It is Christmas!

Man. Crazy how fast time goes by over here. It seems like just yesterday i was starting this blog and getting settled in. Now it's Christmas time. Thankfully (from what I remember) I've taken advantage of my time here. To start this one off I just want to wish everyone Happy Holidays and say that I miss you all.

So. This past Friday was the Christmas Festival at my school in Madrid. What this means is that the already adorable children dress up in even more adorable outfits and do adorable things in front of their parents all day. Then the teachers go out and have some drinks, eat lunch, and have some more drinks. Great time.

5 year olds (Natalia, Paula (so cute), and Irene)

I started the morning off bright and early with the Infantiles (age 3-5 years old) at 9 am, helping the teachers get the kids in costume and ready to go on stage at 9:15. It was the first time I had been with the 4 year olds which was a lot of fun. I instantly fell in love with a little girl named Denisa who wanted to hold my hand constantly and initiated the following conversation with me about 5 minutes after meeting me(in spanish though):
"How come you dont teach me?"
"Because I'm not allowed to!"
"Why arent you allowed to?"
"Because I have to teach the 5 year olds"
"Well I dont like the 5 year olds. You need to teach me!"
Denisa is the one on the right in this picture:


So the little kids did their thing and then it was time for the older kids and my third graders were getting ready to do this play about Rudolph. Its all in English and we had worked really hard to get everything right and they did REALLY well. A video excerpt from it is below:

(The video wouldn't upload. Its a damn shame. I'll try to upload it when we get back from our trip)

After that, all the stress was gone so we got to relax and hang out with the kids. It was and amazing day and a great way to end the semester because it reminds you of how rewarding it is to work with kids and how much fun they really are.
My 3rd Graders:

Alba and Georgina (adorable 3rd Graders):


In about an hour we are leaving for our week long trip to Turkey. So Happy Holidays everyone and hopefully talk to some of you over the vacation when I get back.

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!

Life is finally slowing down in the big Spanish city. A few weeks ago we had a frisbee tournament in Girona (close to Barcelona on the east coast of Spain). The tournament was the Spanish Coed National Championship. A good time but definitely wore us out due to our absurd selection of travel times - a return flight at 6:30 am followed by working 9 am - 6 pm. Anyways, Los Quijotes (our team from Madrid) took third place which was ok but we were hoping for a little better. Third place sufficed because they gave us a trophy and free sweatshirts which was fun. Its really not a surprise that third place gets a trophy because in Spanish ultimate it is litterally like everybody is a winner. No player left behind. And all that jazz.

But, the main point of this post is to say that Christmas is coming and we are getting in the spirit. We have a Christmas tree and stockings and hearts full of joy, love, and Christmas spirit. In reality, we will be traveling throughout Turkey during the real Christmas holiday so we are getting ready early. This coming friday my school has its Christmas Festival and all of the classes are going to do plays, songs, or dances. The third grade class I teach is doing a play that I wrote about Rudolph and the 5 year olds are doing a dance in which I will hopefully participate.






My school is also having a Christmas Dinner tonight where a bunch of us are all meeting up at some restaurant. It's apparently a really popular thing to do in Spain. Everyone goes out to a dinner with their coworkers for Christmas celebrations before the holidays begin. Should cook up some good stories about inebriated primary school teachers. Stay tuned.

Little Kids and Littler Kids

A post solely dedicated to work...

For those of you that don't exactly know what I'm doing, (which is probably none of you because I think beyond my close circle of friends and my mom and dad, nobody reads this) I am working as an assistant to teachers in bilingual public primary schools in Madrid. I work in a school in the northeast of Madrid called Dionisio Ridruejo which is about a 35 minute commute from our apartment. The school has been bilingual for 2 years meaning that the 3rd graders are the oldest students in the bilingual program and that the 4th graders don't have bilingual classes. I work Monday-Thursday approximately 10 am to 4 pm (not bad eh?). The big role-players in my work-life are Carlos, the Bilingual Coordinator and 3rd grade teacher, Manuel, the physical education teacher, Laura, the infant education teacher, Mercedes and Inma, the 1st and 2nd grade teachers, and Susie and Andrew, the other two assistants in the school. I teach primarily with Carlos in 3rd grade and then 3 hours a week with Laura with the 5 year olds. I have the good fortune of having PE with the 3rd and 2nd graders as well.

In the Bilingual schools in Madrid, the kids have Science, English Language, Arts and Crafts, and Physical Education all taught in English. The rest of the subjects are taught in Spanish by different teachers.

So. My job is basically to support the teacher and help in whatever way I can. With Carlos, I do a lot because I know the kids and I know the topics that we are covering and I am in the class every day of the week. With Laura, I typically get to play with adorable little kids and tell them to keep coloring. Another big part of my job is giving oral exams to the kids because the vast majority of their education is oral up until grade 3 and 4 and the teachers cant just step outside and give a 1 on 1 oral exam to each child.

