I've been kissed twice by 20 people today
Trip Start
Sep 25, 2011
1
8
68
Trip End
Jun 12, 2012
Where I stayed
Virgen de Cuadros
Bedmar, Andalusia, Spain
Monday, October 3, 2011
So kissing it was.
My day started at 7am. I woke up nice and early to get everything ready to go and have plenty of time. It was nice waking up to realize that some incompetent dope working at the mall forgot to remove the security pins on both my khaki pants and a blouse. I managed to get it off the pants without any damage but the blouse will be a job for another day. Nice work, mall employees.
Walking down the streets at 7:45-8am in Spain is a funny thing. Imagine 5am in a normal sized American city. This is what it looks like. The only vehicles are a few buses starting morning rounds, and the police. The sidewalks are inhabited by older men who are up having either their first glass of coffee or wine (not common but also not abnormal) for the day. I felt like I was up way too early to be going to work, despite that being a fairly normal time for most Americans.
The bus to work was of course, late. It left the station around 8:40 and we got into Bedmar at 9:15. School starts at 9, although all the teachers and administrators at the school did not seem at all surprised or phased by the time the bus was arriving. I spent the first hour of work mostly just meeting people and stopping in at a few rooms.
My first class was the 3 year old kids, who are in the day care center and only go to school 9-12. Most adorable children ever. I don't know what it is, but something about a cute little kid babbling in Spanish just makes me want to melt. We played some games with them, like a counting marching game. We also have English activity books for them to put stickers and draw in, which we helped them with.
My favorite kid took the entire class time to color one point of one out of four stars. He is totally me at that age. Everyone else had used all four colors and done all their colors, and he was immaculately filling in that one tiny area with no sense of urgency.
After about an hour of that, apparently we get an hour off for prep time. I think this is just on Mondays but I'm not entirely sure. I don't think anyone knows for sure what my schedule is. They all want to use me for English classes but it's Spain, so there isn't enough organization to streamline that. I just go from room to room where needed. Anyways, after that hour off it was the half hour break time for food and coffee. I was taken to go see the bar in the high school where I could get "a beer and a sandwich" for a snack.
Definitely don't remember having that in Verona.
After break, I had about an hour and 45 minutes between 4 classrooms. During this time, I gave each class my introductory presentation (which you can watch on facebook if you are interested). The presentation went really well. The professors were impressed....they said I was very organized and definitely made the presentation much more organized than most people do on the first day by including some pictures and videos. It seemed to get the kids interested in who I am and where I'm from, instead of just being a random American that showed up randomly.
The part I am most proud of was having 80 kids in Spain, at one point, chanting "GO PACK GO!" with a fist pump. They were teaching their friends as well.
After the presentation, there were always lots of questions.
The most common:
Is Wisconsin by New York City?
Do you have a boyfriend?
Are you married?
Do you have babies?
What's your favorite Spanish soccer team?
Do you like to eat pizza?
Can you speak Spanish? (I'm required to answer "no". They aren't supposed to know I can, so that they'll use English around me. This is actually surprisingly difficult. When you know how to say something in Spanish and you understand their difficulty in understanding you, it's extremely hard to not just translate for them and move on).
Most amusing questions:
Do you like to eat meat and potatoes? (this is the only thing this child said all day long)
Is he [pointing at Aaron Rodgers] your boyfriend?
What color is your hair?
Why are you so tall?
What american football team do you play for?
All in all, a very fun and successful first day. It turns out I will be working 9-2 Monday through Wednesday. So four day weekends every week, plus the abundance of Spanish holidays. I think I'll have plenty of free time to explore Spain. I wish hours for every job were like this!
I uploaded some pictures of the drive to Bedmar that I tried taking, but you don't really get the full effect of driving through the mountains. It's all around you
