La Mancha

La Mancha- Tierra de Don Quijote.

Fui a Madrid donde alquilamos un coche para viajar a La Mancha. Primero fuimos a Consuegra y después a El Toboso donde está la casa de Dulcinea y finalmente a Campo de Criptana. Al día siguiente regresamos a Campo de Criptana para una fiesta. El molinero estuvo y nos explicó como funciona un molino de viento- después la gente del pueblo nos invitó a tomar un vinito y a comer gachas (un plato típico de La Mancha).

 Consuegra- The town of Consuegra

 A Windmill. The rod at the back is used to rotate the cap to the best orientation to catch the wind. 

 Don Quijote y Sancho Panza

La fiesta de los molinos (The windmill festival- the men to the right are preparing food to serve) 

Notice that the windmill´s blades have a sheet in them to help catch the wind, the other windmills don´t. We were told they put them in only on the festival day when they want to demonstrate its use.

¨Don Quijote¨ and me

País Vasco

In English in red below
Este fin de semana ha sido el puente de todos los santos, o sea que no he tenido que trabajar ni hoy ni ayer.
Fui en avión a Bilbao a ir a un concierto de Cut Copy, pero por la tarde fui al famoso museo Guggenheim. Normalmente no puedo pasar muchas horas en un museo, pero la instalación de Richard Serra fue impresionante y hubiera podido pasar más tiempo andando por las esculturas. El construyó unas esculturas de hierro que son interactivas en el sentido de que la gente puede entrar en la escultura y sentirla. No sé nada nadita de arte pero de alguna manera me gustó mucho.
Como no se permitía sacar fotos dentro del museo sólo tengo fotos del edificio desde afuera.
This weekend was a long one, two days off for the All Saints´ Day. I took the opportunity to go to the Basque Country and see two major cities there as well as some of the coastal towns. I flew into Bilbao and saw the Guggenheim museum. Normally I am at my limit after 2 hours in a museum, but this place was amazing. There was a steel sculpture that you could walk through, designed by Richard Serra. It was definitely my favourite.
Since the museum did not permit taking photos inside mine are all from the exterior (which was pretty cool too!)

 La entrada del museo The museum´s entrance

 Una escultura de una araña- igual que la del museo de arte nacional canadiense en Ottawa. A sculpture of a spider- like the one outside the National Gallery in Ottawa. 

 Una vista del museo y del río. Another view of the museum and the river 


Donostia- San Sebastián
Una ciudad con dos nombres- como muchas de país vasco- me he quedado encantado de esta ciudad...la comida, las vistas, el mar, la comida ;)
A city with two names (one in Spanish and one in Basque, the regional language here) like many of the cities in the Basque Country. I was very impressed with this city-the food, the views, the ocean, the food ;)

 

 Una vista de Donostia desde un parque de atracciones, detrás de mí se ve la playa de la concha que tiene forma de concha de vieira- el símbolo del camino de santiago.
A view of Donostia from a theme park, behind me you can see the playa de la concha (the shell-beach) which has a scallop-shell shape, also the symbol of the St James´ Way (A pilgrim´s trail through norther Spain)

 La costa vasca con unas montañas verdes al fondo ¡Precioso!
The beautiful basque coast with the green hills in the distance. Beautiful!

Entré en Francia y fui a Biarritz y St. Jean de Luz. Aquí se ve Les Galleries Lafayette- cuando estuve en París me encantó esta tienda.

I drove into France and saw Biarritz and St Jean de Luz. This is a photo (and not a very good one) of Les Galleries Lafayette. When I was in Paris I really liked this store. 

Ibiza

Ibiza is an island in the mediterranean sea that belongs to Spain. It is invaded every summer by Germans and the English. It has a few municipalities on it, the main city called Sant Jordi or Eivissa and is where the airport is located.
I decided to go here for the weekend, arriving on Saturday morning and staying until Sunday night. It turned out that this was one of the last weekends that all of the island´s hotels and attractions were still open.

