Las Jornadas: Una Mirada A Mi Trabajo

Badajóz Town Hall

Last Thursday, the government of Extremadura invited us auxiliares to Cáceres, another city in Extremadura, for orientation.  Cáceres actually a cool city because the older part has a lot of Medieval buildings. (It gets even more interesting because Badajóz has distinct Muslim buildings and Mérida, another city, has Roman ruins including an amphitheater and aqueduct.) This orientation was really important, mainly to meet people from the region and the other people placed in Badajóz.  They also spent hours telling us things that they already told us in emails.  That was less fun.

On the second day, an auxiliar that was in his third year gave a presentation and that was what we really needed.  He spoke in English and Spanish (because the program I'm doing has a French, German, and Portuguese component) and gave us more information about what we'll actually be doing.  He was funny and we all really appreciated it.

Badajóz Theater

Badajóz Cathedral

BaAnother good thing about this orientation was that it brought us face to face with out tutor, which is essentially our mentor throughout this program.  I had already met mine last week, so I was already sitting next to her when they were reading out namess.  Her name is Anna and she is really really nice.  She speaks English really well and she studied for a year in Ireland, a time which equals my trip to Granada.  The best thing was that she really wanted to show me my other school that I'd be teaching in.  I really had no desire to go to a small town just to meet people since it would be a 30 min bus drive.  Anna was really helping me out by taking time out of her day so we could visit Puebla de Obando.

Arab Tents

The school is about half the size of CEIP San Fernando in Badajóz.  The director was really nice and showed us around.  We stopped at the English class where we met Maria, the English substitute who was working because the normal teacher was pregnant.  She is a lot younger than my mentor is so we planned to get drinks on the following day.

Arab Dancers

I met Maria and her boyfriend at an Australian bar that he worked at.  The only thing that made it Australian were the paintings of koalas on the walls.  Anyways, the three of us talked for hours about where to visit in Extremadura and especially Portugal.  Then we talked about the Spanish economy and some of the history into that.  It actually felt like an intercambio because we were speaking in both English and Spanish.  Maria definitely had a distinct British accent that I don't see often with non-native speakers.

Owl

The other interesting thing that happened was Al Mussassa, an Arabic festival that came to Badajóz.  It celebrates the founding of Badajóz by Ibn Marwan.  This event also happens in Badaóz's sister city of Marvão in Portugal.  A bunch of Arabs set up tents near the old part of the city and sold typical Arabaic stuff like tapestries and genie lamps.  They also set up tents where people could hold owls, eagles, and hawks.  That was my favorite part of this whole thing.

So that was last week in a nutshell...A giant nutshell.  Stay tuned for this week's tales from the classroom.