Anyways. My 3rd graders are absolutely brilliant and awesome. They are (typically) very well behaved and very motivated. They also only speak in English when in an English class which is extremely impressive. The big excitement of the month is the Winter Festival that we are having on December 19th. Each grade does a dance, song, or play related to Christmas and, for all of the bilingual kids (Ages 3 - 8), it has to be in English. The 3rd graders are doing a play about Rudolph-the-red-nosed-reindeer that I made up. Its pretty adorable.

The 5 year olds are also really smart. Some of them know all of the colors, all of the parts of the face and the body (arms, hands, fingers, legs, knees, feet, tummy, etc.), all of the school objects (scissors, book, school bag), family members, and rooms of a house. Phenomenal. Plus they are adorable and precious. See exhibit A (I'm in the middle of all of them)


I also give private English lessons to a very intelligent 13 year old girl named Andrea. She's super smart and speaks very well. We basically just read books and talk about them and about life since the class is supposed to be strictly conversation.

We get a few weeks off work starting December 20th and we are going on a week long trip to Turkey during the Christmas holiday and then returning to Madrid to spend Kings day with my Spanish family and my Mom and Dad who are coming over.

P.S. I think I'm going to be in the school newspaper pretty soon. I'll obviously keep you posted.

A M E R I C A

I havent posted in a while so there will be a flurry of posts this week. I wrote this last week but never got around to adding the pictures. But here it is, a bit late...

While I have very little attachment to my country of birth, I have recently been missing many of the people and the happenings of the good ol' United States. Joined in this longing for past times by Jessica, Chris, and many of the American frisbee players, we decided to host an "American Party" this weekend. While I realize that I only make posts about drinking extravaganzas, this will soon change with a post all about my job. But first, I give you "La Fiesta Americana", viewable in facebook.

The latter part of last week, Chris, Jessica and I slaved away to make the party happen as planned. We decked out our apartment with American pictures and American things and concocted ideas of stereotypical American foods that are also stereotypically delicious. This left us with an apartment ready and waiting to show Spain an American Party. The entryway was "Ellis Island" and had a sign in sheet for all foreigners to sign. The living room was decorated with a big "Welcome to America" banner (made by Jessica) and a bunch of pictures of American things - Barack Obama, Nascar, Landing on the moon. You get the point. An unfortunate twist of events led to the poor state of New Jersey being the bathroom. I would also like to note that the bathroom contained all of the beer in the bathtub - i.e. ok Jersey may smell but we at least hold down the party.


A big portion of the frisbee team attended so we had representatives from Mexico, Spain, Venezuela, Germany, and many others. Good times. We rocked beer pong, flip cup, a good list of american tunes, and a spanish game oddly similar to robo (I obviosuly dominated). All in all, a great success and a great time with new friends but also a great reminder of the good times had at home and of the people that we all miss.

On Sunday, Chris and I went and walked around this placed called "Lago" which, ironically, is a big lake on the outskirts of the city. It was really pretty and a great place to hang out.


A post about work to come later this week! Miss you guys! If you actually read my blog, send me an update or something!

The Beach in the Fall

Chris and I spent this weekend (friday to sunday night) in Punta Umbria, a beach town in the very southwest of Spain. We played in our second frisbee tournament with the Madrid team, Los Quijotes. It was pretty amazing. The weather was beautiful (21 C which is warm enough for no shirt and tanning the hams) and the company was even better. The tournament was the Spanish national championship for Open (men only ironically) and Women so our women's team was there too.

We drove down in a rental car driven by a German named Chris. German Chris is quite a character and a really jolly and fun individual. He does, however, drives like a bat out of hell. The upside to this was that we got there quickly. The downside was that I almost had to be asleep to prevent being extremely stressed out haha. Friday night was the birthday of one of our players, Juan, so we all helped him celebrate in great fashion - i.e. by playing a Venezuelan version of Thumper that involved drinking a nice helping of beer if you happened to lose. German Chris had been drinking for quite a while and was thus in even jollier spirits at this point in the night. When Britney Spears "Hit me baby one more time" came on, he just couldn't resist and he broke out in song. After these escapades, my brother says "Man is he wasted!". I quickly reply "No, he isnt that drunk at all...". As I finish the sentence, chris knocks a 40 off the table and the glass bottle shatters on the floor, making for great irony.

Throughout the tournament, we played 6 games, winning 5 of them. We played pretty well overall and ended up finishing in 3rd place. Our women's team finished in 2nd which was also pretty baller. One thing to note about the tournament was the selection of food given to us. For those of you uncultured swine, at American ultimate tournaments, the gold standard for food is bagels and peanut butter. Here in Spain, apparently, they put a Spanish twist to the tourney food. Rather than bagels, you get baguettes, and rather than peanut butter, you get assorted spanish meats and some cheese and tomatoes. I thought it was priceless.

