Casi vacaciones

Monday, March 31st

Monday was a pretty good and relaxed day. I slept in kinda, relaxed, worked on my budget a little bit, and figured out more things for Easter break. It's coming up very quickly. As I write this, it's actually less than a week away! Crazy! On Monday night, I had my Spanish class and the most exciting thing that happened in class was that we had a debate about globalization. Since Karin and I are in the same class and are friends, we don't really mind debating each other when we are on separate teams. Ha. Our instructor had to tell the other students to talk at one point because Karin and I were going back and forth too much. Whoops. Ha. Hey, it's really good for both of us though because we were both practicing Spanish more. :)


Tuesday, April 1st

April Fools' Day. I did not play any jokes on anyone, sorry. And, no, April Fools' Day is not celebrated in Spain, well, not really. They do have a day similar to April Fools', but it is on December 28th and it's called Día de los Santos Inocentes (Holy Innocents' Day). School went pretty well. The students were working on review pages in Science, because they finished up the unit on places in town. In English, they are finishing up the fruit unit and with the workbook pages, they reviewed numbers, too, which I think was good for them. In the kindergarten class on Tuesday, we played alphabet bingo and they had a lot of fun with that. They think it's so interesting that we don't have the letters ñ, ll, ch, and rr, but really some of those letters are technically not in the Spanish alphabet anymore according to the Real Academia Española. After school, I had my language exchange with Esther and then I went home and made dinner. When Lucia got home, we sat down together and watched the finale of How I Met Your Mother. I don't know if you watch HIMYM, but if you do, then you know that some people liked the finale and others did not. Me, I was okay with it. It made sense; however, I did see one theory that a girl blogged about that I would've liked a lot better, but that's okay. On another note, I think the rest of the world and I can agree that it still wasn't better than the Friends series finale. :) So, of course, I had to watch that finale and then I hit the sack. :)


Wednesday, April 2nd

School on Wednesday went pretty well. The students are pretty much working on the same things as in the other classes, the science review and fruit. By the way, my plant is still doing pretty well. :) We are having behavioral issues with a few students, but we are working on it and trying different methods to get them to participate and pay attention in class. Also, during lunch, the teachers had a meeting with the special education coordinator at the school and I listened in on that meeting, so it was interesting to hear his takes on some methods to try out. Wednesday was also Día international del libro infantil (International Children's Book Day). It is celebrated on this day because it is the birthdate of Hans Christian Andersen. So in the morning the kindergartners heard the story The Ugly Duckling and then when I went to the class, they painted a picture of the ugly duckling. After school, I had private lessons. We worked on reading and I learned a lot about water because one girl was studying for her Science test next week. I learned about the water cycle, glaciers, rivers, oceans, waves, and tides, etc. I also helped the younger student work on the months of the year. She still has problems with them in Spanish, so we actually worked on them in Spanish and English. I know I'm there to help with English, but Spanish is pretty important, too, and if you have problems in one language, they are going to be problems in the other language, too. After I got home, I just relaxed. I have been starting to get sick and when I got home, I found out my roommates were feeling sick too, so that's no good. Hopefully, we all get better, especially before Easter break and traveling.


Thursday, April 3rd

On Thursday, we ended the fruit unit and played memory in one of the English classes. Also, my plant started wilting today. :( It must not have gotten enough water, but don't worry, we watered it. :) In the afternoon, we had the drama workshop. This was the second to last workshop, which I'm pretty excited about because that means that we can be done with them and that Easter break is SO close. I will say though that this workshop was probably one of the best days. The students did great with reading through the English play. I was impressed by their English level. After school, I had my lessons. My English fault this week in lessons was helping a girl with her homework. She had to fill in the blanks with the words extremely, really, very, rather, fairly, etc. They are all very close in meaning and some are synonymous, so hopefully I was able to help her. I always get lucky when she has her notes with her, so I can see what the teacher is giving her. After lessons, I stopped at the bus station to buy tickets for the last leg of our Easter break trip. Then, once home, I applied for two more jobs in Illinois and then relaxed. Everybody in my apartment is still feeling under the weather and I'm going up and down, so I pray that it stays up.


Friday, April 4th

Yay, the weekend is here. I feel like I have been running around for two weeks straight with the two weekend trips in a row and school and lessons during the week. I also still have to write my blogs for Aranda and Córdoba and I need to do that before Easter break or then I will REALLY be behind on blogging! Anyway, getting onto my day, I went to school early and had a P.E. class with Esther. We played chain tag and spider tag. The students really had fun with it and it's nice to see them just getting to run around and be kids instead of in a classroom setting. The rest of the classes went really well and I had the teachers' lesson where we worked on asking and answer WH questions (who, what, when, where, why, how). Oh, also, I forgot to mention, I wore a Spanish soccer jersey today and the students were excited about it. At recess, one boy was chanting España and I got him to chant USA instead! Ha, don't really think he knew what he was doing, but it was still so cute! :D After school, I went home and started looking for teaching jobs in Wisconsin as a backup plan. I started an application, but I have a few essays to write, so I gotta work on those before submitting it. But anyway, the rest of the day/night was relaxing. I skyped my boyfriend and just hung out. It was perfect and nice to not be traveling and busy. I had a great week overall and I hope you did, too! :D

Stay tuned for the Aranda and Córdoba blogs. Hopefully, I will finish those this weekend!