English Day / El Dia de Inglés

Esto también voy a escribir en inglés y español. Primero en inglés.

So this past week in school was stressful but also sooooo much fun. The bilingual department (with the help of a few other teachers - Marta (4 years old), Gema (grade 6) and others - put together an "English Day". This meant a day to learn about all the different countries that speak English. Each English teacher picked a country and made a "workshop" about that country. Then each class went around to each workshop and learned a few things about them and had fun. We had a workshop for the UK, Australia, and the USA (the other countries got the shaft since we only have so many bilingual teachers). At the end of the day on Friday, we had a parade where each class dressed up like something related to an English speaking country which was awesome.


I was in the workshop of the United Kingdom. It consisted of two parts - "London" and "Nottingham" aka Robin Hood. Needless to say, I took over Sherwood forest and donned the Robin Hood outfit and manned the dart throwing station. Pretty fun.

(Me and the 4 year olds in Sherwood Forest / Yo y los niños de 4 años)

The London part was manned by Carlos and Mercedes. We had made a big double-decker bus that we made and painted and plasticized so that the kids could sit in it and have their picture taken. We also made replicas of a red telephone booth and the big ben. It was a pretty complicated endeavor and we all worked really hard and it turned out really well.


One of the best parts was being able to play with the little kids and meet some of the older kids. The oldest are like 12 so they are, by all means, still kids and its fun to see them come out of their "too-cool-for-school" shell and be dorks like 12 year olds are supposed to be.


Of major mention is one 4 year old named Denisa. She is absolutely adorable and is apparently totally in love with me. She gets really shy when she sees me but she also doesnt stop smiling. Its to the point where her parents asked me if I would take a picture with Denisa. Which was probably the highlight of my day.

(Me and Denisa / Yo con Denisa)

The parade was great and some of the classes looked really good. You can see all of the photos in the facebook album. I walked with my 3rd graders and was dressed as Peter Pan for the parade. The costume was made primarily by Jessica with my help but she was kind of the mastermind.

(Me and my third grade class / Yo con el clase de tercero)

The last note of mention is that, at the end of the day, a 4 year old that I had just met that day came up from behind me while I was taking down the speakers and stuff and cleaning up and she says "adios" in this tiny adorable voice. I turned around to see her all alone just standing there saying goodbye. I gave her a really big hug and sent her off to her mom. Basically, working with kids is making me a total sucker for little girls and insuring me that I need to have a daughter in my future.

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Puedes ver las fotos aqui arriba en la parte del inglés.

Con esta semana pasada en el colegio venía un poco de estres pero lo que salió fue muy divertido. El departament bilingue (con la ayuda de otras profesoras, en particular Gema (sexto) y Marta (4 años)) hizo un "Dia de Inglés" para que los niños pudiero disfrutarse un poco y aprender un poco de la cultura de paises donde hablan inglés. Cada profesor del equipo bilingue seleccionó un país para hacer un taller de las cosas tipicas de allí. Luego, cada clase del colegio entraba en el taller para aprendery participar en las actividades. Había cuatro talleres en total - el Reino Unido, los Estado Unidos, Australia, y uno para deportes. Al final del dia el viernes, hicíamos un desfile por los padres donde los niños estuvieron disfrazados de personajes tipicas de los paises que hablan inglés. Habia vaqueros y vaqueras, indios, la policia britanica, Robin Hood y su mujer (como se llama aquí?), la familia real de inglatera, y mucho mas. Todos los niños desde 3 años hasta 12 han disfrazado por el desfile.

Yo estuvó en el taller del Reino Unido. Consistió de dos partes, una de "Londres" y otra del "Bosque de Sherwood" donde vive Robin Hood. No hay que decirlo, pero ya tengaís que saber que yo me he disfrazado de Robin Hood para controlar el bosque y el juego con los dardos y las dianas. Nuestro taller era "chulisimo" como lo que dicen aquí.

La parte que era Londres, la controlaban Carlos y Mercedes. Hicíamos uno de estos autobuses rojos de Londres y unas réplicas del "Big Ben" (el reloj de Londres) y de una cabina de telefono roja. Era un esfuerzo muy duro para completar todo pero todos nosotros hemos trabajado mucho y todo salío muy bien.

Una de las cosas que me gustó mucho era que pudía jugar con todos los niños pequeños y tambien conocer todos los niños mayores durante dos días.

