Después de Dos Meses

Thanks family for the bday gift!

In the past two weeks not much has happened.  Actually, my birthday passed on November 12th.  It wasn't on the scale of the birthdays I had in the past, but it was still nice to celebrate with people that I didn't even know 2 months prior.  We went to our favorite restaurant El Tronco, the tree rulo de cabra or goat cheese.
trunk, for a birthday dinner.  I got my new favorite meal: Goat Cheese and Caramelized Onions.  I had told people that my favorite cheese was Brie, but it has since changed to

If you need anymore proof that my life hasn't changed too much since I've gotten here, I watched the complete Breaking Bad series...in English.  My friends here had all watched it and told me that it was incredible, so I finally gave in and watched in a week and a half.  It was totally worth it.  It's an incredible story that they express flawlessly. Vale la pena, it's worth it to watch.

Something out of the ordinary, is that because I am living with a French roommate, we have started making crepes...a lot. In one week period we probably had three days of crepes.  That's how I'm expanding my international horizons: through eating international food. I furthermore got a haircut where I only told the stylist that I wanted to look more European.  The outcome definitely is European and it is a style I would never have had in the states.  See it there on the left? And yes, I do need to use hair gel everyday now.

The friends I celebrated my birthday with

Also, Badajoz is having a Fería de Tapas, or a festival of tapas.  If you remember my trip to Granada at all, you will remember that I talked incessantly about tapas.  There, they were included in the already cheap drink price.  Here, and in almost all other places, they are not.  They cost a few Euros on top of the price of the beer.  For this special festival, local bars cowe vote for the best one.  There is even a chance to win 500 €! It's great.  So far, my favorite one was at Taberna Bigote.  It was like a briscuit with a black raspberry sauce on top.  Surprisingly delicious!
mpete to make the best tapa.  The tapa is also cheaper than usual being only 2€!

Finally, Christmas comes early in Spain.  They have no holidays between Halloween and Christmas (Halloween excluded), so they prepared for Christmas in the beginning of November.  Right now there are lights strewn around the city and the teachers want me to prepare a powerpoint on Christmas for the class.  I'm definitely showing them this picture of Finley's XMas gift from last year:

But overall, things are going fine.  I'm trying to go to Lisbon next month, but I haven't found people to go with yet.  I'll let you know if I end up going!

Fountain that changes colors in the center of Badajoz

Mérida: Roma Existe en España

Temple of Diana

This past weekend, I went to Mérida.  Now, I doubt that many of you have heard of this little city, but it used to be a key location in the Roman Empire.  Yes, the ROMAN empire.  Badajoz has some Islamic roots, Cáceres, where I went last week, has some medieval roots, and Mérida, has Roman roots.  This is all in one autonomia, very similar to state in the US.  Well, Mérida also is the capital of Extremadura.  This is weird because the two provinces that make up that autonomia are Badajoz and Cáceres.  In Andalucia, the capital is Sevilla, but Sevilla is also a province.  It is very uncommon for that to happen in Spain, and here is one of the exceptions.

Well, history aside, Mérida is an incredible city.  Not only do they have sites fenced off so you have to pay to enter, which I didn't do, but they have Roman structures throughout the city.  There is a bar that has part of an arc as part of it's foundation.  They have el Templo de Diana in the middle of the street.  Honestly, it was just as cool as Rome.

The only problem with Mérida when comparing it to Badajoz is that it is much smaller.  It also doesn't have the exciting night life that we have here.  The friend we visited actually comes to Badajoz every weekend because there isn't as much to do there.  I'm sure if I was actually living there, I would find more faults with Badajoz, but since I'm not, I'm going to complain about Mérida.  Actually though, I don't need to return to Cáceres, but I need to go back to Mérida.  It was that cool and I feel like I didn't see it all...because I didn't.

So that was the historical part of my weekend, now on to my favorite holiday: Halloween.  If you know me then you know I love dressing up.  Last year I painted myself blue, last summer I dressed up as a gorilla and made it on the front page of the paper.  I put tons of effort into making the perfect costume.  This year, it was a little different.  Halloween isn't nearly as big in Spain.  They think that it is only about dressing up as something scary and that's it.  To show how much they love me, my school in the pueblo had festivities for Halloween.  There was a Halloween costume contest at recess.  In the spirit of dressing up, I cut two holes in a sheet and immediately became a ghost.  The rules were that you could not buy anything and that it had to be from things around the house.  The winners were a spider, two mad nurses, and an epic scarecrow.  It was a lot of fun.

