Christmas Vacation Part 2: Dublin and Scotland

12/31
Early early early this morning, Robby and I woke up, went to the airport and flew over to Dublin. There wasn't all that much open due to it being New Years Eve, but they couldn't close everything. We stopped by the Abbey theatre to buy tickets to that evening's show and we walked down the river to the Guinness storehouse since it was still giving tours. It was the old Guinness storehouse, but now it has been converted into a guinness museum and just gives tours there. I came into this museum knowing practically nothing about brewing beer, but I think I have a little bit of a better understanding now. At least now I understand what people mean when they talk about "hops."

With entrance to the tour, you get one free pint of Guinness, which if you wanted to, you could pour yourself. So and Robby and I went into the room and were taught how to pour the perfect pint of Guinness and enjoyed a pint in a comfortable little lounge. I even have a certificate that I did, after all, pour the perfect pint.
After the Guinness Factory, we went to see the matinee performance of an Irish Translation of The Governer Inspector at the Abbey Theatre. The Abbey Theatre is Irelands National theatre, dedicated to doing new works only by Irish playwrights, keeping the storytelling tradition of Ireland alive. Although this play wasn't originally Irish, I think because it was translated by an Irish playwright, it counted.  Unfortunately I was extremely tired due to hardly any sleep the night before, but I still enjoyed it. I won't go into my review of the show here, but all in all it was a good feel-good play, but it wasn't something to rave about theatrically. Still really glad I got to experience seeing theatre at the famous Abbey Theatre though.
Then, at night, Robby and I rang in the New Year together in Ireland.
It was an amazing amazing year, and I hope that the next one continues to be filled with happiness as well. I mean, I am starting off the year in Ireland, that's gotta count for something.

1/1/12
It's the New Year!! 2012!! This morning Robby and I did our fair share of sleeping in, but not too much so as to miss out on being in Ireland.  Like I said, since it's around the New Year, much is closed, but we still managed to walk around the city, see the outsides of cool buildings and churches, and walk around a neat park.
Tonight, we were cooking in the kitchen in our hostel and met a girl from Canada, two guys from the US, and two guys from Germany. So after dinner, we headed out for a drink at a nearby pub for a little bit and then called it an early night.

1/2
This is the trip of early mornings. With our hostel stay, we got a free bus tour of Glendalough, the Wicklow Mountains and the old Irish capitol, Kilkenny. Glendalough means valley between two lakes. We had a while to just walk around the woods and the lakes and also explore the old monastic ruins there. Robby and I took a wrong turn on one of the lake paths, so we ended up getting really turned around (Sorry Robby!) but we still had plenty of time.  The we went through the Wicklow Mountains where scenes from Braveheart and P.S. I Love You were filmed. On the top of the Mountain we got out of the bus for a photo opportunity and I walked on my first (and probably only) snow of year. The Bus driver was very chatty and had great stories to tell. He also had a great sense of humor which made the tour thoroughly enjoyable. For example, apparently at one point, we didn't run over roadkill...we ran over a dead leprechaun. And when we went over the bridge where a scene from P.S. I Love You was filmed, all the girls were supposed to let out a very long "awwwww".  Then our final stop was in Kilkenny which is the old Irish capitol city. There's an old Irish castle, a couple of abbeys and churches, and the Smithwicks storehouse. On the drive back to Dublin, there was some great traditional Irish music playing and the bus driver taught us some of the songs.  This was a particular catchy one:

At one of the "lough"s of Glendalough

The old monastic settlement there

The view from the bus over the bridge from P.S. I Love You

The castle at Kilkenny

Later that night, back in Dublin, Robby and I met up with our friend Julia and her friend Amanda. They had just gotten into Dublin that day for their Christmas vacation travels. We went out to The Temple Bar area and had a few pints. We ended up in The Temple Bar which had an amazing atmosphere (along with the overpriced drinks). There was a live irish band in there and I heard a few of the songs that I had heard on bus ride.  Even though the drinks were definitely overpriced at that bar, I absolutely loved it. The atmosphere was amazing.