Algo mas importante era mi abilidad de jugar y conocer mejor una niña de 4 años que se llama Denisa. Ella es absolutamente encancantadora y, aparantamente, completament enamorada conmigo. Se pone muy timida cuando esta conmigo pero no para de reir. Me da mucha gracia por que todos los niños son muy cariñosos pero no muestran los emociones tanto. Durante el desfile, los padres de Denisa me preguntaron si puedo sacar una foto con Denisa y esto era el momento cumbre del dia (aquí puedes decir "la almendra del día"?).

Pase mucho del tiempo con mi clase de tercero. Me encantan estes niños y como siempre, me pasaba muy bien con ellos. Ya me canso de escribir en español. Pues, hasta la proxima, cuidate.

El Dia De Amor

San Valentin was busy this weekend, making everyone in love more in love and everyone not in love... well...more bitter. It was a relatively normal weekend. My aunt Mavi came down to visit from Gijon for the weekend so I spent a fair bit of time with family. On Friday, we ate lunch at my grandmother's house as usual and I ended up staying there and talking for a long time. OH. Speaking of Friday. Here is a little bitter tale...

Chris and I have been attempting to jump through the hoops of securing out Spanish nationality aka birth right. I have personally been to the governemtn office 5 times, each time leaving and thinking "ok at least NOW I know what I need to get in order to get the nationality". Well needless to say, we went again on Friday and came back empty-handed after waiting in line for two hours. Not only do our birth certificates have to be authorized with the Appostille of the Hague from a consulate in the states (already jumped through that hoop), they need to be translated by a sworn and official translator into Spanish. They assured me that, after this, we are done. So let us all wait with baited breath to find out if the next time we waste the entirety of Friday morning we come back feeling just a little more Spanish.

Ok on to San Valentin and his day of love. To start things off, my soccer team got destroyed again, something like 7-2. Oh well..Jessica and I started the night off by cooking some tapas - in particular cherry tomatoes stuffed with a crab meat dip and "buñuelos" which are basically fried balls of cheesy dough and are delicious. After a few glasses of wine, we headed out to a nearby mexican restaurant which has amazing food and pretty damn good drinks. We split a thing of mole enchilidas which arrived impressively quickly for having been cooked in heaven somewhere.

After the mexican restaurant, we went out to a salsa club in the center of the city. The club was packed and the music was really good. For valentine's day the club was playing a game where everyone got a name tag with either the masculine or feminine form of a word and if they found their counterpart they got a free drink. I was "australiano" and, unfortunately I never found the lucky australiana. Jessica and I danced for quite a while and watched some really good people dance for almost as long. It definitely made us feel like we have to start taking dancing lessons. So we will see if we get the motivation to actually do that.

So that was Valentine's Day in a nutshell. (No pictures because we didnt have a camera...woops)

Young Love

No, this isn't about my girlfriend and I, but it is in honor of Valentines day.

Recently, we did an arts and crafts project in 3rd grade where the kids had to use pens instead of pencils. Apparently none of them use pen so the teacher and I lent out our pens. At the end of class, one of the girls who always likes to talk to me and ask me questions asks "Can I have your pen as a present?". Needless to say, I'm a sucker and I am one pen short these days. How cute are little kids? Really cute.

A N D A L U C I A

La segunda parte de esto es en español y la primera en inglés. En realidad es para que puedo practicar escribiendo en español y para que mi familia aquí puede leerlo.

The first part of this post is in English and the second part is in Spanish. Its mainly to practice writing in Spanish and so that my family can read my blog a bit. My written Spanish is pretty piss-poor (just ask the Spanish teacher from SPA207 at Princeton who refused to let me in the class), so it'll be a learning process.

Anyways, last weekend Jessica and I went on a trip with two of my coworkers, Laura and Manuel, to go skiing in Sierra Nevada, a mountain range outside of Granada. Not to be confused with the crap in California. The name literally means "snowy range" and that it was.


It was my first time to ever go skiing so I was naturally stoked about the prospect of spending the weekend on my ass. All of my coworkers were telling me that I was going to have to go skiing for at least a few days before being able to pick it up well and not fall constantly. Well, we drove down to the apartment we had rented out from some boyfriend of Manuel's sister's friend on Thursday night and hit the slopes on Friday morning. Manuel and Laura spent a couple of hours teaching me the basics and then a friend of Manuel's who is a ski-instructor came and gave me some pointers. Long story short, I'm obviously a fantastic skier and picked it up very quickly (or so they all told me). I fell a couple times when i got going way to fast but I skied some blues on the first day and had me a good time.


