My Tribute to los libros de Espanol... 

 

My 2^nd to last time teaching at BCN….and I can barely remember what I taught.  My head felt like it was splitting open all day, I’m definitely getting sick.  Tuesday night, I had a slight fever, I was really hot which is wired because my flat is always freezing, but by the time I went to bed, my teeth were chattering and I was so cold that 3 layers plus a thick blanket couldn’t warm me up!

But the good news is, I had more time to read!  I’m reading One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (I just love that name!) because he is an Hispanic writer and I am in Spain (at least a few more days) so I felt the need to throw myself into the culture.  But I really wanted to get something actually in Espanol—so a few days ago I went to a little bookstore and bought a book recommended to me—La Sombra Del Viento (The Shadow of the Wind) by Carlos Ruiz Zafron.  I didn’t realize until after the man rung me up that the book had 550 pages in it!! I’m on page 5.  It has A LOT of words I’ve never learned (like “con un leve asentimiento” which means “with a slight nod”) or thought about learning. But I bought the thing, so now I’m determined.  Who cares if I need Google translate to read it? Or of I have to make notes in the margins? Or if I have to read a sentence 3 times to get the quasi-full meaning? Whatever.  It’s good motivation—and a good goal to have.  By this time next year, I’ll finish the book and be so much better at Spanish!

Lessons learned:

So I think that I had two of my strongest lessons last week, both on modal verbs (or at least, similar to modals) and both teaching the upper intermediates.  I recently decided that if I cant teach kids, then I’d rather teach the upper-intermediates.  They’re past most of the nitty-gritty grammar, they lovvve to talk, and they’re pretty smart. 

Anyway, lesson one of the week was one modals (can, must, could, may, might, can’t) and I used the theme of ancient ruins.  It was pretty great, I had them all pretend to be explorers—they each had a different picture of a ruin that they “discovered” and they had to guess as to its original function.  They all used the grammar right, they had fun, there was humor, and I got good feedback.  Finally, I wasn’t nervous as I headed up to the front of the class!

Teaching on Friday wasn’t observed (by our teachers that is; they like to sit in the corner and quietly judge/grade us, but it always makes things a little awkward) so that was nice, at least in theory. I did the lesson on look/seem/appear, and since Americans love doctors and cops (according to American TV at least) I did the lesson on cops.

First, I found this cartoon of an old woman with two cops coming in the front door. She was holding a gun and there was an unconscious thief in the background.  I decided the gun thing was a bit violent, (it was a cartoon about gun control) so I went on paint, erased the gun, and drew in a baseball bat instead. It actually looked like it belonged in the original, so I was proud of myself. So then, I found all theses cartoons online and gave one to each student. They were all cops taking a coffee break, and they were discussing their recent cases, of what appeared to have happened, what it looked like occurred, etc.  It was awesome!

Baeceloneta weekenddd...

So…its Friday, and I’m going to Barceloneta—the old city, the place with alleys so narrow they don't look safe enough to walk down.  Its located on this awkward-looking peninsula on the ocean, and on Google maps, the whole place just looks like a smudge of brown.  Jade and I took the metro down, because it would be a good 3 mile walk, which isn’t so bad, except that to get there, you have to walk through so less savory parts of town.

I still hadn’t had any tapas, well that is, outside of Mariluz’s little party.  But we really wanted to go out to a tapas bar, so we did, and it was great!  We had Spanish tortilla (like a super thick omelets with eggs, tomato, and potatoes) the thickness of a child’s birthday cake, a Mediterranean salad (I ignored the olives) and fried eggplant…and it was all so good!

Afterwards we went back to her house where I met her dad, and we drank homemade Sangria, which considering the cheapness of the wine, was actually pretty tasty. Her dad’s cousin had just flown in from London, so I met her too, and she was pretty nice—you gotta love the Brits! 

