Right on schedule! 3 months later I decide to pop my head back into the blogosphere. Just in time so that most people lose interest, haha. I'm like the JLo of blogging. Hoping to make a strong second come back...
Goodness, where to begin. I think we should start back at Halloween and work our way up. Here we goooo...
So last year, with my students, we played a Halloween vocabulary game and I made (nay, allowed them) to watch the greatest Halloween video to ever grace our earth, otherwise known as Donald Duck Trick or Treat. It's from 1952 but it's my absolute favorite clip I remember from wathching VHS Disney movies at daycare. I also gave them Halloween pencils, spider rings, and/or candy shaped like body parts. They loved this last part, especially.
I'm learning quickly, however, that bribing kids with candy is a bit of a cop-out. Don't get me wrong, this definitely doesn't mean I don't still do it...hell yes I bribe them, the kids from all of my private classes are huuuuge pains in the ass and psychotic sometimes. The kids with the cat with the butthole get crazier every single week. More on that later...but my point is that a little sugar-free hard candy never hurt anybody. Especially the diabetic ones (can I get a virtual high-five for finding candy the whole family can enjoy without having to give the diabetic girl an entire pack of gum once a month?? YES!)
Since I gave up the bribery tactics, I had to get creative. Let me just preface with saying that the funniest thing you can possibly do with children of any age is to make them stick their hand into a pumpkin when they are completely clueless as to what's inside.
Last year I explained to my students how to make a pumpkin. They were excited but we never actually cut into one. This year, with my 1st graders, I actually let them "help me" make it...aka I let them scoop out the seeds & crap so I didn't get my hands dirty. I spent 40 minutes polishing tiny tuxedos on my fingernails for the shock & awe value from them....the least they can do is roll up their sleeves and take one for the team.
Anyways...there are so many unseen problems in teaching. Things that usually seem self-explanatory, for a 23 year old, but maybe not for a 6 year old. I've got 17 years of experience on them (God I feel old) and I shouldn't expect them to have reached my level of common sense. So I take full responsibility for the fact that 3 of my students tried to eat the raw pumpkin seeds when I wasn't looking. I also take responsibility for the fact that a.) I wasn't watching (because I didn't think they were going to stick them in their mouths) and that b.) I laughed/cackled/might have accidentally pointed while laughing once I realized why they looked like they wanted to vom. Lesson of the day: if you touch something and it grosses you out, don't try to put it in your mouth.
Moving onto second grade. These are my favorites from last year (although they are turning into tiny little nightmares as time goes on...it breaks my heart but I've also started talking to them in Spanish when they won't shut up, and that way I can tug on their heart strings easier. Speaking in their native language hits home harder. If they wanna play hardball, I'm gonna bring it...) I told one of my teachers that I wished we could buy things in bulk here, or have more supplies to play fun Halloween games with them. She told me if we just tell the kids to bring in whatever it was, we could do whatever it was. Done!! The week before Halloween we told the students to bring in an apple (for bobbing for apples) and a roll, or two, or three, of toilet paper (to do mummy races).
Now, if you are a 7 year old, and your teacher tells you to bring in these two items for Halloween, your mind starts racing (apparently), especially since she's cruel and won't tell you what it's for. For a whole week. I've never seen these kids concentrate long enough to write their own names, let alone spend an entire week pondering and stalking me during recess, asking what we were going to do. They're also terrible gossips, so I heard SO MANY different possibilities of what was going to happen. Here are a few (after awhile they forgot about logic and reason):
1.) We were going to use the apples to make pumpkins. (....if I wanted you to make pumpkins, don't you think I'd ask you to bring in a pumpkin?)
2.) We were going to use the toilet paper to wrap the apples so they were like eggs and throw them at cars. (2 things....1.) like #1, don't you think if I wanted to throw eggs, I'd have you bring eggs? 2.) Spain has watched too many bad teen movies and thinks that on Halloween people throw eggs at crap for funsies...I have never understood it and have never been able to set the record straight. So I usuallys smile and nod and roll my eyes to myself)
3.) We were going to shoot apples off each others heads like Isaac Newton. (once more, the kids know about gravity and Newton but can't tell me if it's sunny or cloudy outside...)
4.) They were going to be vampires. (no logic at all)
Irene, the teacher who works with me in 2nd grade, is new this year, cute as a button, my age, and therefore very overzealous. We both lack the teaching experience to step back and say "you know, these are awesome ideas but there's no way we can pull so much awesomeness off in one day.......or ever." So instead we (stupidly) decided to join all of the 2nd grade classes, 66 7-year olds, together and have one big Halloween party. Two other teachers offered to help us organize and play as well (even though they just wanted to watch the crazy). First we watched Scared Shrek-less, a hilarious spin-off of Shrek for the holiday. Then we told the kids to grab their TP, their apples, and come downstairs with us. We took over the preschoolers playground and the plan was to split them into three groups. One group would do mummy races with the toilet paper. Another group would make two lines and play bobbing for apples (we only had 2 big vats for water) and the other group would just color a worksheet for Halloween. Trying to split up 66 second graders is like trying to lick your elbow. Impossible, frustrating, and tiring. Eventually you just give up and submit to defeat. It took us approximately a minute and twenty seconds to come to this realization.
Once we had succumb to our lack of control, I manned the bobbing for apples station, Irene started wrapping children in toilet paper willy nilly, and a group of stragglers started coloring. We had no help. The two other teachers didn't feel like going outside because it was cold so it was just the two of us. Plus 66. This is also the precise moment I stopped speaking only English and started screaming in Spanish. Which only shut them up for about 10 seconds before they started in with "CHELSEA, you know Spanish!??! Say something else! Say something else!" or even better, "Chelsea, you speak Spanish so well!!! You've learned so much since last year!" I try not to get depressed by this by reminding myself that I, myself, told them that I didn't speak Spanish and they don't know that I've spent the last 10 years trying to perfect it....sigh. Deep breaths.
I pick a student to come with me to the bathroom to fill the vats with water. The sinks were midget sized for the preschoolers, so we did our best to fill them up. That means that I filled mine up as best as I could and India, the girl helping me, spilled half of hers all over the bathroom counter & floor. While we were filling the bowls one of the preschool boys came in and accidentally peed all over the floor because he was paying too much attention to what we were doing. I figured all acts balanced each other out and created a purpose for the other. Perfect harmony.
We waddled outside with the bowls, turned two trashcans upside down, and placed the bowls on top so they were at comfortable mouth level for the students. They make 2 lines with their apples in hand, and we start bobbing for apples. I tried to explain that the best system was to shove your head in, without being afraid of getting wet, push the apple to the bottom, and once it touches bite into it with your mouth. For adults this might have been an easier task...2nd graders don't know how to hold their breath, shove their head into decently cold water, and bite all at the same time while not using their hands and not thrashing around like migrating fish. To make a long story short, within the first minute one of the bowls went crashing to the floor and created a small tidal wave of water (approximately 5 gallons).
This wouldn't be that big of a deal except that I was wearing my new boots and we were uphill........and the mummies were downhill. So all of the monsoon headed straight towards the mounds and mounds of easily-cleanable dry toilet paper....soaking it and making the biggest soggiest mess you've ever seen.
By the end of the day Irene was exhausted, I was soaking wet, and the kids had had the absolute time of their lives. 70% were soaking wet as well with their entire upper body covered in water (which is impressive considering there was only 6 inches or so of water...how does that happen!?)
I'm exhausted just remembering it, and it happened over a month ago. Phew.
The crazy nun has turned into a bit of a Grinch this year, so she sucked the fun out of all of my classes with her. Those classes didn't really get to do Halloween unfortunately, which is just sad for the students more than anything. I'm working on it but it's really hard to sway her on anything because she's quite thick headed.
That brings me to the 5th and 6th graders. They are a bit older, and are always too cool for school, so I constantly pressure myself to be the fun teacher and not be lame and boring (I feel like I'm striving for social status in high school all over again. Except this time I'm totally winning). This might just be the most epic thing I will ever do in my life.
Since they're older, I thought they could handle something scarier and a bit more hands on. I told them to bring in 10 sheets of paper towel or napkins. I turned off all of the lights, made the entire classroom black as night, and brought a tiny flashlight. I shined it on my face (it was an LED flashlight, I think I permanently scarred my retinas...what happened to the dim old fashioned dull flashlights you could tell scary stories with??) and told them we were going to talk about a man named Hal 'O Ween, a man who died 100 years ago on October 31. I told them that I didn't know how he died but it was slow, painful, and bloody. I also gave them a slip of paper with numerous body parts written. I explained that in some plastic cups I had Hal's "body parts" and that without looking in the cups, they had to touch the "body parts" and tell me what it really was. It was a competition so it was also a secret. I used peeled tomatoes for brains, apricots for ears, a hard boiled egg for a nose, ketchup & hot water for blood, spaghetti and olive oil for "worms...the only thing left of his body", pumpkin pulp for stomach & cockroaches, cinnamon sticks for bones, gum for teeth, and olives for eyes.
The first two or three classes were okay...they definitely got grossed out because they couldn't separate the idea from the feel of the objects...but they eventually got smart and started smelling their fingers to figure out what it was they were touching. So even though they were disgusted, they'd smell and say "oh, it's just tomato."
The last two days, however, I got smart. I added the pumpkin slime & seeds because I realized Spanish kids don't know what that feels like or smells like. And it would up the ante. God also smiled down upon me and helped me stumble upon the most awesome trick of all. Wednesday I bought the pumpkin slime & peeled the tomatoes, and left them in a plastic bag over night. I figured they'd be fine. And sure enough they were, perfectly fine to use the next day. Thursday I had five classes to do this activity with. In the first class, I pass around the "brains", aka the tomato, and the teacher is giving hints to help them, saying "remember you can't look but you can smell!"
And that's when it happens. One of the students touches the tomato and goes to smell his hand...I give him a look like, "Yeah? Now you know what it is??" and he almost hurls. He starts shaking his hand, saying how disgusting it is and throwing this hissy fit. I'm thoroughly confused. It's just a tomato...what a weenie. So I move on to the next kid (I got smart and held the cups in my hand as I walked around) and he does the same thing, moaning and complaining about how gross it is. I decide to take a whiff myself, it's just tomato, and holy hell did that think REEK. It smelled so disgusting that I can't even describe it. It was foul and raunchy and rancid. Rancid. It was rancid. I literally start cackling and howling with laughter because they were so petrified and disgusted. It was disgusting. It was a Halloween miracle. It took the game to a whole new level. The exact thing happened with the pumpkin....which made it that much better. I also would jump every once in awhile and gasp when someone would touch something "gross", like the tomatoes or spaghetti or pumpkin, which completely freaked them out. They were screaming, gasping, and all around terrified and having fun at the same time. It was SO FUNNY. Each class I was laughing maniacly, so proud of what I had done. Five or six students were jokingly complaining about how mean I am, asking "Chelsea, how do jew say "evil" in English?? Jew are eeveel!!" I just raised one eyebrow and gave them a smug look of approval. Then I started to add gorey details, explaining that the pumpkin seeds were cockroaches that had started to eat his decaying stomach...and while this all sounds horrifying, it was all in good fun except with one student and it wasn't even my antics that put him over the edge. He just couldn't separate the idea of body parts from what he was touching, so it literally made him sick to his stomach. I held out the cup of olives as eyes and he almost lost it. He was in the corner dry heaving for a few minutes and I tried to urge him to go to the bathroom but he was so grossed out he couldn't move, hahaha. Eventually he got past it but it was seriously the funniest thing I'd ever seen. It got to a point where the kids wouldn't stick their hands in the cups and would hesitate three or four times before finally taking the plunge. It was great, though, because all of the bratty kids who usually hide from participation were forced to finally do something and be involved. While they were completely grossed out, everybody came to class the next week and asked, "are we playing the Halloween game again?!" No sillies, Halloween is once a year! haha....they're starting to reflect me more and more, and I LOVE it.
Basically, it was the best Halloween ever, and I'm so freaking glad it won't be back for another 10 months.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Sunday, November 6, 2011
New changes....& Suzie's tiny pooper
I have let everybody down and myself thus far, for which I'm quite sorry haha. I've been in a rut lately, with life and friends, so I've not been in the mood to blog much. Jeri called me out on it, actually, and I agree with her that it's a clear sign of a problem. My school life and private classes are wonderful, but it's my social life & home life that have been bothering me. I think I can solve all of my problems by moving, though, so I'm hoping to move closer to my school & the city around December. By doing so I'll save so much time travelling, a lot of money on rent, and hopefully jumpstart my year again. I'll keep you posted :) I visited an apartment I loved last week, 4 minutes from my school, but they have other people interested so they're going to let me know next week if they want me or not...fingers crossed & prayers that I'm cool enough :P
Okay let's get down to business. I have so much to catch up on it's not even funny. To begin, I have picked up two new private classes this year. This means a lot more money for me...and a lot more crazy in my life. The first class is on Fridays for an hour and a half, with 4 year old Irene, 7 year old Diego, and sometimes their 1 yr old Sara (she just repeats things). They wanted the kids to think I was their new American friend, who doesn't speak any English...so we usually just play games. They're both really shy, though, and very hesitant to English...it's difficult. The first day I showed up the parents had purchased presents from a chino and wrapped them for me to give to kids...as they were opening them I was like, "Oh, what is it?!? (thinking...no seriously, what is it?? I honestly have no clue...)" Kind of bizarre but I go along with it...25 euros is 25 euros. My school has been amazing this year, and re-did my schedule so I have Fridays free. I will have to work on Fridays in June, but I figure that 10 months without is a pretty awesome setup.
My other new class is on Mondays and Wednesdays...one hour, 30 euros. It's the SWEETEST class I have thus far. The kids are 4 and 6, Marta and Nicolas. Their English is PHENOMENAL! It makes my job so easy, because I literally play with them for an hour, they talk to me in English, and the time flies. Both of their parents speak English very well, so I think they might have lived in England or something...not sure. The first day I went there, they were telling me about their brother and sister and all of their toys. They love drawing so I asked them to draw me all the animals they know in English...I drew a black cat for Halloween and they flipped out. "We have a cat!! She's black and has green eyes...her name is Suzie!" I asked them if we could see her (cats are like raccoons here so it's rare for a family to have a domesticated house cat...and I miss my little black cats & Lexi dearly) and they said that Suzie is big, and would scratch them...so we'd have to go look for her. We go to the living room, hunting for the cat, and she's sitting on the back of the sofa. They told me she might not like me at first but I told them cats speak English so I'm sure she'd love me (side note: I lie to my students all the time, and they all believe me...sometimes I feel bad about it but most of the time it makes me giggle and entertains me. Read below for more lies I've told). I go to pet her and say how beautiful she is, and Nicolas says (in Spanish), "Yes! She's really pretty and did you see her butthole??"