The big bummer of the weekend was that the weather turned miserable (snowy and high winds) so they closed almost all of the ski slopes on day two. So I only got one day of skiing in but it was fun and I'm definitely going to do it again. After we managed to dig the car out of the snow on Saturday morning, we headed to Manuel's home town, Cabra, which is outside of Cordoba.


We made a stop in Granada to take a peep at The Alhambra and grab some food and got into Cabra at like 5 pm. To understand our experience in Cabra you have to understand that the people of Andalucia speak with a very thick accent where they don't pronounce words fully, thus making it very difficult to understand.


We met Manuel's family which was an experience in its own. His dad was absolutely crazy and spoke with one of the thickest accents of anyone I've ever heard speak Spanish. But they were really great to us and pretty fun to be around. Manuel's friends were also a horse of a different color. We passed the night doing what is called a "Botellón" which means "Big Bottle" which involves a small group of people drinking and finishing a bottle of alcohol in a public place like a plaza. This is really the popular thing to do in Spain. So popular that some of the bars in Cabra offer a service where you can by a bottle of alcohol, a mixer, cups, and ice, all for 20 Euros. Manuel, Laura, Jessica, and I split a bottle of rum and hung out with Manuel's friends talking about so many random things. I remember being shown a cell phone video of one of his friends doing an amateur bullfighting thing and getting totally owned by the young hornless bull. Needless to say, we had a good time.


All in all a fantastic weekend.

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El fin de semana pasado, Jessica y yo fuimos a la región de Andalucia para esquiar en la Sierra Nevada y aprovechar del puente que tuvimos. Fuimos allí con algunos de mis compañeros de trabajo, Manuel y Laura. Manuel es de Cabra, un pueblo de Córdoba, y estudiaba en una universidad de Granada. Por eso, Manuel conoce muy bien la región y pasábamos muy bien con el Andaluz en Andalucia.

Era mi primera vez para esquiar y tenía un poco de nervios porque toda la gente me dijeron que pasas los primeros tres dias cayendo por el culo. Sin embargo, con unas horas de enseñanza de Laura y Manuel y un poco de consejo de un Monitor que era amigo de Manuel, lo cogi muy bien y estuve esquiando de puta madre entre unas horas. Jessica y yo bajábamos unas pistas azules y divertíamos muchisimo.

Era una pena que las pistas se ceraron el dia siguiente y no pudíamos esquiar por causa de viento y nieve pero pasabamos muy bien el primer dia y quero volver a esquiar otra vez durante el invierno.

Después de quitando la nieve del coche y saliendo del apartamento en la sierra, pasábamos por Granada para comer y para ver La Alhambra desde Sacramonte. Una cosa que me parecio muy impresionante era que, en Granada, puedes pedir una caña en un bar y te dan la tapa que quieras totalmente gratis. De una perspectiva madrileña, para pagar 4 euros para dos cañas y comida es imposible.

Desde Granada fuimos a Cabra, el pueblo donde nació Manuel y donde vive su familia. Allí encontrabamos un montón de "personajes". Para empezar, era muy dificil para entender los andaluzes cuando hablaban con un acento muy fuerte. Su padre habla completamente en andaluz y me costó mucho para entenderle. Tenía que concentrar muchismo cuando estaba hablando.

Mas que eso, pasábamos la noche con los amigos de Manuel charlando y escuchando historias. En Cabra, hay un bar donde puedes comprar todas las cosas necesarias para hacer un Botellón.Pues hicimos esto y pasábamos el tiempo allí en la calle, hablando por mucho tiempo sobre no se que.

Asi que nada. Disfrutábamos en Andalucia. Me gustaría pasar mas tiempo con españoles durante los fines de semana porque era muy buena practica y que ellos son muy divertidos, los andaluzes en particular.

Getting Caught Up To Speed

So a lot has happened since my parents left Spain after Reyes. So much that I haven't had time to squeeze it in here. So now I'll catch you all up to speed on the highlights of the last few weeks.

