So I left off my last post saying that I was going to start teaching soon, and so far it's going well! But I don't want to get ahead of myself.
On Wednesday, I went to a teacher's lunch at the elementary school. The spread was amazing; there was a ton of delicious Spanish food (most of which incorporated pork), and they even had drinks and dessert. The craziest thing to me was that they had alcohol at this teacher's lunch. To be fair, the students had been dismissed, but I felt weird about drinking wine in an elementary school--not so weird that I didn't have any, however.
After lunch, a colleague asked me to go out for coffee with her. She is a new teacher this year, and she's working on improving her English. We were together for several hours, and between my crappy Spanish and her decent English, we didn't have much trouble communicating. She wanted to get to know me a little because when I started teaching the following day, I would be in two of her classes. She is the infantil teacher, which means she works with the students who are 3-6 years old. Primaria is 7-12, secundaria is 12-16, and bachillerato is 16-18, and I'm working with all of them. The bachillerato students are the students who want to continue to university; in Spain, compulsory education is complete at 16.
So my first day with the babies went relatively well. I think my time in the elementary school is going to be challenging, because they don't know much English, and they're not particularly motivated to learn it, either. I can't say I blame them; what use does a six-year-old have for a language that neither his family nor his friends uses? For both of the lessons that I attended, the students introduced themselves to me and told me how old they are and something they like, like "football" (soccer) or playing with their friends. After that, they did a worksheet that the real teacher gave them, and I observed. So my first day was pretty low key.
After the two lessons were over, I went to the high school. They were having a ceremony to welcome the Finnish exchange students, who were in Quintanar for a week. Students from Quintanar are going to visit them in Finland at the end of the month. The students prepared a song and dance for the assembly, which was nice. And they were American songs, which was fun for me. They sang "Count on Me" by Bruno Mars and danced to "Talk Dirty to Me" by Jason Derulo. The second choice surprised me, since it was a school function, but I clearly need to learn to be less uptight while I'm in Spain. The head of the English department introduced me to the whole school while I was there, which was very nice of her. So now the high school students say hello to me in English when they see me.
Everything was going well until I found out that I was expected to start teaching my after school conversation lessons that I picked up to make extra money. My colleague called and told me that I had to be at the school at 3:45, and the current time was 2:00. Thankfully, I don't have a busy schedule, so I was able to make it! It turns out that there is another teacher who is fluent in English but he is from Spain, so we will be splitting the lessons. But we taught the first two lessons together, a group of 7-9 year olds and a group of 9-11 year olds. Those lessons went really well. With the younger ones, we talked a lot about different animals, and the older ones talked about sports, family members, and more. It was very successful overall.
On Friday, the Finnish students were taking a tour of Quintanar, including a stop at a winery and an iron artisan, so my colleague invited me to go with them. Walking through a Spanish town listening to Finnish was a crazy experience, let me tell you. It was great though, and I really enjoyed the tour.
Don Quijote mural
Ayuntamiento (municipal building)
Old church with clock tower
Dulcinea mural, from Don Quijote (the largest in the world!)
The oldest building in Quintanar
Going to the winery was especially interesting, because at this particular winery (the second largest in Castilla La Mancha and so close to the town of Quintanar that we walked to it) grows the grapes, turns them into wine, allows it to ferment, and sells it. So they do literally everything themselves. I enjoyed seeing the industrial side of wine making, because I had never seen anything like that before. Because I was with high school students, we only got to taste a sip of wine, but I enjoyed what I tried, which is a new wine as of this year.
Working on the farm
In the bodega, or wine cellar
In the wine laboratory
After the tour, the rest of my weekend was pretty boring until Sunday. On Sunday, I went to Toledo to meet up with some of the other auxiliaries in my program. Two of them live in an apartment right near center city Toledo, so they invited me to stay with them on Sunday night because we had orientation in the morning. It was so great to meet some of the other people in my program, especially because they invited another auxiliar over who also lives in Toledo, and we had dinner together in their apartment.
Orientation on Monday was interesting. This program, as I said in an earlier post, looks for people who speak many languages. There were people who spoke English, French, German, and who knows what else in the room together. The only language we had in common was Spanish, so the whole orientation was in Spanish. I totally understand why it was, but I would have gotten more out of it if it was in English. After orientation, however, a big group of us went out for a tapas lunch, and it was great to meet more people. The Finnish students I mentioned earlier were in Toledo on Monday being tourists, so I even got a free ride back on their bus with them. Overall, it was a very successful day.
Today, Tuesday, I had work at the high school. I went to art for two periods, where the teacher asked me to read the notes about the basics of geometric art to the class, and she wrote them on the board as I read them. She wanted to expose her students to a "more correct English," as she says, and to help them get used to my American accent. I also went to a technologies class, where they were classifying different companies as producers, manufacturers, or sellers. That class was very interesting, especially because of the American companies used, like Burger King, Amazon, and Green Giant. After school, I went home for lunch before I went back to the elementary school to give an after school conversation lesson. I worked with nine-year-olds today, and they were very rambunctious, but I enjoyed teaching them. Next week, I think I might just tie them to their chairs so they stay in them!
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