¡Los Ganadores! The winners!

Otherwise, Halloween passed pretty nonchalantly.  I saw one kid dressed up on Halloween.  That's it.  After not seeing much on Halloween itself, you can imagine my surprise when I got invited to a Halloween party at someone's casa de campo, which is a summer house in the countryside.  My friend Tom and I went to get costumes in the little window we left for ourselves in between getting back from Mérida and getting picked up for the party.  I found a crown and decided to be a king.  Tom found a mask and decided to be an alien.  Not our best effort, but it was something.

When we got to the car, the Scottish girl who had invited us greeted us and told us about this party and how many people were going to be there.  We told her we had just bought costumes for the party.  Erin burst out laughing.  Although in Scotland they celebrate it like they do in the US, she knows that in Spain costumes are not a thing.  Tom and I look at each other and are kind of embarrassed; however, we don't have to wear the costumes if we don't want to.

Picture from the summer house

So we get to the party and for the longest time the only thing that related to Halloween were two pumpkins.  Then Erin decorated the rest of the room with some homemade decorations and it had more of a Halloween vibe.  After a couple of hours, Tom and I wore our costumes for all the Spainards to see.  At first they laughed, but then they tried wearing our costumes.

The reason why dressing up for Halloween is not big here is because they dress up for Carneval in March.  That's their biggest holiday to wear their disfraz, costume.

As you may have noticed, I have been writing more than I promised.  We'll see how things go and if I have an interesting week, I'll be sure to fill you in on it!

Can you guess what this is supposed to be?

Cáceres: La Edad Media

Saint Jorge, patron saint of Cáceres, and DRAGONSLAYER

The academy

Last week I started doing private lessons.  This means tutoring outside of school. I joined an academia or academy which is like after school lessons that are run by this Irish guy.  I also picked up 3 hours of clases particulares, which are essentially one on one or one on two tutoring sessions.  The hardest part was just starting.  All the kids want to improve their English, but they don't know what they need to improve on, so I would play around with some things that I found difficult when learning Spanish.  This one family is worried that the younger daughter will speak English better than the older daughter, therefore they scheduled two hours for the older daughter.  To avoid having the younger feel left out, they still scheduled one hour with her.  The other family is really nice, the only bad thing is that they live a 40 minute walk away from me.  As of right now, thankfully, I work at the academy right before I go to their place saving me some time.

Me kissing some guys toes for good luck

Also, this past weekend I finally got to return to Cáceres.  Cáceres was where we had my orientation and I was there for about 20 hours.  They boasted about the old part and how we should take advantage of the 4 waking hours that we had and visit the parte antigua.  Well, we obviously didn't get a chance to do that, but this time we did!  I went with my friend Tom and we met up with my study abroad friend, Mariel, who is doing the same program but in Cáceres.  We actually went to eat at an all you can eat buffet that compares to Golden Corral with a slightly more Asian theme.  Then she and her roommate took me out on the town on Friday night to some of the more popular spots of Cáceres.  To be honest, Badajoz has a better night life.  On Saturday, we met up with my roommate's boyfriend, Pedro (remember him?) who took us on a full out tour of the ancient part of the city.

Can you see the water?

This place is incredible.  It is as if you were catapulted or trebuchetted in the Middle Ages.  It was so well maintained that it felt like you were there.  We saw a lot of churches and museums.  In one of them, they had an aljibe, the word for an Arab bath.  This would store rain water that would eventually go to the town's people.  This one actually still stored water and there was water when we went down, underground, to see it.


After the aljibe, we went to find some food.  We went to this really nice, artsy place in the middle of the middle aged part of the city.  The food, yet again, was spectacular.  We had solomillo, a meat with cheese.  I even had felafel, and loved it.  Food is just sooo good here. Yes, it deserved that many o's in that sentence.  Afterwards, we drove up this mountain to see Cáceres from a bird's eye view.  That was amazing also.  Then Pedro had to go as the Real Madrid v. Barcelona game was on and we were about to head back to Badajoz.

Cáceres from atop a mountain

The way we got back to Badajoz was interesting.  There is this website called Blablacar.  People post if they are headed from one place to another and if they have room to carry others.  The three of us (because Mariel wanted to see Badajoz) got a ride from this man for almost half the cost of the bus and for half the time it would've taken.  It worked out really well.  He was a rugby player who grew up in Badajoz, had a girlfriend in Cáceres and works in Madrid.  I felt really bad that all three of us fell asleep in his car.  Not too bad because he was getting paid, but still, he was a nice guy.