Reaction:
How the hell do you respond to that? I was like "Yes!! She is very beautiful!" but he was not satisfied that I had not addressed his statement. (In Spanish) "Yes, her butthole is so tiny! It's like this!!"
Needless to say I'm not going to teach the kids how to say asshole in English. I was tempted though. Imagine the look on their English teacher's face.
All good things have their drawbacks, though, and I've finally found their imperfections. Nicolas, the boy, gets super hyper sometimes...which is fine, he likes to wrestle and roughhouse, but last week he started spitting at me. Why, as the English tutor, do I end up with such crazy little brats?? I finally grabbed his mouth and told him no spitting. I had to mime spit a few times for him to understand the word spit, but I made him pinky promise not to do it again. Luckily I speak 5-year old, haha.
Meanwhile, my class I still have from last year is constantly up and down. The girls are nicer, we haven't argued about the size of my chest and they haven't thrown any coins at me lately...but the boy loves to tell me how much he loves war video games, and the best ones are the ones that are more realistic where you can see the blood gushing and squirting. I feel like Hitler's English tutor sometimes...
I'm getting tired so I'll update soon about Halloween. I know this wasn't quite at par for my usual posts but I think things will start getting better soon :) They have to!
Okay let's get down to business. I have so much to catch up on it's not even funny. To begin, I have picked up two new private classes this year. This means a lot more money for me...and a lot more crazy in my life. The first class is on Fridays for an hour and a half, with 4 year old Irene, 7 year old Diego, and sometimes their 1 yr old Sara (she just repeats things). They wanted the kids to think I was their new American friend, who doesn't speak any English...so we usually just play games. They're both really shy, though, and very hesitant to English...it's difficult. The first day I showed up the parents had purchased presents from a chino and wrapped them for me to give to kids...as they were opening them I was like, "Oh, what is it?!? (thinking...no seriously, what is it?? I honestly have no clue...)" Kind of bizarre but I go along with it...25 euros is 25 euros. My school has been amazing this year, and re-did my schedule so I have Fridays free. I will have to work on Fridays in June, but I figure that 10 months without is a pretty awesome setup.
My other new class is on Mondays and Wednesdays...one hour, 30 euros. It's the SWEETEST class I have thus far. The kids are 4 and 6, Marta and Nicolas. Their English is PHENOMENAL! It makes my job so easy, because I literally play with them for an hour, they talk to me in English, and the time flies. Both of their parents speak English very well, so I think they might have lived in England or something...not sure. The first day I went there, they were telling me about their brother and sister and all of their toys. They love drawing so I asked them to draw me all the animals they know in English...I drew a black cat for Halloween and they flipped out. "We have a cat!! She's black and has green eyes...her name is Suzie!" I asked them if we could see her (cats are like raccoons here so it's rare for a family to have a domesticated house cat...and I miss my little black cats & Lexi dearly) and they said that Suzie is big, and would scratch them...so we'd have to go look for her. We go to the living room, hunting for the cat, and she's sitting on the back of the sofa. They told me she might not like me at first but I told them cats speak English so I'm sure she'd love me (side note: I lie to my students all the time, and they all believe me...sometimes I feel bad about it but most of the time it makes me giggle and entertains me. Read below for more lies I've told). I go to pet her and say how beautiful she is, and Nicolas says (in Spanish), "Yes! She's really pretty and did you see her butthole??"
Reaction:
How the hell do you respond to that? I was like "Yes!! She is very beautiful!" but he was not satisfied that I had not addressed his statement. (In Spanish) "Yes, her butthole is so tiny! It's like this!!"
I tried as hard as humanly possible to ignore this statement and talk about something else but they were both so eager and excited about Suzie's ass that they kept going...finally in English. "Ojete!! How do you say ojete in English? Suzie has a very small ojete!"
Needless to say I'm not going to teach the kids how to say asshole in English. I was tempted though. Imagine the look on their English teacher's face.
All good things have their drawbacks, though, and I've finally found their imperfections. Nicolas, the boy, gets super hyper sometimes...which is fine, he likes to wrestle and roughhouse, but last week he started spitting at me. Why, as the English tutor, do I end up with such crazy little brats?? I finally grabbed his mouth and told him no spitting. I had to mime spit a few times for him to understand the word spit, but I made him pinky promise not to do it again. Luckily I speak 5-year old, haha.
Meanwhile, my class I still have from last year is constantly up and down. The girls are nicer, we haven't argued about the size of my chest and they haven't thrown any coins at me lately...but the boy loves to tell me how much he loves war video games, and the best ones are the ones that are more realistic where you can see the blood gushing and squirting. I feel like Hitler's English tutor sometimes...
I'm getting tired so I'll update soon about Halloween. I know this wasn't quite at par for my usual posts but I think things will start getting better soon :) They have to!
Saturday, September 24, 2011
A boring post to catch things up
Once again I got caught up in life and suck at blogging...but it's been a hectic week!
I don't even know where to begin...and to be honest, nothing earth-shatteringly interesting has happened so I'll try to update you all in an entertaining way. Let's cross our fingers and begin.
My first day at school was last Thursday, but I went in on Wednesday to say hello, make sure they remembered I was coming back, etc. I knew I would have to suffer through a million hello kisses and I was prepared for the awkwardness. The only thing that helped me gather my nerves was the thought of all of my kids super excited to see me and telling me how bee-you-tee-full I am. I arrived at school around 11:40, just in time for recess. I walked inside, though, and nobody was on the playground. Not knowing why they were still in class, I went upstairs and headed to the teacher's lounge, hoping to find Rocio, the English coordinator, and talk to her about this school year, me starting, etc. I didn't find her but one of the other teachers was in there prepping for classes and was super excited to see me. I asked her what was going on this school year, how things were going (because they all started Monday) and she gave me some of the dirt on all of the changes that went on over the summer. They switched around some of the teachers and basically all of them were annoyed because it was Wednesday, nobody had their schedules yet, and there was no organization. It made me feel better knowing that they were completely in the dark in life as well, and it wasn't just me, haha. Instead of being bombarded by my students though, I ended up being bombarded by my teachers. I was really surprised because last year they didn't seem super warm towards me...they weren't unfriendly, by any means, but they weren't super excited or involving either. This year though they were all so happy to see me! I was so surprised and it made me so happy to see all of them...for once I didn't mind all of the hello kisses :) They're a lot less awkward when people are truly happy to see you, and you to see them, too.
The first week of classes, that week, is "sensibility" week...and that might be a really poor translation. Basically the teachers have to pull material out of their asses in order to waste time until they receive their real schedules and can prepare classes accordingly. Honestly it's more fun for me because I just walked around from class to class and tried to help the teachers waste time. To give you an example of how much the teachers didn't care, they made the kids watch The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and then gave them a bogus worksheet to pass the time. Isabel, my favorite teacher, asked the kids what happened when when the boys came out of the closet, then whispered in my ear that they "bought rainbow flags and went to celebrate Pride in Chueca (the gay district)." It was a fun week because I basically had no responsibilities or anything to do. I did crack open their new English books, though, because literally none of the other English teachers had, haha.
Come Monday they had finally finished our schedules. They tried to give me Monday free, but it just wasn't possible. Instead I only have one class on Monday (at 3 p.m.), and a half day on Friday. I'm pretty excited! Combined it's like a 3 day weekend, right?? Haha. Some good news, though, is that I feel like I have been inadvertantly promoted. First of all, all of the classes have an extra hour of English this year. This hour is my hour of class, which means we won't be using the books. Instead they want me to facilitate them speaking more in English and doing more activities/games/projects. They also have discussed it and are going to let me give the kids grades! It's not super official but basically the kids will now know that I have a grade book and that during my hour of English I can give them positive or negative marks and tell the teacher so that it impacts their overall grade in the class. Technically as an assistant I'm not allowed to give "grades" but I thought this was amazing because it shows their respect for me and I feel like they are truly working to include me and demand respect for me. It feels so good.
I think this year is going to be wonderful. I survived my first week "on my own" in the classrooms and while I cheated and used some Spanish to assert my boundaries, most of the classes (even the awful 2nd graders) were eager and excited for the fun class each week with me. Hopefully I can live up to everybody's expectations!
Next blog I'll try to be more fun, this was just necessary catch-up work :)
Thursday, September 8, 2011
ChiChi's Shit & My Second Arrival in Madrid
Hola world! I know I said I'd write sooner but my days have been hectic. First we've had class from 9-3 every day, & it takes me over an hour to get to our classes which are located in BFE. That means I have to get up ass early, which wouldn't be so bad if I actually slept each night. The week before I came, I didn't sleep much & now that I'm here I've got terrible jet lag. I try to go to sleep at 10, but my body says, "wake up bitch! It's 4 p.m." Or last night I tried to go to bed at 9 (we had no internet, we're currently stealing wifi from our neighbors while ours gets fixed) but there was this block party concert thing near by so I had to suffer through that. First an opera singer, then some more normal bands, and for the grand finale was a Spanish version of Jay-Z. Jota zeta en la casa!! (if you speak Spanish that joke might have been funny...maybe.)
Back to my arrival here. I had an absurd journey (you might have already followed some details on Facebook, I had a bit of free time on my hands). My flight from Indy was at 6:30 am so I spent the entire night before that packing and cleaning my room. We left the house around 4:30. The flight was fine (I think...I passed out almost immediately. I even missed my complementary drink which I'm still upset about, haha) but the airplane was soo small. It couldn't have been more than 8 feet wide. There were two rows, one with 2 seats and the other with only one. That small. Looked like a model airplane.
I arrived in Miami around 9am.
We ended up waiting on the plane for about 45 minutes just waiting to taxi & for the attendants to unload our carry ons. The plane was so small that we had to check almost all of our small carry on luggage because there was no overhead space. So anyways the baggage guys come out to the plane and all of us watched as they unloaded our carry-on items. The two Miami-ans were young men who clearly hated their jobs and perhaps their entire lives. They, therefore, had no respect for our belongings. The worst was this little burgundy carry-on that the guy literally picked up and chucked towards the top shelf of the luggage cart. Surprisingly enough it missed, flew over the rack, and landed three feet away. He begrudgingly walked over, picked it up, tossed it up without looking again, and watched it teeter on the edge. He decided that was secure enough and went back to the other bags. 2 seconds later it fell at least 8 feet off the cart again back on to the ground. Everyone on the plane was watching this occur like a close football game, moaning and shouting, "OHH! that's gotta hurt!! Sucks for whoever's luggage that is!!"
It was mine. I watched every freaking throw, fall, roll, tumble, and bashing while listening to everyone else adding their own play-by-play commentary. Even more embarrassing was the fact that everyone was eagerly watching to see which unfortunate person would claim the battered bag because it was still teetering on the edge & they figured it would fall again. I hesitantly claimed my bag, head down, and rolled it away, just thankful that the wheels still worked.
I got inside and there were no directions telling where to go for connecting flights, or where to go to recheck your luggage. I drug my sad carryon to the nearest desk and asked for help. The attendants, both Hispanic, took my boarding pass and tag-teamed my questions on the computer. They cheerfully informed me that my luggage would automatically be transferred all the way through (unless Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky bag basher got his angry hands on it) and my connecting flight was at gate D11. Then they both got a very familiar look on their face, a look that I've seen many times before...a look of severe sympathy for bad news & simultaneous disbelief of how unlucky I am (it's the same look my students give me when I break the news to them that I don't have a boyfriend...I'm used to it)
"um, well the thing is your flight doesn't leave until this evening, at 6:30pm..."
I know this chicas. I do have my itinerary haha. I tried to humor them & thanked them for the help.
So I start walking to my gate. I walk and walk and walk and walk & finally reach my gate around 10. I like to think of it as Devine intervention, but my gate was located in between Starbucks, Hagen Daaz, Wendy's, and Jose Cuervo's Tequileria.
My first stop? Wanna make bets?
Starbucks. Duh. I needed coffee to stay alert so that nobody stole my beaten up carry on. I bought a Cosmo & 24 hours of Internet so I could have something to do for my 9 hour layover.
The first thing I noticed was that I already felt like I was in Madrid. The entire airport was filled with Hispanics! I thought about skipping my 9 hour layover, skipping my 9 hour transatlantic flight, and just freelancing translation down there.
2 hours later I realized the gate where I had set up camp, in front of Starbucks, was a flight headed to Guatemala. That explained the abundance of Latin Americans. Face palm.
So I read my Cosmo, candidly...the articles can be a bit colorful and some creepass behind me kept looking over my shoulder...
The best part about a 9 hour layover in an airport (there aren't many) especially in Miami, has to be the people watching. Bleach blonde Hispanics (dark skin, bleached hair), countless people wearing shirts that say MIAMI across the front (or sweatpants with MIAMI across the ass), and finally a large Cuban man (I assume, his shirt said CUBA) with a little chihuahua. I'm not positive that having a chihuahua was legal, but because it was the only dog in the airport, and so small, everyone stared at him, nudging their friends and pointing, "look! Isn't he soo cute??"
While everyone was swooning over the dog, and the large Cuban was strutting proudly and tall, basking in the attention of his popular accessory (the image was pretty ironic...300 lb Cuban man, 2 lb chihuahua)...the chihuahua stopped.
And in the fashion of most people who use pets for accessories, the Cuban did not pay attention to his dog and simply dragged it along behind him (slick tile floors...the chihuahua didn't stand a chance.)
Most dog owners know where this is going. When dogs stop, they are usually smelling for pee, or they themselves have to pee.
Little ChiChi (I named the dog) started to hunch his back. Turns out he didn't have to pee after all, he had to go #2.
