8/2/2012

Yesterday, Tuesday, woke up around 930 and went and met up with Kirsten.  We went shopping - she needed notebooks and I needed a binder.  We shopped for a bit, came home, and had lunch.  I had this wicked good.. I don't really know what to call it.  It was a mix of veggies - zucchini, green peppers, onions, some crouton-like things, with an egg over easy in the middle.  I took a picture of it, but right now I can't put it up because my phone charger is broken!! (Figures, my boyfriend and mother both sent me packages this week and my charger breaks today!)  But anyways.. it was delicious.  After I ate I hung out for a bit, then had my first two teaching classes.  The first one is Methodology of Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language.  The teacher is so nice.  Teaching teachers are always the same.  They are very nice, easy going, and run classes in a similar manner (group work, lots of open-ended questions with "no right answers", lenient).  So basically for this class we will be learning how to teach.  My class is all girls and they all seem very nice.   The next class was my Teaching Development class.  This class is the whole TDP group.  The group  kind of split off into two smaller groups, so it was weird being all together again, as we hadn't seen them for a while.  We had met the teacher briefly in orientation- he's awesome!!! I already learned a lot in the first day.  He gave us a packet he made called "Survival Spanish" with a lot of common sayings, misconceptions, and useful words and phrases for Spanish teachers. He is so enthusiastic and makes us feel very comfortable - which is important seeing as we will be teaching our own classes and none of us have experience.  I'm beginning to regret choosing 3-5 year olds because I feel like I would more enjoy teaching an actual class.  How do you teach 3-5 year olds English?! I feel like they're just going to be running around screaming the whole time.  Oh well.  After class, came home and ate dinner (left over pizza, salad with kiwi and tomatoes, and half a chorizo and cream cheese sandwich).  Then I skyped with Sarah and Nicole and we planned our trip for our first week off in April!  So the first weekend of the vacation my Mom and stepdad will be here, and we're going to Austria.  From there I'm flying to London, and going to meet up with Sarah and Nicole.  I'll spend Sunday night-Wednesday morning in London, then go to Dublin from Wednesday-Saturday morning.  We'll have all day Saturday and Sunday in Sevilla to experience Semana Santa!  So after we planned everything it was already midnight, and I realized I had 90 pages of reading!!! Ridiculous!!! And even worse, the way it was scanned online, the whole thing was sideways.  I was up til 4:30 doing it (I may have spent some time on Skype).  Today I had my cooking class again.  Just listened to her talk the whole time- it was pretty interesting.  After class I met with my intercambio.  We went to a cafe and ate.  I had a little "ensalada" sandwich (basically potato salad) and fresh squeezed orange juice that was wicked good.  My intercambio told me he failed his english test on future simple tense.  He then asked me about it, and I really have no idea to explain it because I don't know any of the gramatical rules.  I should probably learn that stuff.  We talked about cultural differences- meal times, movies (they watch American movies dubbed), weather.  He told me the weirdest thing about America that he's seen in movies - that the houses don't have walls or gates in front of them.  He said that every house here has a gate and multiple locks.  It just seems so crazy to him that we don't.  He said if the houses were like that here they would absolutely get robbed.  Then I came home, napped, ate lunch.  It was pork with blue cheese and another salad with kiwi, cheese, and tomato.  Then I did some errands and went to flamenco class.  The teacher lectured the whole time but it was pretty interesting.  After class met up with Kirsten, Michelle, Kimby, Nicole and Sarah, and went ut for Kirsten's birthday.  We went to a place and got tapas.  Well we got the plate sizes and shared.  The place was soo good.  We got spinach salad with goat cheese, walnuts and honey, fried potatoes with three different sauces- brava, blue cheese, and another I forget, tomatoes with cheese and oregano, some kind of meet in a fried ball thing ( I forget what it's called but it was really good), and fried rice.  I have pictures that I'll put up, but everything was awesome.  We then went to Huelva Ocho to watch free flamenco.  It worked out really well.  At 9:30 they have a show that you have to pay for.  Then at 11 they do it again, but it's shorter (so I don't get bored) because a student performs (only for a minute).  But the flamenco and the singing was awesome here.  Way better than the last time I saw it.  I took a few videos of it.  Really good.