We went clubbing at this place called Opium de Mar (strange name!) which was along the water.  It would have been 20 euros but we go there early, so it was actually free!  In America,  people head to the clubs around 11, 11:30, and they usually close around 2:30.  In Spain, anything before 2 AM is considered early!  Its crazy, but the places are all dead quiet until then.  Anyway, so the people finally turned up and we started dancing, and we had some more drinks, and yeahhh.  It was pretty funny because everyone would sing along to the words, so you thought they understood, right?  Well, most pop songs today have the words “put your hands up” in them, and then everyone puts their hands up.  Except that I was one of the only ones who actually did, because all these other people just memorized the songs without actually knowing what they mean!  (They also played some pretty explicit songs but I guess that didn’t matter either). I ended up dancing with a Dutch kid mainly because he actually spoke English.  In the end, Jade really wanted to get rid of this weird guy (there were some definite creeps there, men way to old to be clubbing) so we used the buddy system and left around 3:45, not to go to bed until 4 AM!  The metro stopped running hours ago, so I stayed at Jade’s flat—I felt kinda bad when we got back and woke up her father—but they have the strangest relationship.  I was apologizing profusely for waking him up (he was on the couch because his cousin was in his room) but all he wanted to know was how fun the club was.  Hmm.

Anyway, we had an early morning because we both had to head off to work on our one-on-one projects (to learn how to teach a student one to one as opposed to in a big group) so we both headed out, though not before Jade’s dad offered us everything under the sun for breakfast, and drilled us on whether we had fun at the club!  He even recommended a book for me to read, and advice on living in Bath! 

I was pretty much operating on 4 hours of sleep, which meant that I didn’t get a whole lot done and I needed a nap later on.  In the morning, I helped Mariluz scrub down the flat since she was having a party later in the day.  She was inviting a bunch of people from her old job (at Citi bank, before it was disbanded).  It was actually pretty cool—they were from all over South America (a common theme here, its like the NYC of Spain) and they all brought traditional dishes from their country.  And all of the food was amazing—I ate sooo much!

Let’s see—there were these little flaky rolls filled with cheeses or tuna or vegetables, there were these large pocket-type things with cheese or chicken, egg, and olives (I didn’t realize that until I bit into the pit…), a tune-flavored dip, and this really good bread+ jam thing from Venezuela.  Plus Sangria.  Real Sangria, curtesy of Mariluz.  They all spoke Spanish, and I tried, I really did.  They all laughed at me, and then asked for a translation.  But then one of the women’s husband brought their baby over and I played with him. See, I could say random stuff in Spanish, and he didn’t care.  And the dad was speaking Catalan, so he didn’t care either.  It was a pretty great evening though—I was so full and tired and all that Sangria, well by the end, everything was a bit fuzzy!

Things I miss from home:

-Mis padres, always :)

-My dogs! All of the them—Jazzi for the snuggling, Riley for her cuteness, and Sandy for her sweetness. 

-Mi familia.  Duh.

-Oatmeal (Seriously. It’s a good breakfast food.)

-Reese’s (WHY don't they understand peanut butter here??)

-dollars (Euros are expensive!)

-Running with the team

-peanut butter No more now that I found it!

-mom’s meals (really I do! All those vegetables and sauces and salads and soups that I can’t/don’t know how to make...yummm)

-Dinner with the fam (Now I eat dinner in my room, or with my landlady.  How sad.)

-family weekends.  Being a tourist would be even better if I was being a tourist with my family!

-Pancakes! Mmmmm.

-Cookies and brownies. (A candy bar is NOT the same thing as a well-baked brownie!)

-Tori's homemade biscuits...especially when she makes them snowman-shaped in the middle of the summer just because she can.

-Trees and other green things.  They just don’t have that in Barcelona…

-My car!  (I’ve used the metro maybe three times, other than that, its all been walking.)

-Recycling.  I think they do that here, but I am still a little unclear on how to do that, so the plastic bottles are slowly accumulating in my room…)

-The little used bookstore near the house.  (I love that place.  It’s so cheap, and well organized and its got all the cool old books in there.  The bookstores here aren’t like that at all. Plus, the books have the words going the wrong way on the spines!)

-Brad’s fish obsession.  Hey, it’s great to watch!

-Walking in the woods.  Especially with my dad. 

-Biking!  Its sooo much faster than walking.

-Adam’s magic shows…

-Granola!  I know they have it here, but I can’t seem to find it. 

-My apartment.  And my roommate!

-Sunday football…haha, the REAL football.

-The team!!! Especially Michaela's awesome ideas.

Hmm.  Basically, I miss food and people…

Well, this is a bit late, partially because I’ve been busy, but mostly because I’ve been lazy. 