Here I am next to a canon along the walls of the old-city of Ibiza (known as the Dalt Vila)

 This is the hotel that I stayed in in Santa Eulalia on Ibiza. It was the last night of the season so it was cheap 23€ a person. I think there may have been 25 guests in the entire hotel.

 I decided to roll up my pants and get my feet wet in the sea. It was well worth it!

 Saturday evening I went to Sant Antoní and decided to take in the sunset next to the famous Café del Mar. It turns out it is free to sit on the dock next to the café and drink a pop from a grocery store, while enjoying the music from the café and watching the sailboats go by.

 The following morning on Sunday, I went to see El puerto de Sant Miquel. This small port was beautiful. I would love to return in the summer and sit on the beach for a week.

 In Sant Miquel there is a cave called La Cova de Can Marçà. Apparently it was used by pirates to store their goods. The guide also told us with great pride that the cave had been altered and that they had added stalagmites to make it more interesting...below is a picture of the man made waterfall inside. I would not recommend spending the 9€ I gave them to get in.

 Turns out the 9€ I paid to see the cave wasn´t a total flop, I did get to see this view of the water from the walkway. It was so clear and blue. Again, I want to come back here in the summer and sit on the beach to take it all in.

 On the way back to Ibiza town from Sant Miquel I stopped at Can Caus to see some of the traditional products of the island. Shown below is a sandwich made with Sobrasada (raw meat with onion and spices). The sandwich and the glass of vino...1€

An Interview with Brian

Gemma (the English teacher at school) thought it would be a nice idea for the students in grade 6 to think of questions to ask me about Canada and then use those questions and answers to create a mural. Half of the students worked on this while the other half thought of questions to ask me about myself. We split the latter group in two and filmed it. And here are the interviews.

Escola Banùs

English in red
La escuela donde enseño se llama Escola Banús (en catalán) y está en Santa Coloma de Gramenet, en las afueras de Barcelona.
Querría poner unas fotos del colegio en el blog para que veáis como es y como son los alumnos. The School where I teach is called Escola Banús in Catalan and is located in Santa Coloma de Gramenet a suburb of Barcelona. I wanted to put some pictures of the school in my blog so that my friends could see what it is like.

 El aula de Gemma, la profesora de inglés. Aquí damos las clases de inglés del primero hasta sexto. Tenemos muchas ventanas en el aula pero lo malo es que entra mucho ruido de la calle y del patio.
This is the English classroom. Gemma and I teach grade 1-6 in here. There are 6 big windows to the patio outside (shown below). It is quite noisy because the kids have PE there.

 La vista del patio de la escuela desde el aula de Gemma. Aquí vemos los niños en la clase de educación física. En la escuela no hay un gimnasio, los alumnos tienen que salir al patio para practicar los deportes.
The view from the English classroom to the patio below. The school doesn´t have a gym, so this is where the kids go fro PE.

 Los alumnos del P5- una chica con Densel el pato del libro de inglés.
Students in P5, preschool age 5, this particular student is holding Densel the Duck- a character from the text we use. 

 Un alumno con Cookie- el gato-protagonista del libro de inglés.
Another student from P5 with Coookie the Cat- the main character of our book.

 Y el otro personaje del libro- el canguro Lulu.
And one more with Lulu  the Kangaroo.

 Estamos aprendiendo los miembros de la familia de búhos y el cuento del Baby Owl.
We´re learning the words for family members in English.

 Aquí contando el número de búhos en el árbol de la familia.
We´re counting how many owls there are in the owl family....well actually we´re singing it, but I decided not to video this...if you´ve heard me sing you´ll know why. Below is a link for the owl family video we put in Youtube. The kids acted out the story from our book.
El enlace abajo es un vídeo de los alumnos presentando su obra de The Owl Family.

Aquí unos alumnos del sexto pintando un mural con información sobre Canadá. Antes de pintar me habían preguntado unas cosas sobre Canadá y luego pusieron las respuestas aquí (la comida típica, el clima, las fiestas, y tal)
Lastly, some of the older kids are making a large poster to hang on the wall- highlighting all the information they learnt about Canada- it´s cold, we ate lots of maple syrop and we all speak both national languages...ahem. 

