45 am to go volunteer.

Shake, Shake, Shake Your Tail

Last weekend was a long weekend or "puente" as they call it here in Spain. I decided to take a solo trip to Brussels and Amsterdam. I was busy the whole time and didn't really get lonely until the last day/night there. I think my favorite part of my trip was the day trip I took to Amsterdam. I got to visit the Anne Frank House, see Dam square/monument, wander the Jordaan neighborhood, and shop a bit. The weather was perfect and Amsterdam was such a cute city. I hope that in the future I can make another trip there for a longer period of time.
In Brussels, I got to do all of the things I wanted to do, which is the nice part about travelling alone. A lot of what I did was eat. I had most of the typical Belgian food including waffles, chocolate, mussels, fries, and kebabs. Kebabs are pretty much the same thing as a gyro. My favorite attraction was the chocolate museum. I got to learn a little bit about the history of chocolate, then see a demonstration on how pralines are made. My favorite part was the free samples :)

I also got to see all of the major attractions. I really liked the Magritte Museum, but I wish there would have been more of his artwork and less letters that were written to him in French or Dutch that I couldn't read. I saw the cathedral, Grand Palace, Palace of Justice and of course the Atomium. I think the Atomium is the coolest attraction that I have ever visited. It was built for the 1958 World Expo in Brussels. It is an iron atom, blown up 165 billion times. People can walk around inside of it and have a beautiful panoramic view from the top. It was very futuristic and I really enjoyed visiting.

Since we had the break last weekend, school was only 2 days this week for me. Wednesday I went in and taught sixth grade the different endings for regular verbs in the simple past tense. They had to fill out a chart deciding if the word ended in /d/ /Id/ or /t/. It really helped some of them because they have the tendency to say all of the words with an /Id/ ending sound. Now they can look back and the chart to help them better their pronunciation. 

Thursday was very exciting. I didn't actually have to go to school because we were going on a field trip to see a play in English with the 1st and 2nd graders. The play was in Los Remedios (my neighborhood), so I got to sleep in and just meet them at the place where it was. The play was about a dog, cat, donkey and rooster who form a band because their owner doesn't want them anymore. The biggest issue we had was that the play was in English, but Spaniards were acting and they had really bad accents. It was very hard to understand the play and many of the students left confused. Also, they seated us on the top balcony level, which normally would have been fine, but we booked the play last May. We have a student who is in a wheelchair and they would not let him sit downstairs, so one of the teachers had to carry him up the stairs so he could sit with us. I can even begin to imagine how he felt. It was really crappy of the company to book the only school with a student with a physical disability on the top floor. Also, none of the students could really see from the top floor because they were too little to see over the seats in front of them. I was nervous that one of them was going to fall over the balcony because of how they were jumping up out of their seats. The kids really liked the songs in the play though and the one "Shake Your Tail" has been stuck in my head all weekend...

Here Come's the Sun

The past two weeks at school have been so much better! The students are finally paying more attention and really wanting to learn English. It might be because we have been doing a lot of fun things like singing and crafts, but today when I was teaching vocabulary, the students seemed to be paying attention.

For Valentine's Day at school, I made the students learn the poem "Roses are red, Violets are blue, Sugar is sweet and so are you!" They had to color the words red and blue correctly and then the could write a Valentine to whoever they wanted. The only rule was that they needed to write "I love you" in English. Then they could write whatever they wanted to on the rest of their heart. Many of the students wrote their Valentine's to me, which was super cute and heartwarming.

With my older students, we did a vocabulary check for Valentine's Day words. We went over about 15 words and what they mean. Then they had to read a set of directions and draw the what the directions said. They are going to turn them in tomorrow and we are going to pick a winner. If we didn't have any incentive for the students to draw well, they would just scratch some stuff on their papers and turn them in. So, we decided to give a prize. I hope they come out well :)

Today was my first opportunity to teach a class completely by myself. Bea was home sick with a cold and for some reason, there was no substitute sent to my class. I was a little worried about it, but it was the best class that I have had so far. I set some ground rules at the beginning of class such as raising your hand to talk, working quietly so that everyone can concentrate and that nobody could go to the bathroom. These three things are constant problems in all of my classes and since I am not the full time teacher, I feel weird overstepping the authority of the full time teacher. Since that wasn't an issue today, I tried it out. The students got all of their work done today and we even had a little bit of time left over to do some Simon Says (the kids favorite game!)