Today I taught again, and once again, I was with Geoff ( a good thing too, cause he likes to draw smiles next to all his comments and tends to twist everything into a positive.) Anyways, one of the students asked me a question on the present perfect, and I had no idea! I kept thinking about a story they told about this one guy who didn’t know why the structure of the sentence was different, so he said it was because the statement was about outer space, and all the students believed that was the reason!  Yeahhhh, I didn’t want to be that guy. But we (me and the students) figured it out in the end.  And then Geoff told me that I was adaptive, that that came from working with kids, where the best laid schemes of mice and men just never work out.  So I guess that’s a good thing—I think it means I think well on my feet, and I’m good at quickly changing plans and going off in a different direction than my lesson plan says I will.  I never knew this about myself…

But anyway, what I’ve been meaning to write about is my landlady, Mariluz’s, party on Saturday.  I think it’d be classified as a dinner party (though I’ve rarely been invited to them so I don't really know).  She knew that I’d never had a Spanish tortilla (rather like a big omelet, but also cooked with potatoes), so she made one for one of the dishes for me, which I thought was so sweet!  She also made this kickass lasagna thing that was 10 times better than the traditional American variety.  It had fresh veggies, no meat or tomato sauce, and even the cheese was different.  I really need to ask for the recipes!  Plus, it was this one girl’ birthday, so that meant there was un pastel chocolate….yum ;)

And they kept pouring the wine!  As the night progressed (it didn’t even start until 9:30!), it got harder and harder to communicate.  They were all speaking Spanish (none of them knew much English besides Mariluz and one girl who’d had too much to drink to remember how to say much) and the night was getting pretty late, and then there was the several glasses of wine…. it’s safe to say that I didn’t get much.  

This one woman took a liking to me.  She was a Spanish teacher from Argentina, here only for a short time, but she sat down and started talking to me.  She wasn’t that good at English, and I wasn’t that good at Spanish, and neither one of us were that good at French, but we used all three to have a lopsided conversation.  She kept calling out to Mariluz to come translate for us, and the poor woman was getting all confused with the bustle of languages in her mind, until she started trying to talk Catalan with me, and we let her go sit down. But this woman (whose name I think I missed), she was a middle-aged lady with three sons. She spent a good portion of the evening trying to set me up with her youngest son.  She told me all about him, and why he’d be perfect for me…. He was tall, he had light hair, blue eyes, he spoke English, he studied at university, he was 24. Perfect!  She used that word an awful lot!  I never actually found out if he was here, or if he was in Argentina, so I guess I’ll never know. Oh well. 

The last guests finally left around 1:30, and then I pretty much collapsed into bed.  Four glasses of wine, lack of sleep, and the exhaustion of trying (and failing!) to speak and understand Spanish will do that to you!

Picasso...

Okay so…Friday.  Teaching was observed again today, meaning the tutor sat in the corner and wrote down literally everything we said or did. I didn’t really notice him while I was teaching, but afterwards, he pretty much tore our lessons apart!  I hope I’m getting better though—I have 3 next week, and I have no idea what I’m gonna teach for mine tomorrow!  Crap.

Welllll, anyway, afterwards, I went to happy hour with my friend Jade, at a nearby bar. If you can call it a bar—it has wicker chairs.  But it did serve alcohol, so that was good. The whole thing was orchestrated by the Barcelona teacher’s association, so there were all these random people coming and going.  Jen (the job guidance woman) told us that in Spain, you have to include a picture on your résumé, and after meeting some of these aspiring “teachers” I can see why!    

Well, me and Jade decided to go find another bar, but it was still too early by Spanish standards, so even though we found plenty of bars, there weren’t a whole lot of people in them. We ended up in an American pop-culture bar, but we were only there twenty minutes until our other classmates texted to say they were at the first place.  We went back, but Jade only stayed a bit because she was worried about taking the Metro.  I wanted to win favor, and do a little more “relaxing” so I decided to stay.  I only meant to stay another half hour, but I ended up staying out until 2:30, and I wasn’t in bed until three…oops.  I guess I got caught up in everthing.  (And they were all still there when I left!)

