9/2/2012

Today, woke up around 9:45.  Luckily my phone hadn't completely died yet, so my alarm still worked.  Met at CIEE and took a bus to our school placement.  There are about 8 of us at this particular school, called Colegio de las Irlandesas.  We have to take a bus there - but it's not difficult.  There's a bus station right near my house, and the bus comes every ten minutes or so.  We got there for a tour, and the first thing the lady showed us was the infantil section.  The school is a small building, and when you walk in infantil has its own area to the right, and the other grades are to the left.  So we walked down the hallway, where there were two rooms of three year-olds.  They have long windows, and there were a bunch of little kids looking out at us.  They we soooo cute! They were giggling and waving.  Then we walked into one of the classes, got introduced to the teachers, who were young and very nice.  The teacher asked, "They're from the United States, what do you say?" "Hellllllo!".  They were adorable.  Then we went upstairs to see a class of five year-olds.  They were a little more outgoing, and some would say "hello" to us.  One little girl asked me "De donde sois?" (Where are you guys from).  I said "los estados unidos", and her face lit up and she looked at her friend, shocked.  Then we were leaving and a little boy ran up to me and blew me a kiss.  The kids were adorable.  I was no longer worrying about teaching the younger kids.  I'm sure it will be a lot of fun.  But, then we visited the other section - primary and secondary.  The younger primary kids were cute, but I'll definitely have more fun with the little kids. The only thing is I feel like I'm going to be playing with the little kids as opposed to teaching them.  We'll see.  So after Kirsten and I walked around because I needed to find a post office.  Then came home and had lunch.  It was a chick pea stew that was really good, with fresh bread and a salad with kiwi and apples.  Then I had my two teaching classes.  I was exhausted and they dragged.  And the first class, methodology, was horrible.  First off, I hate teaching classes (for the most part), because they make you do group work, and pointless activities.  The teacher laid out a bunch of paper throughout the class and we had to read them, then answer a true and false questionnaire.  It's just annoying.  And then we got into groups and were assigned a topic to discuss.  We then switched groups and taught our new group members about our topic.  Stuff like that is just annoying.  I'd rather sit there and listen to the teacher talk so I don't have to move.  But anyways, the topic was really hard too.  Big words, and in Spanish.  We were learning about linguistics.  Just boring, hopefully it gets better.  The next class was okay, we just learned more phrases the whole time.  The teacher is entertaining but I was too tired.  Came home and ate dinner.  Senora asked me to help her.  I toasted some corn tortillas while she made a tuna salad.  As I was watching her make it I was kinda grossed out.  She put tuna from a jar in oil with mayo and lettuce - fine, not a huge fan of the tuna, but whatever.  But then she put pineapple in.  I didn't think I would like it, but I was so hungry I didn't care.  It was delicious!  I think she uses different kinds of tuna- some from a can, and maybe some fresh? Well I like this kind.  And the pineapple tasted really good with it.  I also ate a little chorizo and cream cheese sandwich.  Then we watched a show that had people on it performing typical songs of Carnivale.  There were a bunch of older men dressed up like women and babies, singing corny songs.  I did not like it- and made me rethink my trip to Cadiz for Carnivale.  Creeepy.  Then we ate Natilla, which is vanilla custard, with cinnamon.