The first five weeks

Hey fam and friends! Sorry it's been a while since my last post...five and half weeks into my time in Spain and the whirlwind hasn't stopped.

It's hard to believe I've been here for almost a month and a half but it's true. So far, life as a L/C Assistant is great. I love my job and am so lucky to be able to spend this year in Spain as a teacher. While there are a lot of similarities between the Spanish school system and American school system, there are many differences and I am learning a lot about myself as a teacher.

Since my school is in a small little town about four or five miles outside of Granada, I have to take the bus to get there. It's mainly me and the older men from the pueblo who ride the bus in the mornings when they're coming back to Víznar from doing some shopping in Granada. There is one man, Pepe, that I think just gets on to ride back and forth between Granada and Víznar and shoot the breeze with the driver and his buddies that are getting on and off throughout the day. The first day I rode out there, they all kind of smiled with a look on their faces like "isn't it nice this girl is coming out to visit our little town". Then for the next few weeks every time I got on the bus, I got looks that said "ok, what are you doing back on the bus?" There really isn't much to do in my town...there is one restaurant and I've yet to see it open...and that's about it. Finally, last week one of the older men got curious enough to ask me what the heck I was still doing going out to Víznar four days a week. So I told them about my job and everything I'm doing at the school. They asked me what my name is and I told them Megan, to which they said was too hard to pronounce, so the driver, two men named Pepe and a few others on the bus said they were just going to call me María from now on. Whenever I get to my stop, the driver now shouts, "OK, María, here you are! See you tomorrow!".

At our orientation in Sevilla we were told to only speak in English with our students, to not even let them know that we can speak Spanish; however, I found out very quickly that wasn't going to work. I did try the whole only talking in English gig for my first few classes but after many blank stares, puzzled looks, and several comments like "es que no sé qué dices" (I don't know what you're saying) I realized that we were going to have to take the whole English only thing slowly. Part of my job this year is going to be getting the students to the point where they will be able to understand more spoken English than they can at this point, but until then, I'm going to have to use as much English as possible and supplement/explain a lot in Spanish when needed.

My favorite part of my job is working with my students. While being at the Elementary level this year is way different than working with high schoolers, I'm loving it just the same. My students call me Maestra, Teacher, Megan or "seño" which is short for señorita. Since my school is so small, I have the chance to work with almost every class and I've been able to get to know the kids really well. For the most part I'm working in the English language classes but I have one class with my third graders where I teach Science in English. Now Science isn't really my best subject so when they first told me that's what I was going to be doing, I was a little nervous. But thank God third grade science is something I can handle. Right now they are learning body parts, so we've been singing "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" and playing Simon Says (Simon says touch you nose...). The hardest part about this science class is that the kids are just learning how to write in their own language let alone in English, which makes labeling pictures of the face and body tough.

This building is the whole school...

One of the perks to my job is the schedule. I work four days a week for twelve hours a week. Needless to say, I have a lot of free time. Most days I go home from work, have lunch, maybe take a short siesta, and head into the center of town. I look at the shops, get a café con leche and read the paper, sometimes go visit Conchi and Rocio. I'm hoping to find an intercambio (language exchange partner) soon so that I can start practicing my Spanish more and meet more Spaniards. There are a few L/C Assistants here in Granada that I hang out with but it's hard to go back to speaking Spanish when you've been speaking in English at work and with friends. One of the teachers at my school has a couple of daughters who are studying English in Ireland are getting back to Granada in November so I think we're going to meet up once they get here.

Homemade Sangria in Málaga 

Me, Kerianne, and Jessica in Málaga

I've also been able to get down to Málaga (a city off the Mediterranean about an hour and a half from Granada) to visit some friends I have down there and they've been able to come up here for a weekend. It's been a lot of fun! We've started planning some trips outside of Spain and we're off to Paris the first weekend of November to celebrate our friend Jessica's birthday.

Hope you are all doing well back home!

Besos,
Megan

España...Round Three!

Hello Family and Friends!

Well, where to begin? As many of you already know, I'm here in Granada, Spain for the year as a Language and Culture Assistant in a local Elementary school. These past two weeks have been a whirlwind, so I will do my best to try to remember everything that has gone on. I would have started writing this blog sooner, but since I am a rookie blogger, it's taken me a while to figure out how to get it up and running! :) Right now I'm sitting at one of my favorite cafés in Granada (Café Pícaro, close to the Centro de Lenguas Modernas where I studied two years ago) sipping on a café con leche and figured it would be a good place to update you all.

The flight to Spain was long but went very smoothly...no lost bags, which is huge when pretty much everything you're going to need for the next year is in two suitcases, a carry-on and purse! I first flew into Amsterdam from Seattle, then to Madrid, and finally landed in Granada about 22 hours after leaving home. I had decided to get to Granada the weekend before my teaching program's orientation in Sevilla so that I could get used to the time and start practicing my Spanish after a five month hiatus. 

