Happy Halloween!

Happpy (almost) Halloween!

Halloween here is not a very big thing. They celebrate Dia de todos Santos which is around the same weekend but it has more to do with paying respect to the dead instead of trick or treating and getting dressed up.

This past weekend (10/25, 26) I finally got to ride the Teleferico, which is like a gondola like they have at some of the big ski resorts. It was really fun. I went with one of the assistants Jen and two of her friends. It goes 40 meters into the air and goes from Parque del Oeste to Casa de Campo where there is the Zoo and the Aquarium and the Theme Park. I thought it would take a while for teleferico to go and I was suprised that it only took 11 min. It is actually quite quick especially when it enters and leaves the turnstile. Also very much like the ski lift when it swings in really fast right before you get on and off but slows down to actually enter and exit the thing. We were really lucky because the weekend was beautiful. It was sunny and warm and it had just rained so the air was nice and clean. We had some nice views. (I would have taken pictures, but I had unfortunatley lost my camera a couple nights before...)

After the bout of warm weather, it turned freezing (for me, from Ca,) cold! Temps dropped to right around 0c. And then it rained a lot and since I don´t have rain boots I didn´t feel like going anywhere. The nice thing is that there is now snow on the mountains close to school and the mountains that you can see on the bus. Its so pretty and the air is so clear. I have to find a way to get up into the mountians and the snow.

Halloween was last weekend and my friend had a party at her place which was really fun. I dressed up as a cat and she was a bunny and some people came dressed as priests and as Dexter (Main character from the tv show of the same name) and we had some vampires. We went out to a club afterwards and it was interesting to see what people dressed up as. Not that many people dressed up and there wasn´t a large variety of costumes. They tend to stick to the traditional vampire, ghost, witch etc. Basically it is just an excuse for places to make large flyers and have another excuse for a party.
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I have made my plans for Munich. Buying fares online is horribly frustrating because the fares can change by the minute and while I was booking our hostel the prices for the flights more than doubled. At least we good a good price on a hostel which is voted the ¨Best Youth Hostel in Munich¨...We´ll see if it lives up to the hype. I´m going with my friend Chelsea and we have found some interesting things to do. There is a huge Christmas Market and then there is a tram that serves spiced wine and Gingerbread, an old monastary that is also a huge brewery, and Dachau is also close by. We´re going for 4 nights and 5 days and I think it will be very packed. It will also be very cold. and snowy. and cold.

Also in the works is a trip to the Canary Islands with Rebecca after Christmas. We had planned on being there for New Years, but we might end up staying in Madrid for News years because they are supposed to have a large New Years celebration as well. December looks to be the travelling month because I also want to plan a trip to Galicia with Jen, one of the other assistants and then a trip to Italy with Alissa and some other people. We´ll see if this all works out. Trip planning takes a lot out of you. Especially if you´re trying to it as cheaply as possible, but still trying to have a good time and see the sights. At least this time around we´re getting paid instead of like the last time I was in Madrid when I was just going off savings...

Avila and then some

I've been working now for three or so weeks and things are falling into more of a routine. I work with three teachers: Gema, Miguel, and Sonia. Miguel and Sonia teach first grade and Gema does third. Gema is the teacher who has the most experience teaching with an assistant and she is always asking me if she is saying things correctly. Sometimes I have to stop and think about how I actually DO say things. A lot of what she says make sense, but you would not actually say it in that order or that manner.

I think that one of the most frustrating things about working at this school, apart from the massive amounts of time that I spend not doing anything is that the teachers are impatient. A child will be struggling through a reading and the teacher interrupts all the time and sometimes the kids gets really confused.

