This year, I am thankful for...

Wednesday and Thursday at school this week were AMAZING days. I have been really loving school for the past couple of weeks. I think that I am finally comfortable with being there and what my role is. I also think that the teachers are more comfortable with me in the classroom. After my lessons in 6th year on Wednesday, Milagros pulled me aside and told me that I am the best Auxiliar de Conversacion that the school has ever had. That made me so excited and so thankful for the opportunity to be in their school! On Thursday after my lessons, I helped Bea (my coordinator) make a blog for the school. On this blog, we are going to post English activities, vocabulary, videos and pictures of what is going on in the school. I am really excited about the new project and I can't wait to start posting. If you want to check it out the website is http://ceipelmanantial.blogspot.com.

Being away from family on Thanksgiving day was a bit difficult. I tried to get my dad to show me the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade over skype, but the computer didn't like being close to the tv and it kept freezing. Then, later that night, my brothers set up a screen so that I could be a part of my family's dinner. It was really nice to be included, but it was hard to not be there. We went around and said what we were thankful for and then I sat there and watched my family eat delicious food. Oh well, there are only 22 days until I go home and can be eating with them too!

Our beautiful feast!

On Friday, we prepared a Thanksgiving meal in our Spanish piso. Bridget made a beautiful, delicious green bean casserole. The onions on top were totally homemade by frying real onions- so take that French's! I made a sweet potato casserole that was probably the most delicious dish I have ever prepared in my life. Thanks to Bridget for pulling the sweet potatoes out at just the right time when the marshmellows were perfectly golden brown! I also made homemade stuffing that didn't cook exactly right in our oven, but still tasted delicious. Kathleen made mashed potatoes from "copos" (flakes), some delicious broccoli with garlic, deviled eggs and delicious roasted honey carrots. The only things that were missing were turkey, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. We substituted the turkey with baked chicken breasts and gravy and the pumpkin pie with brownies. The meal turned out surprisingly well, we were so shocked because our oven tends to give us some problems sometimes.

Saturday, the weather was absolutely gorgeous, so I went over to Parque de los Principes which is right down the street and sat in the sunshine and read my book. I am finally ALMOST done with the 400 page book in tiny font, in Spanish that I have renewed twice! I really like the book, it is just hard for me to read more than a chapter at a time because the print is soooo small and in a different language. After getting back from reading my book, Bridget and I prepared the leftovers and a few additions to our feast from the night before to serve to Fidel (for being such a great help with everything related to technology), Pilar (our neighbor who we have become very close with over the last week), Joanna (another Auxiliar friend), and ourselves. As we shared the meal with our friends, we explained the tradition of Thanksgiving and what we do to celebrate it. I shared that I am thankful for my family, my friends- especially the ones sitting around the dinner table, the opportunity to live and teach in Spain and my good health. Sharing this tradition with a new culture was very exciting and is exactly the reason why I came here. I want to share as many things about my culture with everybody here so that in return, they will share their culture with me!

Spanish students do Thanksgiving!

The 6th graders "I'm Thankful For..." Turkey!

2nd graders handprint turkeys!

1st grader's handprint turkeys!

Thanksgiving Spirit

Even though I am far way from all of my family and friends for this Thanksgiving, I am still trying to make the best of it. Today I started making some decorations for our piso, just like I did for Halloween. I am also in the middle of making pumpkin muffins, just like I do every Thanksgiving at home. I think it will be a bit hard to be away, since it is the first Thanksgiving that I will spend away from my family and I am SO far away. They said they are going to Skype me in during Thanksgiving dinner so that I can be a part of it, but it won't be the same.
My roommates and I are going to cook a Thanksgiving dinner here in our apartment. The only thing that will be a little different is that we will probably not have turkey. They don't really sell whole turkeys or even turkey breast anywhere here. So, we are either going to get a cooked full chicken from a place around the corner, or we are just going to cook some chicken breasts. I am going to make homemade stuffing, gravy, and sweet potato casserole (with marshmellows of course!) Bridget is going to make a green bean casserole and we are also going to have a salad and some wine. It should be a great meal. We aren't going to have it until Friday though since we all have to work on Thursday.