#1 - Drug Busted
One night, Jessica and I went out with some British friends, Emily and Dan, to a local Salsa club. This was after a few drinks at a "Jazz Bar" where they actually didn't play much Jazz music but, instead, had Jazz-related decorations on the walls. After spending about 15 minutes in the club drinking our free drink, we hopped onto the dance floor to strut our stuff. Literally (and here literally means that I'm, for once, not joking), we were on the dance floor for 2 minutes until the music cut out and the room was (magically) filled with police. Police of all types. It was like a menagerie of Police. There were policemen wearing berets, policemen wearing helmets, policemen that were undercover cops wearing normal street clothes and now had their badge showing, and the big shot detectives with trenchcoats and no badges because they are that important. Anyways, so I politely ask a nearby helmet-wearing policeman what the hell is going on. He responds "just an identity check". Oh, well, if thats the case, "I only have my ID from the United States, but here it is". Then this helmet-wearing man of mystery proceeded to walk off into the crowd with my ID. Basically, mistake number one was speaking spanish instead of playing the foreigner card. Jessica and the two brits got off without any trouble while I had to sit in the club and get grilled about why i wasnt carrying my passport. Long story short, they couldnt find my license for a long time and then shut down the club so we had to go home. Damn you Spanish police / parade-rainers.


#2 - Alicia Visits
Jessica's good friend from Kent visited us in the middle of January. I had never met her so obviously that was a lot of fun given her bubbly disposition but it was also great to have someone else around for a bit. Plus it got Jessica out of my hair (which she has been getting increasingly caught in as it gets longer...). The big highlight was that we went out to the biggest club in Madrid (7 floors) and had ourselves a get-up get-down good time. The theme was a "White Party" so we put on our recently bleached threads and made it happen. There was a giant fog machine in the middle of the main dance floor which sprayed fog straight down with quite force onto the crowd below. It was pretty much the most amazing thing I've ever seen and felt. Better than the touch, the feel of cotton, the fabric of our lives. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I have changed my entire wardrobe to consist exclusively of fog.


#3 - Como se llama? - O B A M A -
Inbetween now and the last post our country has managed to give Bush the boot and welcome in the big BHO. People over here are pretty excited about it. We watched the swearing in at a local Irish Pub and clinked some glasses to the hope of 4 years of change for the better.

Dia de Los Reyes

We allowed ourselves to spend American Christmas in Turkey, as far away from family as possible, with the knowledge that we would be spending the Spanish equivalent of Christmas with our Spanish family. My Mom and Dad (aka Miz and Rads) came from the states to spend some time with us and celebrate the holidays.

In Spain, some people celebrate Christmas on the 25th but most people celebrate "Christmas" on January 6th. This is known as "El dia de los reyes" or "The day of the kings". It celebrates the coming of the 3 Kings to give Jesus sweet presents. This places the big celebration after New Years Eve which is bizarre.

We passed the first part of New Years Eve with my family (from dinner until 12:30AM). We did the typical Spanish stuff such as eating the 12 grapes at the 12 chimes of midnight. After that we all went out to a private (ie VIP) party. We were invited to the party by the niece of my aunt's boss. We didnt know her or a single person there but we made do and made some friends and had some good times. Overall, not a highly eventful night.

The time with my parents was great. It was awesome to see their shining faces for a week and spend some time together. We did our own little Christmas away from the rest of the family where we cooked them a lunch and all that jazz.


We also went to a flamenco show which was pretty kick ass.


The big highlight of the break was, of course, "Dia de Los Reyes". It was the first time that my whole "direct" Spanish family (aunts/uncles and cousins) had all been together since I was 3.


We did what was called "Amigo Invisible" which is basically like a Spanish version of secret santa. Some people take it really seriously and nobody is supposed to know who gives who a gift. I ended up getting a whole slew of stuff for cooking - an apron, a cheese grater, a chefs hat, and a book to cook Spanish Tapas. Pretty flippin sweet.


Alas, after 3 weeks off of work, vacations have ended and its back to the grind. Stay tuned for a sweet story about our latest night out.

Turkey for Christmas

The irony of the title being that we spent the Christmas season in Turkey and didn't eat Turkey at all. Anyways, below is basically what I wrote down while we were traveling through Eastern Turkey.

Most of the good photos can be found on facebook here.

Day 1 - Culture Shock
Nothing here is familiar. It's positively and negatively amazing. I don't know a word of their language or a speck about their culture. I haven't the slightest idea of how to say thank you. In the first 24 hours there were a lot of feelings of helplessness and a lot of adventure but also feelings of guilt for not knowing more or at least wanting to know more until 8:27 AM the morning after a night bus to Selcuk. Eventually, the culture shock wore off after situating ourselves into touristy places and spending a little time by ourselves. The first real day was spent in Ephesus where we saw the purported house of the Virgin Mary where she fled after the crucifixion as well as a crap load of very well preserved ruins. The most impressive part about Turkey in general is the cheapness of the food (a sizeable lunch for 2 dollars if you know where to go).

