Sunday, February 23, 2014

Madrid Enverbenado

Wednesday, February 19th

This week was a pretty good week! On Wednesday, I had school and the students were learning the words firefighter, ambulance driver, and police officer and they had to say what they were wearing, since they are also learning clothing vocabulary in English. And in Science, they are learning weather, seasons (which are both very easy because they already know it), and now the planets. Also, they are learning the water cycle, which is pretty interesting, I guess. I think it's so cool that they have Science in English. They get twice as much vocabulary as they would if they only have English class. Anyway, I usually have a kindergarten class right before lunch, but the class was on a field trip so I went to a different class instead and they are ahead of all the other classes and are learning more about food. The teacher asked them to name some fruits and vegetables and boy were they naming weird ones that I did not know the translation for in English or Spanish and some of them (once I knew the name in English) I still didn't know what they were. For example, a Saturn peach (paraguayo), it's a type of peach, but it is flatter. They also names leeks, which I didn't even know what those were until a few years ago, and they started naming types of things that I could not help translate, but some I could, like purple cabbage, cherry tomatoes, etc. Ha, the other auxiliar and I were joking and saying that the students were asked to name veggies and it turned into this...iceberg, romaine, escarole, chicory, etc. Haha, it's lettuce! All of it is lettuce! Really though, that's what happened. :)

Anyway, we had more Carnaval workshops in the afternoon where the students finished making their costumes. They made a belt buckle and taped white tissue paper to their costume to make it look like Captain Hook's shirt, and then they colored masks to hang up in the hallway and classroom. Also, you remember how I was happy that all the students in my group finished their hat and hook the day before..yea, this workshop I found out that one of the boys didn't even start making his hat. Whoops, not sure what he did the whole time, but yea. At least he definitely got it finished this time.

Anyway, Wednesday it was beautiful outside and that means that all of the kids were outside playing instead of at home and I saw seven of my students out and about while I was walking to private lessons. At one point I had five girls running at me screaming my name. It was both terrifying and the best feeling ever! :) The lessons were all good, however I did come across some more interesting English facts: read, ride, and write are very simple and hard to say if you can't distinguish the vowel sounds and the "d" and "t." Also, don't even get me started on present perfect vs. past simple verbs. This issue was brought to my attention last week and it is still bothering me! It's the difference between "I have ate" vs. "I ate." Did you know there are rules for which one to use? Did you know that I do not know them for the life of me! I had to help a girl with her homework and I had to ask her to get out her notes because I honestly didn't know which one to use. For the majority of the questions, both sounded right, but I always leaned towards the past simple, but yea..I have NO clue if I helped her or if I was even right. One of the hardest ones was. "Look! I _______ a window" Naturally, I would say "broke," but I believe (again, still not sure) that grammatically it should be "have broken" because it is recent news! GAHH! Anyway, that was my Wednesday. It was good.

Thursday, February 20th

On Thursday, I accompanied the 1st graders on a field trip to see a musical called Martina at the zoo. It was pretty good, but slightly annoying and I think the students were done with it after about 15 minutes or so. We sang The Wheels on the Bus though and that was pretty fun. Also, I think some of it was a little advanced for the students, but I also think the actress did a pretty good job in the majority of parts explaining things. Oh, it was in English, by the way. I guess I should have mentioned that first.

Once back at school, I played with the kindergartners and then helped Esther teach the water cycle to her class. :) Then, I had a few private lessons where again I had to deal with present perfect vs. past simple. We'll see this week if we got them all right or all wrong on the homework. Ha. The girls were seriously like..."Look! I have broken a window?" And I would be like "I have no idea." Whoops, some English teacher I am. After the lessons, I just went home and relaxed for the night.

Friday, February 21st

On Fridays, I usually go to school late, but now once in awhile I will be going to school at the normal time to go to Esther's P.E. class that she teaches. So that's what I did last Friday. I went to a first grade P.E. class and helped Esther out. She wants to know the name of all of the equipment in English and she wanted to write down all the mistakes she made while instructing the class. I think this is great for her and it's awesome that she wants to improve, even though her English is already really good! Anyway, after a few other classes, I didn't have the teacher class again because we practiced the dance for Carnaval this coming week.

After school, I went home and skyped my boyfriend and then went to Spanish class. We obviously usually don't have class on a Friday night, but since we didn't have it a few weeks ago we were making it up. After class, we went to a musical called Madrid Enverbenado. Enverbenado refers to verbena, which is like street music and a party. These parties are pretty popular in Madrid in the traditional neighborhoods and also copla, which is a type of music is traditional to Spain, so the musical had mostly copla music, I guess..I'm not really sure how copla is identified, but yea. I have included a song below that was sang in the musical called Rosa de Madrid and then there is a video of the two main people that were actually in the musical singing a song that they sang during the musical. As you can see from the second video, the female role is played by a man, so you can probably guess that the musical was a comedy and it was! Also, I understood pretty much everything and laughed at all the jokes and such! So I'm pretty proud of myself for that one and it really was funny, but also kind of dark. It was about an artist that was struggling and depressed and he had no inspiration to continue creating art. However, his crazy cousin, Rosa de Madrid, provided comedic relief! Anyway, here are the videos:

After the musical, we went out for a free drink (a typical Madrid drink..can't remember the name) and then I went home. I watched most of Pearl Harbor with Rocío and then I was exhausted and went to bed.

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