So. while being drug on the linoleum, with over 200 people watching, ChiChi crapped, in a trail, all along the airport floor.
The 200+ watchers all gasped & pointed laughing at poor ChiChi and bringing it to the attention of everybody they could reach. Large Cuban (let's call him Juan) and ChiChi had reached the moving sidewalk, but a kind couple tapped on Juan's shoulder and brought it to his attention that ChiChi had left a little present behind. Apparently Juan is a real dick and completely ignored them, quickly walking away (as quick as a large man can walk). So we all stared at the poop, which was like watching a train wreck because a.) nobody wanted to clean it up, b.) we all wanted to punch smug Juan in his crap-lousy face, and c.) not all of the traveling passengers saw ChiChi doing his business, so everybody was kicking the poop, stepping on it, and trailing it throughout MIA.
Eventually the crowd died down, and ChiChi's leftovers were being avoided. Finally one of the flight attendants at my gate noticed and yelled to one of the security guards to pick it up. The funny thing was she yelled it in Spanish, trying to be more tactful. Apparently she hadn't realized that she was surrounded by Hispanics who understood everything when she yelled "EH! DIEGO! A DAMNED DOG SHAT ON THE FLOOR OVER THERE! LOOK! DO YOU SEE? THATS A SMALL PILE OF SHIT RIGHT THERE! YEAH, A DOG SHAT ON THE FLOOR AND NOW PEOPLE ARE WALKING THROUGH IT."
Diego, being a security guard, was above picking up doggie doo doo, so he grabbed one of the luggage carts and placed it over the poop.
This was an improvement to the situation, for sure, until about 30 minutes later, when an older man thought that fate was smiling upon him and had left him an empty luggage cart. So he took the poop shield, kicking it around as he walked off. Finally, an hour after that, the cleaning lady came with her broom and swept it up. Unfortunately she didn't see the last piece that somebody had tracked over by the moving sidewalk. That remained there until I left, and may or may not still be there as you read this. So here's to ChiChi for leaving his mark on Miami, and hoping that someday he can get away from that asshole Juan. I'm hoping that karma will come around and get him some commercials with Taco Bell.
I eventually made my flight to Madrid. Remember my last post where I said I liked the aisle so I can pee when I want? Still applied. I sat in a window seat (because this stupid flight charged $35 for "preferred seats" aka aisle seats) next to an unfriendly Spanish women who may or may not have been both pregnant and anorexic. She had a minimal bump, but was very very thin. And refused to eat anything on the flight. She made me nervous so I went all 9 hours without peeing. It was okay though because I slept most of the time anyways.
So I get to Madrid, pee, make it through customs (even though my green card had expired) and went to get my luggage. And I waited. And I waited. 40 minutes later I almost had a small panic attack (again, remember last year?) I kept thinking to myself "don't freak out...if you don't have your luggage, you'll get it eventually. Don't cry. Plus you know it was that screw-up shitbag in Miami that threw your carry-on, so you already know who to blame. Seriously don't cry. Think about your satin sheets! Zebra print satin sheets. And hot Spanish men. Ok for serious DO NOT CRY."
On top of that, soooomebody forgot to come get me at the airport. I won't name names but it rhymes with Hamuel and starts with an S. I didn't know this though, so I texted as much as I could until I ran out of money on my phone & prayed he hadn't left due to my delays (we had already arrived an hour late anyways). It also didn't help I was in terminal 4, and hardly any flights come in through terminal 4. Deep down, I knew that all of these conflicts were going to result in me being alone at the airport.
Finally my bag appeared. Magically. I grabbed my crap and rushed through the gates. Nobody there. I did a few laps with my cart, accidentally hit a few people in my anxious pacing, but eventually came to terms with the fact that I was alone. I tried to pick up a wifi signal to get ahold of somebody on Facebook, but that didn't work either. I knew that if I tried to take the Metro, with two suitcases and a carry-on, I would have some sort of post traumatic stress flash back to last year and probably have an anxiety attack . So with satin sheets and happy thoughts in mind, I walked aimlessly weighing my options.
DON'T CRY. YOU ARE NOT A CUTE CRIER.
I found a little hub with two computers where you could get on the Internet. Luckily a guy was just getting off so I hopped on, preparing to get raped by the airport prices. I put in one euro and got 18 minutes! Still rape, but at the time I only needed 2 minutes and felt like the storm was finally passing.
About an hour later, around noon, I decided I needed to look for other people to help me. I called my friend Rebecca and luckily she had gotten into Madrid early and was cleaning her new apartment. She tried to hurry to help me but I was calm as a cucumber once I knew that help was on the way. I took my time going to the bathroom, sat at the little airport coffee shop playing Hearts on my new iPhone (p.s. That's literally what I did for the majority of my time in Miami...reprogram my iPhone. Tim found a 3G on eBay for cheap because the top button that makes it sleep doesn't work. Funny thing is when I landed from Indy, the button worked!) I did have to tolerate a noisy child next to me, who I nicknamed DJ Biggie Smalls because he insisted on clapping, smacking or beating on any thing nearby with a solid surface, and playing his Arabic techno music at full volume from his cell phone while singing. His dad was wearing headphones so he didn't give a shit anyways. I think he was maybe 11 or 12, old enough to not be cute enough to do that crap in public, plus he was dressed like he belonged in a gang, with pants at his knees and an XXXL shirt.
Rebecca finally came and I'm finally settling in. If only I could sleep, that'd be the cherry on the cake. This weekend I get to go to a pool party! I'm excited to swim. And meet new friends. I know I sound like I'm five but I'm just that excited. Will update soon. :)
I'm working on a tagline to end my blog, so it has a definitive goodbye. For now, I think, I will just re-warn America to watch out for ChiChi's shit. It could be anywhere.
Back to my arrival here. I had an absurd journey (you might have already followed some details on Facebook, I had a bit of free time on my hands). My flight from Indy was at 6:30 am so I spent the entire night before that packing and cleaning my room. We left the house around 4:30. The flight was fine (I think...I passed out almost immediately. I even missed my complementary drink which I'm still upset about, haha) but the airplane was soo small. It couldn't have been more than 8 feet wide. There were two rows, one with 2 seats and the other with only one. That small. Looked like a model airplane.
I arrived in Miami around 9am.
Miami! If you look closely, it's the coast :) It was beautiful.
We ended up waiting on the plane for about 45 minutes just waiting to taxi & for the attendants to unload our carry ons. The plane was so small that we had to check almost all of our small carry on luggage because there was no overhead space. So anyways the baggage guys come out to the plane and all of us watched as they unloaded our carry-on items. The two Miami-ans were young men who clearly hated their jobs and perhaps their entire lives. They, therefore, had no respect for our belongings. The worst was this little burgundy carry-on that the guy literally picked up and chucked towards the top shelf of the luggage cart. Surprisingly enough it missed, flew over the rack, and landed three feet away. He begrudgingly walked over, picked it up, tossed it up without looking again, and watched it teeter on the edge. He decided that was secure enough and went back to the other bags. 2 seconds later it fell at least 8 feet off the cart again back on to the ground. Everyone on the plane was watching this occur like a close football game, moaning and shouting, "OHH! that's gotta hurt!! Sucks for whoever's luggage that is!!"
It was mine. I watched every freaking throw, fall, roll, tumble, and bashing while listening to everyone else adding their own play-by-play commentary. Even more embarrassing was the fact that everyone was eagerly watching to see which unfortunate person would claim the battered bag because it was still teetering on the edge & they figured it would fall again. I hesitantly claimed my bag, head down, and rolled it away, just thankful that the wheels still worked.
I got inside and there were no directions telling where to go for connecting flights, or where to go to recheck your luggage. I drug my sad carryon to the nearest desk and asked for help. The attendants, both Hispanic, took my boarding pass and tag-teamed my questions on the computer. They cheerfully informed me that my luggage would automatically be transferred all the way through (unless Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky bag basher got his angry hands on it) and my connecting flight was at gate D11. Then they both got a very familiar look on their face, a look that I've seen many times before...a look of severe sympathy for bad news & simultaneous disbelief of how unlucky I am (it's the same look my students give me when I break the news to them that I don't have a boyfriend...I'm used to it)
"um, well the thing is your flight doesn't leave until this evening, at 6:30pm..."
I know this chicas. I do have my itinerary haha. I tried to humor them & thanked them for the help.
So I start walking to my gate. I walk and walk and walk and walk & finally reach my gate around 10. I like to think of it as Devine intervention, but my gate was located in between Starbucks, Hagen Daaz, Wendy's, and Jose Cuervo's Tequileria.
My first stop? Wanna make bets?
Starbucks. Duh. I needed coffee to stay alert so that nobody stole my beaten up carry on. I bought a Cosmo & 24 hours of Internet so I could have something to do for my 9 hour layover.
The first thing I noticed was that I already felt like I was in Madrid. The entire airport was filled with Hispanics! I thought about skipping my 9 hour layover, skipping my 9 hour transatlantic flight, and just freelancing translation down there.
2 hours later I realized the gate where I had set up camp, in front of Starbucks, was a flight headed to Guatemala. That explained the abundance of Latin Americans. Face palm.
So I read my Cosmo, candidly...the articles can be a bit colorful and some creepass behind me kept looking over my shoulder...
The best part about a 9 hour layover in an airport (there aren't many) especially in Miami, has to be the people watching. Bleach blonde Hispanics (dark skin, bleached hair), countless people wearing shirts that say MIAMI across the front (or sweatpants with MIAMI across the ass), and finally a large Cuban man (I assume, his shirt said CUBA) with a little chihuahua. I'm not positive that having a chihuahua was legal, but because it was the only dog in the airport, and so small, everyone stared at him, nudging their friends and pointing, "look! Isn't he soo cute??"
While everyone was swooning over the dog, and the large Cuban was strutting proudly and tall, basking in the attention of his popular accessory (the image was pretty ironic...300 lb Cuban man, 2 lb chihuahua)...the chihuahua stopped.
And in the fashion of most people who use pets for accessories, the Cuban did not pay attention to his dog and simply dragged it along behind him (slick tile floors...the chihuahua didn't stand a chance.)
Most dog owners know where this is going. When dogs stop, they are usually smelling for pee, or they themselves have to pee.
Little ChiChi (I named the dog) started to hunch his back. Turns out he didn't have to pee after all, he had to go #2.
So. while being drug on the linoleum, with over 200 people watching, ChiChi crapped, in a trail, all along the airport floor.
The 200+ watchers all gasped & pointed laughing at poor ChiChi and bringing it to the attention of everybody they could reach. Large Cuban (let's call him Juan) and ChiChi had reached the moving sidewalk, but a kind couple tapped on Juan's shoulder and brought it to his attention that ChiChi had left a little present behind. Apparently Juan is a real dick and completely ignored them, quickly walking away (as quick as a large man can walk). So we all stared at the poop, which was like watching a train wreck because a.) nobody wanted to clean it up, b.) we all wanted to punch smug Juan in his crap-lousy face, and c.) not all of the traveling passengers saw ChiChi doing his business, so everybody was kicking the poop, stepping on it, and trailing it throughout MIA.
Eventually the crowd died down, and ChiChi's leftovers were being avoided. Finally one of the flight attendants at my gate noticed and yelled to one of the security guards to pick it up. The funny thing was she yelled it in Spanish, trying to be more tactful. Apparently she hadn't realized that she was surrounded by Hispanics who understood everything when she yelled "EH! DIEGO! A DAMNED DOG SHAT ON THE FLOOR OVER THERE! LOOK! DO YOU SEE? THATS A SMALL PILE OF SHIT RIGHT THERE! YEAH, A DOG SHAT ON THE FLOOR AND NOW PEOPLE ARE WALKING THROUGH IT."
Diego, being a security guard, was above picking up doggie doo doo, so he grabbed one of the luggage carts and placed it over the poop.
Actual photo.
This was an improvement to the situation, for sure, until about 30 minutes later, when an older man thought that fate was smiling upon him and had left him an empty luggage cart. So he took the poop shield, kicking it around as he walked off. Finally, an hour after that, the cleaning lady came with her broom and swept it up. Unfortunately she didn't see the last piece that somebody had tracked over by the moving sidewalk. That remained there until I left, and may or may not still be there as you read this. So here's to ChiChi for leaving his mark on Miami, and hoping that someday he can get away from that asshole Juan. I'm hoping that karma will come around and get him some commercials with Taco Bell.
I eventually made my flight to Madrid. Remember my last post where I said I liked the aisle so I can pee when I want? Still applied. I sat in a window seat (because this stupid flight charged $35 for "preferred seats" aka aisle seats) next to an unfriendly Spanish women who may or may not have been both pregnant and anorexic. She had a minimal bump, but was very very thin. And refused to eat anything on the flight. She made me nervous so I went all 9 hours without peeing. It was okay though because I slept most of the time anyways.
So I get to Madrid, pee, make it through customs (even though my green card had expired) and went to get my luggage. And I waited. And I waited. 40 minutes later I almost had a small panic attack (again, remember last year?) I kept thinking to myself "don't freak out...if you don't have your luggage, you'll get it eventually. Don't cry. Plus you know it was that screw-up shitbag in Miami that threw your carry-on, so you already know who to blame. Seriously don't cry. Think about your satin sheets! Zebra print satin sheets. And hot Spanish men. Ok for serious DO NOT CRY."
On top of that, soooomebody forgot to come get me at the airport. I won't name names but it rhymes with Hamuel and starts with an S. I didn't know this though, so I texted as much as I could until I ran out of money on my phone & prayed he hadn't left due to my delays (we had already arrived an hour late anyways). It also didn't help I was in terminal 4, and hardly any flights come in through terminal 4. Deep down, I knew that all of these conflicts were going to result in me being alone at the airport.
Finally my bag appeared. Magically. I grabbed my crap and rushed through the gates. Nobody there. I did a few laps with my cart, accidentally hit a few people in my anxious pacing, but eventually came to terms with the fact that I was alone. I tried to pick up a wifi signal to get ahold of somebody on Facebook, but that didn't work either. I knew that if I tried to take the Metro, with two suitcases and a carry-on, I would have some sort of post traumatic stress flash back to last year and probably have an anxiety attack . So with satin sheets and happy thoughts in mind, I walked aimlessly weighing my options.