I went to the walled city of Avila the other weekend with one of the other assistants. We were supposed to meet up with another assistant, but she had gotten there earlier and with some other people so we didn´t actually go meet up. The morning was very rainy but the weather cleared up really nicely by the time we left and we were able to get some nice photos from one of the highest towers of the wall. The old part of Avila is surrounded by this acient wall that was used to protect the city. Their patron saint is St. Teresa of Avila and we went to her church and found out about her life and saw some of the old relics. I think the oddest one was definately her finger with rings attached to it...We also got to get up and walk around the wall, which is something I wasn´t able to do last time I came here. It was really fun to be above the city and walking around. To climb some of the towers you have to climb up some really steep stairs. I don´t know how people did it back then because I was having trouble and people were shorter way back in the day. (pictures have been added to my picture website)

Avila is really the only day trip that I have taken so far. I wantto go to El Escorial and also to Cercedilla to ride the Nature train and also to Alcala de Henares. All of those places are relatively close to where I am and I could go walk around after school one day, but the days are getting shorter so I would have to be quick. I need to get some more small trips in especially since I´m getting paid soon.

Week 2

I make it through my second week. Hurrah! The only problem is that everyone now is sick.

I have opened a bank account, and hopefully I will be able to get my NIE (basically a foreigner´s ID card) by the end of November.

Mi escuela en Moral(zarzal)

This is an aerial view of my school.

We officially started work on Oct. 1 and I have been working on my schedule and figuring out what is going on at this school. The school has 3 classes for each grade they work on English from first through 5th grade, but we are only with kids from 1-4. There were supposed to be a grand total of 5 Assistants at this school, but one was unable to make it due to some type of complication or business she had to take care of at home. So in addition to myself there are three other Assistants. Jen is from London, Amanda is from Philly, and Anna is from Poland, but she had been living in Spain for 9 years with her Spanish husband and she has 3 children. Her oldest is 14 and then 9 and 4. This is her second year doing the program. The other two are my age. Jen is living in Madrid and Amanda is living with one of the other teachers in Moral. (Everyone there calls it simply 'Moral' instead of saying the whole darn thing...makes sense, no?) It is interesting to work with Anna because she was a teacher in Poland and I think she does her own thing and maybe she teaches her own class...? One of her kids is at the school.

We basically work with the classes when they have class in English. The kids switch subject matter every 45 minutes and we are in the class when they do the subject in English. They do art, PE, science, and English in English. Their other subjects, Spanish language, math, and geography/history are in Spanish. The school is on whats called a 'continuous schedule' which means that they are only in class from 9-2. They have recess at 12 and then they have lunch at 2. After lunch they go and do the equivalent of extra-curriculars until 4. The other Assistants work with the same teacher and follow that teacher around as they go from class to class. I chose the schedule that lets me start later so I don't have to get up quite so early. Originaly I was going to work with two 3rd grade classes and 1 first grade class, but on the second day I realized that the 2 3rd grade classes did not have an English teacher and that there was nothing for me to do because we are not supposed to be teaching classes on our own. The second day I went to a different class because I had nothing to do and ended up switching my schedule. I now have two first grade classes and one 3rd grade class. The first graders are super cute, but they don't understand any English so everything that is done in the classroom takes FOREVER. The 3rd grade class has pretty good English and the teacher is really nice and enthusiastic. They went through and recited the months and the greetings for me.

The teaching methods are very different here than what I'm used to at home. The teachers straight up shout and grad their kids if they are doing the wrong thing. I think part of it is just because they are Spanish and the tend to be louder and more brusque, but it seems like the reason their kids don't pay as much attention is because the discipline methods are not very effective.

I have a lot of breaks in my day and with my new schedule I don't have to be at the school until 10.30. They feed use snack at 12 which is usually fruit and some type of prepackage pastry and then a 'main' dish' We had tortilla española one day and sandwhiches the next. We also get fed lunch if we want it. The kids eat at 2 and then we are suppoed to have lunch at 2.30 or 3, but the teachers eat in the staff room and after 2 there is always a staff meeting and we don't get to eat until 3.30. Part of me wants to stay because it is free food that is not bad, but then I have an hour and a half where I'm just sitting around doing nothing. Its not enough time to go swim or to the gym because it takes around 15-20min to walk up there and there is not a lot else to do. A small group of teachers and staff go get drinks everyday before lunch, but that will add up. The internet is slow and I have it at home so there is nothing I need the computer for and I can use it when I have another one of my breaks. I will probably stay most days, but the time gaps are really annoying.

I'm still getting the hang of things at the school and I have a lot of time to figure out what the game plan will be for the rest of the year.