Tom and I watched part of the game

On Sunday, Tom and I showed Mariel all of our favorite places of Badajoz with the pretense that it was not nearly as pretty as Cáceres.  Then she left and I went on a run and took this picture of the sunset. I don't know why I don't run with my actual camera.

P.S. I know I have not been fulfilling my promise of writing once a week...which is evident from the two posts I posted today when I haven't posted in three weeks.  I think it feels like my life here is just like my life at home, so writing about it would be as if I wrote about my life in the States except that every time that I said, "I went to get coffee in the USA," I would replace 'the USA' with Spain."  So, I can't promise a new post every week...but you can check every week just in case!

Yo Te Tengo que Bigote una Pregunta

October 20th, 2013

A caracol I found

So, where did we leave off?  I have been teaching for 3 weeks now and it's going great.  Last week I taught photosynthesis by explaining that plants need ingredients to make their own food...and the example food was a cheeseburger.  If they lost their focus in class, I would just say hamburguesa and they would look right back to the board. (Interesting plant fact, all of the Carbon that plant uses to for everything including leaves, stems, and roots, comes from the air.  Plants literally appear out of thin air).  I also saw kids spell the number 1 as "juan" which made me laugh.

I started running through the town with my roommates and going to the gym. Kilos are really killing me though.  The conversion is 2.2 lbs = 1 kilo, but man it's still difficult to do at the gym.  It was funny because I would stop at times just to take a picture.  This is a really nice city.

This past weekend I was going to go to Cáceres, the city with the medieval structures.  However, we were celebrating my roommate's birthday on Saturday.  So I had to throw away my plans and had a blast with a group of 15 Spaniards.

First, we went to this bar called Taberna Bigote, which means mustache bar.  There was a private room for us downstairs that had different types of mustaches all over the wall.  Most were in English so they were asking me what they all meant.  They got a little carried away though and asked me a word that was actually a Spanish word!  The food was also exquisite.  We had goat cheese with caramelized onions, bacalao dorado (thin potatoes with egg and fish...yes fish.  You can't even taste it though), croquetas (a fried mashed potato), and meat.  The meat is so good here!

After lunch, we went back to my place where I got some real one on one time with my roommates friends.  Really, each one of them wanted to talk to me.  Some highlights were: this Spanish girl who had read all 5 books of A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones), Pedro, my roommates boyfriend, who promised to show me Cáceres when I go, and this guy who wanted to learn all of the dirty English words.  Obviously, I'm a teacher so I had to oblige.

Sunset over the River

Y ya está.  And that's that.  A great weekend to practice my Spanish.  I've

Primera Semana de Clases

Tower Espantaperros in Badajoz

As you all hopefully remember, last week I had my first week of classes.  I work 3 hours a day, 4 days a week, at two different schools.  Honestly, I was a little nervous at first.  I don't know what Spanish classes are like, I don't know how the children act, or more specifically, I don't know how they act around a foreigner.  Now, I would say I have a really good grasp of the Spanish language.  It has improved significantly since I arrived here in Spain.  That being said, when people, or worse, children, start speaking at 1.6 kilometers per minute, I can't seguir el ritmo, or keep up.  That's my fear.  If kids say something, in Spanish, about me and I don't understand, I don't want them to think they can get away with anything.  And of course my professor can help, but they can't hear everything.

I can't say that after a week of teaching that I still don't fear that, but I don't worry as much.  I don't worry because this past week has been AMAZING.  Teaching is something that I've always felt natural doing.  I love standing in the center of the room.  I love explaining things in different ways for different people.  I especially love boards (of the chalk or white variety).  This job has given me just that.

"Always by your side" - Anonymous

I work at two schools.  One is in Publa de Obando, a pueblo 35 minutes away from Badajoz.  Compared to my city school, this one does not have nearly as many commodities.  The English teacher who I work with the most is incredible. She speaks English nearly perfectly and is a great teacher.  The other one at the school isn't so great.  Her accent is off and it doesn't appear that she knows a lot of vocab.  One of my first classes was with the latter and I kind of took over because a.) it was science and b.) it didn't seem like she knew what she was talking about.  As I stated above, I love teaching, so this did not really bother me.

The other thing about this school is that I teach kids in 2nd grade up until 6th grade.  The 2nd graders are terrible.  They talk all the time in Spanish.  A couple of them just laugh at me when I talk.  I imagine this is the same as when kids in the United States laugh at someone speaking a foreign language because it seems funny to them.  They do know their stuff though: we did flashcards of numbers and colors and I would say 90% got theirs right.