(Chris and I in an ancient latrine)

Day 2 - "I'm from Spain"
The heckling done by Turkish people is quite unprecedented in my life. As you walk down the street in your culture-shocked-visibly-foreign clothes they pick you out and start yelling at you to gain your business - "My friend! Yes Please! Very Cheap!". Every store and every restaurant was the same. It came to the point that we began to say we were from Spain to deter the vociferous ferocious street vendors. The most absurd part of the whole thing is that, in Turkey, everyone uses the phrase "Yes please" to mean something like "hello", as if someone played a big joke on Turkey and purposely taught them all poor English. The most eventful part of the day was the night bus we took which involved us getting dropped off on the curb and told to get into a random taxi and not to pay him, then driving at 160 km/hr with a driver who spoke no English to a place where we had to transfer to another bus company who magically had reserved tickets for us. Yay for Turkish public transportation.

(Take note here that one bus company is called StarBatman and another Camel Cock)

Day 3 - A different Christmas
Today was Christmas but it wasnt quite like the ones past. We barely slept on the crazy night bus and arrived at 4:30 AM, checked into our hotel at 9 AM, wandered around, found food, and then went off to explore the ancient city of Troy. Troy, my friends, is no Brad-Pitt-Bad-Ass-Beautiful-Maiden Troy. Troy, my friends, is a pile of stones. Really haphazard excavations have left the sight unintelligible to the average tourist and totally not worth seeing. The only interesting parts are to see the geographical positioning of Troy (on a hill, next to the ocean, views of the valley all around) and get a feeling for its size. Anyways, the fact that the only historical reference to Troy comes from Homer makes the "purported existence" of the city of Troy seem like a little bit of bullshit. After Troy we had a nice dinner and opened our stockings since we had each brought some stuff to put in the others' stockings.

(Posing on some piece of history)

Day 4 - Foiled Plans and Beautiful Land
The plan for today was to go to Gallipoli, famous for the battles fought during WWI. Bad weather and the fact that we forgot that Friday was the Muslim holy day made for a difficult time. But we walked around for hours in the cold and then hitched a ride with a random trucker because we couldn't get in touch with any taxis. An uneventful day bled into an eventful night where Jess and I downed a few shots of Turkish liquor and then we all went out to a bar. The bad happened to have live Turkish music which was folled by traditional Turkish dancing after some of the other patrons had some beer. It may have been the beer talking but it felt really cool to be sitting in a Turkish bar with all Turkish people listening to Turkish music and watching / attempting to partake in traditional Turkish dancing.

Day 5 - Out in Istanbul

Most of the things we did in Istanbul were sight seeing minus a few select jewels. So I'm going to skip the litany of mosques and museums and get to the good stuff. First things first, I discovered this dish called Iskender which is normally some bread covered in mystery meat and a tomatoey sauce with a side of some type of Turkish yogurt to dip the stuff in. Its especially delicious when you get it with chicken instead of mystery meat. Get it if you go to Turkey. The best part about our first day in Istanbul was our first night in Istanbul. After a few more shots of Turkish Rakisi we went to a hooka bar that "had cheap beer". In reality, after we ordered the beers, the owner ran down the street and bought canned beer from the corner store, came back, and poured it into glasses for us. CLASSY. After fighting with a taxi driver who tried to rip us off and then threatened to call the police Jess and I found ourselves in the thick of the nightlife of Istanbul. We bar hopped a bunch to every free bar we could find, including a drag bar which we backpeddled out of after sitting down and realizing where we were. The night ended at Burger King which was delicious.

Day 6 - Turkish Delights
It poured on our last day in Istanbul. I had only brought one pair of shoes and they were soaking wet by lunch time and my feet were frozen. I swallowed my pride and bought a pair of used shoes in a sketchy alley for about $7. The absolute highlight of the day was the Turkish Baths that we all made reservations for. Aparently, the word "Bath" in Turkish translates to mean "large fat men splashing you with unnecessarily hot water, exfoliating you rather harshly, and then giving you an extremely unpleasantly forceful bubble massage accompanied by intermittent hitting". Jess and I also saw a Whirling Dervish ceremony but it wasnt nearly as memorable as getting the shit kicked out of you by a fat hairy Turk.