Saturday, I had to sleep in.  I was just too tired not too.  After a wonderful breakfast of eggs, I grabbed the map and some fruit, and headed downtown.  I had in mind that I wanted to see the Picasso Museum that my sister Tori had told me about—and had even visited!  It sounded really cool, so I was looking forward to it. It was only 6 euros (under 25 get discounts!) and it was actually pretty neat.  It started off with early Picasso paintings, and he could actually paint!  At the tender age of 13, he was painting like an adult.  He won some award when he was 15 by joining the I-painted-a-sick-person-to-represent-the-new-age-of-medicine movement that was taking off in his time, but after that, he got all depressed and started painting everything blue.  By mimicking other painters, adding his own flair, and mixing in the blue, his art started to become more wonky, and next thing you know, he had started Cubism. Freaking weird, slightly creepy paintings with lines and cubes and lots of colors that don't fit = cubism.  Before that though, he had a fascination with “the other” aka fringe dwellers. Inmate, criminals, crazy people, homeless, etc.  He did this one sketch of a homeless-looking man, with a caption informing us the man was crazy.  There was something about the man that just caught my attention, and I looked at that one for awhile. 

Well after that, I moved (a little quicker) through las Menias, the really wonky, disjointed paintings that he is so famous for.  Some of them are really cool, but some looked too childish!  At the end, there was a quote saying that he started off painting like an adult, but by the time he was an old man, he was painting like a child. What was that Shakespeare quote?  All the world’s a stage, it starts off with infancy, and ends with “second childishness and mere oblivion/sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”  Full circle.

Afterwards, I tried to find this church that was supposedly free, and I nervously walked through these really narrow alleys.  I really like how alleys look, but I was nervous because this is supposedly a semi-bad part of town 9frequented by pick-pocketers), so I walked quickly, with my head down, and my purse tight under my arm.  Unfortunately, I forgot about the seemingly endless lunch breaks everyone here takes, so it was closed and I didn’t want to wait.  Instead, I snapped a few shots, including a few of Passieg del Born (plaza where they used to joust!) and then headed back. I was gonna try to find and explore the Barrio Gotic, but I didn’t feel that great.  My stomach had been feeling off all morning, and suddenly, I just felf like crap.  So instead, I metroed back (I barely made it, it was sooo stuffy in the metro and I really didn’t feel good) took a nap, and skyped people from home. 

El Theatre

Oh yes, and I have to mention the Catalan theatre! I went there a few days ago with my landlady, Mariluz, who is a wonderful woman, and super nice.  I love getting to talk to her; she speaks pretty good English, so we don't have a language barrier at least!  Anyway, I was talking with her last Monday and she told me that she does theater as a hobby.  I thought that was really interesting, and told her so, so she invited me to go to one of her practices.  She’s been sick, so she missed a few practices, but she was really happy to be going back, and I was thrilled to get to experience something that I wouldn’t be able to do as a mere tourist. 

 She met me outside my school around 8—I grabbed this calzone-thing and some fruit for my dinner, which was actually pretty good—and then we walked to the theater from there.  It was in Catalan, which is the “local” language here, as everyone knows both Catalan and Spanish.  I was a little nervous because what did I know about Catalan? It all sounds the same to me! 

We met one of the other actors outside, and he did that kiss-on-the-check greeting thing, and Mariluz was all, “She’s from America, she doesn’t do that!” But hey, I’m here, I want experience things the “Spanish” way, so I assured him that it was fine, and now I do it all the time.  Well, there were about 15 or 16 different actors/actresses and one director (who to me, looked like he had a cork up us rear, but whatever) and they started, and at first, I was the deer in the headlights.  I had no idea what they were saying! 

It’s a musical, and the first act (maybe the whole thing) takes place in a bar that is situated under (or next to) a hotel.  It’s a comedy, so the characters include several nuns, a really awkward boy, a janitor who likes to sing who is being courted by an overweight waitress, and several loose women.  You can’t say it isn’t interesting! 

I understood it a lot better once someone gave me a script.  Because Catalan, I discovered, was actually French and Spanish mushed together with a funny accent—and I studied both languages at school.  So, I can’t speak it, nor understand much of it spoken, but I can understand it written!  (For the most part) It was a wonderful discovery. Really. 

It was great to watch them try to learn the dance, especially when they came down the stage and one of the women grabbed me and tried to get me to do it. And then at one point, the director pointed at me and shouted at me to get on stage before he realized that I wasn’t one of the actors—that was a bit terrifying!

As we walked back, Mariluz explained the premise of the play, and we were both pleasantly supreied to see that I understood most of it!  I guess I’m learning Catalan, eh? That, and I’m pretty sure its true that 80% of communication is body language. 