DON'T CRY. YOU ARE NOT A CUTE CRIER.
I found a little hub with two computers where you could get on the Internet. Luckily a guy was just getting off so I hopped on, preparing to get raped by the airport prices. I put in one euro and got 18 minutes! Still rape, but at the time I only needed 2 minutes and felt like the storm was finally passing.
About an hour later, around noon, I decided I needed to look for other people to help me. I called my friend Rebecca and luckily she had gotten into Madrid early and was cleaning her new apartment. She tried to hurry to help me but I was calm as a cucumber once I knew that help was on the way. I took my time going to the bathroom, sat at the little airport coffee shop playing Hearts on my new iPhone (p.s. That's literally what I did for the majority of my time in Miami...reprogram my iPhone. Tim found a 3G on eBay for cheap because the top button that makes it sleep doesn't work. Funny thing is when I landed from Indy, the button worked!) I did have to tolerate a noisy child next to me, who I nicknamed DJ Biggie Smalls because he insisted on clapping, smacking or beating on any thing nearby with a solid surface, and playing his Arabic techno music at full volume from his cell phone while singing. His dad was wearing headphones so he didn't give a shit anyways. I think he was maybe 11 or 12, old enough to not be cute enough to do that crap in public, plus he was dressed like he belonged in a gang, with pants at his knees and an XXXL shirt.
Rebecca finally came and I'm finally settling in. If only I could sleep, that'd be the cherry on the cake. This weekend I get to go to a pool party! I'm excited to swim. And meet new friends. I know I sound like I'm five but I'm just that excited. Will update soon. :)
I'm working on a tagline to end my blog, so it has a definitive goodbye. For now, I think, I will just re-warn America to watch out for ChiChi's shit. It could be anywhere.
Monday, September 5, 2011
Back with a Bang!
Hello world!!! It's been quite a while, hasn't it?! I apologize. I had plenty of things I could have blogged about over the summer but I didn't want to cheapen the experience.
And I'm lazy. But if you're reading this, you should know that by now.
Well, as I type this I am laying in my mildly cluttered NEW bed with zebra print satin sheets :D (if you'd like some of your own, perhaps in a solid color, giraffe, or cheetah print, check Amazon. $20. I'm so impressed with myself and everytime I lay in them I feel like a princess. They're so damned soft!!)
Check that out, 3rd paragraph, already sidetracked. That must be a record.
Anyways, I'm FINALLY back in Madrid. I'm assuming most of you know by now but I decided to stay another year, at least, to learn Spanish this time. Last year I came with the intent of learning Spanish and getting a not-so-important Master's degree at the same time. I got the Masters, and am still amazed by my thesis, ask to flip through it sometime (lots of pictures, easy to read). Anyways, I spoke English ALL of the time. With my roommates, at school, private classes...and I somehow managed to escape the entire reason I came here. So, year #2. This year I'm getting paid twice as much with half of the work. I'm going to have *gasp* free time...and maybe even develop a social life! I'm not holding my breath though :) In case you're wondering, I'll be home December 23. I've yet to buy my return ticket, but I'm looking at January 7 - June 28ish, which means we'll need to celebrate my birthday early. (January 10th cough cough).
Okay good. All of the boring nitty gritty details are finished. Let's get to the part where I cannot manage to travel without 80 kinds of crazy.
I never updated this AFTER I flew back for the summer. I had quite an eventful time getting to the airport (ask if you'd really like to know) but once I finally got to my gate & was able to sit down, calmly, knowing I got there on time, I was thrilled. Finally headed home!! My flight was FILLED with students heading to America to learn English for the summer. I think that grand total there were about 3 or 4 groups of 30 students each on this plane, with matching T-shirts so they didn't get lost. I go to my seat and somebody is already sitting there. He was blonde & cute & didn't speak English well, but he asked me if it would be okay if he switched me seats because I was next to his 13 year old brother & he didn't want him to sit all alone. I asked if, by chance, his seat was on the aisle. He said yes so I told him no problem, I'd move back on the plane.
I get to my new seat and there are these 4 girls. The last one, on my aisle, gathers up the courage to try and ask me in English if she can switch me seats because I was by myself so she can be with her friends. I told her sure, as long as my seat was on the aisle. She said it was, so she took me up front (awkwardly enough, past the blonde kid) and showed me her seat. At this point I go to sit down and a flamboyant flight attendant sees me about to sit down and says, "Are you by yourself??" ........yes, sir, thanks for pointing that out. I am all alone. Yes. Alone.
"Since you're alone, would you mind moving to a seat in the back? I have a kiddo I'm trying to keep an eye on and it'd be easier if he was here with his group." Sure, why the hell not? I've moved twice, what's three times. I asked "by any chance is it in the aisle?" It was! Super. So I haul my carry on back. I feel like I should also add that my carry on held ALL of my clothes. Literally, all of them. It was packed to the rim and weighed about 30 pounds. It was like dragging a sack of sheet rock.
I get to my new seat, start to try to put my carry on up above, and the man in front of me turns around. I AM NOT KIDDING. "Are you by yourself?" Question of the year, sir. Why yes, I'm the only one on this foresaken plane who is alone! GLAD YOU NOTICED. I was so happy to be coming home, though, after 6 months that I wasn't even annoyed. At all, ever, during this situation. "Yes, I'm by myself........wanting to switch seats?" "Well if you don't mind! My wife is up there with our family friends and I'm just one row back..." You know my rules! As long as it's on the aisle...
At this point the flight attendant got sassy and in Mean Momma mode. "Oh my Lord! I feel so bad for you! I just made you move!" I told them I really didn't care where I sat as long as it was on the aisle, and they could muster up the muscle to put my suitcase in the overhead bin because it was kinda big, kinda heavy, may or not have qualified for the carry on requirements........
The guy I was trading with starts to hoist my carry on (with ease) when Miss Spanish America narrowed her sights on me and bee-lined it for my seat with her clipboard. She was about 29ish, bad highlights, and was in charge of one of the students groups. She was super proud of her English and was therefore overly assertive with it. "You're alone raight? Could jew moof up dere, I haff a student and he ees by himself." It was more of a statement than a question. I just laughed. And I asked her if it was in the aisle. (P.S. if you're wondering why I like the aisle, it's simply because I am the exact opposite of Charo there. I'm too passive. If I sit in a non-aisle position, I won't pee for the entire flight, even though it's 9 hours long. Case in point: My trip back from the USA. Sat next to a mean girl, potentially pregnant and anorexic (go figure) and didn't get out once.) She says, "yes yes, it's right up here".......but it wasn't in the aisle.
Well nice passenger and sassy flight attendant flip shits. "OH MY GOD!! She just moved twice!!!"
...."actually this would be my fifth move...."
Sassy gay bald flight attendant: OH MY GAWD, are you kidding?! You're SERIOUS!? Oh my God. Oh my God. Sweetie what's your name?? Chelsea?? Chelsea it's nice to meet you. I'm going to take care of you today. Anything you need, ANYTHING, just let me know okay? We're gonna take care of you. I'm gonna take care of you.
We get up to look at my new and hopefully last seat...but it's not in the aisle. SGBFA (sassy gay bald flight attendant) lost it.
SGBFA: Nuh-uh. She said aisle. AIIIIISLE. Do you know what aisle is?? This seat is in the aisle, and this one and this one. (She mumbles ahh, que esta en el pasillo...) YES. Paseeyo? AISLE, in English. Yes, look, now you've learned a new word today! She won't move unless it's en EL PASEEYO.
............................................face palm.
Anyways, she finally chooses one of her student's seats that's in the aisle. I sit down and enjoyed a 2 hour conversation with a nice Spanish man on vacation, before he let me go to sleep. I taught him how to improve his accent before he let me rest, but in the end it was an incredible flight. No turbulence. No scary moments at take off or landing. AND SGBFA offered me free headphones (usually $5), my choice of refreshments and meals before everyone else, he gave me extra pretzels, and also offered me free booze. Sometimes it pays off to be a doormat. And my nice Spanish neighbor also reaped the benefits of the earphones because he didn't want him to feel left out...God forbid anybody be "by themselves" on the airplane.
Somehow this post ended up being longer than expected and I haven't even detailed my trip back over here. I think a lot of you saw my bajillion updates on Facebook, though, so for tonight I think I will just leave you with some pictures of my new apartment and finish expanding on my absurd trip tomorrow :) I don't start teaching until September 15 (at the latest) so I'll have plenty of time before then to write!
Here's my new beautiful home in Aravaca :)
And I'm lazy. But if you're reading this, you should know that by now.
Well, as I type this I am laying in my mildly cluttered NEW bed with zebra print satin sheets :D (if you'd like some of your own, perhaps in a solid color, giraffe, or cheetah print, check Amazon. $20. I'm so impressed with myself and everytime I lay in them I feel like a princess. They're so damned soft!!)
Check that out, 3rd paragraph, already sidetracked. That must be a record.
Anyways, I'm FINALLY back in Madrid. I'm assuming most of you know by now but I decided to stay another year, at least, to learn Spanish this time. Last year I came with the intent of learning Spanish and getting a not-so-important Master's degree at the same time. I got the Masters, and am still amazed by my thesis, ask to flip through it sometime (lots of pictures, easy to read). Anyways, I spoke English ALL of the time. With my roommates, at school, private classes...and I somehow managed to escape the entire reason I came here. So, year #2. This year I'm getting paid twice as much with half of the work. I'm going to have *gasp* free time...and maybe even develop a social life! I'm not holding my breath though :) In case you're wondering, I'll be home December 23. I've yet to buy my return ticket, but I'm looking at January 7 - June 28ish, which means we'll need to celebrate my birthday early. (January 10th cough cough).
Okay good. All of the boring nitty gritty details are finished. Let's get to the part where I cannot manage to travel without 80 kinds of crazy.
I never updated this AFTER I flew back for the summer. I had quite an eventful time getting to the airport (ask if you'd really like to know) but once I finally got to my gate & was able to sit down, calmly, knowing I got there on time, I was thrilled. Finally headed home!! My flight was FILLED with students heading to America to learn English for the summer. I think that grand total there were about 3 or 4 groups of 30 students each on this plane, with matching T-shirts so they didn't get lost. I go to my seat and somebody is already sitting there. He was blonde & cute & didn't speak English well, but he asked me if it would be okay if he switched me seats because I was next to his 13 year old brother & he didn't want him to sit all alone. I asked if, by chance, his seat was on the aisle. He said yes so I told him no problem, I'd move back on the plane.
I get to my new seat and there are these 4 girls. The last one, on my aisle, gathers up the courage to try and ask me in English if she can switch me seats because I was by myself so she can be with her friends. I told her sure, as long as my seat was on the aisle. She said it was, so she took me up front (awkwardly enough, past the blonde kid) and showed me her seat. At this point I go to sit down and a flamboyant flight attendant sees me about to sit down and says, "Are you by yourself??" ........yes, sir, thanks for pointing that out. I am all alone. Yes. Alone.
"Since you're alone, would you mind moving to a seat in the back? I have a kiddo I'm trying to keep an eye on and it'd be easier if he was here with his group." Sure, why the hell not? I've moved twice, what's three times. I asked "by any chance is it in the aisle?" It was! Super. So I haul my carry on back. I feel like I should also add that my carry on held ALL of my clothes. Literally, all of them. It was packed to the rim and weighed about 30 pounds. It was like dragging a sack of sheet rock.
I get to my new seat, start to try to put my carry on up above, and the man in front of me turns around. I AM NOT KIDDING. "Are you by yourself?" Question of the year, sir. Why yes, I'm the only one on this foresaken plane who is alone! GLAD YOU NOTICED. I was so happy to be coming home, though, after 6 months that I wasn't even annoyed. At all, ever, during this situation. "Yes, I'm by myself........wanting to switch seats?" "Well if you don't mind! My wife is up there with our family friends and I'm just one row back..." You know my rules! As long as it's on the aisle...
At this point the flight attendant got sassy and in Mean Momma mode. "Oh my Lord! I feel so bad for you! I just made you move!" I told them I really didn't care where I sat as long as it was on the aisle, and they could muster up the muscle to put my suitcase in the overhead bin because it was kinda big, kinda heavy, may or not have qualified for the carry on requirements........
The guy I was trading with starts to hoist my carry on (with ease) when Miss Spanish America narrowed her sights on me and bee-lined it for my seat with her clipboard. She was about 29ish, bad highlights, and was in charge of one of the students groups. She was super proud of her English and was therefore overly assertive with it. "You're alone raight? Could jew moof up dere, I haff a student and he ees by himself." It was more of a statement than a question. I just laughed. And I asked her if it was in the aisle. (P.S. if you're wondering why I like the aisle, it's simply because I am the exact opposite of Charo there. I'm too passive. If I sit in a non-aisle position, I won't pee for the entire flight, even though it's 9 hours long. Case in point: My trip back from the USA. Sat next to a mean girl, potentially pregnant and anorexic (go figure) and didn't get out once.) She says, "yes yes, it's right up here".......but it wasn't in the aisle.
Well nice passenger and sassy flight attendant flip shits. "OH MY GOD!! She just moved twice!!!"
...."actually this would be my fifth move...."
Sassy gay bald flight attendant: OH MY GAWD, are you kidding?! You're SERIOUS!? Oh my God. Oh my God. Sweetie what's your name?? Chelsea?? Chelsea it's nice to meet you. I'm going to take care of you today. Anything you need, ANYTHING, just let me know okay? We're gonna take care of you. I'm gonna take care of you.
We get up to look at my new and hopefully last seat...but it's not in the aisle. SGBFA (sassy gay bald flight attendant) lost it.
SGBFA: Nuh-uh. She said aisle. AIIIIISLE. Do you know what aisle is?? This seat is in the aisle, and this one and this one. (She mumbles ahh, que esta en el pasillo...) YES. Paseeyo? AISLE, in English. Yes, look, now you've learned a new word today! She won't move unless it's en EL PASEEYO.
............................................face palm.