Luckily, my host family that I lived with two years ago offered to let me stay with them for the weekend. It was so much fun to see them. When I got to their piso (apartment) Conchi my host mom was the only one there but it was like I had never left. We sat down at the kitchen table and caught up on everything that's been going on and then my host sister Rocio came back and we chatted for a while. It was so great. Later that night Rocio told me that she was going out for tapas (great in Granada -- tapas are little snacks/appetizers that come free when you order a drink) and invited me along. At about 2 am (an early night in Spain) I called it quits and headed back to Conchi's house since I hadn't slept at all on the plane, while Rocio and her friends went on to the next bar. 


The next night I joined up with them again. It happened to be one of Rocio's friends birthday and he took us to one of his favorite restaurants to celebrate. He grew up in the Albaycin neighborhood of Granada (it is the oldest neighborhood in the city and is on the other side of the valley from the Alhambra) and knew of a quiet little place with an amazing view of the Alhambra. We got there right as the sun was setting and were in awe of this amazing fortress on the hill across from where were sitting. 



Then the weekend was over and it was time to head to Sevilla for five days to meet a some of the other CIEE Teach in Spain participants. The first night at the hotel, CIEE had a welcome cocktail party for us with lots of tapas and good wine...my kind of night! The next day we started our orientation and took classes throughout the week about how to look for an apartment once we got to our cities, buy a cell phone,  what our role as Language and Culture Assistants would be, how to apply for our temporary residency cards, etc. They were long days but were filled with a lot of really helpful info. Then we spent our nights out in Sevilla and getting to know everyone in a group. I met some really great people, had a lot of fun, and am excited to start visiting everyone in their different cities!


Friday morning all of us Language and Culture Assistants left for our different cities throughout the southern region of Spain. There were three of us headed towards Granada on the train. My friend Kelly was supposed to get off two stops before we reached Granada but we had a little change of plans. Keep in mind that all of us CIEE people on the train were lugging around at least two 40-50 lb suitcases plus carry-ons and purses, so it took us a while to gather all of our stuff. As the train pulled up to Kelly's town we all got up to help her unload her things when the train started moving after only a brief pause at the station. So, we moved onto plan B and Kelly stayed in Granada for a night before going back to her town the next morning.  


CIEE was supposed to put us up in a hotel for five days while we looked for apartments in our placement cities. It turned out that my roommate for the five days in Granada already had an apartment, so that meant there was an extra bed for Kelly to spend the night. I was really glad to have her there because it turned out the hotel that CIEE had us in was, let's just say, not the nicest hotel I have ever stayed in. It was a small place that had an elevator that stopped in between the floors. So we had to lug our bags up half a flight of stairs and then back down another again once we got to our floor. It was 90 some odd degrees outside (and inside the room) in Granada that week as well and the fan in the room barely worked. But Kelly and I laughed it off and went out for a walk around Granada and spent the night getting tapas and hanging out at the Mirador that looks across to the Alhambra. However, later that night I stopped finding things in the hotel funny when I found a bug in my bed and more in the bathroom the next morning. Yuck!


Once again, I am lucky to have my host family here in Granada and Conchi told me I could stay with them while I looked for an apartment. So after Kelly left for her town I moved back into Conchi's temporarily. Rocio helped me find some good websites to look for apartments and told me what neighborhoods were good places to live and which ones I should avoid. I spent all of Sunday calling people who were renting rooms and found out that most were "ocupados" - already rented. But after a few days of calling and going to see some pisos I finally found one that I really liked. I'm living in a neighborhood that is on the other side of the city from Conchi's house, but she told me it is a great place for tapas and is really close to the University of Granada's campus. My neighborhood is called "los pajaritos", literally the little birds neighborhood, because all of the streets are named after a different kind of bird. My piso is on Turtledove Street. It is a little further out from the city center than I wanted to be but the girls I am living with are really nice, and the apartment is in really good shape, so I took it. 


I started work at my school last Friday and love it! I am assisting in an Elementary school in a little pueblo just outside of the city of Granada. There are about 700 people who live in the town and only 70 students in the whole school. My biggest class has 11 students in it. It's muy chiquitillo, as they say here in Granada! I'm going to be in charge of the Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and other major holiday units as well as helping students with their pronunciation. Since the students learn "British" English, they think my American accent is pretty funny. All of the kids have been really fun and curious and are excited to be learning a new language. My first three days I have been working with the older students (7-12 year olds) and tomorrow I am going to be with the really little ones (3-6 years).

I think that about covers all of what has been going on here in Spain. I'm going to do my best to keep this blog up-to-date so that you don't have a mini novel like this one to read through each time you get on here! 


Hope you are all doing well back at home!

Hasta luego,


Megan