1/3
Early early this morning we got up to take a bus to the airport to head over to Scotland. The wind was really bad that you could feel it shaking the bus and walking into the airport, it was hard to walk in a straight line. But our flight took off anyway for the longest flight of my life, even though it was only like 45 minutes.  The plane started its descent, but then had to pull up and circle around in horrible turbulence because the wind gusts on the ground were too much. I thought we were either going to die trying to land the plane or we were going to have to fly to another country and wait out the storm. We did land eventually. Not the smoothest landing of my life, but it was smooth enough to get us safely into Scotland. Our plans this day were to take a train up to Glasgow and spend our first day in Scotland with our friends Aileen and Steven. We're at the train station, and a message comes through the loudspeaker- all trains are cancelled until further notice due to averse weather. So we figure we'll just get a coffee and wait for it to get better and get on the first available train. Well...the roof of this train station is made of glass, so within an hour of us getting there, the whole train station was being evacuated. We didn't really know where to go, so we found a map and got ourselves to the bus station hoping for some luck there. But the wind was so bad that even the bus routes were suspended. We had nowhere to go and the weather was really too terrible to do any sort of sightseeing. So we just sat in the bus station waiting for busses to start running again. Luckily we didn't have to wait much more than an hour and a half and we finally got on a bus on our way to Glasgow. When we got there, we had a late lunch/early dinner with Aileen and her friend Maria and then went back to Aileen's house. After such a stressful and long day, we just stayed in and ordered pizza and watched movies. It was perfect and just what we needed.

1/4
After getting up and getting ready, we headed back to Edinburgh for the day. While there we went to the Camera Obscura which had a lot of really cool and fun optical illusions and we also went to the Edinburgh Dungeons. There we learned about  Edinburgh's creepy history full of cannibals and ghosts. I, not being able to handle myself very well in scary situations, held tightly onto Aileen's hand, and she, not being able to handle herself very well in scary situations, did the same. I'm sure it was quite a sight, seeing the two of us jump at every little thing. Robby got some good laughs out of it I'm sure.

1/5
Today, Julia and Amanda came into Glasgow after their trip in Dublin and Aileen and Steven showed us all around Glasgow. We went to the science museum, which was very hands-on, and we just played around in there for a while. It reminded me a lot of when I went to the Franklin Institute and the Museum of Play with Heather and Brandon. Loads of fun.
Then we met up with Aileen's brothers and some friends to have delicious burgers and then we went back to Aileen's house to get ready to go out for the night.

1/6
Today we all slept in, which was great after having so many early mornings on this trip. And then Robby and I went into Edinburgh. First we checked in at our hostel, since the next day we were flying out of the Edinburgh airport and then we walked along the Royal Mile, got some dinner, and then just walked around more parts of the city. We headed down a random street and on that street we passed one of the pubs I went to when I was here for the theatre class during the Fringe Festival. The whole city looks so different without the tents and the crowds. I got used to finding my way around the city using Fringe Festival markers, so coming up on this pub randomly surprised me, but it was a nice surprise. We met up with Amanda and Julia for coffee at the Elephant House where J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter. We didn't stay out too late because we wanted to see more of the city during the daytime.

1/7
It's the day of our departure, but our flight doesn't leave until the afternoon, so we wake up early, check out the church and then go to the Edinburgh Castle. There's so much to see within this castle and the history is so interesting. It has never once been taken over forcefully, only surrendered. And I'm not surprised. It sits on top of a huge hill with many layers of walls and many defensive structures. We spent pretty much the whole morning walking around the castle and then we headed to the airport and got on our flight back to Málaga.

This was a wonderful Christmas break and I loved everywhere I went. It's good to be back in Málaga though where the weather is warmer and the days are longer.

Christmas vacation 2011-2012 Part 1: England

(Disclaimer. This post is very long and it's been taking me a while to write, so I have divided it into two parts. This is Part 1)

My two week Christmas vacation was filled with both ups and downs, but ultimately, it was a great adventure.

Since it was about two weeks long, I'll try to just give highlights.