Plaça Jaume

Finally used the metro today, though I wasn’t brave enough to go alone.  I went with my friend, Jade, downtown to Plaça Jaume, because our teacher was having an art exhibition, and they promised (cheap) wine.  We got there early and ended waiting outside in thee plaza with a large group of protestors, chanting something about Tunisia and Algeria.  Not sure exactly what it was about, but we tried to stand aside, as the square was lined with cops.  It didn’t help that my friend, Jade, started talking about the corruption of South African cops and the intense security systems that they have in their houses (including panic buttons in multiple rooms!)—and then she told about a scam where “cops” i.e. men with fake sirens “pull you over” on quiet roads and steal your shit.  So, if you hear a siren and you’re on a deserted road, you just keep driving. Weird—and creepy?  Richard, who’s lived here for a year, then followed up with a wonderful story about himself. He was at the metro late at night and two men attempted to robb with a knife! Luckily, he was fine, he managed to step into an open café, but yikes.  DC’s starting to sound like a wonderful place!

Anyway, the exhibition. It was modern art, abstract actually, so I had no clue what was going on, I just looked at the things and tried to see stuff that wasn’t really there.  We wanted to search for our teacher’s hidden emotion, but I don't think we ever found it. But I must say that the evening was much improved with a bunch of us, mostly people from the school, hilariously trying to imitate each other’s and random other accents…southern accents, New York accent, Boston, Queen’s English, Cockney, Aussie, South African, and so on.  We were all varying degrees of terrible, which made the random, somewhat confusing art pieces that much better.

And then there was school itself.  I taught today, and it was considerably better than yesterday.  Yesterday I was nervous as hell, and it definitely showed.  I messed up a few times, I talked super fast, and even my lesson wasn’t that great.  But today I taught “elementary,” so everything was better.  They don't tell you your grade though, which kind of sticks.  It’s like a guessing game…

Annnd, we’re learning a lot of properties from both ling 101, and the History of the English language.  My teachers here are all very impressed that I know all the answers to the linguistics questions already, plus I keep inserting little anecdotes from linguistics, like child language acquisition, or how things have changed since OE/ME, even semantic shifts in words!  It is frustrating how they use some different symbols (rather than the c-wedge or the s-wedge), I guess it's the international one.  And the vowels trip me up, since the damn things are different with different accents, and we’ve got four or five different accents in our class!  

De domingo

Well, I slept in a bit, and got a late start.  But I really wanted to go to la Sagrad Familia, which meant I was walking down Traversera de Gracia forever, plus the Cathedral line was frickin long. So, I didn’t get inside until mid-afternoon.  La Sagrada Famila was…phenomenal.  It was huge!  The first thing you saw was the enormous (side) entrance, literally all done up for over 500 feet with carvings and sculptures and spiraling and intricate designs and alcoves with more carvings inside—it was something else.  I don't really know to even describe it!

At first, I just waked around the building.  Gaudí (him again!) worked on this giant thing for years, in fact, he died working on it.  It still isn’t finished—and they think that it won’t be done for 25+ years!

The whole place is created to look like a forest, with columns and branches to look like trees.  The guy loves natural stuff, and everything, though carved from stone or marble, still had a natural feel.  Or so the museum said, anyway.  There were the stained glass windows too, which were a magnificent array of colors, and I do realllly like colors….

And then there were the towers.  That was the best part! I took the nativity lift, all the up to one of the super tall towers.  You come out of the little door, onto a narrow bridge.  You look down, and you realize just how frickin high up you actually are!  I’m not one to be afraid of heights, but I’ll admit, I felt, um, queasy, just a bit, as I stood there at the top with the four or five other people and surveyed the view around me.  And looked down.  They always say, don't look down cause then you’ll fall down.  I looked anyway, and well, I’m still here!  I also had an overwhelming desire to chuck something off the tower, but I’ve heard that from great heights, even a lightly tossed penny can turn into a mini torpedo! So, I resisted. 

From the top, you could see more fruit imagery, and you could tell that this guy really did like nature.  Barcelona could do with more green space—are isn’t a lot of grassy or wild areas—so I guess he was improvising!

Then, you get to walk down the nightmare-ish tower steps.  I say nightmare-ish because the interconnecting tunnels in the towers remind me of a narrow labyrinth with the possibility off falling out of a window and falling 400 +feet, and its just creepy.  If they didn’t put little running man signs (the exit sign) everywhere, I’d be sure to get lost!  And I’m pretty sure that that will happen in one of my dreams soon enough, and I’ll wake up drenched in sweat, panicked as I try to find a way out. 

