Happy birthday to me

Another week has flown by already! Time is moving really quickly here. My favorite time of year is officially upon us, but it really doesn't feel like it, honestly. The weather is totally different here; we still have plenty of days in the high 60s, as well as a handful in the low 70s. It definitely doesn't feel like fall, and I have to admit that I miss it. Part of the reason I love autumn so much is the activities. I'm crazy for scary attractions like haunted houses, and I go apple picking and to a pumpkin patch every year. Meanwhile, autumn Spanish-style is just very different. I haven't even seen a pumpkin while I'm here. But I hear that the U.S. and Spain celebrate Halloween basically the same way, so I'm eager to see if that's true. The best news that I have to share in this post is that my after school lessons have been so much better. I always enjoyed the lesson with the oldest class, but now I'm beginning to like my other classes, too. We play a lot of games, because that's the easiest way I have to keep their attention. Hangman continues to be a crowd pleaser, but I also played a game with them last week called, "What is the question?" I would give them a response, such as "I am 22 years old," (Which is no longer true, as of today!), and they have to figure out what the question is. I take no credit for this; I found it on an ESL website. But the website explained that ESL students are always answering questions, so it's a challenge for them to ask them. And they were right. We also played a game where they describe someone in the class, without using their name, and we guessed who it was. Both went really well, and I'm pleased with their progress. As usual, my youngest class was terrible last week. I taught them the Hokey Pokey, which actually went pretty well, because they know body parts. But that was the only good part of the class, and it was the first thing we did. They are simply uncontrollable, so after last week, I decided to say something. I contacted the principal of the school and explained my predicament, telling her that I was completely overwhelmed and I could not go on with the class as it was. She was absolutely lovely about the whole thing, and she immediately took matters into her own hands. I am pleased to say that the lesson has now been broken into two, so I only have 9 of them at a time. I can't even put into words how relieved I am, but I guess I should reserve judgment until tomorrow, when I have the smaller class for the first time. Cross you fingers for me that it goes well. Last week was fun in school because I was with the third and fourth graders. We did two lessons on numbers. The first day, I said really big numbers out loud, like 87,623 and they wrote them down as I said them. Then I wrote them on the board and they could correct their answers. They cheered or groaned every time, based on whether or not they were right, so it was a really funny and exuberant class. The following day, I spelled the word form of the numbers 1-20 aloud, like e-i-g-h-t, and then they wrote them down. Then we flipped and I asked them to spell eight, so they got a little of everything. The most difficult part of the lesson was explaining that spelling the number 4 as f-o-r was incorrect, but it's hard because "for" is, of course, a word. And then I explained that 4 and 14 have a "u," but 40 does not. The more I teach, the more I realize what a bizarre language English really is. On Friday, I went to Toledo for an overnight at Natalie and Kendra's house. We had made these plans several weeks ago, when I first met them, as a sort of early birthday celebration for me. But the plans ended up sort of evolving, and there ended up being a bunch of auxiliares in Toledo that night, as well as a friend of Natalie's who is also teaching in Spain, in Extremadura, but she's doing a different program where she teaches in a private school. There were probably about 12 of us when the whole group was together, if not a few more than that. We met for tapas and drinks and we ended up at a bar where we could dance, so it was a really fun night. And I called it quits around 3:30 that night (or should I say morning?), so it wasn't quite as wild as Granada. My favorite part of the evening was meeting the auxiliares who are teaching English but they aren't from the United States. My friend who is doing a similar program in Austria has friends from a bunch of different places in Europe, including Wales and Germany, and it is my dream to be able to say the same when I'm done with this program. So I took the first step in that direction this weekend because I had the pleasure of meeting two girls from England, a girl from Scotland, a guy from Ireland, and a guy from New Zealand. I love talking to people from other countries to begin with, but when they also speak perfect English, it's a dream come true. My visit to Toledo was just an overnight because they don't run a bus from Toledo to Quintanar on Sundays, so I bid my friends goodbye the next day. I slept so soundly on my way home that I jolted awake at one point because I was convinced that I missed my stop (false alarm). The weekend in Granada and then a full week of running from school to school and then a late night on Friday finally caught up to me. I was looking forward to sleeping as long as I wanted on Sunday without setting an alarm, and it was just as great as I predicted. My colleague from the primary school invited me over to her house on Monday for lunch, because she told me she wanted to make me traditional Spanish food. As it turns out, she turned the lunch into a sort of surprise birthday party for me. There were three other colleagues from the school were there, as well as her 17-year-old son. It was so thoughtful of her, and she went above and beyond. The first course was Spanish omelette, which is sort of like a delicious fritatta with potatoes and cheese that you eat by the slice, and cheesy artichoke dip. Then we had a sort of Spanish pot roast, which had more artichokes and beef in a stew/gravy. Lastly, she had two different kinds of cake for me: a cheesecake and a Spanish cake that is sort of like a citrus pound cake. But she didn't stop there. She even gave me a birthday gift, which was a backpack purse that looks very, very European. I'm excited to use it. So today, for my actual birthday itself, I don't have any plans except to go home and enjoy a good book. However, a set of twins that I teach in one of my after-school lessons on Tuesdays also had a birthday today, and they found out we had the same one, so the cries of 15 Spanish children wishing me a happy birthday made it a pretty unforgettable one.