12/26
To start it off, Robby and I flew out of Málaga on Monday morning, the day after Christmas. It was a very comfortable flight and we landed in London Luton airport at around 9pm. Going through immigration took forever since they only had one person checking all of the non-EU or UK passports and since it's England, they drill you with many questions each. On our flight, the guy next to us informed us of the strike that was currently going on in England. Since it was Boxing Day, all of the train drivers were going on strike since they did not get their requested triple pay and extra holiday. This of course affected us since the majority of people going to Luton, usually take the train into the city. But today, everyone was forced to take the bus. Which leads us to the next line. The bus queue. They told us it would probably be about an hour and a half, but luckily they were quick with bringing the busses around so it probably only took an hour.  Unfortunately, we only had directions to our hostel by way of the tube, so we took this bus all the way to the central bus station to figure out how to get to our hostel. We hopped on the night bus and took it all the way to the end of its line and finally got to our hostel after 2am.

12/27
We had to sleep in the next day, but we also didn't want to waste our first day in London. So we got up fairly early and took the bus into the city to start our vacation. We walked along oxford circus down to Trafalgar square. There were tons of people on the streets since it was still so close to Boxing day, all the stores had their big sales.  We saw Big Ben and the London Eye and then I went into Westminster Abbey and a guided tour took me along the huge church. It was really quite fascinating. My favorite part was probably the "poet's corner" where they have a statue to Shakespeare and a lot of writers and musicians are buried.  Another great part was at the end of the tour where they have buried an Unknown Warrior, whose body was brought back from France. His grave reads as follows:

 BENEATH THIS STONE RESTS THE BODY
OF A BRITISH WARRIOR
UNKNOWN BY NAME OR RANK
BROUGHT FROM FRANCE TO LIE AMONG
THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS OF THE LAND
AND BURIED HERE ON ARMISTICE DAY
11 NOV: 1920, IN THE PRESENCE OF
HIS MAJESTY KING GEORGE V
HIS MINISTERS OF STATE
THE CHIEFS OF HIS FORCES
AND A VAST CONCOURSE OF THE NATION
THUS ARE COMMEMORATED THE MANY
MULTITUDES WHO DURING THE GREAT
WAR OF 1914-1918 GAVE THE MOST THAT
MAN CAN GIVE LIFE ITSELF
FOR GOD
FOR KING AND COUNTRY
FOR LOVED ONES HOME AND EMPIRE
FOR THE SACRED CAUSE OF JUSTICE AND
THE FREEDOM OF THE WORLD
THEY BURIED HIM AMONG THE KINGS BECAUSE HE
HAD DONE GOOD TOWARD GOD AND TOWARD
HIS HOUSE

Then after getting some coffee, Robby and I went back into Westminster Abbey to partake in the Evensong service. The choir sounded magnificent and the service was lovely. Definitely a highlight of the trip.

Tonight Robby and I made dinner in our hostel's kitchen. While we were there, our roommate in our dorm room came in to cook also. He's from Barcelona, so we were all speaking Spanish together along with a couple other people.  Robby and I sat down at one of the tables to eat our meal and one of the other people asked if he could join us since all of the other tables were taken. We got to talking and we come to find out that he isn't actually from Spain as we had assumed since he was speaking Spanish. He's actually Italian. And he actually made the exact same assumption about us. He thought we were Spanish since we were speaking in Spanish. But it was really cool to have that common language even though it wasn't any of our first language.

12/28

Today we did more touristy things of course. We saw St. Paul's Cathedral, we walked down the Thames river past Shakespeare's Globe and the National Theatre where we saw some fun street performers in that area. Then we checked out the Camden market where there were a lot of cute little stalls.

But the highlight from today comes in the evening. During the day, Robby and I "shopped around" for day-of tickets to see Wicked. We got some cheap tickets even though they were crazy high up and far away. The cast was amazing. Although I had already seen it, it was great to see it a second time. I caught a lot more of the foreshadowing and the characterizations. I also was able to focus on more of the background activity such as the outstanding choreography. Coming back from Wicked, I just had this craving to start choreographing a musical or something again.