Anyways, she finally chooses one of her student's seats that's in the aisle. I sit down and enjoyed a 2 hour conversation with a nice Spanish man on vacation, before he let me go to sleep. I taught him how to improve his accent before he let me rest, but in the end it was an incredible flight. No turbulence. No scary moments at take off or landing. AND SGBFA offered me free headphones (usually $5), my choice of refreshments and meals before everyone else, he gave me extra pretzels, and also offered me free booze. Sometimes it pays off to be a doormat. And my nice Spanish neighbor also reaped the benefits of the earphones because he didn't want him to feel left out...God forbid anybody be "by themselves" on the airplane.
Somehow this post ended up being longer than expected and I haven't even detailed my trip back over here. I think a lot of you saw my bajillion updates on Facebook, though, so for tonight I think I will just leave you with some pictures of my new apartment and finish expanding on my absurd trip tomorrow :) I don't start teaching until September 15 (at the latest) so I'll have plenty of time before then to write!
Here's my new beautiful home in Aravaca :)
My bedroom....still trying to unpack. Loving my huge window!
View from my window, overlooking the garden :)
ZEBRA SATIN SHEETS!!!
Classy staircase...only one flight instead of three this year haha
Our studio/library...TV & Computer, sun roof
OUR KITCHEN....do you believe it?!? There's a table in the kitchen. Our old kitchen had a capacity of one, haha.
Also, the door leads out to the little back porch and our garden!...
The tree right there to the right is a pomegranate tree!
My own personal bathroom! It's a little small but the water pressure is INCREDIBLE and it's my own!!
Our living room! (note: fits more than 5 people!! haha)
Actual dining room & more of the living room.
Isn't my new house so pretty!? I love it, and it's located in a beautiful neighborhood. Maybe tomorrow, or over the weekend when I can take some photos in the morning, I'll show you all that as well. But for now....ta ta!
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
The Rest of the Story
It's only 84 degrees outside right now but it feels like Hell is slowly opening its gate and letting out all of his damned heat (haha, punny) in Madrid. I know it's hotter in America but very few places believe in air conditioning here, especially in apartments. It's so non-existent that certain stores boast "cool air" by using hand-crafted signs Scotch-taped to their windows. That freakin hot. School is unbearable, my kids don't stop telling me I'm sweating (trust me, I know I'm sweating, it's hot as hell in here) which makes me self conscious, which makes me sweat even more...luckily (knock on wood) I'm not a smelly sweaty person. Just damp. It feels like menopause on steroids (I assume). When I get home, I literally strip off all of my clothes (cept my undies) and lay in bed praying for a breeze to roll through. I also sleep like that, despite the fact that all of the neighbors walking by can see me. It's. That. Hot.
That leads to a funny story. About this morning (are you proud of me?? I'm blogging only hours after a major event!) It's about my roommates but they're all slowly leaving so hopefully by the time they would possibly read this, it will be a funny memory. Katie's friend DJ is visiting, who is a total sweetheart, and Juliet & Carissa, the other two roommates from California, are done with their schools. Carissa leaves for San Diego tonight, so ever since the weekend she's been partying and enjoying Madrid to the max. Juliet finally got told by our school she could finish early, so she has also taken advantage. Katie and I still have work til Friday, but I'm not mad about it because I would feel guilty if I didn't go...my kids are having Post Pardom Depression already and I've not even left. I still need a lot of sleep and energy for those little guys though. Which is difficult when the roommies are in 110% party mode (understandably). The only problem is that it's so stupidly hot that I have to sleep with my door open to get a breeze to come through (who knew Madrid would also teach me basic physics...har har har). This causes problems because a.) I now sleep ass naked because of the heat and b.) the walls are made of newspapers, practically, so I can hear every whisper, laugh, cackle, and glass-shattering. I haven't been sleeping very well because of all of it but that's not the only repercussion.
Last night was no exception to my new routine. I had warned everybody in the apartment, though, about my butt-nakedness so I figured I was safe enough and in an "Enter at Your Own Risk" type of situation. I was the only one home last night because there was a great drink special downtown, but I finally fell asleep around 1 a.m. Some people came home at about 3, I'd guess, and maybe another few around 4? Not positive. However I think everybody was a little warm from the cheap beer and there might have been a tiff because I heard numerous slammings of doors and a lot of people were sleeping in the hallway (which is super unusual because we usually have space with the beds). Around 7 a.m., right before I was supposed to get up to shower, one of my roommates barges in my room (I mean the door was open but I think she was still a little bit drunk), and literally dives into a 3-inch space between me and my wall, prying us apart with her arms like the wall and I were going to get into a fight. I was startled, asking, "what's going on? What do you need?" with no answers, just frustrated strugglings trying to shove me off my bed. I was really confused, wondering why she was trying to sleep with me...until I realized that she wasn't trying to sleep with me, she was trying to sleep in my bed without me (not that sleeping with me is really an option...my bed might be half the size of a normal twin-sized bed...you have to REALLY cuddle to manage it). I realized this after I got shoved off the bed. I'd also like to remind you that I was au naturale at that point, so I was also severely struggling to cover my basic assets and stop her from fondling me accidentally. I'm not so sure I was successful at that because I sort of have a lot of assets. I can't wait to come home and tell sober-her how she tried to get to second base with me this morning. Happy Hump Day? (can I get a humourous rimshot?)
Despite the blessed heat, I thought today would be a good day to play soccer with my 3rd graders. It was a piss-poor idea all the way around. For one, it's disgustingly hot. Two, I wore a skirt and sandals (shocking, I know) which aren't conducive to an intense soccer game, and third my hair was down so it was simultaneously acting as my own personal heating system. Not to mention we played with an inflatable Sponge Bob ball and Spaniards are embarrassingly competitive at the sport (rightfully so but...never challenge a Spanish male of any age to a "friendly" game of soccer. It's as smart as challenging Paula Deen to a butter-eating challenge. You know she's gonna win because she's had so much more practice and experience). I learned so many lessons today and it's only 2 p.m.
I should digress, though, and finish my story about the Glorified Shit Show, aka Excursion, aka Field Trip. There eventually was room on the bus for me (as poorly organized as it was), and so we climbed in and were off (only an hour late)! Did I describe the buses? There are two things that Spaniards do not take lightly...chartered buses, and baby strollers. Madrid, being a city and all, doesn't have school buses. So, for adventures further away, they rent chartered buses...but these chartered buses are like the crème de la crème of buses. They should be reserved for royalty. There are velvety curtains on every window, proper emergency escape hammers (which is a miracle in this city...I've YET to see any of those damned hammers on a public bus. On long bus rides I often visualize what type of accident we will be in and if I would have the guts to throw my elbow hard enough into the window to bust it open to escape...or what article of clothes I am wearing that I can use to protect my hands from the broken glass, you know, like they do in the movies), air conditioning, personal fans and lights, assistance buttons, televisions, a restroom, and the seats are made of down feathers, it seemed. They're so luxurious! Baby strollers are the exact same thing. My teachers told me a stroller here goes for over 1,000 euros usually and even the shittiest of the shittiest strollers here are fit for royalty. The wheels have chrome plating, built in protection from sun and rain (both removable), 9,000 pockets for diapers, bottles, formula, the baby's college tuition..., a compact design so that it can be lowered immediately to go up and down stairs and fit into public transportation immediately (all while the baby is still quietly sleeping), cup holders for the mom's water/drinks, the wheels have a 360 degree turn radius for when you just don't have all that time to pull a U-ey on the busy sidewalks, built in changing table...the strollers here will do everything except fly, and even that might be debatable with the newer models. It makes me chuckle that THAT is what Spain has decided to be the best at. Strollers.
Now, I'm getting older so my memory is failing me, but I feel like in America, on the bus for a field trip, you sat with your BFF, gossipped about boys or pogs or My Little Ponies, or just talked about where you were going. In Spain it's quite different. First of all, they sang three songs, continually, for the entire hour-long bus ride. And I don't mean they sang one, then another, and cycled through them....no, that would be more enjoyable. Instead, they sang one song for 20 minutes, the next song for 20, and then the last one until we got there. Continually. What three songs was I graced with learning?
1.) Quien se ha hecho pis en el saco de dormir? This song is very similar to "Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar? Chelsea stole the cookie from the cookie jar! Who me? Yes you! Couldn't be! Then who? Except....in Spanish it's "who pissed in the sleeping bag?" Classy, right? I was completely taken off guard, because I was talking to the teachers, excited to be enjoying a day off, when they start yelling CHELSEA!! CHELSEA PEED IN THE SLEEPING BAG!! I thought they'd lost their damn minds. And they kept yelling it. I was embarrased and super confused. Then finally one of the teachers was like "oh you have to say 'who me?' and then 'not me!'....then just choose a kid." I caught on quickly but when you're not expecting somebody to accuse you of peeing in awkward places, it comes as a bit of a shock. That lasted approximately 22 minutes.
2.) Waka Waka: Thanks, Shakira, for bestowing me with the worst headache I've ever had. The Waka Waka song, in both English and Spanish, is annoying all the way around, because a.) Spaniards associate it with their World Cup win (which therefore ellicits chaotic screaming and cheering for atleast five minutes) and b.) nobody knows any of the other words except for the 10 African words followed by "cause this is Africa". I listened to the chorus 85 times, atleast. And the kids did not get bored. Ever. Each time was like somebody had just had the best idea ever, to sing Waka Waka! Again!!!
3. Soccer cat-calls: Now...while wildy inappropriate, I will admit that this, the first 3 times around, made me chuckle. Spaniards take their sports intensity to the next level. When it comes to your favorite soccer team, it says more about you than anything else (such as education, talents, literacy...nothing compares to your favorite soccer team). Therefore, it becomes important to create really elaborate chants that put down and insult the opposing rival teams. There are three main teams in Spain/Madrid: Real Madrid (my favorite), Barcelona, and Atletico de Madrid. In the city, Real Madrid and Atletico are rivals but Barcelona is a strong rival as well. For example, Barcelona played Manchester United in the league championship (and won, because they're an all-star team). All of Madrid was cheering against Barcelona and for Manchester, even though Barcelona is part of their country. It's a bad rivalry. Worse than the Colts and the Patriots. Anyways the kids on the bus started yelling this lovely chant:
Chupa, chupa regaliz
A la mierda, Real Madrid!
Basically it says "suck, suck, licorice, go to hell Real Madrid". Except mierda means shit but apparently nobody considers that profanity here. I don't mind using the word shit (...clearly) but hearing it come from a 7 year old's mouth is appalling. They kept shouting that a few times until somebody got clever, or just realized what was being said, and retaliated:
Oh no, era broma
A la mierda, Barcelona!
Translation: oh no, that's a joke, go to hell Barcelona!
Still...so classy.
After enduring all of that on the bus, we finally arrived to the park. This park was basically a huge national forest with a few built in soccer fields, sprinklers, and a small playground. I would like to reiterate that there was no official way to keep track of all of the students, just hope they all stayed together. Also, the buses simply dropped us off. If one of the kids got hurt, they were just supposed to call 911 and wait until an ambulance came...logistically, all of the things that could have gone wrong and all of the leaps of faith they took make my head hurt.
Here's a link to some pictures of the park, to give you a small idea:
Anyways as soon as we find our own little place in the park the kids ran wild. Within five minutes, ten kids were crying, bleeding, or throwing up. The park was very nice, so it had a lot of toys that little city parks don't have, such as a merry-go-round thing, or teeter totters, etc. Most of the boys ran to the soccer fields (constructed on concrete....not in the grass. Guess how well that went...) and the rest played on the playground. The teachers immediately found a picnic table and started setting up bags upon bags upon bags of chips, candy, and other miscellaneous food and drinks. They had a great time, just let the kids play while they gossiped and relaxed. They truly deserved it though, haha. I hung out for awhile and then decided to go walk around...so I showed a couple of girls how to make flower bracelets (and literally felt like I was 11 years old again)...but then that turned into twenty kids wanting a flower bracelet/crown/necklace....they didn't understand the whole "teach a man how to fish" approach. Instead it was "Chelsea do this for me!!" Then Miguel, the cute one from the last blog with the hilarious mustache, wanted to go for a walk outside of our little camp area. I told him I didn't think the teachers would let us, we should stay in the area. 30 seconds later he had run and asked the teachers if he could go on a walk with me and they said yes to get him out of their hair.
Dangit.
So he grabs my hand and starts pulling me to a rose garden nearby. On the way to the rose garden, located 20 feet away from our area, we ended up with twenty other students who also wanted to go on a walk. I told them in Spanish that they HAD to stay with me and do as I said, or we were going to immediately turn around and walk three feet back to our invisible boundaries. First graders are so hilarious...and so creative. Their imaginations are these incredible little machines that come up with the most incredible and incredulous bullshit....but the best part is that they believe it. It's kind of magical, in a way. For example they found this hole in the ground and started making up this whole story about how a venomous lizard lived there and he was the only one of his species. Then they found a dead bird and were super enamored with that for awhile...which, gross, whatever....fine...until they picked it up and tried to show me where he had been half-eaten by a poisonous spider. DISGUSTING. Jeri always told me I would bring her daddy-long-legs and say, "look Mom, look!" as she tried not suppress her horror...I feel like I experienced that, times fifty. Plus I couldn't quite express my sever disgust in Spanish the way I would have liked to. This little adventure led to a two hour stalking session, with all of these kids following me everywhere I went. They wanted to explore, they wanted to play games....but eventually all they did was follow me around. I tried to pull the "oh I'm hungry, I'll be right back!" card but even that turned into an adventure with our little group because they wanted to have a picnic and pretend like they were camping...so we designated a little area and all ate together. Meanwhile the teachers kept sending different people over to take picture of us and were making fun of my fan club. It's hard being so loved. In the end we had about 5 kids throw up, 15 kids with cuts/bruises, and 3 dead animals discovered due to "venomous insects".