Parc Guell was odd, I’d say.  It reminded me of anchient ruins meet a once-grand out-of-the-away square made of mosaics.  At first, it was designed to be a gated community (like we have today), but the idea was too modern and it failed (all rich people wanted to be right in town, amidst everything) and so it later became a public park.  It was decorated with columns that looked like upside-down termit mounds (yet they still looked really cool), with the center section lined with multicolored benches similar to some other details of Gaudí’s works. 

Then I walked home, but I started to get a little turned around because the blocks were uneven and I missed my street and turned at the wrong one, and ended up taking the longest possible route back to the house.  Oops.   At least I’m back now, snuggled into bed, jotting this down!  I think I’ll finish this and post in the morning though.  Hah!  Another difference between normal teaching and teaching non-natives—never explain what you’re doing (like I just did) because it will just confuse them. And on that note….

(Too bad it took me a week to actually post this…)

El Fin de Semana numero Uno (En Barcelona)

I always thought that when you traveled, you’d have to have someone else with you because who actually traveled alone? That’d be weird.  But I didn’t want to leave Barcelona without seeing the sights just because it wasn’t working out with the rest of my classmates and I.  So I got some advice (and a very detailed, and very helpful!) map from Mariluz and went to bed excited—to some extent.  I did make the mistake of watching Black Swan online, and that was one of the weirdest and creepiest movies I’ve seen, so I probably shouldn’t have watched it right before I was planning on going to sleep. Oh well.  But I uickly found out that

De sabado

I was your average tourist.  I had a blast though!  I walked decided to walk downtown (about a 45 minute affair where I saw…

-Casa Míla, a crazy ass apartment building Gaudí designed but it was closed so instead I went to the art exhibition inside, where I got yelled at twice for taking pictures inside.  But hey, it’s was modern art, meaning there were lots of colors and I like colors! I played the language barrier card.

-Casa Batalló.  I realllly wanted to see the inside of a Gaudí building, so I bucked up and paid the fee.  It was the strangest, craziest, wonkiest place I’d ever been to! I felt like I walked into a real-life game of Candyland meets Narnia’s boat the Dawn Treader. So, so weird, but really cool!  I had a tour of an apartment, the attic, and the roof.  The roof was the best, because not only did you get a nice view, but this was were the Candyland imagery really took off.  The place is famous for having a dragon-like thing on the roof (like the back of a sleeping dragon) with bright colors and crooked designs everywhere!  The whole house is rather reptilian, and there is barely a straight line in the building!

 -Las Ramblas, AKA the place to go to get robbed. I didn’t—I was lucky! It’s a big street with an extra wide median in the middle filled with vendors and street performers and street artists (who get frickin pissed if you take photos of them…). There are overflowing flower stands, men selling these annoying, bird-like whistles that only interest immature boys, and pets (where Barcelona kids traditionally went to buys pets).

-The monument de Colón (Columbus!) and la Mar de Mediterráneo—Barcelona’s port.  It was a giant column with good ol’ Columbus pointing out towards the horizon.  It made me feel just a little closer to home, knowing that if I followed his direction (figuratively) I’d get home eventually!

I felt a lot better, because now I finally knew where all the streets other people had been talking about were located and now people can give me directions and I can actually follow them!  (In English, por favor…) I felt really independent, finding my way on my own and everything.  Annnd I ate at a little sandwich shop, then ate ice cream in January!  (Coconut, pistachio and fudge—surprisingly really good!)

I did buy some street art (of Casa Batalló.  I liked a picture of Barrio Gotic better, but I haven’t been there yet, plus Batalló is something I’ll always remember!)—I always do, since I think street art is soooo much better, more authentic than, you know, “real” (aka expensive) art. 

The weekend...almost.

There was a holiday on Thursday—Los Tres Reyes, the day of the Three Kings, which marks the end of the Christmas season.  You’re supposed the spend it with family, give gifts, have a huge lunch (because it’s Spain, so lunch is more important than dinner).  My landlady was sick (the poor woman’s been sick for awhile) so she didn’t go out for the holiday.  I was supposed to meet up with some of the other trainees from class the evening before, but I didn’t go, I didn’t see the FB message for it until hours later.  Oops. But I thought that people from the class would send out a message of what they were doing on our day off, and we could all meet up and do something together.  That’s what we did when I was living in Costa Rica.  Nobody had phones there, we all just used the internet to talk and make plans, plus I had roommates (and a better knowledge of the bus system, and I had to take a minimum of 4 buses a day.  Gah, I miss Costa Rica a lot!) Well…this didn’t happen here.  So I didn’t go anywhere the whole day—and it was such a waste!  I heard the next day (Friday, thank god) that other people had gone to the beach and went on long walks through their various neighborhoods, and gone shopping or whatever else they all did, and I pretty much just slept in, watched a movie or two, read my book, and planned most of my lesson (one useful thing at least!). 

