Alive and Well in Spain

Once upon a time, Leslie started a blog and was very faithful in writing in it until she disappeared from the face of the virtual blog world for two weeks. Then she resurfaced briefly to update her blog readers as to her well-being.

This is that update.

So I am, in fact, alive and well in my host-home in Spain! Today I completed the last of my teaching practicum hours and observations, which makes me unimaginably happy. I came to Spain with some serious concerns about teaching kids, and it seems that I was right- elementary isn´t my strong suit! The older the kids were, the better I did. I definitely had an easier time with my angelic Chinese high schools. Sadly, the cultures that tend to result in internally motivated, infinitely respectful students of this type are pretty much confined to the Far East, and far eastern cultures are much harder for me to deal with. So perhaps I´ll begin looking into the adult teaching possibilities that I can find.

That being said, the kids are a trip! All these little Spanish bodies, with hyper-energy (non-transferable to adults, as it turns out) and the standard foreign language phraseology:
Leslie: Hello, Carlos, how are you this morning?¨
Carlos: Finethankyouandyou?
Hilarious! Some of them can´t even say that much, but they´re having fun anyway, I think. The leaders here are really great. And I was blessed indeed to have a really good supervising teacher who has helped me IMMENSELY in my teaching. Here´s my biggest lesson learned during camp: learn to distinguish directed, noisy work from undirected, unfocused chaos. It seems they are not one and the same, after all.

In other news, God has blessed us with unseasonably cool weather for the first week and a half of camp. Apparently it should be in the high 90´s but we´ve been working with temps in the low 80´s and often a nice breeze. I hear-tell that´s about to change, but even so, the weather break has been FAN-TAST-IC!!

Funny travelling story #739: Leslie and Mel Come Home from Madrid.
It´s Friday night, and Mel (Melissa, a friend and classmate at Wheaton who´s doing the same thing here as I am), Misty (also a TESOL teacher, met her at camp) decide to go into the city to see the Thysson, a famous art museum. We saw a bunch of Van Gogh´s last works (so did we all know that he painted over 70 paintings and a bunch of sketches during the 70 day before he shot himself?? Artists…interesting people.) and then got some tapas (Spain is famous for these appetiser-sized dishes that are made into a meal). After supper we were walking past a little ally when my super-sensitive chocolate radar picked up a sign that read, ¨Chocolateria¨, and I dragged the girls back to see. We decided to get chocolate con churros, which is hot chocolate that is so rich and thick that it´s about halfway to the consistancey of pudding. Churros are, well, deep-fried sticks of…a sweetbread, sortof. Hmm. I think the closest thing in the states is CinnaStix at Taco Bell, except churros are to Cinnastix as those little chocolate coins you get at Easter are to the best European chocolate you´ve ever eaten. Aka, no comparison.

But I digress. After we had gorged ourselves on c&c, we headed back to the bus station to catch a ride home. Misty lives in Tres Cantos (a bigger suburb), so she took off on a bus before us. Mel and I waited for the single bus that went to Soto (a much smaller suburb which is just houses), where we both live. That bus came once an hour by that time of the night (we got the 1am bus…having not exactly met our goal of catching an 11 or 11:30 bus). Eventually it came and Mel (whose Spanish is considerably better than mine) asked the driver to tell us when to get off for Soto. He agreed. After riding for about 20 minutes and almost getting hurled on by the really drunk guy sitting behind us (pause to roll eyes at how annoying drunk people can be), the driver yells back to us, ¨The next stop is Soto¨. So off we get, and as the bus pulls away, Mel and I are realizing that this is NOT Soto, it´s Tres Cantos. We look around. It´s about 1:30am on a Friday night. We see a couple of guys coming out of a bar. We see buildings and trees and houses. No street signs, no one to ask for directions, and no idea how to get to Soto. The next bus comes in an hour.

So after a few minutes of steaming about the stupid bus driver and the stupid lack of street signs, we started walking. We walked, and we walked, and we walked. We walked through the ¨Zona Industrial¨, which means exactly what you think- factories. All deserted for the night, with chain link fences and huge, empty parking lots. I felt like I was in a scene from a horror movie. We decided to count our blessings and sing praise songs while we walked to get our minds off the annoying busdriver and the fact that any self-respecting mother would be fainting to see the two of us walking through the industrial zone at 2am. In fact, I hope Mel´s mom isn´t reading this…

Eventually, about an hour later, we reach our neighbourhood. Exhausted after a long week of camp and the long, unexpected trek home, we wearily bid each other a good night. As I walked the final block home, I though about how excellent my bed was going to feel. I walked up the front steps, put the key in the door, and…nothing. It wouldn´t turn. I´d been successfully using the key for a week at this point, and had, in fact, used it that morning to get out of the house. I turned and pushed and pulled and did everything I could think of, but no dice. It wasn´t working. It´s nearly 3am now. I literally cringed as I pounded on the door to wake someone to let me in. Dang.

The good news is that the next day as I was talking to my host-father (who had stumbled to the door to let me in), he asked me how I finally got into the house. He was so sleepy that he had forgotten the whole thing!

Speaking of my host family, they´re great. I feel like my butt´s going to grow into this seat, so I¨m going to sign off for now, but I promise to send more pictures and more news about the trip when I can. Hopefully, Monday, when I get home!