Parque Cabaneros

Last Wednesday, I was able to go along on an excursion (field trip) with all of the infantil classes as well as primer curso (first grade). There is a national park close by called Cabaneros, and apparently the younger classes get to go every year. Pretty much the whole day I tagged along with the four year old class (one of my three favorites). Their teacher, Mari Carmen, is super nice and always takes tons of photos of everything, and she was cool enough to give me the ones from Cabaneros! Other than showing the pictures, there's not much to tell about the field trip...there were a lot of ciervos (deer) and it was very cold, haha.


This is the entire 4 year old class. From left to right, it's Paula (I absolutely adore her, she's my favorite!), Pablo (he's a little slow; I think he may be autistic), Maria, Carlos, Raquel, Jose, Carla, Manuel, Alejandro. And the woman here works in the park.

This is Maria, Alejandro and Pablo in the bus going through the park. Alejandro had heart surgery earlier this year, so he only started coming to school a few weeks ago. But he's hilarious, I have stories about him haha.

This is me, Maria, and Alejandro.

This is Jose, Carlos, and Manuel. I have a very funny story about Manuel, Paula and Carla which I'll write later haha!

Carla, Raquel, and Paula.

Me walking with Paula and Pablo.

So the funny story with Manuel...lol...my first day teaching their class, Paula started crying and ran up to teacher, whining, "Seno, seno!" which is an endearing term for "teacher" that all of the little kids use. I couldn't understand her very well, but she was pointing to Carla and calling her a mentirosa (liar). Their teacher, Mari Carmen, asked Carla to come over and asked the two of them what was going on. Apparently, Paula wanted to marry Manuel, and Cara knew this, but said that SHE was ging to marry Manuel intead of Paula. Mari Carmen asked Manuel if he wated to marry Paula. He shook his head. She asked if he wanted to marry Carla. He noddd his head. So then Mari Carmen had to explain to Paula that the situation was out of anyone's hands, that it was fate. Paula was displeased, so they decided that everyone could take turn being each other's boyfriend and girlfriend. Paula and Carla made up and eveyrthing was fine again, haha!

Two and a half months in...

So I'm finally starting the blog! I didn't have internet in my apartment until a couple weeks ago, which made it very difficult to update.

But for starters, these are my roommates:

This is me, Noemi, Heather, and then Brianna, my best friend from home...Brianna obviously doesn't live with us, but she was visiting the weekend we took this picture haha! We live on the western side of Ciudad Real, about 10 minutes walking distance from the city center. The city is very small...it only takes about 35 minutes to walk across the entire thing! Here are some pictures of our piso (apartment):

This is the salon (living room)...Jeff sent me those beautiful flowers for our 1 year anniversary :)

This is one of our two bathrooms ^

^This is our kitchen...washing machine but no dishwasher ugh! And no clothes dryer either.

My job is very relaxed and easy. I work Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, and the normal school day ends at 2pm. However I have an hour commute each way, and on Mondays and Thursdays I give extra English lessons so those days turn out to be pretty long...Mondays are the worst: I leave my piso at 8am and don't get back until about 7:15pm. But during the normal school day, I teach 3-11 year olds. The little ones are SO CUTE, oh my goodness! Spanish children are WAY better looking than American ones, haha. Their eyelashes are insane! But anyway...I teach at two different schools. The one in El Robledo is the main school, but for two hours on Mondays, and well as my extra classes on Thursday, I teach in a town called Pueblonuevo. Pueblonuevo is VERY small; there is only one infantil (preschool) class, which is ages 3, 4, and 5. There is also only one primaria (kind of like 1st-5th grade) class, which has 9 kids across three grade levels! There is also one class for "middle school," but I only teach a couple of those kids in my private lessons. So needless to say, of the children I teach, I know everyone's name.

Because I only work three days a week, it leaves me a lot of time to do other things. On Tuesdays, I always cook a big Spanish comida (lunch, which is the main meal of the day...it's normally three courses) for my roommates and myself. I also get to take siestas (naps) all the time because the town is so traditional; everyone closes during the siesta hours, so there's never anything I can do outside of the apartment! I also get to sleep in a lot, which is great, because the Spanish lifestyle is very nocturnal. When my friends and I go out on weekends, we don't leave our piso until at least midnight (normally about 1am), and we stay out until about 6am. The first couple weekends of this were tough, but I've gotten used to it now, haha! Here's a photo of some of my friends:

From left to right, there's Ekin (he's from Istanbul and very interesting to talk to; he's here studying abroad), Noemi my roommate, Kylah (she's from Florida, doing the same program as I am), Me, Steven (he's from Boston, also doing the same program), and Heather my roommate.

It's a shame that I wasn't able to start this blog sooner because there's so much to catch up on!! I think for now I will try to organize my posts into subjects or somthing. :)