Well, I’m not gonna let that happen again.  I was supposed to go to this bar/restaurant that specialized in Champagne on Friday night, but instead I got lost and missed the bus, and ended up just walking back to my apartment and having a quiet night in, which as actually more up my alley then a crowded, overpriced bar on the other side of town that I knew nothing about.  I was more worried about getting lost in the dark miles from home after I’d been drinking champagne than anything else, so I’m kind of glad that I didn’t go.  I am pretty sure that the other students think I'm weird, esp. because I’m not going to try to get a job right after I graduate this program, as I’ve still got a year left of school—and now I’ve missed at least two invitations to go out with them.  I really have to learn how to use public transportation so that next time, I’ll be there!

End of week one 

We have classes in the morning, where they basically teach us how to teach.  It sounds stranger than it actually is.  Its actually kinda fun sometimes, it brings back a lot of memories of childhood, since he generally starts off class by playing some game or having us do an activity that we could one day use with our students. 

On the second day, he had us do a survey/test thing, kind of like one of those Meyers-Briggs tests they have you do in schools, so that we could measure what kind of learner we are.  All you had to do was rate these statements between 1 and 5, but for some reason, I rated almost everything a 4 or a 5, meaning I ended up scoring pretty high in 7 of the nine areas (excluding the mathematical thinker and the interpersonal learner, two things that I am definitely not).  Whatever.  I guess this means that I can understand students of almost all of the learning types, since I seem to be a little of everything (which totally coincides with my everyday life.  Even when eating dinner, I’d prefer to have smaller helpings of everything rather than one or two parts of the meal in large sections.) 

TEFL-Barcelona seems to veer away from traditional teaching, as most of the time, they just show the traditional classroom’s weaknesses.  Instead, my teachers are trying new or at least different activities and games and such as a way to teach, as opposed to the typical write-the-vocab-on-the-board-and-the-students-will-copy-it thing.  It's interesting, I guess.  We’re encouraged to bring in visuals (pictures and objects), include music and songs and rhymes, play games in class, and other stuff like that—even with adults, which is who we’re teaching right now.  Everyday, we have a few “students” come in and learn from us student teachers. They pay next to nothing (25 euros a month), but mostly, they just want to talk and talk and talk in English.  As far as I can tell from the two classes I’ve taught, all the students are enthusiastic and eager, and they all try really hard, which is more than I can say from most of the students back home!

Barcelona

So I survived my first day. Three days, actually.  I’m actually surprised nothing bad has happened to me yet. I haven’t gotten lost, I haven’t been robbed, I haven’t starved to death or anything of the sort.  I got there early for my first day (always a good thing, right?) which is pretty unusual for me, since I’m constantly late for everything.  I just don't like wasting time sitting around waiting.  Whatever.  So I met the rest of my classmates, who are all older than me and insist upon calling me “the baby.” Being the youngest in my grade at school since I was in kindergarten, I should be used to that—even though I’m not.  There are only seven of us, but between us all, we actually make a pretty diverse bunch.  Washington DC, Chicago, New Jersey, England, Serbia, South Africa, and Scottish-Australian.  Its pretty interesting, actually.  I love accents, and different dialects, so I was pretty enthralled with all the different ones that I encountered in just my small class.  Seriously.  I could just listen to people talk all day long, as long as they had some awesome accent—and it wouldn’t even matter what they said. 

Plus, there are all those quirky things that people from the UK (or people who learned from people from the UK) use, like “jolly” and “whilst” and “nankard.”  Or weird pronunciations of words like “tomato” (to-mah-toe) or “garage” (gare-edge).  Even one of my teachers, Erwin, speaks in a British accent, although he says he is from Majorca.  The other teacher, Geoff, is from Baltimore, MD.  Its weird how no matter how far away from home I get, I always find people who are from someplace within 50 miles of my house—usually even closer—or at least know someone who is. 