At the end of the day I was exhausted. I also had borrowed Juliet's shoes, that were wearing out, so they gave me a huge blister on my heel. We got back to school and there was still an hour left, so the kids were told to play on the patio. The 2nd grade boys were playing soccer, so I decided it would be in my best interest to gain their respect by asserting myself in their game and showing them how good I am. It was quite successful with a couple of setbacks. First of all...it was really hot and when I run alot my face turns to a nice shade of magenta. All of the teachers thought I was dying. "Sorry, my face is just like this" in Spanish sounds even dumber than it does in English. Also...once the kids saw that I was really good at soccer they were not only super impressed, but also wanted to play. This led to 75% of the kids from the field trip playing. I was excited that it brought everyone together but the 2nd grade boys and I had developed a pretty strong rivalry whilst playing, so it got intense. A few good men were nailed in the face with a real soccer ball...I definitely plowed a few of them to the ground...and all of the teachers stood in the shade amazed I played so well but also confused as to why I was wasting so much energy playing with the kids. I'm not sure if my 30 minutes of glory were worth the 3 hours of pain that followed, taking into consideration the quarter-sized blister I already had on my heel and the fact that I'm severely out of shape, not having hard-core worked out in a few months. Nevertheless, I slept wonderfully that night and learned to hate my 2nd graders a little bit less.
Last weekend, Kiely, Katie, and I adventured to Valencia. Nothing super absurd happened to blog about, but I will report on it soon. TTFN :)
That leads to a funny story. About this morning (are you proud of me?? I'm blogging only hours after a major event!) It's about my roommates but they're all slowly leaving so hopefully by the time they would possibly read this, it will be a funny memory. Katie's friend DJ is visiting, who is a total sweetheart, and Juliet & Carissa, the other two roommates from California, are done with their schools. Carissa leaves for San Diego tonight, so ever since the weekend she's been partying and enjoying Madrid to the max. Juliet finally got told by our school she could finish early, so she has also taken advantage. Katie and I still have work til Friday, but I'm not mad about it because I would feel guilty if I didn't go...my kids are having Post Pardom Depression already and I've not even left. I still need a lot of sleep and energy for those little guys though. Which is difficult when the roommies are in 110% party mode (understandably). The only problem is that it's so stupidly hot that I have to sleep with my door open to get a breeze to come through (who knew Madrid would also teach me basic physics...har har har). This causes problems because a.) I now sleep ass naked because of the heat and b.) the walls are made of newspapers, practically, so I can hear every whisper, laugh, cackle, and glass-shattering. I haven't been sleeping very well because of all of it but that's not the only repercussion.
Last night was no exception to my new routine. I had warned everybody in the apartment, though, about my butt-nakedness so I figured I was safe enough and in an "Enter at Your Own Risk" type of situation. I was the only one home last night because there was a great drink special downtown, but I finally fell asleep around 1 a.m. Some people came home at about 3, I'd guess, and maybe another few around 4? Not positive. However I think everybody was a little warm from the cheap beer and there might have been a tiff because I heard numerous slammings of doors and a lot of people were sleeping in the hallway (which is super unusual because we usually have space with the beds). Around 7 a.m., right before I was supposed to get up to shower, one of my roommates barges in my room (I mean the door was open but I think she was still a little bit drunk), and literally dives into a 3-inch space between me and my wall, prying us apart with her arms like the wall and I were going to get into a fight. I was startled, asking, "what's going on? What do you need?" with no answers, just frustrated strugglings trying to shove me off my bed. I was really confused, wondering why she was trying to sleep with me...until I realized that she wasn't trying to sleep with me, she was trying to sleep in my bed without me (not that sleeping with me is really an option...my bed might be half the size of a normal twin-sized bed...you have to REALLY cuddle to manage it). I realized this after I got shoved off the bed. I'd also like to remind you that I was au naturale at that point, so I was also severely struggling to cover my basic assets and stop her from fondling me accidentally. I'm not so sure I was successful at that because I sort of have a lot of assets. I can't wait to come home and tell sober-her how she tried to get to second base with me this morning. Happy Hump Day? (can I get a humourous rimshot?)
Despite the blessed heat, I thought today would be a good day to play soccer with my 3rd graders. It was a piss-poor idea all the way around. For one, it's disgustingly hot. Two, I wore a skirt and sandals (shocking, I know) which aren't conducive to an intense soccer game, and third my hair was down so it was simultaneously acting as my own personal heating system. Not to mention we played with an inflatable Sponge Bob ball and Spaniards are embarrassingly competitive at the sport (rightfully so but...never challenge a Spanish male of any age to a "friendly" game of soccer. It's as smart as challenging Paula Deen to a butter-eating challenge. You know she's gonna win because she's had so much more practice and experience). I learned so many lessons today and it's only 2 p.m.
I should digress, though, and finish my story about the Glorified Shit Show, aka Excursion, aka Field Trip. There eventually was room on the bus for me (as poorly organized as it was), and so we climbed in and were off (only an hour late)! Did I describe the buses? There are two things that Spaniards do not take lightly...chartered buses, and baby strollers. Madrid, being a city and all, doesn't have school buses. So, for adventures further away, they rent chartered buses...but these chartered buses are like the crème de la crème of buses. They should be reserved for royalty. There are velvety curtains on every window, proper emergency escape hammers (which is a miracle in this city...I've YET to see any of those damned hammers on a public bus. On long bus rides I often visualize what type of accident we will be in and if I would have the guts to throw my elbow hard enough into the window to bust it open to escape...or what article of clothes I am wearing that I can use to protect my hands from the broken glass, you know, like they do in the movies), air conditioning, personal fans and lights, assistance buttons, televisions, a restroom, and the seats are made of down feathers, it seemed. They're so luxurious! Baby strollers are the exact same thing. My teachers told me a stroller here goes for over 1,000 euros usually and even the shittiest of the shittiest strollers here are fit for royalty. The wheels have chrome plating, built in protection from sun and rain (both removable), 9,000 pockets for diapers, bottles, formula, the baby's college tuition..., a compact design so that it can be lowered immediately to go up and down stairs and fit into public transportation immediately (all while the baby is still quietly sleeping), cup holders for the mom's water/drinks, the wheels have a 360 degree turn radius for when you just don't have all that time to pull a U-ey on the busy sidewalks, built in changing table...the strollers here will do everything except fly, and even that might be debatable with the newer models. It makes me chuckle that THAT is what Spain has decided to be the best at. Strollers.
Now, I'm getting older so my memory is failing me, but I feel like in America, on the bus for a field trip, you sat with your BFF, gossipped about boys or pogs or My Little Ponies, or just talked about where you were going. In Spain it's quite different. First of all, they sang three songs, continually, for the entire hour-long bus ride. And I don't mean they sang one, then another, and cycled through them....no, that would be more enjoyable. Instead, they sang one song for 20 minutes, the next song for 20, and then the last one until we got there. Continually. What three songs was I graced with learning?
1.) Quien se ha hecho pis en el saco de dormir? This song is very similar to "Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar? Chelsea stole the cookie from the cookie jar! Who me? Yes you! Couldn't be! Then who? Except....in Spanish it's "who pissed in the sleeping bag?" Classy, right? I was completely taken off guard, because I was talking to the teachers, excited to be enjoying a day off, when they start yelling CHELSEA!! CHELSEA PEED IN THE SLEEPING BAG!! I thought they'd lost their damn minds. And they kept yelling it. I was embarrased and super confused. Then finally one of the teachers was like "oh you have to say 'who me?' and then 'not me!'....then just choose a kid." I caught on quickly but when you're not expecting somebody to accuse you of peeing in awkward places, it comes as a bit of a shock. That lasted approximately 22 minutes.
2.) Waka Waka: Thanks, Shakira, for bestowing me with the worst headache I've ever had. The Waka Waka song, in both English and Spanish, is annoying all the way around, because a.) Spaniards associate it with their World Cup win (which therefore ellicits chaotic screaming and cheering for atleast five minutes) and b.) nobody knows any of the other words except for the 10 African words followed by "cause this is Africa". I listened to the chorus 85 times, atleast. And the kids did not get bored. Ever. Each time was like somebody had just had the best idea ever, to sing Waka Waka! Again!!!
3. Soccer cat-calls: Now...while wildy inappropriate, I will admit that this, the first 3 times around, made me chuckle. Spaniards take their sports intensity to the next level. When it comes to your favorite soccer team, it says more about you than anything else (such as education, talents, literacy...nothing compares to your favorite soccer team). Therefore, it becomes important to create really elaborate chants that put down and insult the opposing rival teams. There are three main teams in Spain/Madrid: Real Madrid (my favorite), Barcelona, and Atletico de Madrid. In the city, Real Madrid and Atletico are rivals but Barcelona is a strong rival as well. For example, Barcelona played Manchester United in the league championship (and won, because they're an all-star team). All of Madrid was cheering against Barcelona and for Manchester, even though Barcelona is part of their country. It's a bad rivalry. Worse than the Colts and the Patriots. Anyways the kids on the bus started yelling this lovely chant:
Chupa, chupa regaliz
A la mierda, Real Madrid!
Basically it says "suck, suck, licorice, go to hell Real Madrid". Except mierda means shit but apparently nobody considers that profanity here. I don't mind using the word shit (...clearly) but hearing it come from a 7 year old's mouth is appalling. They kept shouting that a few times until somebody got clever, or just realized what was being said, and retaliated:
Oh no, era broma
A la mierda, Barcelona!
Translation: oh no, that's a joke, go to hell Barcelona!
Still...so classy.
After enduring all of that on the bus, we finally arrived to the park. This park was basically a huge national forest with a few built in soccer fields, sprinklers, and a small playground. I would like to reiterate that there was no official way to keep track of all of the students, just hope they all stayed together. Also, the buses simply dropped us off. If one of the kids got hurt, they were just supposed to call 911 and wait until an ambulance came...logistically, all of the things that could have gone wrong and all of the leaps of faith they took make my head hurt.
Here's a link to some pictures of the park, to give you a small idea:
Anyways as soon as we find our own little place in the park the kids ran wild. Within five minutes, ten kids were crying, bleeding, or throwing up. The park was very nice, so it had a lot of toys that little city parks don't have, such as a merry-go-round thing, or teeter totters, etc. Most of the boys ran to the soccer fields (constructed on concrete....not in the grass. Guess how well that went...) and the rest played on the playground. The teachers immediately found a picnic table and started setting up bags upon bags upon bags of chips, candy, and other miscellaneous food and drinks. They had a great time, just let the kids play while they gossiped and relaxed. They truly deserved it though, haha. I hung out for awhile and then decided to go walk around...so I showed a couple of girls how to make flower bracelets (and literally felt like I was 11 years old again)...but then that turned into twenty kids wanting a flower bracelet/crown/necklace....they didn't understand the whole "teach a man how to fish" approach. Instead it was "Chelsea do this for me!!" Then Miguel, the cute one from the last blog with the hilarious mustache, wanted to go for a walk outside of our little camp area. I told him I didn't think the teachers would let us, we should stay in the area. 30 seconds later he had run and asked the teachers if he could go on a walk with me and they said yes to get him out of their hair.
Dangit.
So he grabs my hand and starts pulling me to a rose garden nearby. On the way to the rose garden, located 20 feet away from our area, we ended up with twenty other students who also wanted to go on a walk. I told them in Spanish that they HAD to stay with me and do as I said, or we were going to immediately turn around and walk three feet back to our invisible boundaries. First graders are so hilarious...and so creative. Their imaginations are these incredible little machines that come up with the most incredible and incredulous bullshit....but the best part is that they believe it. It's kind of magical, in a way. For example they found this hole in the ground and started making up this whole story about how a venomous lizard lived there and he was the only one of his species. Then they found a dead bird and were super enamored with that for awhile...which, gross, whatever....fine...until they picked it up and tried to show me where he had been half-eaten by a poisonous spider. DISGUSTING. Jeri always told me I would bring her daddy-long-legs and say, "look Mom, look!" as she tried not suppress her horror...I feel like I experienced that, times fifty. Plus I couldn't quite express my sever disgust in Spanish the way I would have liked to. This little adventure led to a two hour stalking session, with all of these kids following me everywhere I went. They wanted to explore, they wanted to play games....but eventually all they did was follow me around. I tried to pull the "oh I'm hungry, I'll be right back!" card but even that turned into an adventure with our little group because they wanted to have a picnic and pretend like they were camping...so we designated a little area and all ate together. Meanwhile the teachers kept sending different people over to take picture of us and were making fun of my fan club. It's hard being so loved. In the end we had about 5 kids throw up, 15 kids with cuts/bruises, and 3 dead animals discovered due to "venomous insects".
At the end of the day I was exhausted. I also had borrowed Juliet's shoes, that were wearing out, so they gave me a huge blister on my heel. We got back to school and there was still an hour left, so the kids were told to play on the patio. The 2nd grade boys were playing soccer, so I decided it would be in my best interest to gain their respect by asserting myself in their game and showing them how good I am. It was quite successful with a couple of setbacks. First of all...it was really hot and when I run alot my face turns to a nice shade of magenta. All of the teachers thought I was dying. "Sorry, my face is just like this" in Spanish sounds even dumber than it does in English. Also...once the kids saw that I was really good at soccer they were not only super impressed, but also wanted to play. This led to 75% of the kids from the field trip playing. I was excited that it brought everyone together but the 2nd grade boys and I had developed a pretty strong rivalry whilst playing, so it got intense. A few good men were nailed in the face with a real soccer ball...I definitely plowed a few of them to the ground...and all of the teachers stood in the shade amazed I played so well but also confused as to why I was wasting so much energy playing with the kids. I'm not sure if my 30 minutes of glory were worth the 3 hours of pain that followed, taking into consideration the quarter-sized blister I already had on my heel and the fact that I'm severely out of shape, not having hard-core worked out in a few months. Nevertheless, I slept wonderfully that night and learned to hate my 2nd graders a little bit less.
Last weekend, Kiely, Katie, and I adventured to Valencia. Nothing super absurd happened to blog about, but I will report on it soon. TTFN :)
Thursday, June 9, 2011
The most Spanish thing I've ever seen, and the glorified shit show (otherwise known as a Spanish field trip)
It's been awhile...again...so so sorry. I just wrote all the absurd things I need to blog about...and I realized it's been a really really long time...ugh.
