Where does the cow live??????

The second grade class is my least favorite. It is my last class on Mondays and Thursdays. It lasts an hour. The teacher is boring and the kids are visibly bored. They sit a their desks cutting their erasers into little, tiny pieces and then build piles out of them. They also play with their pencil shavings. Don't ask me what they do with them because I don't really understand what is so special about pencil shavings, I guess that's a clear indication of their boredom level.

Last Thursday I had a particularly interesting experience in this class. It was right before the weekend (for me) and I was bored, hungry, and itching to get out. The teacher began reviewing the unit, animals, in front of the class like usual. Over the past week we had reviewed names of all the different types of animals, wild, farm, aquatic, etc. We also reviewed questions that could be asked on the subject, for example, "Donde vive (enter animal here)?".

The teacher was following her usual reviewing routine and here is what proceeded to happen:

Teacher: "How do you say, 'Donde vive la vaca' in English?"

Student #1: "What does the cow eat?" (for descriptive purposes I will tell you that this student is the only asian kid in the school, and is also the niece of the 2nd grade teacher and the daughter of the 4 year old teacher.)

Teacher: No, la pregunta es "Donde vive la vaca"? Clara have you studied?

Student #2 raises her hand.
Student #2: "Where the cow live?"

Teacher: DOES, WHERE DOES THE COW LIVE? REPEAT, Where DOES the cow live?

Student #2: Where do the cow live?

Teacher: DO, DO, NO! WHERE DOES THE COW LIVE? (the teacher is very angry at this point. She keeps looking at me with the expression, 'what the hell is going on', these kids are the devil, and she's flapping her hands at her sides with wide, angry eyes and disbelief). Now, answer the question, "Where does the cow live?".

Student #3 bravely raises her hand.
Student #3: The cow lives in the farm.

Teacher: (in Spanish yelling and scaring me at this point) YES FINALLY, YOU GET A 10, EVERYONE ELSE GETS A ZERO! WHY HAS NO ONE STUDIED, the question is "WHERE DOES THE COW LIVE, WHERE DOES THE COW LIVE", we have gone over this for over 2 weeks, you have it in your notebook, WHY have you not studied? CLEARLY, no one in this classroom CARES AT ALL about learning ENGLISH. YOU DON'T STUDY! The question is "WHERE DOES THE COW LIVE", the answer is "THE COW LIVES ON THE FARM"!!

After looking at me and looking at the students and back and forth with a look of anger and disbelief and scariness the teacher finally said:

Stacey, you can go, clearly no one cares about learning. (She said this in Spanish, quickly, and barely looking at me because she was so upset.)

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So I left, I mean ran out of this crazy ladies classroom. It was 20 minutes before the end of school.

My first reaction was to laugh. I mean really, these kids are in 2nd grade, they can barely say colors in english, how do you expect them to remember "Where does the cow live?". And also, when in real life would you ever need to ask "Where does the cow live?". I know she was trying to broaden their English skills, and I know that the kids should have studied more, but they can only fit so much in their little brains. It was funny watching this screaming, rampaging, 40-year old Spanish lady, yelling "Where does the cow live" over and over again. She was so upset over a sentence about cows. I laughed about it then and am still laughing about it.

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When I went into the class today we reviewed these same questions. Every single kid knew how to say "Donde vive la vaca" in English. They also knew that the cow lives on the farm. Lesson learned.

Intercambio

Today was the first day of my "intercambio". At the school that I take Spanish classes they offer a program, "intercambio", where you exchange language practice with a person native to the language you wish to learn. For me, I am paired with five native Spanish speakers who are trying to improve their English. Luckily, today I only met with two of them.

I was really nervous to do this program. For a while now, for most of my learning Spanish life, I have had a mental block against speaking Spanish. I can read, write and understand very well, but when I go to speak my tongue turns into a brick and my mind goes blank. I can say everything in my head to myself but when I open my mouth nothing comes out, and what does come out is usually wrong. Don't get me wrong, I can communicate and get by and have small talk, but I can't express my opinions or feelings.

I thought coming here and being immersed into the Spanish speaking world would provide a magical solution to my speaking problem. Of course my Spanish has improved but my core issues still remain. And it hasn't been hard to find ways to hide and escape from having to exercise my spanish skills. Now though, this second time around, since this is really the beginning of the end of my time here, I am trying really hard to put myself out there and bring down my wall. I want to learn more and feel less confined and timid. This program will not only help me with my spanish speaking skills but I know it will overall enrich my experience because I will be able to have a relationship with Spanish people beyond the people I see everyday at my job. I want to have a full experience. The intercambio is my solution, or at least I hope. 