Overall, a fantastic weekend away from the cold weather of Madrid and a great tournament. The results bode well for the Mixed (guys+girls playing together) tournament that is in 3 weeks.

H A L L O W E E N

So. We had originally planned to be ninja turtles for Halloween but this plan fell through the cracks when we realized that none of us wanted to go to a club wearing a cardboard jankity-ass shell on our backs (since we obviously arent going to spend money on a costume). This plan quickly degraded into apathy and as Halloween neared,we still didnt have costumes. Jessica and I decided to salvage the night by buying vampire teeth, dressing up in black clothes, and drinking orange colored drinks (Tang, Vodka, and Fanta). Good Stuff.

We headed out to a local bar right next to our apartment to listen to some live Funk music and wait for the much anticipated arrival of Namita and Joe. The two guests came around 1 am so we left the club and met them at the nearby Burger King - the logical predetermined meeting spot. After meeting up, we decided to head out for a bit to a nearby dance club called Fog. It was extremely packed and we danced to such all star jams as Sean Paul - Give me the light. Or maybe it was some other Sean Paul song but, lets be honest, nobody knows the difference. Surrounded by some crazy spanish Halloween costumes, we enjoyed ourselves until around 4 am and headed home.

The next day passed uneventfully. This was necessary, however, in order to allow for such an eventful night. We started with a good home cooked meal made by Joe and Namita, accompanied by beer and wine. We continued to drink and decided to make it interesting by taking shots through straws. We ended up having so much fun that we didnt leave the apartment until 2 AM. We started walking to a district called Huertas about 20 minutes south of our place. On the way we encountered a very angry man involved in a heated domestic dispute. In the middle of a blocked off construction-site-type-thing this guy was yelling at these two girls and chasing after them and kind of hitting them, though not really. Out of nowhere he picked up a large brick and started chasing one of the women down the street. Absolutely insane. After buying beers from shady street vendors (selling them out of backpacks), losing Joe and Jessica once, we found our way to the club and enjoyed ourselves until 4:30ish. After drinking quite a bit we were all dancing like absolute lunatics. It came to the point where some random guy told Joe to "tranquilo" aka "chill the f out". A pretty phenomenal night in summary.

The remainder of the weekend Joe and Namita attempted to sell the bikes they had bought in Barcelona and prepared to head off to Cairo. It was great to see some familiar faces and have a taste of the good old princeton life. Made me a bit nostalgic for the last four years but also excited for the next 5 (or 6)...

Work and Coworkers

Two weeks have gone by since I posted about that crazy guy who was dancing at that club (see video below). The previous two weekends have escalated in such a way that suggests to me that I may have become that guy this past Saturday. Unfortunately I will write about this past weekend in the next post.

So the story begins...
Last Saturday, Jessica and I made plans to go out with some of my coworkers. In my school there are a handful of younger teachers that are all good friends. These include Carlos (teaches 3rd grade with me), Manuel (teaches P.E. with me and other things) and Laura (teaches the 5 year olds with me). In my work schedule I have 15 classes split among these 3 people and 1 class with someone else. So I spend a lot of time with them.

Jess and I had dinner with some other friends at a delishious mexican restaurant which ended with a round of tequila shots which killed my stomach. In the picture is our friend Nicole, a girl from the states who is over here doing a masters in Spanish. She is one of the many people we have befriended through frisbee.

We decided to go out to a club called Chango. We met up at our apartment at midnight since the club was very close to our place. A bottle of rum later we left for the club. By this time it was 2:45ish. Needless to say, the night was a long one. Filled with techno music, techno music, and techno music. Both Jess and I had a great time with my coworkers and I'm really looking forward to going out with them again. We ended up staying out until 5:30 AM which is our new Spain record for latest night out. Good stuff.

The week passed relatively uneventfully. A huge cold front came in and brought a lot of rainy weather with it which was no fun. So lots of time inside. Being a teacher has been really rewarding/fun lately. I've been giving a lot of oral exams to the students to test their knowledge orally because most of them understand things better orally than written. The third graders did really well on this last exam. I even gave an "exam" to the 5 year olds and a few of the students knew all of the colors, circle, square, big, small, the numbers 1-6, boy, girl, teacher, and the parts of the body (eyes, mouth, nose, ears, hair, tummy, shoulders, arms, hands, fingers, legs, knees, and feet). Pretty impressive.

Namita Bisaria and Joe Rokicki came to visit this weekend as a stop on their world tour. Great times were had by all. Check the next post for the low down on the shenanigans.