HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD! Hope you’re still able to enjoy today even with your ankle. :(

It’s like 70 degrees today! The sun is out, the wind is almost nonexistent and there’s not a cloud in the sky. It’s a gorgeous day to be outdoors; I may go read in the park…

School today seemed to go by very quickly! First hour I was in 2B. I reviewed some clothes vocab with them (to practice pronunciation mostly, since they’ve had this vocab for several weeks). Later there was a picture of four different people in their book and I described what each person was wearing and they had to guess which person it was.

As per my schedule change, in place to 6B, I went to 3B…and sat there. I talked with Lourdes a little bit about some Easter activities, but that was it.

In five-years A we listened to a song to practice the clothing vocab they’ve learned. We mimed putting on shoes, trousers and a hat. It seems like each week we lose more and more class time because they’re always hungry and restless. Today we only had class for about half an hour, instead of 50 minutes because they were complaining so much.

With the four-year-olds, Sandra is putting booklets together of all of their worksheets from the beginning of the year, and so they colored a cover page for that. It was a picture of the main character from their English materials, Ellie the Elephant.

I don’t have a lesson today, because with Pilar gone Juan An said he didn’t have anything to study (with me) and apparently Carlos doesn’t either. I was going to go over to Arturo and Teo’s later to do laundry, but when I got home, I got a big surprise! Will told me they’re coming to give us our new door, in about an hour, at 4:30!!! I’m super excited—it’s almost been a month since it broke for good. Also, at seven o’clock I’m meeting up with a teacher who taught English at Gerardo last year and we’re going to have a conversational hour—half in English and half in Spanish…it’ll be good practice for both of us!

Xoxo,

Court

It’s 61 degrees and partly cloudy today. It’s a little windy, but other than that, it’s a pretty nice day. The forecast is calling for the 70s over the next few days, so it should be a pretty nice weekend!

I got to school this morning and Alberto told me that María José was sick and so 5B wasn’t going to have English. I was headed to look up some activities for Easter and then the 5A teacher, Pilar, asked if I could teach something, or at least be in there, along with her, so they could at least have English today. So I went and we corrected a couple of workbook pages and then did this other worksheet.

We started talking about Easter with the fourth years. I found a few songs to sing and then I talked about traditions in the United States. There’s still a lot we haven’t covered yet though, like some vocab, videos and coloring sheets, so that should take us up until break.

With Espe’s 1B we were also in the video room. She said they’d been taking an exam all morning and needed a break and so we watched this like two minute video in English about an ant who gets saved my a pigeon, and then later he saves the pigeon’s life. And then all the kids were like “BobEsponja—en español!” (SpongeBob) so we watched cartoons (in Spanish) for the rest of the hour.

This afternoon I’m totally watching some Modern Family! I bought some blanks CDs yesterday and Will burned the first several episodes for me. I’ve only seen a few episodes from the current season, but I LOVE it, it’s hilarious! So now I can watch all of them!

Xoxo,

Court

It’s nearly 60 degrees today and sunny at the moment (although it was raining as I was walking home). I actually got a little warm while walking back and forth from classes earlier, but when the sun went into hiding and the rain made an appearance, it was a rather chilly.

First hour was split with the three-year-olds. I went to Julia’s class first and they were just finishing up the “Buenos Días” song. Then Mayte called roll in English and we counted the number of students in school and at home (17 and 3). Then Julia taught the class a few tongue twisters for spring.

Ángela’s class is learning about fruits and vegetables, so they went over those several times (and I would say the name in English). The student who said the word first took the card and stuck it on the board. It’s amazing how into it they were! Some actually got upset if they had said the word but weren’t able to put it up there—but they are three, I guess!

5A is reading a comic strip book based on the novel “Around the World in Eighty Days”. They were working on questions and doing an assignment for the majority of the time, so I didn’t do much. Although I was able to go over the assignment with them with ten minutes left in class.

1B had a little quiz of sorts. They had this picture of fish and the bubbles from their mouths had different letters to spell out animals (lion, elephant, dolphin, etc). Below the big picture, there were smaller pictures of the animals and they had to find the word and write it underneath the picture. Later, I said “color the fish/lion/dolphin red/yellow/blue”. Espe had predicted that some would have trouble with it and she was right…they took a long time; we almost ran out of time and had to rush towards the end of the hour.

In five-years A we did this activity to practice putting on and taking off clothes. Espe had this poster of a scarecrow in which we could change the shoes, hat, pants and shirt. We had one student at a time go up the board and I would say, for example “put on the purple shoes” or “take off the yellow hat”.

In place of Pilar’s 6A, I went to 3A Plástica (aka Art). I’d never been to Plástica before, so I was interested to see what they’d do. It’s wasn’t what I’d expected: they colored this picture of a castle. So I sat there as I usually do with the third years and watched chaos unfold, as Raúl reached into Lourdes’ coat pocket, stole her keys and tried to run out of the class. Oh how I hope they find a replacement for Pilar sooner rather than later!

I’m gonna go to the chino store when it opens back up at five to see about getting some blank CDs, for Will to burn some Modern Family. Oh and I also need to call this lady about possibly giving her a class. I hope it works out!