My partners and I met today in the school bar, aka cafeteria, aka cafe/you can order food here but I wouldn't call it a restaurant. My friend Henk (a retired Dutch 65 year old man who lives in Sotogrande and golfs all day with his wife) came along. He speaks English fluently. I wanted to have another English speaking person there to balance out the two Spanish people I was meeting with. He was happy to come since he wants to practice his Spanish. Since this was the first time all of us met, we decided to briefly, one by one, and in their foreign language, give an introduction about ourselves. The Spanish girl, Monica, studied Chemistry and since she couldn't find a job teaching after she graduated 7 years ago she now works at the casinos in Gibraltar. The Spanish man, Daniel (pronounced Danielle), is a PE teacher at a private school and likes to play padel, like the rest of Europe, but I still can't figure out what that is exactly (no, it's not racquetball or tennis, but it does involve a wall, a ball and a racquet). Then it was my turn to talk about myself. My issues started to present themselves - my mind went blank, I started twitching and getting really nervous, then I started uncontrollably cursing and my skin turned green!!!! Just kidding, but my mind did go blank and all the Spanish I have ever learned seemed to slip out of my mind. I stumbled through my introduction and felt pretty illiterate and stupid. In the moment I was angry with myself. I know how to speak, I just have stage fright. I can do this, right? I know I just need to let go, and over time I hope this program will help me do that.

So, we will see. Everyday is a new struggle to speak, but everyday is also an opportunity to improve. Hopefully I can open up enough to be fluent by the time I leave.

Hasta luego.

Hiking: Parque Natural de Los Alcornocales

On Saturday, Eric and I packed our water bottles and a granola bars and took the train to a nearby town, Jimena de la Frontera, to begin a 9.5 km hike. We had great weather, 65 degrees, and the pueblo blanco was quaint and beautiful. 

The hike was a big circle. First we went to the top of the town and then trekked up the peaks, then down through the Hozgarganta Valley where we saw pines and cork oaks. Once in the valley we reached the river and crossed it in two parts via stepping stones. The river was overflown, so we had to cross in shoes (with water up to my thighs) to get to the other side of the river (see picture below). Very adventurous! From the river we saw the jagged ridges of the valley and a few small sandy beaches. After a few more hours of hiking along the river we walked by an old water channel called El Cao (which once supplied water to the factory where the cannon balls used during the siege of Gibraltar were manufactured). Soon after walking along the channel we hiked up a bit more and then arrived back to the town of Jimena just before 6pm. And, before heading back to the train station to go back to San Roque we had a victory beer in the main town square. It felt good to sit down after our 5 hour hike (and of course the beer couldn't have tasted better!). 

The trip was really great. We really enjoyed getting outside and seeing the natural landscape and breathing in the fresh air. With our book (Walking in Andalucia, by Guy Hunter-Watts) there are lots of hikes in our area, so we will be doing this again very soon, especially if the weather keeps up! Here are some pictures of our hike:

Jimena de la Frontera - town where we began our hike

Lookout point in the middle of our hike

Distance from our side of the river to the stepping stones, where we walked in the water

Great view of the river

Do like the Spanish do

When Eric and I first moved into our apartment we didn't notice anything wrong. A few weeks into living there we realized there was a funky smell coming from our second bathroom, "the older one". It turns out that the pipes were really old which prevented the sewage from properly flowing out of the bathroom. Granted we never used the bathroom so you can only imagine how long that stuff must have been stuck in there, and therefore how bad the smell was. Nonetheless, since we signed the lease under false pretenses we decided it was only fair that the owner fix this unlivable issue.

The owner said that she would have the bathroom redone. We were very excited. Now we were really getting some bang for our weakly converted buck. Their timeline of completion of the bathroom seemed the same as ours, fix this problem as soon as possible. Problem solved, right?

No, problem not solved. This is the part where I remind you of the country in which I live. I live in Spain, not Germany or Switzerland, countries of great efficiency. I live in southern Spain, where "no pasa nada" (no worries) and "tranquilo" (calm) are the mottos.

After three months of dealing with "late plumbers", the worthless brother of our landlord (our landlord lives in Madrid so we deal with her brother), being waken up before we had to be up, having our privacy interrupted, rigorously translating our concerns and issues into Spanish, AND after a 10 day trip to Rockville and back, the bathroom was, how do you say "complete?"...not quite.

This is what the we found when we returned to our apartment (believe me, we joked about the bathroom not being complete). There was a chair in the middle of the bathroom with a light fixture on it, not in ceiling. There was no door or curtain on the shower and there was a small water leak from the ceiling window. We had given them plenty of time to finish, had given them plenty of patience, but the bathroom was still just hairs away from being complete, it was not complete.

The real cherry on top of this whole catastrophe is that when our landlord's brother, Pepe, came by to talk to us about the "completed" bathroom and we told him that we still can't use the shower because there is no curtain, etc, his response was, in Spanish of course, "you can still use the shower, and I want to make sure it works, you can just mop up the floor after your showers". And to this Eric replied, in very good Spanish, "Why would I want to have to mop after I shower, just finish the bathroom". I mean really, mop after I shower? Who does that?

To them apparently almost complete is complete. No pasa nada, right?

Kids are Funny

I was just looking through some photos from when I taught the kids about Christmas in the US and I came across this little gem. In the 5th grade class we made "Merry Christmas" cards. On the board I wrote out what they needed to do on the card. On the front of the card they had to draw Santa and use cotton for his beard and on the inside of the card they had to write the message I wrote on the board:

Clearly I have not been doing a good job teaching English. Look at this kid's card (click on the picture for a better view): 

He wrote "Cotton Best Wishes for Christmas and New Years 2011".

This girl got it right (above). Heres the front of her card, very pretty: