Alright. After another long absence from the blog, we'll do some more updates. We wish they could come more often, but getting internet in our apartment has been a nightmare, to say the least. I'll spare you the details, but in the meantime we will be updating whenever possible using the free wireless (recently discovered, thanks to a friend here) in the public library!
A warning from the beginning: this post has the unfortunate potential to turn into a long and meandering commentary on our jobs and the Spanish school system. If you're not interested, skip to the bottom for some unrelated photos. But if you're one of the probably many who wonder what exactly we are doing here in Spain... then hang on tight, here it goes!
We were asked to arrive by the 15th of September, when the school year officially began in our autonomous region (Castilla y León). Which we did, and willingly so! What we have known from the beginning is that we will be acting as "English conversation assistants" in 12 hours of class a week (yes, we will be teaching other private lessons to fill in the spare time and make a bit more money). However, after a few initial visits to our public school (IES María Moliner), during each of which we were told that our schedules were not yet ready and that we should come back again tomorrow, we began to realize that maybe-- just maybe-- we had arrived too early.
Perhaps the first thing to mention is that life in Spain moves at quite a different (sometimes agonizingly slower) pace than life in the U.S. This is true at any time of year, but particularly in August and September. The entire country goes on vacation for the month of August, and it takes a few weeks for everyone to adjust to working again in September. So, regardless of the September 15 start date for classes, nothing at the school (nor in the rest of the country, it seems) is "fully functional" until October. This will be a good exercise in patience and understanding.
Thus, it took about a week to receive our "final" schedules and for either of us to make a live appearance in any of the classes we are assisting. As of last Friday (2.5 weeks after we arrived), I had assisted 4 hours of class, and Stevie had assisted only 1). These hours consisted mainly of powerpoint presentations about ourselves and our lives in the States, and then we were aksed many questions about many things. The most interesting among these inquiries were when one student asked Stevie: "What is the traditional dance of your city?"-- and when one student asked me: "What is your favorite monument in North Carolina?" Yes, these are all coming from kids who have grown up in a town with a 12th-century castle and a 2,000-year-old Roman aqueduct. Needless to say, they were less than impressed by our answers to these questions. Seriously, I continue to realize just how very young our country is. However, they were quite impressed by our basketball team, graduation ceremony ("silly hats" included) and deep-fried state fair!
The next detail to mention is that teachers in Spain cannot get fired. This can result in a number of outcomes-- for example, as you can probably imagine, we have heard stories of laziness among the teaching community. I cannot yet say much to this stereotype, but I can say that this probably contributes to the delayed pace of scheduling and organization-- many teachers, it seems, do not yet know what the curriculum for their classes will be this year. And don't even ask them yet what our (the assistants') roll will be... that's still in the works.
But aside from all of that: teaching staff have all been incredibly appreciative and welcoming to us. They tell us that "they aren't yet ready for us to assist" and to "come again next week"-- but with huge smiles on their faces, and with sincere friendliness! They seem to truly care about their kids and their classes. Additionally, our students are fantastic. We assist with many bilingual classes, meaning that the students in them have been taking many of their classes in English since they were 4 years old. They are so smart! And it was obvious from my first presentation how happy they are to have us, and how fascinated they are with our lives.
To sum it all up: it's going to be an interesting, sometimes frustrating, informative, and incredibly fun year. We've already met so many amazing people, and are just getting started!
And now, as promised, are some unrelated photos. This past weekend, we went to Madrid for our program orientation (yes, two weeks after we began our program), and met some friendly assistants from other regions in Spain. Afterwards, we stayed the night with a couple of my Riley cousins (Mike, Pilar, and their 16-month-old son Nathan) and had a fantastic time!
Here is a photo of Nathan, because he is just too darn cute.
We were fed quite well at the Madrid Riley household-- a Galician seafood feast!
The accompanying salad, padrón peppers, bread and wine