This week at school I am going to be teaching about Thanksgiving in 5 of my 7 classes. In 1st and 2nd grade, I am teaching them song that goes to the tune of "Do You Know the Muffin Man?" The first verse is "The Pilgrims came to America, America, America, The Pilgrims came to America a long, long time ago." Then there are verses about the Mayflower, Indians, corn and a feast. I think it will sum up Thanksgiving for them pretty well. Then I am going to have them make a handprint turkey as a fun craft. In 6th grade I am going to read them a story about the first thanksgiving. After that, I am going to make a turkey to put up on the wall, then each student is going to get a feather. On that feather they are going to write "I am thankful for...." and they are going to paste the feathers up on the turkey. I think this activity will go really well and they will really like it.

Madrid!

Sorry it has been awhile since my last blog, I have just been really busy since the last time I posted! Over the weekend, I went to Madrid to visit Chelsea Isley. I really enjoyed myself and I really liked getting away for the weekend. On Friday, we started an apartment hunt for Chelsea because shes is looking to move. So, we went to this apartment which really reminded me of the gross apartment that my roommates and I saw. The common area was the kitchen which was only a sink and a bunson burner type of stove. All of the rooms were off of this "kitchen" and were all locked like a hostel or something. After we did that, I went to see the Royal Palace, which is absolutely worth the money you pay to get inside. The rooms are beautiful and there are a ton of different architectural styles in different rooms, which I really loved. We at Doner Kebab for lunch which was absolutely delicious. After that, Chelsea had a private lesson, so I went shopping on Gran Via and I am really proud of myself because I held back from buying anything! I did see a few things that I will go back and buy with my next paycheck though. Once Chelsea was done with her lesson, we met back up and went to visit another friend who is teaching English in Madrid, Rebecca Grosebeck. We met up with Rebecca and her boyfriend, Sandy, for some wine and chorizo.

The next morning, Chelsea and I cooked a delicious pancake breakfast. We made pumpkin pancakes and blueberry pancakes. The pumpkin pancakes were a bit of a fail, but they tasted delicious. After, Chelsea took me to a store called Taste of America where I bought canned pumpkin and cake mix so that I can make pumpkin muffins for Thanksgiving like I always do. We then got a wonderful gourmet picnic (McDonald's) which we took into Parque Retiro. The park was absolutely gorgeous because fall actually happens in Madrid. I was so excited to see the leaves changing color! After that, we saw two more apartments which were both extremely great. She is going to live in one of them with two other roommates and a really great location. We then went out on the town on Saturday and ended up running into her friends at both of the places we went to. It was nice to meet her friends and I really had a great weekend.

This week at school, I feel a lot more "in the know" because teachers are actually telling me what I need to do to prepare for classes. I also feel that the students are doing a much better job of at least trying to understand what is going on. Most of the time so far, they have just spaced out when I am talking, but I reinforced that if they want to do well on their tests, they are going to have to start paying more attention.

Exam Week

This week is the first time that my students have an exam in all the ages. I am really hoping that they do well on their exams because it will be a partial reflection on my teaching. Seeing as I am only with each group of students for 1 or 2 hours a week, it is really hard to judge if they are learning. I feel that the teachers I work with don't do the best job of speaking English when I am not in the classroom. So, I will feel bad if my students do poorly on the exam, but I won't feel that it is all my fault. I have talked to the teachers and told them that they need to be speaking in English during bilingual time because the students need more practice, but seeing as English is difficult for them, many of them don't do it.

Today I read the first of many exams that I will read. In order for the students to perform well on the exam, the school believes that it is necessary to read the entire test to the students. I noticed that many of the students really seemed to understand the questions and got to work straight away on the answers. I also noticed that there were a few students who literally had no idea what was going on. The first question on the test was "Where does fresh food come from? Answer." and they had to trace "Fresh food comes from" and then write "plants and animals". I saw one girl trace/trace Fresh food come from Answer. I tried to explain to her about 10 times what the question was, but she had no clue. It made me a little sad that she was so clueless and that I could not help her since it was an exam.

I think that this week will be kind of boring at school because normally during an exam, I am sent out to prepare materials. I can only prepare so many materials, so it is hard to fill up all that time without seeming like I am sitting around and doing nothing.