Jooo que lío

This is a fun video that describes my latest experiences in Spain with the oficina de extranjeros and the ayuntamiento- still waiting to be able to pass in my forms.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZGHPpEmH14

Barcelona Y Madrid

For my English speaking friends see below :)

Voy a intentar escribir en castellano para algunas entradas del blog-para mis amigos aquí en España y por todo el mundo, y luego debajo en inglés, porque los parientes siempre se quejan porque no comprenden nada del castellano.
Llegué a Madrid al final del mes de agosto para participar en una orientación del programa de profesores visitantes. La orientación tomó lugar en Colmenarejo, que es un pueblo en las afueras de Madrid. Nos explicaron todo del programa y nos dieron mucho tiempo para conocernos. Afortunadamente encontré un amigo que se llamó Matthew que ya tenía piso en Barcelona. Me dijo que podía quedarme en su piso unos días hasta que encontrara otro. Me ayudó encontrar un piso también, en casa de una amiga suya ¡Qué suerte he tenido!
Bueno pues, ahora estoy muchísimo más tranquilo de tener un piso en un buen barrio al lado de la estación de tranvía que me lleva al colegio.
El cole...tengo que acostumbrarme a muchas cosas nuevas, como mis experiencias docentes son unicamente del instituto no sé como voy a enseñar los niños del preescolar o los de los primeros ciclos de la primaria, pero ya veremos. Estoy un poco preocupado, pero a la misma vez emocionado de tener esta oportunidad.
Voy a enseñar los 3 niveles del infantil, o sea, los niños que tienen 3,4 y 5 años.
Las profesoras de la escuela son muy majas, me acogieron todas el primer día, que fue el martes, porque lunes fue festivo en Santa Coloma. Pensaba que iba a trabajar principalmente con la profesora de inglés pero parece que voy a trabajar con casi todas las profesoras.
Hoy llevé unas guías didácticas a casa para leerlas para preparar unas lecciones, y aunque todo esté escrito en catalán puedo entender más o menos las ideas principales de las lecciones. Algo muy interesante aquí es que los profesores utilizan más estos libros que vienen con los textos- algo que en Canadá está un poco mal visto...también la guía no solamente da unas ideas generales sino un guión completo si fuera un actor preparándome para un papel de una película. Pero la verdad es que este guión me ha tranquilizado muchísimo. Como os podéis imaginar, estoy un poco nervioso para las primeras horas con los niños, como no tengo nada de experiencia con esa edad....pero bueno, ya veremos.

Hey everyone, I decided I would try to write a little in Spanish to see if I could do it, and even today after having to deal with the red tape of the Spanish immigration system I have the energy to do a blog entry.
There won´t be any photos in this entry, I left my camera at home. I guess I do have the one from my cell phone, but we´ll see.
So after the orientation in Madrid, I came to Barcelona. I had the good fortune to meet another visiting teacher named Matthew who is here in Barcelona as well and had a friend who was looking for a flatmate. So now I am living here in the other apartment, and it is great! It has a pool and air conditioning.
Things at the school are going great and I feel really welcome there. I took home some of their teacher guides to have a look at before the first day with students, which is going to be on Monday, September 12th.
Ohh yeah! By the way, I am teaching in what is called Infantil, which means basically preschool. So having only ever really taught the older students in high school and junior high, I will now be teaching 3,4, & 5 year olds. Our textbook is called Three in a Tree and features a cat named Cookie. In the teachers´ kit there is a puppet of cookie that I will get to use along with a kangaroo named Lulu who has a pouch that the students can put flash cards into. Right now I am imagining that everything is going to go wonderfully and that they won´t be crying all of the time, nor will they be wiping their dirty fingers on me, or clinging to my legs or anything... we´ll see.
If you remember any fun songs that you teach children of this age, please add them in the comment section so I can add them to my repertoire of ¨teaching materials¨. If you don´t have time for that- send a quick prayer upwards for me! :)