Tengo que aprovecharlo

Tuesday, March 11th

This week was a pretty good school week. On Tuesday, the students were learning a few instruments, because since they were learning about farm animals, the story Peter and the Wolf was in their book, but actually it wasn't... Their book usually has videos and stuff that go along with the workbook pages, but this time it just mentioned Peter and the Wolf and had a workbook page, but there was no video or anything. It was strange, because if a student didn't know about that story, then they would have been out of the loop. Even though there's not a story, there are songs and it's so awesome to hear them sing them! It's so cute!

After school, I had the exchange with Esther, which went really well. We talked about 11-M (pronounced own-say em-ay) which is what they call the day of the terrorist attack on the trains in Madrid, just like we call the Twin Towers attack, 9-11. Tuesday was the 10 year anniversary of it so I read part of a newspaper article and Esther let me keep the paper and she lent me a book, too, which I've already read quite a bit of. It's called Martes con mi viejo profesor...maybe you've heard of it. You most likely have. In English, it's called Tuesdays with Morrie, written by Mitch Albom, the author of The Five People You Meet In Heaven. It's a good book so far and I'm happy to be reading it in Spanish. :) After the exchange, I went home, made dinner, watched some T.V., and started four more job applications for teaching positions for next year. And that was my Tuesday. :)


Wednesday, March 12th

My Wednesday consisted of going over the parts of a tree and plant with the first graders and reviewing types of trees with them. :) They call the willow tree a Pocahontas tree and I absolutely love that! Pocahontas was probably, no definitely, my favorite Disney movie when I was younger so it just put a big smile on my face to hear them call it a Pocahontas tree. :D After that I taught a kindergarten class. I did a short Powerpoint about the U.S. and then I had them color the US American flag. :)

After the kindergarten class, one of my English classes started on the next unit, which is learning the places in town, so like cinema, post office, library, etc. Then, I had one of my favorite classes (I know you're not supposed to have favorites, but I really do enjoy this class), but they were a bunch of crazies on Wednesday! I don't know if the spring weather is already getting to them or something, but they have been off the wall lately. However, we did get them to pay attention long enough to learn the "ch" pronunciation, which was good. But, when we asked them to name some words with "ch" they were naming a lot of words with "t" so fourteen became fourcheen. Whoops.

After school, I had my lessons where one of the girls made/gave me a bracelet that are pretty popular right now. They are made out of rubber bands and they are pretty cool. See picture below. It was so sweet and I felt pretty special for getting one.

Once home, I watched some T.V. and just relaxed and then it was off to bed.

Thursday, March 13th

Who would have known that the bracelet that I got on Wednesday would have caused a ruckus on Thursday. Well, I mean, it didn't really cause a huge ruckus, but it was a ruckus nonetheless. I can't change anything without the students noticing. I mean I wore one rubber band bracelet (even with a long sleeve jacket) and still I had a TON of students ask where I got it and if I made it myself. They were pretty excited about it because of course they had one, had made one, etc. I told you they were popular. Anyway, once we got into the class time, we taught one of the other classes about the "country" fair. This time I didn't have as many students color the tractor red, but it was still probably the majority. But, I also saw green tractors, blue ones, and an orange one in this particular class. Ha. In another class, we started a new unit in English, which is fruit, which the students already know from Science, so we should breeze through this unit, just like the last.

In the afternoon, once again we had the drama workshop. It went pretty well. It actually wasn't as hectic as last week. This week in the workshop, we finished the students' costumes and then they "acted" out the play. They didn't have their lines memorized and we only went through the short play twice, but I think it was still fun for them. Also, the prince was adorable! He was really the only student that had his part memorized so when he came on and rattled off his lines, it was so cute!

The Three Little Pigs

After school, I had my private lessons, they went pretty well, but sometimes I feel bad not knowing more about soccer, technology, or video games. I try my best to keep up with the conversation though. Walking back to the train station from my lessons, I think I got hit with the first real "Omg, I am going to miss my students next year" moment. When I was walking, one of my students was walking with her mom, little brother, and her dog. And she started smiling and running at me and calling my name. And I heard her mom say something along the lines of "With that smile, it's obviously Andrea," saying that of course it was me walking because her daughter got a huge smile across her face. And by the way, her dog was adorable and just like the one in the proposal. :) And can I add how frustrating it is to not be able to communicate with the parents... The students can't know that I speak Spanish, so the jist of my conversation with this girl's mom, was "Hola" and "Hasta luego." That is not a good parent-teacher relationship and it kind of drives me crazy sometimes. And I'm sure it's weird for the mom to have her daughter running up to me with a huge smile and then not being able to talk to me, but yeaa... Anyway, what I really wanted to get at with this story is that I am really going to miss my students next year. I feel like I am abandoning them and I feel guilty for it. I realize that as a teacher I will have lots of students that come and go, but when that happens it will be the students leaving. They will be leaving and moving on to bigger and better things and I would have taught them all that I could, but in this sense, I am leaving them. I almost feel like I am letting them down. :/ I mean, they are fully capable of moving on and learning without me, but I still feel bad and I really am going to miss them, but that's okay. It's not that time yet. I still have a few more months to aprovechar.

Anyway, once I got home from lessons, I made dinner, did some job application stuff, and then watched La Voz Kids. I have been watching it in the background for the past couple weeks, but I wanted to watch this week specifically because one of the girls that was on it passed away on Monday. Her name was Iralia la Torre and she was 11 years old and she died after battling cancer for four years. Click on the link to read a brief article about her and to watch her blind audition that she had. Anyway, on Thursday, they aired a previously taped episode of the battle that she with two others. It was pretty cool to see her get chosen to go on, but very sad knowing that she has passed. I'm sure her family would welcome prayers.

Friday, March 14th

On Friday, I went to school and had a 1st grade Science class first. Since the students are finishing up their unit on plants, we planted a few beans in two small jars, so we are going to see how those progress through the rest of the year. It should be fun. :) After that, I had a kindergarten class where again I did the lesson on the U.S. The students are so cute with that. They like coloring the flag. See below. :)

After those lessons, I had the teacher's class and I taught them about connectors, which are words like therefore, however, nevertheless, though, etc. It went pretty well, but it was grammar heavy and we didn't have time to do the activity that I wanted to do, but we will do it next time.

Once I got home, I hung out, submitted applications for two jobs, cleaned, and then picked up Tonisha and her boyfriend, Ross, from the bus station! If you haven't been following this blog since the beginning than you won't know who Tonisha is, but don't worry, I will tell you! Tonisha was in the same program as me when I studied in Peru! We became great friends there and we traveled a lot together and she and her boyfriend are currently in the south of Spain doing exactly what I do! So they came to Madrid to visit me/pick up a friend from the airport and it was so great seeing them! On Friday night we just hung out and talked and went to bed, but stay tuned to hear about the rest of our weekend! :)