Xoxo,

Court

And my schedule has changed again—for the time being, at least. Last week I found out that Pilar is pregnant and is really worried about the baby. And rightfully so I learned that she had a miscarriage in November. So she went to the doctor I think Friday and he basically has ordered bed rest, possibly until the baby is born, which is gonna be a while—as she’s not even showing yet. So all my sixth year classes have been changed until they can find a sub English teacher. Guess which classes two of the three hours have been replaced with? Wait for it…I don’t even wanna say it: third year…NOOOO!

In place of 6C first hour, I went to bilingual science with Lourdes and 1A. That wasn’t bad. They’re talking about weather conditions, so I described a picture of the weather from their books and they did fill-in-the-blank sentences about it.

In 2B I helped this kid, whom had been in China for a month and a half visiting family, get caught up on a comprehensive exam. That was rather boring—I basically sat there and gave him many of the answers about colors, animals and numbers.

I didn’t do anything for the last two hours with third year. Wait, no, I take that back—for the last six minutes with 3A (last hour) I read them I VERY short story with eight fotos—though I did have to stop numerous times in order to wait for attention.

I have my lesson with Juan An this afternoon, although I’m not sure what we’ll do since we didn’t have class today. I could always have my lesson with Carlos…they did the clown activity like I did with 2A on Thursday. We shall see…

Xoxo,

Court

Today has been very low-key. At the store yesterday, Will decided he wanted to make an American breakfast this morning. We had pancakes and bacon (they actually have the Oscar Mayer brand here, go figure!). Gunita helped him with that and then I did the dishes. I cleaned the bathroom after that. I went to church at 6:30 and got home 15 minutes ago. I’m trying to download season one of Modern Family, but it’s being SO slow…it’ll be a while. I think the others are going out to dinner later. I passed; I’m trying to save some money for Germany, plus you know there’s whole pay-sharing thing, so it’s better not to go I think!

Xoxo,

Court

I’m so glad it’s the weekend! I’ll be catching up on some sleep over the new few days!

It started out nice and sunny this morning, although the wind is still making its presence known. I went over to Carmen’s at 11:30 for our weekly chat and espresso. We talked longer than I thought—at 1:45 she was like “Well, I have to go pick up María now.” The time just flew by today! We talked about the washing machine and how it’s still not fixed. Then she started telling me about how her mom used to wash clothes the “old-fashioned way”, with a tub of water and a scrubber thing. That evolved into the Amish and modern day technologies and a few other things.

I hit the store on the way home, as I usually do. Then I got home and Gunita was like “Jesús is coming over and we’re going to the store at three”. So I went again. But it was a different store, so it was ok…and of course I still found things to buy!

By the time we left Mercadona, it was pouring outside. That made it fun to unload Jesús’ car. It wasn’t actually that bad. I’m just glad we had a ride and didn’t have to walk.

We got home about half an hour ago and it’s pretty quiet around her now. The rain has stopped, but the sky is still kinda dark—good napping weather! I’m not going to do anything tonight…I’ve been on the go the past three days; I just want to hang out!

Xoxo,

Court

HOLY WIND, BATMAN! It’s been so incredibly windy today and yesterday! Combined with the cold, it’s been kind of miserable. Yesterday was quite a tiring a day. I did the same thing with 5B that I did with 5A on Tuesday. Wendy was in Rocío’s 4B class, so I just kind of sat and listened that hour. Also, there was a Bulgarian English teacher named Bodie here from Tomelloso. I’m not sure why she was there (maybe she’d heard that Wendy was here) but she stayed for a couple of hours and I skipped 1B to have a chat a coffee with her. The last two hours with 4A and 4C Wendy was in other classes, so we continued talking about different states—this week it was California, New York, Illinois and one other one I don’t remember.

After school, we went to nearby El Toboso for lunch and to follow some of Don Quijote’s route, including Dulcinea’s House (yes, we did this in October when Carol, another Irish teacher, was here). Then we went to Campo de Criptana to see the windmills and walk around a bit, but everything was closed. It would have been more fun/better if it wasn’t SO WINDY, but what can you do? I got home at 7:00 and I was so tired; I was in bed by 9:30.

I don’t think today is as windy as yesterday (don’t get me wrong, though, it’s still really windy). In 2A we listened to this short little story about a clown and then the students had to put the phrases from the story in the correct order. I then wrote sentences up on the board and they had to draw/color a clown based on what I wrote (i.e. the clown has got purple eyes/red nose/yellow mouth/pink hair…)

With 6B I first helped them correct their homework and then we did this fill-in-the-blank activity Saint Patrick’s Day activity they didn’t have time for last week.

I didn’t go to the other classes because Wendy and Aurora were trying to get a video conference going with her school there in Ireland and I wanted to see it. The problem was Wendy has never used the program before and it was being difficult. We finally got everything squared away about 1:30, so they were able to chat a little bit. Some of her students were there and Rocío and Pilar brought some of ours in, so it was kinda cool to see! I wish we could do that with some of the kids in NP, but the time difference is so great, when we leave school, their day hasn’t even begun yet.

We went for another lunch after school at Stone. I tell you these Irish get all the special treatment! It was Antonio, Alberto, Aurora, Rocío, Wendy and me. We ate some delicious paella! It was so good—I could eat paella every day!

I got home about an hour ago at four and I’m thinking about taking a nap now. I don’t know why, but I’ve been so tired like every day this week. I’m definitely looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow!

Xoxo,

Court