After school today, I picked up Claudia and we had a lot of fun. I taught her how to do a cartwheel because she loves gymnastics. I also taught her how to play Go Fish and made her play it in English to practice the phrase "Do you have any" and numbers. She loved it. The only bad part about babysitting today was that Claudia decided to practice her recorder for an hour since she has an exam tomorrow. Now, I am sitting back at home with a giant headache :(

Halloween does not need to be scary!

Bridget and I finally got to go to Ronda on Sunday. Although it was a bit of a rough morning since neither of us got very much sleep, Ronda was totally worth it. When we arrived, we got tostada and coffee at a cafe. Turns out we picked a very historical cafe, it is the oldest cafe in Ronda. We just sat down there because it was one of the first places we saw that was open, then we met a couple that has been coming to Ronda since their honeymoon from Connecticut. They told us a restaurant that we should try for lunch which was a tapas bar. They also told us where to walk around and see things. We saw the parador (cliff) of Ronda which is the most amazing view of the mountainous terrain that surrounds it. We got a lot of walking in and saw a lot, including a small petting zoo where they had peacocks. It was pretty cool.

Yesterday, we celebrated Halloween at school. We played pin the face on the jack-o-lantern, a version of steal the bacon, and bobbing for apples. The students had a ton of fun. I actually got to work with 5th grade yesterday for the first time and they are really awesome.  I did an activity with them where they had to read the directions and draw different things on the haunted house (example: There is a ghost in the left downstairs window). They really seemed to like the activity and I think I actually convinced them that I don't know Spanish (a first in my school)! They did a great job of asking questions when they did not understand and were trying so hard in English.

Last night, we had a bunch of the other Auxiliares de Conversacion (people who are doing what we are) over to our piso. It was a lot of fun to have other people to talk to and hang out with. All of them are great people that we had a lot of fun with. We also had a couple of Spaniards over. They were all so confused about our costumes seeing as my roommates and I were a cowgirl, a pumpkin, a goth, and an Energizer bunny. The Spaniards are under the impression that Halloween is only a scary holiday and no matter how many times we try to convince them, they don't want to believe that Halloween does not mean only scary.

Today is All Saints Day, so no school! We have been cleaning our apartment, trying to get laundry done (since it's supposed to rain for the next 4 days straight!), and relaxing.

Everything happens for a reason

The rest of this week was pretty average at school. I am still confused why I am a class with second graders that is arts and crafts where they are given a project to work on and I sit there while they do it, but oh well. Anyway, I found out that I do have to go to school on Monday even though most auxiliares have off. The government in Bormujos did not approve for us to have Oct 31st off, so we will be celebrating Halloween that day. The students are really excited for the Halloween games and carnival!

Today, Bridget and I were going to go to Ronda which is a beautiful city that is south of Sevilla. It is one of "los pueblos blancos" which means "white villages" where all of the buildings are white and beautiful. There is a lot of walking around and huge mountains/valleys to see. We got to the bus station about a half hour before the bus was due to leave and the ticket stand was closed. So, we walked to the bus and asked people if we had to buy tickets on board and they said they already had tickets and the bus was completely full. We waited while the bus loaded to see if there were going to be any open spots, but there were not. So when we walked back into the station, we decided to see if the ticket stand was open to buy tickets for tomorrow.

Instead of heading home, we decided to take the TUSSAM (tram) into the city. It is basically a glorified people mover that is really unnecessary, but it was a good experience. Then we got a coffee at Starbucks (even though it was SUPER expensive). We decided to go into the Archivo de Indias which is the building in Seville that houses all of the documents about explorers journeys around the world. We were reading about the Nao Victoria which was the first ship to travel around the world and bring back cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves to Spain when an older Spanish man came over and started sharing all of his knowledge about the history of the building. He walked us through the entire building and was explaining everything to us. We learned that all of the mahogany paneling was brought over from the Caribbean, that the documents are actually housed in an adjacent building to preserve them and that there are over 60,000 documents housed there about the finding of America and journeys around the world. So, although our original plans did not work out, we ended up having an amazing time learning more about our city!