Me, out with my roommates (the three on the left)

Otherwise, the other grades are fine.  3rd grade has 4 kids in it with disabilities ranging from ADHD to Aspergers to extreme Autism.  Once the kids get settled, they are fine.  The older kids are just great though.  You can tell they want to learn English because they try really hard in class.  Today, they told me the date entirely in English without any prompts.  My teacher said that they have never done that before.

The other school is just the opposite.  Most of the teachers speak English really well.  I only teach 5th and 6th grade and they are extremely eager to learn English.  I don't teach as much as I do in the smaller school, but I do get to read stories or pronounce things.  The funniest thing is when I encounter a British word and I don't know what it is at first.  Fancy Dress is a costume.  Who knew?  I told them that it was cooler just to say costume.

Courtyard of the school in the pueblo

Overall, teaching has been a blast and the days go by so quickly.  The worst is when I have a free period because I don't know what to do with myself.  Preparing for class is easy and I don't mind going off the cuff.  Or I'll work with the teacher to see what they have prepared.  Now, I'm looking for another job to supplement this one.  I called an Academy today and I'm also offering one on one English classes to anyone that asks.  Vamos a ver if anything comes of it.  You will be the first ones to know.



Enjoy the pictures that have nothing to do with the blog!

¡Hasta luego!

Spanish Words of the Week:
colchón - mattress
murciélago - bat
carnet - license

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.

Cruzando El Puente a Madurez

Here I am a week after leaving the US and I already have an apartment, a bank account, a job, and friends. Who knew it would be so easy?

I took this while crossing the bridge back from la escuela.

Well, it actually wasn't. The apartment took a decent amount of searching, and I had to communicate in a different language. The bank account didn't work the first 3 times I went into the bank, and I had to communicate in a different language. The job I visited for the first time today, and I spoke Spanish and English.  The English they had learned was British English so there was some confusion there. And the friends? Well, their Spanish so that's what we primarily speak. So easy? Not so much. Worth it? Yes. 

I don't think I've done any of those things in the United States by myself. Yes, even make friends :P  I imagine it's easier when you speak the same language. But boy, do I feel like I'm becoming an adult now because I have done all these things. 

I shouldn't say that I did all of it on my own. One of my roommates took me to the bank the first time and then did errands with me for food and linens etc. Actually, the first meal I cooked for myself was stir fry; I think that really confused my roommates (3 spainards). They think Americans eat pizza, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, and French fries all of the time. When we went shopping, Maria Jose kept pointing them out to me. Once I started cooking, she wondered if I liked Chinese food.  They really do have the opinion that Americans eat greasy food all of the time.

An instagrammy picture from one of the tallest points of the city

I also had a lot of help in the school.  The main English teacher, who learned a lot of her English in Ireland, showed me around and spoke in both English and Spanish (when we couldn't figure out how to say something in English).  I am the first Auxiliar de Conversación that they have had so not only are the uber (I think that it's a proper time for that word) excited to have me, but they don't know what to do with me.  She told me so many of her ideas but they really don't know.  I think that makes it better.  We can work together to figure out the best way to go about this.

Now, I don't know if I told a lot of people, but I am teaching in two schools.  This one is in the city, only 30 min walk or 15 min bus ride.  The other one is in a pueblo, or town, 45 min drive away.  Obviously, this was a huge concern for me because I have no means to get there.  The first option they presented was a bus.  They volunteered to cover all of the charges, but still, a 45 min + bus drive would be annoying.  Well, it turns out that we called the other school and they have an English teacher who drives from Badajóz.  However, that teacher is on leave for some reason.  The great news is that the substitute also drives from Badajóz.  So even when the teacher returns, I will have a ride. ¡Qué bien!

So, right now things are looking pretty good.  We have orientation this Thursday and Friday in Cáceres, the other autonomia in Extremadura. I start actually teaching the first of October and vamos a ver, we will see what happens.

Finally, the weather here has been brutal.  It has been 90+ degrees (Fahrenheit, not Celsius).  Emma, do you think I can take my parka off now?  They say that it gets cold during the winter, but cold for them might not mean cold for me.  It never snows, but it sometimes rains which means it can't be too cold during el invierno, the winter.

I'm going to try to update this blog once a week.  Obviously, I have been writing more frequently as I've posted 3 posts in a weeks time, but I'll try to keep it to just the highlights.  Below you will see a video of me giving a tour of my new apartment complete with Jacob awkwardness.  ¡Aprovéchete!