Settling in

Things here are finally falling into place.

After a long and frustrating search for housing, I finally have a place to live. Work started on Wednesday the 1 and I have a schedule set up for that.

Finding housing in Madrid was one of the more frustrating things about coming here. (I can't decide if the visa process or the housing process was the lesser evil.) I mainly used the online site www.loquo.com for my search. There is a classified paper called the Segundo Mano, but after paying 2.20 euro for it and calling all the availaiblabe options only to be told that they had already filled the room, I decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Loquo is basically like a Spanish version of Craigslist. There are some other sites out there like www.campusanuncios.com or www.habitamos.com, but none of these were updated as frequently as Loquo. I was looking for housing in the Chamberi area which is by the metro stations Arguelles and Moncloa so that I can take the from the terminal in Moncloa to Moral.

This is a link that shows all the districts in Madrid Capital. The following image is in the Google Maps view of the area I was looking for housing.


View Larger Map

The problem with ads for rooms is that some people are very detailed and some people are not. I saw ads with a description of the future roommate that one girl was looking for and I also saw the 'room in arguelles. 400euro. call....' Some people would get annoyed when I said I was just going to be renting until the end of June, but they didn't say anything on their ads. I went to see various places and they all had one thing about them that I wasn't too fond of. I went to see a room in a Women's only residence. It would have been like living at Scripps if we had a dorm mom present ALL the time. It had shared bathrooms and shared kitchen space where I would have had to keep my food in my room until I wanted to use it. I looked at places where the husband and wife rented out rooms, but they felt too claustrophobic and I wouldn't be able to have people over. One place was a really nice room with a bunch (7) other young people from various Spanish speaking countries, but they ALL smoked. In another room one of the other flatmates smoked in her room and I couldn't smell it in the room I was to have, but I could smell it in the common area. Usually, the main problem was that I couldn't have visitors (one mother would have charged me to have visitors, 20 for a friend and 10 for a family member to spend the night...) or it was too expensive, or another thing that happened was that I found a great place with two really nice Spanish girls, but they said that they had forgotten to put on their ad that the place wasn't available until November. Whoops. This whole time I was living with friends from my study abroad program who are in the same program and who had gotten into Madrid earlier than I had. Even though they said it was no problem to stay with them, I felt bad and in a rush to get out.

At orientation I met two girls from Pleasanton and one was looking for housing in the same place that I was so we tried looking for a piso (apartment) together. This yielded worse results than trying to find a single room. I was also grasping at whoever else posted something about housing on the Facebook group that was made for our program. By the time I found this room, I had been up and down this one street, Andres Mellado about 5 or 6 times looking at different places. One of the pluses of going to see lots of places was that I learned to ask more questions to get what I wanted.

When I found this room I was worried because I couldn't get to see it until 1030 at night and then I had trouble with the address, but its a good thing I tried the buzzers anyway. I was so tired that I must have appeared very addled and confused. They told me that they would call me back later in the evening because they were going to see some other people and then they were going to decide who they liked the best. It was like going to an interview! on and off day! It was very nerve racking because if I didn't get the room then I would have to search all over again. Luckily for me, I did get the room.

My room is in a shared piso with two Spaniards, Jorge and Macarena. They work and study. They are both very nice and keep telling me to ask if I need anything. Jorge has been explaining to me how the place works and how they do things. My room is a good size (pictures to follow soon) and there is a kitchen and a bathroom. There is a small common area with a tv and I've come to figure out that they usually eat there. Jorge was saying that it is a rare occurrence for all of the housemates to be in the piso at the same time, so that explains why they don't need a large common area. The kitchen has no microwave, but it has a dishwasher and a clothes washer and a stove and an oven. I have wifi here. The only downside is that there is construction on the street, but hopefully I will be up or needing to get up by the time they start. The area is full of shops and supermarkets and bakeries so I'm happy and its a 5-10 min walk to the bus station. I have spent the last few days arranging my room and buying things like sheets and pillows and food and permanent toiletries.

The next items of business are to get used to my schedule at school, find a gym, a pool, and get a bank account and an ID card.