Anyways...I'll start at the beginning, I guess. San Isidro. To explain this holiday in a detailed manner, I'd have to show you pictures (see below). To explain without pictures, all I can say I have learned about it is that a.) it might be Madrid's Patron Saint holiday (maybe...not positive), b.) some schools got a day off school (unfair...mine didn't), but most importantly c.) I got time away from one of my horrid 2nd grade classes so really I can't complain. To give you the short explanation...it's like every bizarre Spanish sterotype ever heard mixed with a Russian roulette-style pastry assortment. Seriously look at this food setup (keep in mind this is just for 1st and 2nd grade & the chubbster kids had already attacked it before I arrived)
Okay so it's not that impressive but the kids had gotten ahold of most of it. Basically each student brought one item of "San Isidro" pastries (most were like donuts) and each one looked delicious...but after you tried one, it was too dry, or awkwardly tasted like licorice, or didn't have any taste at all. Some were okay, though. Each student wanted me to try one of whatever they brought, too, so it was like an endless nightmare of dry, tasteless, bread.
Anyways...(p.s. I say anyways a lot here don't I?...maybe that can be my catchphrase and/or book title if I ever sell out & publish [read: Oprah discovers me or something equally miraculous and I pursue a lifestyle and career I never dreamt of but immediately fall in love with....it could happen])
So...anyways...
I took this lovely aerial shot of the chaos and hurried downstairs so I didn't miss anything good or crazy.
Anyways...I'll start at the beginning, I guess. San Isidro. To explain this holiday in a detailed manner, I'd have to show you pictures (see below). To explain without pictures, all I can say I have learned about it is that a.) it might be Madrid's Patron Saint holiday (maybe...not positive), b.) some schools got a day off school (unfair...mine didn't), but most importantly c.) I got time away from one of my horrid 2nd grade classes so really I can't complain. To give you the short explanation...it's like every bizarre Spanish sterotype ever heard mixed with a Russian roulette-style pastry assortment. Seriously look at this food setup (keep in mind this is just for 1st and 2nd grade & the chubbster kids had already attacked it before I arrived)
Okay so it's not that impressive but the kids had gotten ahold of most of it. Basically each student brought one item of "San Isidro" pastries (most were like donuts) and each one looked delicious...but after you tried one, it was too dry, or awkwardly tasted like licorice, or didn't have any taste at all. Some were okay, though. Each student wanted me to try one of whatever they brought, too, so it was like an endless nightmare of dry, tasteless, bread.
Anyways...(p.s. I say anyways a lot here don't I?...maybe that can be my catchphrase and/or book title if I ever sell out & publish [read: Oprah discovers me or something equally miraculous and I pursue a lifestyle and career I never dreamt of but immediately fall in love with....it could happen])
So...anyways...
I took this lovely aerial shot of the chaos and hurried downstairs so I didn't miss anything good or crazy.
I arrived just in time. As soon as I left the doorstep I was was flooded with ten panic-stricken girls who needed me to tie their scarves on their head again, or pin their flowers in their hair. I thought what the hell, can't be that hard...so I start tying scarf after scarf after scarf. If you ask me, they all looked like little babushkas.
Total babushka.
After the scarves I started with the flowers...each girl had 8 bobby pins for her flower which I didn't understand. I tucked the red/white/pink rose by their ear and tried to utilize all 87 bobby pins, so proud of myself for jumping head-first into Spanish culture & winning! Finally I get to the last girl in line, one of my cute, well-tempered 1st graders. I put her flower in, finally get the last bobby pin in, smile, and say "done! Beautiful!" She felt it, to make sure it was sturdy, and screamed one decibal below "total bloody murder" while ripping out all 901 bobby pins at once, including the fake rose, a clump of hair, and some skin particles that used to be attached to the loose hair strands. "IT DOESN'T GO THERE!!!! IT GOES HERE!!" she squealed as she adamantly pointed to her forehead-ish area. I said, "here?" as I tried to move it back an inch so it was cute and didn't resemble a rhinoceros' horn. "NOOOOOOOOO!! HERE!!" pointing to the horn locale, still. She looked at me with this face of disbelief (that I didn't get it), disapproval (for making her look so "ridiculous"...) and aggravation for not catching on despite her subtle hints, waving the stupid rose and smashing it on her forehead like she wanted it.
In the end I said fine and 786 bobby pinned the horn to Triceratops' head. As she walked away, finally approving of my shoddy Spanish flower work, I realized THAT'S why there's so many damned bobby pins....creating a floral horn is against God's intent for hair and the human head.
As a side note, I saw a flamenco poster last week. Turns out Triceratops was right. Still doesn't look any less stupid though....even on a professional dinosaur-- er, dancer.
After that crazy Friday we had one normal week and then a field trip...otherwise known as an "excursion"...personally I find excursion more fitting, because field trip sounds so tame. However, the appropriate term I'd give it in English would be "glorified shit show." From the very beginning to the very end...complete chaos.
So...before this shenanigan even began, I was not actually told that I was going. I asked what I was supposed to do (3 of my classes were going on one field trip, 1 class was going on a different one, and the last class was staying at school). I asked my teacher, Isabel, and she said just ask the principal if I could go. I asked the principal, Manoli, and she said I could do whatever I wanted, just to tell the other teachers so they knew. I asked her what I should do to confirm my place on the buses or whatever, and she told me to talk to Isabel. Who then told me to ask Manoli. Hello, Spain. Somebody was in charge of the buses...somebody had to order them and knew who was going and how many spots were available. Nobody knew who that person was. Apparently my school is like Hogwarts where magical buses just show up when they're needed. Whatever. This is Spain, which means you probably have to order the buses three separate times just to confirm, and then they will probably show up within the same week you ordered...probably.
I asked like five times, to numerous people going, and the teachers were like "ehh...there should be room. If not, we'll punish someone and you'll go! No worries!"
That brings me to the second hilarious part about the field trip. It was for 1st cycle of Primary, which means 1st (yay!!!!!!!) and 2nd (shotgun to the face) graders. I know I've explained my dislike for my 2nd graders but I'm not sure I've explained that it's not just me. All of the teachers feel the same way. Which makes me feel better. A lot better. They think they're just a bad batch. I feel like that's highly unlikely, that 75 children born in the same year are all miscreants...but...on the other hand I'm relieved. I was afraid my little angel babies in 1st grade would mutate over the summer and break my heart in the Fall.
Anyways the teachers were trying really hard to punish the six main troublemakers of 2nd grade. Four had already committed enough offenses to be banned from field trips for the rest of their lives, and the remaining two were hanging on by a thread. It was Wednesday, and the classes were on a point system. Each student had 10 points, and if they misbehaved or didn't turn in their homework, etc., they lost a point. If they lost all of their points, no field trip. Ruben was down to one point left, and Josue had two. They were so sure that within two days time they could wash their hands of them on the excursion but they were also giddy about me & the space issue so they would have a safety net, so to speak.
After experiencing the field trip, I understand why they were so eager to sift out the bad seeds ahead of time. Let's do some math:
7 teachers
150 students
0 parental chaperones
1 giant ass park the size of a small city
0 safety waivers
0 buses after they dropped us off
2 bathrooms (1 boy, 1 girl)
+ 0 rolls of toilet paper
______________________________
total chaos
The school rented two charter buses and one small bus (which, p.s. was suuuuuuuuuuuper nice!! So much better than dinky yellow school buses). The kids got dropped off at school and waited in line (all wearing absurd baseball caps just because they could, and Spaniards don't believe in sunscreen. Sunscreen here costs 10 euros for one bottle of SPF 30. That's like $15.) It took us an hour to simply leave, and 30 mintues of that was just getting on the bus. Most of the time was making sure all of the kids were accounted for. There's no method for counting, just simply remembering who was in each class.......ABSURD. No rosters. No class numbers. Just memory.
Anyways, when the students finally got their lunches and were sort of organized (I use that term loosely), we left through the nuns' back door to get on the buses. I climbed the stairs, trying to keep all of the children with the group and not off wandering the streets of Madrid, when I saw it. It was horrifying. All of the mothers had dropped the kids off at the front door, and then flooded to the side door to create a human tunnel (sort of) for the students. Except it wasn't to high five them and say good luck...it was to kiss them goodbye, and hug them, and give them extra jackets (even though it was 75 outside), and give them more food...it was so...I just have no words. Actually I do have words.
CUT. THE. UMBILICAL. CHORD.
Spanish parents are the WORST. On some level, I enjoy them because they all walk their kids to school and kiss them goodbye and tell them they love them...without worrying about the kids being embarrassed or angsty. However...there's a fine fine line between affectionate and obsession. For example, there are three main doors to enter my school. The first is a gate that let's you onto the property. The next is a door you have to buzz in order to get in (usually open for students in the morning). Then, there is the last and final door...the clingiest door of all. It goes beyond the welcome foyer, and actually ENTERS the school. Parent's aren't allowed past this point. I think it's perfectly appropriate to come through the front gate but any further seems like the parents are literally hanging on to every inch of their kids' childhoods and is taking it a bit too far. I get elbowed atleast five times each morning trying to bust my way through clingy mothers. As a side note, THIS is why Spaniards live at home until they are 31. True fact. Spanish men also act like babies. CUT THE CHORD WOMEN. You're not doing them any favors here...ugh. Serious pet peeve.
So, we fought the mothers, all of their absurd questions that should have been answered atleast 24 hours before the field trip, not 40 minutes after we were supposed to have departed. Finally, fiiiinally, we started the bus and headed away from Madrid. That adventure, and many more, will have to be told soon. Part 2 will be posted, probably Monday-ish. This weekend my host mom has lent Kiely & Katie & I her beach house in Valencia, and another friend from Alcala is lending us his TomTom. Basically....this weekend is going to be full of swimming, sun, and lots of crazy adventures in a manual car (I'm sure). Pray for me and make sure I post soon, I'm accumulating too many stories for my own good. Peace, love, and crazy pictures below.
My 4th graders decided to photobomb, haha
Oh my crazy kids. Check back later for more of our adventures.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Gangs, fire drills, and snails (Season Finale, Part 2)
Hello world! I'm sorry I still haven't gotten the hang of that whole "more shorter posts" thing, but life has gotten crazier and I've managed to keep pretty busy with class, school, and the homework I'm drowning in. Our thesis is due June 1st (I am "finished" but want to put it in a more presentable format), we have a paper due Thursday, and another paper due next Tuesday. Haven't started any of those, actually. Sooooo, as per usual, my good ole blog posts are going to be priority :D
As a side note about my thesis, I caught a pretty fantastic break. My teachers have been super helpful, giving me books and materials to use which have helped me a lot. The nun asked me one day to make a game for vocabulary review and I laughed, because I have just spent hours and hours organizing games for a curriculum (I'm writing my thesis about how to use games to teach English as a second language). I told her that, and she said she had this book with many activities and games if I wanted to take a look. I'm already done but I said sure, why not? She gives me this "book" and I notice it's written by Ileana...the old assistant at the school. I was confused at first, thinking it was a book she had written??, but then I realized it was her thesis. I was excited, not because I'm going to copy (I had already done all of the work) but I loved her format (it's pretty and like a book). So I creeped her on Facebook and asked her if she got a good grade, haha. Answer: yes! So I'm going to be working on that once these papers are finished.
Anyways...I'm going to have to flash back to a few weeks ago for some pretty awesome stories. And then soon here after I'll update again with some videos of the most Spanish holiday I've witnessed thus far.
Just to reaffirm before I write this post, I loooove my students. I really do. And they're wonderful kids.
That being said, I was appalled to learn that some of my 5th graders had created a gang and tried to attack a fellow 5th grader at recess.
Now...my school has good kids. They really are. Which is why it is so ABSURD that they made a stupid ass GANG. It's like the CareBears making a gang against My Little Ponies. Stupid as hell. PLUS Spain doesn't have guns or anything. I made the mistake one day of saying I thought I was going to get shot when my bus was stopped by the police (not an interesting story I promise) and my teacher laughed in my face for about 5 minutes...and then explained nobody here has guns. I think even the cops might just carry around one of those huge sticks. Not positive.
I digress. So I'm teaching my Easter lesson...I've got my basket of eggs filled with candy and for the 5th graders I was practicing large numbers (235,183...in the thousands). If they could tell me how to correctly say 2 large numbers and a year (1882), then they could choose an egg. While I'm explaining how to read the numbers, two of the other fifth grade teachers barge in the classroom, said sorry to me, and asked for all of the boys in the "Neck-soos" to go out to the hallway. Immediately. They already knew who they were but wanted to see who would admit to it. HALF of the boys in my class went into the hallway. Like eight boys.
I looked to Rocio, my teacher, panicked, curious, wondering what the hell was going on. The boys were in the hallway, these two teachers were PISSED screaming at them, most were crying, and all of my students couldn't give two shits about large numbers because the entire wall of that side of the room is window. Four huge windows. The door is even paned with a big, long, window. The class had a front row seat. Rocio came over to me and explained that this group of boys, "Neck-soos", had created a gang and tried to kick a boy together at recess. Neck-soos...I had no idea what that was.
Anyways Rocio went out into the hallway and left me alone...which would be fine if there wasn't a verbal onslaughter of the students' classmates within their eyeshot. So I keep screaming to look at the numbers, trying to ignore them...except I really wanted to watch to see what was happening too, and try to lip read what the teachers were screaming. They also kept coming out into the classroom and asking for more boys who didn't fess up. Also distracting.
So, finally, they all leave the hallway and go to a classroom to yell more. Why that wasn't first choice is beyond me. After that class was lunch. I sat with one of the teachers that was doing all of the yelling and she asked me how my "huevos" were (eggs in Spanish...it's also the equivalent of "balls" in English, joking about testicles. All week long all of the teachers in the school were joking with me about carrying around eggs, and how were my eggs, very colorful, what's it like to finally say I have "eggs", etc....it was really funny, haha, but I am so glad that's over now) and I told her good...and asked, of course, about the Neck-soos thing. She waved a piece of paper about it and was cursing about the situation, about how the kids were stupid and had even arranged, before recess, how they could gang up on certain kids they didn't like. It really was shocking, considering how nice my students are. It wasn't really violence or anything, just dumb stupid bullying. Which is still awful. She said that all of them broke down crying and confessing except one, and all of the other boys ratted him out anyways, haha. Clearly their gang didn't practice loyalty. On the paper she had, I saw the name of the gang, and their symbol.
Nexxus. With Spanish pronunciation, sounds like "Neck-soos".
Ring a bell for anybody else? Maybe I've just spent too much time in beauty salons. Let me refresh your memory.
Yup. Nexxus. The shampoo and hair care brand. The symbol they use even has the X's arranged in the same way. Hilarious.