As part of the course, we get taught 3 lessons in foreign language with no English.  I suppose that’s only fair, since that’s how our poor students will feel.  But anyway, Geoff, who used to teach in Prague, is teaching us Czech, which is definitely not a phonemic language, and is thoroughly confusing!  I can now say hello both formally (dobry den) and informally (ajoj—pronouced ahoy), as well as introduce myself (Jmenuji se Dawn) and tell people that I’m hungry, (mam hlad) which I am.  Not gonna lie, it was pretty strange to have a lesson in straight up Czech, but it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be.  I thought he was gonna come in, and start gibbering off in Czech, and I’d sit there like a deer in the headlights from 60 minutes.  But he talked slowly, and used lots of miming, and drew on the board.  It wasn’t all that bad. Confusing, yes, and frustrating too, and it made my brain hurt, but rewarding in the end, at least kind of.  And now I know what my students will feel like…

London, Heathrow

My layover is in Heathrow.  I kind of wish I was staying—but I’ll be back in a month.  I say it like its not that long but it really is.  I’ll be in Spain a month; its still crazy to think about! 

So for the next 2 hours, here I am, in the land of people who drive on the wrong side of the road, the wrong side of the car.  The place where everyone is way too polite, where they use “lifts” instead of “elevators,” and say “whilst” instead of “while.”   And plus, everyone has British accents, so even if they are being rude (which I cant imagine happening), it doesn’t matter, because how mean can you sound in a British accent?

I heard once that London had the most languages spoken within the city than other city, I don't know if its true, but as I sit here in the airport, I can definitely see that.  So far, I have heard Spanish, French, English, German, several different Indian languages, one that could be Dutch or something similar, plus others that I can’t identify.  I’ve been trying to determine what language the people behind me are using, but I have no idea; I could be a lot of things.  I wish I spoke 2 or 3 other languages, but I don't. I guess I’ll have to content myself with my school French, and my Costa Rican Spanish.  I’m not that great at either language, though I hope my Spanish will improve in Barcelona.  Barcelona’s supposed to be really great, and the woman whose flat I’ll be living in seems nice, so I guess I’m excited to go, but then again, I’m also pretty nervous!  My Spanish is pretty rusty, and wasn’t that great to begin with (an A in Span 105 only means so much—there’s a pretty big difference between the classroom and the actual world!)

Anyway.  Usually, I’m pretty good with adjusting almost immediately to new time zones and avoiding jet lag, but this time, I don't know.  I’ve only slept for 3 or so hours, and I doubt I’ll get much more.  And this 5-hour difference is killing me!  It refuse to act like it is 8 o’clock in the morning, because it freaking feels like the middle of the night.  Whatever. 

International Airport Dulles, Washington DC

So.  I can’t believe that I am going to write a blog.  I always thought they were rather silly, and I really don't know what I’m doing, or what I’m supposed to say.  But someone told me I should, since I’m going to be studying abroad, first in Barcelona, Spain, for one month, and then four more months in Bath, England.  I will be taking classes to get my TEFL (to teach English as a foreign language worldwide) then I will go to England to take English classes.  In England, I'll have an internship at an art museum, but I have no idea what that will entail. 

So here I am, sitting at the airport, waiting for the British Airways people to let us on the plane.  I still cant believe that I’m doing this. It doesn’t seem real, like its happening to another person.  I'm excited, (duh!) but I’m also nervous as hell. I'm gonna be away for five months, which for me, is a freaking long time.  Last summer I went to Costa Rica for a month, as part of a volunteer program. I taught English there, too, which is what gave me the idea to do this whole Spain thing.  I always knew I was gonna study abroad.  My mother did when she was in college, and she went to England too.  I remember when I was looking at colleges in high school, I specifically made sure that I could study abroad.  I had wanted to go somewhere slightly off the beaten path—like Prague or St. Petersburg, or somewhere in Germany—but I caved in the end. I like England.  I like English accents.  I secretly want to live in England when I graduate.  And I’m majoring in English.  It just seemed appropriate to go to England.  And Bath is the place where the 4 minute mile barrier was first broken (fun fact courtesy of Sarah!) which seemed appropriate, as I am a cross country runner. 

Its weird to think that in about 6 or 7 hours, I’ll be across the ocean.  The world does seem rather small, especially when I remember that less than 200 years ago, the journey I’m about to do in a few hours would take about 7 weeks.  There’s perspective for you.