12/29
Today we got up early to catch our train to Bath. Bath is a small city outside of London situated on an old Roman bath that draws water from the local hot spring. Robby and I walked around the city, saw some of the architectural sights and then went to the Roman Baths. It was cool to be walking around in such an old and historically important place.




12/30
Today's highlight: Stonehenge. This morning we got up early and took a short train from Bath to Salisbury. Once in Salisbury, we got on a bus tour that took us around Salisbury (although this was very small), through the countryside to Stonehenge and then on the way back, stopped at Old Sarum.  Stonehenge was very impressive. Although you couldn't really get near the stones, there was a really cool audio tour that talked about the different stones, the different stages of Stonehenge and the different mysteries surrounding the structure. What really impressed me was that the stones were alligned so that you could tell the month  depending on between which slit of rocks the sun rose and set, going between the winter and summer solstice.
On the way back from Stonehenge, we stopped at Old Sarum which was the old castle fort of William the Conqueror that existed before the city of Salisbury. There wasn't much left of it since the rocks of the castle were recycled to build the city, but it was still an interesting old site.
The last big stop of the day was visiting the Salisbury Cathedral. The Salisbury Cathedral has the tallest church spire in all of England. So tall, that the supporting beams buckled a little bit and the spire is now crooked. It's not very noticeable, but still a cool fact.









England has been incredible and it really is nice to be in an English speaking country again.  This was our last day in England. In the next post I'll recount our journeys through Ireland and Scotland.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone!
Here's a little preview of my Christmas:

Our Charlie Brown Christmas Tree

The sign says "Merry Christmas 2011"

At my school, the kids in the 2nd ESO held a Christmas concert.

Skyping with my family on Christmas morning :)

Robby and I cooked a nice dinner

Feliz Navidad and Merry Christmas everyone!

Christmastime in Copenhagen

Denmark, Day 1
I woke up early this morning to catch a bus to málaga to catch a metro train to the airport to wait in line at the check-in counter to get on a plane to Denmark. On the plane, I was surrounded by little children and babies and an absurd amount of little dogs in carrying cases fancier than my purse.  But it was all worth it when I heard my name, "Kaitlyn" as soon as I exited from the international section past customs. Ingelise was standing right outside waiting for me. She is so sweet and it was so good to see her and hg her again. When we got back to her apartment, she put the nice dinner she had prepared into the oven and we sat down with a glass of wine and just talked. We talked about so much this evening- about my time in Spain, her time in Denmark, languages, traveling, family, etc. The dinner was absolutely delicious- pork tenderloin in an apple, onion, mango and curry sauce over rice. Eating this reminded me of how poor a cook I actually am. This was a true homemade meal that I have been missing out on. And to make it even better, I was eating it in the company of Ingelise- family. A little bit of home away from home. So even though I didn't do any sightseeing today, it was such a great first day in Copenhagen. I'm so blessed to be able to see family that lives so far away from me. They are so special and I'm so proud of my Danish heritage. I'm just so happy and blessed to be here.

Denmark, Day 2
Grocery shopping: check
Stroget: check
Danish National Museum: check
Family: check check check

Today I didn't get to cross off too much of my sightseeing list. It took so long to actually get going. Breakfast was nice and relaxed and then we went to the grocery store to get food for dinner tomorrow night. After that was done we went on our way to the city a little past noon. We took a nice stroll down the Stroget (the longest pedestrian shopping area in Europe). It was beautiful with all of the christmas decorations over the street and in the store windows. There we stopped in a few stores to look at pretty things we could not afford. One of these stores was the Royal Copenhagen: Danish Porcelain store. Everything there was so beautiful. I was tempted to buy the 2011 Danish christmas plate, but it was a little out of my price range.  Plus, we have plenty at home anyway from other years.  After window shopping for a bit, we went to have coffee to escape the cold since the wind was so strong.  When we got to the other end of the Stroget we made our way to the Danish National Museum. This was really interesting because it was full of archaeological artifacts and information about the history of Denmark. We spent most of our time in the section about Danish prehistory. After the museum, it was time to go to Carsten's house since he was preparing us a nice dinner. He made us tenderloin stuffed with ham and cheese with a delicious mustard gravy. This was a wonderful meal. (It's making me hungry just typing this up again).
   I think it's quite amazing. This concept of family. There are people out there, some you have never met before, but because they are family, because they love people who you are related to, they take you in, care for you, and on top of that they care about you too. I think it's such a lovely thing.
  After dinner we looked at pictures from Ingelise and Carsten's trip to Edinburgh last year since they heard that I am going there for my Christmas break.
  Tomorrow hopefully we'll see more things. It'll probably be another late start since we didn't get back until really late. But that's okay, I have the time here.

P.S. Carsten made some really funny jokes today that reminded me of my dad. For example, Ingelise said, "I don't think the busses are running anymore" and he responded, "I don't think they'd be driving anymore either." Well, he's an engineer too. Maybe they all have similar minds.

Denmark, Day 3
First stop, Rosenbborgade, where Soren Kierkegaard lived and wrote a few of his famous books I had looked up the address from a blog online but when we got to the number it gave us, it didn't look quite right and there was no plaque. We looked around for a little, but gave up after about 5 minutes of looking. We decided to just continue down the street towards our next destination. Lo and behold, we found it! It was number 7, not number 15. So all was not lost. It looks like a really interesting location to live too. It's right near the royal park and Rosenborg castle one way and a  nice walking street, round tower and old university dorms in the other direction.  From Kierkegaard's home, we then walked towards Langelinie, the little mermaid.  On the way to see her, we walked down Nyhavn and saw the Christmas market there. Then we went past Amalienborg palace on the left and the Royal opera house across the water on the right. None of the Royal family is here at the moment so there weren't that many guards. Apparently in July, there had been a big storm and the ground floor and kitchens to the palaces had been flooded and they still have yet to be fixed. So no grand changing of the guards while I'm here. 
Then we walked a little more and got to Langelinie. "The Little Mermaid" is a popular fairy tale by the Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen about a young mermaid willing to give up her life in the sea and her identity as a mermaid to gain a human soul and the love of a human prince. But this story doesn't end quite the way that Disney portrayed it. The prince thought it was a different girl who saved him and so he married the other girl.  If the little mermaid slays the prince and lets the blood drip on her feet, she will become a mermaid again. But she cannot bring herself to kill the prince so she throws herself into the sea and dissolves and becomes a wandering spirit sentenced to wander for 300 years. Yeah. Not the happy Disney ending... But still a cool story and a pretty statue.
After seeing the statue, we went to a cute little coffee place to warm up for a bit and then we did a little souvenir shopping and then home to a wonderful warm meal.


Last day in Copenhagen
This time in Denmark has gone by both quickly and slowly. Quickly because you can never have too much time traveling or being with family. Slowly because you can see most of the touristy things in the city in two days, but I had more time than that so we could do things slowly.
Today we went into the city around noon again. This time I wore leggings under my jeans since yesterday I near froze to the bone. We saw the old stock exchange building with its beautiful architecture, the outside of the parliament building and the royal library with the royal gardens. I also continued my Kierkegaard scavenger hunt. Inside the royal gardens there was a statue of Kierkegaard.  Then we met up with Carsten at a place called Charlie's Bar. It was a really cozy spot near Stroget. 
After that we went on to Tivoli. It was just about dusk when we got there so I was able to see some of it in natural light and then I got to see it with all of the lights since it got dark pretty quickly. There was so much light from all of the christmas lights. There was also a special Christmas exhibit in Tivoli about Christmas in Russia. They had some Russian gift shops, Russian food stalls, and a little building in the center with Russian architecture. This was really cool, especially since Russia was on my list of places I would like to travel (But I can't since it's expensive and really hard to get to). So I got a piece of it, however fake it was, here. After Tivoli I took Ingelise and Carsten out for a nice dinner at a place called Klubben to thank them for all their hospitality and then I went back to Ingelise's place. Tomorrow I have to get up at 5am to get to the airport. I have loved my time here in Copenhagen and I would love to come back and see again, especially with friends and people more my age. Hopefully someday...

Busy, busy weekend.

I guess that's just how life happens. Nothing really happens for a couple of weeks and then everything happens at once.  Well that just happened to me.  No complaints, but now I'm looking forward to a nice relaxing weekend. Sorry about the length of this post, but it comes with the territory of being busy...

It all started on Thursday for me.  I went to school in the morning, and everything was pretty normal. I taught my kids about Thanksgiving and about all of the thanksgiving foods and traditions.  As soon as I came home from school, though, I dropped my bag by a kitchen chair, not even taking the time to go upstairs, and I started to peel potatoes. I had taken it upon myself to cook my mom's recipe of mashed potatoes, which have always been my favorite. But I had to make it for 25+ people. The day before, I grabbed 6 kilos of potatoes, and so as soon as I came home I started the peeling process.  I didn't think we had a peeler, so I just used a knife.

 About 2 hours in, Leslie comes in to start her vegetables and finds a peeler in the drawer for her carrots.Oh well, I was already pretty much done.  All during this time too, I helped out with the turkey, making sure that it didn't dry out.  Then, as soon as people started coming, I was pretty much put in charge of where to put all the dishes. Also, I was the only person who knew how to use the swiss army knife can opener, so of course, I had to open all of the cranberry cans, etc. (Shout out to my parents for taking me camping where I learned this).  Once everyone started eating, though, everything became much less stressful for me and we all had a great Thanksgiving.

The next day, early in the morning, I got up to head to school. Normally I don't go in until 2nd hour, but this day was special so I had to get up bright and early. This was the day of the school excursion to el pantano (the man-made lake at the bottom of the mountain). We walked down through the streets of Periana to a steep path through olive orchards to the lake. When we got to the picnic area, the kids dispersed to different picnic benches and the teachers started to set up our barbeque. Even though I had had so much food the night before for Thanksgiving, I wasn't going to miss out on all of this food.

Then while more food was barbecuing, the teachers split up to run different games and activities for the kids. I helped run this huge board game where the students were the pieces.  Then after the activities, the kids just went off and did their thing while the teachers ate more and hung out.
We walked back up a different way since the way down was so steep. This way was steep too, but not quite as steep. The views were so gorgeous.  When we got to the end of the path, there were busses waiting for us to take us all the way back to the school. However there was some miscalculation and they were short one bus so a few teachers stayed behind with the rest of the kids waiting for a bus to return to get us. One finally came and we made it back to school moments before the last bell rang.  The day at the pantano was a lot of fun, but on such little sleep from the night before, I was ready to go home and take a nice long siesta. But....

When I got home, a group of friends had come over to help us eat all of the leftovers. I hung out with them and ate even more.  We played some games and watched part of a movie. Then we decided that we were going to go out dancing that night so they went home to get ready and I went upstairs to take a nap at 10pm until they came back.  They came back to our place around 1am and we headed off to the discoteca to dance off all the calories we had eaten the past couple of days.  I came home a little early, but I guess that was understandable since I was the one who had the least amount of sleep in the group.

The next day, Saturday, I got to sleep in finally! Anneli, Nick and Ron came over and we headed into Málaga to see all the lights.  This was the first night that the lights were lit in the city and there are always a lot of people on the streets going out to see them. In one plaza there was even a small concert.  These lights were amazing!

I thought the ones in Madrid were great (which they are) but these ones were just so colorful. In Málaga we met up with Leslie, Adam, Eddie and Robby who had gone in earlier.  That night, we spent the night at Anneli's since she lives in the city.
The next day, on Sunday, when everyone else went back to their respective homes, Anneli and I went to the Picasso museum since the last Sunday of each month has free entry there.  The museum was cool and interesting. There aren't any big works of Picasso since those are all in the big museums, but you could see all of the different styles Picasso experimented in and his progression as an artist.  But I'm glad I went when it was free.

After the museum I finally went home to relax and have some down time after such a crazy weekend. I was successful in relaxing for the most part except for all the dishes and cleaning...and our power going out.  Randomly our power went out, so our landlord came over and finally figured out that water was seeping behind our dishwasher and getting around the outlet which blew the fuse.  After all that was settled, things settled in the house.  Overall I had an amazing weekend with great friends and great experiences. But it's good to relax too.

When life slows down.

Life has kind of slowed down recently.  I've gotten into my routine of working 3 days a week, doing something or other on the weekend, and then cleaning and lesson planning and running errands on Monday and Tuesday (when the rest of the people in my apartment have work).

Contrary to popular belief of most of you who read this, I do work. Granted, it's not much and it's not extremely hard. But it happens. 3 times a week on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.  I carpool with different teachers every day and the 20-30 minute drive to school is breathtaking.  My school, Alta Axarquía, is literally in the mountains. One day, the entire town of Periana was enveloped by a cloud. This was no regular fog. This was a legit cloud. You could not see more than 10 feet in front of you. That kinda made the drive through those windy roads to get there a little scary, but the teachers that I commute with know the roads really well.

View from a window at school

Wednesdays I have a short day where I just need to come in for the afternoon and then Thursdays and Fridays I have full days.  Most of my classes are English classes, but I also have some other classes within the bilingual program such as Physical Education, Natural Sciences, and Social Studies. Math is also a course in the bilingual program, but I don't have any Math classes until February.

Leslie is the other Auxiliar de Conversación at my school. We are actually living together which is nice since we can help each other with lesson planning and ideas.  She works Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays but in February we are going to switch our schedules so that I can have Fridays off since a lot of our friends also have Fridays off. It's also cheaper to travel Thursday-Sunday than Saturday-Tuesday.

Every other week, I teach a 30-40 minute activity in my Social Studies class with the 4th year students.  Two weeks ago, I taught the American War for Independence.  Since it was also around Halloween, I incorporated candy into the lesson. I gave each student 4 pieces of candy, but I told them that they were not allowed to eat it until the end of class. Then, I appointed tax collectors and I collected taxes (of candy) to simulate the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act, etc.  The kids were not happy that I was taking away their candy, and they tried to reason with me. But I told them that they did not have any representation in my parliament, so I would not listen to them.  At the end of the activity, one kid who does not speak up in English very often raised his hand and said "Teacher" (referring to the Social Studies teacher, Fábian) "I propose we start a revolution."
This was probably one of the most rewarding classes I've taught so far. Sometimes I wonder how much they pay attention when I am talking in English or how much they understand. But with the combination of the worksheet and the activity, I feel like the students really learned something with learning in English.

Soon, I will update about my commute and hopefully get pictures of the drive.

Ibiza

Sorry for not updating in a little bit...I'll try and do better to keep up with it.

Two weekend ago I went to Ibiza with los Lobos. Ibiza is one of Spain's Balearic islands of the eastern coast in the Mediterranean.  It was towards the end of the season in Ibiza and a lot of places were already shut down (It apparently becomes close to a ghost town when it's not summer). Nevertheless we made the most of it.  It was also good because places had a lot of great off-season specials for tapas and such things.

The first night we were there we went to one of the most famous discotecas in Europe. At least in Spain and they have the best discotecas in Spain in the first place.  We went to Pacha Ibiza. I had been to Pacha Madrid when I studied abroad and it was a lot of fun, but this was even bigger. There were a couple different rooms so you could decide which music you liked better. Anyway, in the spirit of a Spaniard, we stayed out until the place closed at 6am.


The next day we went to one of the really nice beaches.  Even though Ibiza is an Island with a lot of beaches, not all of the beaches are beautiful. The beach outside of our hotel was nice enough, but it also had a lot of seaweed buildup.  The sand at the beach we went to was so incredibly soft (unlike the sand here in Torre del Mar which is not as fine). We soaked in the sun and went in the clear teal water. Mind you, this is in October.

Out in the distance, you can see this cool tower, so Robby and I decide to take a hike and explore.  On the way there were all these really cool alcove beaches from the water eroding the shoreline over time.  And then we get to the tower we found out that it was an old watchtower first set up to protect the fishing industry and then it was turned into more of a defensive tower. In the distance, from this point, you could also see a beautiful lighthouse.









Oh, and the last night in Ibiza, I rode a mechanical bull.