Nothing says "fear me" quite like clean and stylish hair.
Honestly I'm not sure whatever happened to them as punishment. Part of me wanted to joke around with them about it and ask if they wanted to borrow my curling iron to crimp somebody's hair they didn't like in an unfashionable matter. I'm sure they don't even know that's what Nexxus is anyways.
Moving on, I took my eggs with me to my private lessons and the little girls were super excited to have an Easter egg hunt. (They live in a gated community so there's a like a little built in park with a playground we had access to) I was hoping the park was empty but there were 2 mothers there with their children. I walked up to them and explained that I'm the English tutor for two of the girls here, from America, and we were going to do an Easter egg hunt...and that if they wanted their kids could play too. The looked only slightly hesitant but thanked me and told their kids to get ready. While I was walking away, I thought about how that would never fly in America. "Hi strangers, I'm from a foreign country and I'm the language tutor for two unnamed girls that live here...I'm going to hide plastic food objects with unnamed candy inside if your kids would like to join in the game!" Never. Ever.
So anyways I go upstairs, tell the girls to grab plastic bags for their eggs, and we come downstairs to search. The boy, Miguel, refused to play. He said his ankle hurt. I wanted to tell him I'd rather him not play anyways because he's a brat. By the way, the roles of those kids have changed. Once upon a time, Julia threw a quarter at my forehead and I left pissed off at her. Now we're friends, somehow, and they really like me. We have days that are better than others but we're friends. Miguel, however, refuses to like me. He hates English and subsequently hates me. He's a brat...going into the teenage years. The horror.
Anyways the girls go after the eggs and somehow by the time we come downstairs there are like five different families. Their kids are super young and grabbing all of the eggs on the playground. I figured....well...let them have them, they are super special because you can't get those here in Spain. So the girls are running around like crazy and I was a moron and didn't count how many eggs there were...who knows if we got them all. When I thought they had gotten most of them, we sat down outside (which was GLORIOUS, there isn't really any grass here in Spain...but in their park there is) and counted the eggs to see who had "won" (the real winner, regardless, was Julia because Marina is diabetic and couldn't eat any of the candy...so even though Marina got 18 eggs and Julia got 15, all of the candy goes to Julia. Because of this I gave Marina a big thing of Orbitz gum...bubblegum flavored which doesn't exist here. So she was happy) While we were counting, one of the neighbor kids came up and started playing with the eggs. Out of nowhere this kid (who is probably three/four) starts naming the colors of the eggs and asks "where ees green?" He also started counting the eggs with us, but stopped when he got to thirteen. He randomly took a blue egg and ran away. I have no idea who he was but the girls were impressed he knew so much English. I just wondered where the hell he came from and who he was, haha.
So, to end Easter, I started out with a basket of 60 eggs...four big ones, six little ones, and fifty normal ones. After some of my students STOLE some, and the neighbor kids, and me forgetting where I hid some...and I gave some to Javi, the little brother of my private class kids....I had 28 eggs. Epic fail. The good news is that was enough to use for my class the following day. That's all I really needed.
Moving on to titular topic #2....fire drills. Now, in America, fire drills usually occur a.) throughout the year, b.) when the whole school is present, and c.) at the beginning of the year. Not in Spain! Actually, most schools have some sort of plan but from what I've seen, they don't have drills. They don't practice. Ever. HOWEVER! My school is wonderful so we just had our first one (read: only one) of the year. It happened last week (May...a month before school is out) and all of the 2nd graders were on a field trip (hypothetically, if any of my students were unfortunately going to be burnt to a crisp in a fire, I'd vote them. They would have been AWFUL to deal with during a fire drill.)
Now, I went to Zionsville High School, so we weren't in the "city". The school had a lot of property and the students just stood in a single file line outside of the building. I never thought about what a fire drill would be like in the city. It's CHAOS.
So first of all, nobody knew about the fire drill. The teachers knew it was on a Friday, but the students didn't. They had sent fliers home to the parents telling them it was sometime this week. They don't tell the kids so they don't freak them out I guess. Anyways, Isabel, my teacher, was gone because her class is 2A, 2nd grade. So first of all, I had my entire 1st grade class in the morning all by myself. Do you know who told me that? My first graders. When I walked in, "Chelsea Chelsea! Isabel isn't coming! It's just you!" Good to know. Luckily I had a million games prepared from my thesis so I thought I'd take a shot at playing "Soccer" with vocabulary review. Also, the kids had been studying Science so two of my kids had brought in insects they were talking about. One brought in "silk worms" which are just those little annoying worms on leaves, apparently...and another brought in a giant ass snail the size of my palm. I was so thrilled. Daniel refused to put the lid on the snail because then he'd be "upside down". I tried to explain it didn't matter but he also didn't care.
That's Daniel's snail. Gross.
Anyways, after they calmed down we played Soccer. I talked to them in Spanish and made them promise not to tell anybody, it was a secret. I love days I do that. Anyways we played but Spaniards get so intense over soccer. It's insane. Kids were pushing, shoving, kicking, and hitting their classmates. Also keep in mind this is my favorite class. I told them that it was just a friendly game, it doesn't matter who wins. It's just to practice English and have fun.
One of the students piped up and said "yeah, you don't have to scream and hurt my ears, or hit people....it's not a real soccer game!" I said "Yes! Exactly! It's not a real.............wait, even in real soccer games you don't need to hit people! Or scream! You can be excited if your team wins but fans of the other team are still friends too. You don't want to hurt them...."
Lord. I'm not qualified to deal with this. Or what came next.
So luckily my 2nd grade classes were gone, which means I was free for the fire drill. I figured I'd just stick with the class I was with. Their teacher, Silvia, explained that we were going to have a fire drill and we were going to walk a few blocks to a nearby Plaza (note: taking all of the children, including the infants, three or four blocks away from the school. TERRIBLE). They were going to hear an alarm, a loud noise, and that's when they leave.
Right. In the states a fire drill sound is just really loud...it sounds like a school bell and there were flashing lights. This alarm sounded like an immediate bomb warning straight out of World War II. When I heard the alarm, it gave me chills. I look down and all of my 1st graders are grasping at my legs with their little fingers and nails and looking up at me stricken with terror. They all were trying really hard not to cry. The alarm was so terrifying! Anyways their teacher asked me to just watch the back and make sure nobody was left behind. That upset the girls who wanted to hold my hand and didn't settle well. We walk and we walk and we walk.....and then walk some more....and eventually get to the plaza. They have to make sure that everybody is there, so we ended up waiting thirty minutes for the whole thing to be over. Meanwhile the kids are asking me a million questions, none of them I have answers for. "How long are we going to be here? Where is Silvia? When do we go back? Why do we have to pretend there is a fire?" and so on. One student asked me a question but asked it quickly and really excitedly so I just smiled and nodded. All of the students were buzzing about something for a little bit but they all have such high pitched voices and talk so quickly I have a hard time understanding their Spanish. Finally their teacher walked up and asked what was going on and one of the students said that there was a real fire in the building and that a student was stuck inside. Silvia asked why they were lying like that and they told her that I told them. They then got yelled at for five minutes by Silvia, calling them liars and saying I would never tell them that and they got their recess taken away for two days. I felt really bad...I tried to tell her I was confused and might have said that but apparently this student lies a lot anyways. Ooops.
It was imperative all of the students stand in line during the fire drill, to keep track of everyone, but all of the kids at one point were huddled in a circle because this massive grasshopper, literally the size of two clothes pins, was flying around, jumping on the students and wreaking havock. Finally the Nun walked over, pinched his hind legs, practically threw it over her shoulder and marched it over to the bushes and chucked it over a wall. That ended that chaos quickly.
The walk back to school was quite pleasant. All of the students were trying to hold one of my fingers (which doesn't work because I only have ten) and every stair we hit I told them to count....which annoyed all of the other teachers, especially on the three flights of stairs where we ended up counting to fifty.
So, anyways, that is the end to my crazy Season Finale. Perhaps tomorrow I can squeeze five more stories into one post...and finally be caught up. Stay tuned, it's gonna be a good one with pictures and videos.
As a side note about my thesis, I caught a pretty fantastic break. My teachers have been super helpful, giving me books and materials to use which have helped me a lot. The nun asked me one day to make a game for vocabulary review and I laughed, because I have just spent hours and hours organizing games for a curriculum (I'm writing my thesis about how to use games to teach English as a second language). I told her that, and she said she had this book with many activities and games if I wanted to take a look. I'm already done but I said sure, why not? She gives me this "book" and I notice it's written by Ileana...the old assistant at the school. I was confused at first, thinking it was a book she had written??, but then I realized it was her thesis. I was excited, not because I'm going to copy (I had already done all of the work) but I loved her format (it's pretty and like a book). So I creeped her on Facebook and asked her if she got a good grade, haha. Answer: yes! So I'm going to be working on that once these papers are finished.
Anyways...I'm going to have to flash back to a few weeks ago for some pretty awesome stories. And then soon here after I'll update again with some videos of the most Spanish holiday I've witnessed thus far.
Just to reaffirm before I write this post, I loooove my students. I really do. And they're wonderful kids.
That being said, I was appalled to learn that some of my 5th graders had created a gang and tried to attack a fellow 5th grader at recess.
Now...my school has good kids. They really are. Which is why it is so ABSURD that they made a stupid ass GANG. It's like the CareBears making a gang against My Little Ponies. Stupid as hell. PLUS Spain doesn't have guns or anything. I made the mistake one day of saying I thought I was going to get shot when my bus was stopped by the police (not an interesting story I promise) and my teacher laughed in my face for about 5 minutes...and then explained nobody here has guns. I think even the cops might just carry around one of those huge sticks. Not positive.
I digress. So I'm teaching my Easter lesson...I've got my basket of eggs filled with candy and for the 5th graders I was practicing large numbers (235,183...in the thousands). If they could tell me how to correctly say 2 large numbers and a year (1882), then they could choose an egg. While I'm explaining how to read the numbers, two of the other fifth grade teachers barge in the classroom, said sorry to me, and asked for all of the boys in the "Neck-soos" to go out to the hallway. Immediately. They already knew who they were but wanted to see who would admit to it. HALF of the boys in my class went into the hallway. Like eight boys.
I looked to Rocio, my teacher, panicked, curious, wondering what the hell was going on. The boys were in the hallway, these two teachers were PISSED screaming at them, most were crying, and all of my students couldn't give two shits about large numbers because the entire wall of that side of the room is window. Four huge windows. The door is even paned with a big, long, window. The class had a front row seat. Rocio came over to me and explained that this group of boys, "Neck-soos", had created a gang and tried to kick a boy together at recess. Neck-soos...I had no idea what that was.
Anyways Rocio went out into the hallway and left me alone...which would be fine if there wasn't a verbal onslaughter of the students' classmates within their eyeshot. So I keep screaming to look at the numbers, trying to ignore them...except I really wanted to watch to see what was happening too, and try to lip read what the teachers were screaming. They also kept coming out into the classroom and asking for more boys who didn't fess up. Also distracting.
So, finally, they all leave the hallway and go to a classroom to yell more. Why that wasn't first choice is beyond me. After that class was lunch. I sat with one of the teachers that was doing all of the yelling and she asked me how my "huevos" were (eggs in Spanish...it's also the equivalent of "balls" in English, joking about testicles. All week long all of the teachers in the school were joking with me about carrying around eggs, and how were my eggs, very colorful, what's it like to finally say I have "eggs", etc....it was really funny, haha, but I am so glad that's over now) and I told her good...and asked, of course, about the Neck-soos thing. She waved a piece of paper about it and was cursing about the situation, about how the kids were stupid and had even arranged, before recess, how they could gang up on certain kids they didn't like. It really was shocking, considering how nice my students are. It wasn't really violence or anything, just dumb stupid bullying. Which is still awful. She said that all of them broke down crying and confessing except one, and all of the other boys ratted him out anyways, haha. Clearly their gang didn't practice loyalty. On the paper she had, I saw the name of the gang, and their symbol.
Nexxus. With Spanish pronunciation, sounds like "Neck-soos".
Ring a bell for anybody else? Maybe I've just spent too much time in beauty salons. Let me refresh your memory.
Yup. Nexxus. The shampoo and hair care brand. The symbol they use even has the X's arranged in the same way. Hilarious.
Nothing says "fear me" quite like clean and stylish hair.
Honestly I'm not sure whatever happened to them as punishment. Part of me wanted to joke around with them about it and ask if they wanted to borrow my curling iron to crimp somebody's hair they didn't like in an unfashionable matter. I'm sure they don't even know that's what Nexxus is anyways.
Moving on, I took my eggs with me to my private lessons and the little girls were super excited to have an Easter egg hunt. (They live in a gated community so there's a like a little built in park with a playground we had access to) I was hoping the park was empty but there were 2 mothers there with their children. I walked up to them and explained that I'm the English tutor for two of the girls here, from America, and we were going to do an Easter egg hunt...and that if they wanted their kids could play too. The looked only slightly hesitant but thanked me and told their kids to get ready. While I was walking away, I thought about how that would never fly in America. "Hi strangers, I'm from a foreign country and I'm the language tutor for two unnamed girls that live here...I'm going to hide plastic food objects with unnamed candy inside if your kids would like to join in the game!" Never. Ever.
So anyways I go upstairs, tell the girls to grab plastic bags for their eggs, and we come downstairs to search. The boy, Miguel, refused to play. He said his ankle hurt. I wanted to tell him I'd rather him not play anyways because he's a brat. By the way, the roles of those kids have changed. Once upon a time, Julia threw a quarter at my forehead and I left pissed off at her. Now we're friends, somehow, and they really like me. We have days that are better than others but we're friends. Miguel, however, refuses to like me. He hates English and subsequently hates me. He's a brat...going into the teenage years. The horror.
Anyways the girls go after the eggs and somehow by the time we come downstairs there are like five different families. Their kids are super young and grabbing all of the eggs on the playground. I figured....well...let them have them, they are super special because you can't get those here in Spain. So the girls are running around like crazy and I was a moron and didn't count how many eggs there were...who knows if we got them all. When I thought they had gotten most of them, we sat down outside (which was GLORIOUS, there isn't really any grass here in Spain...but in their park there is) and counted the eggs to see who had "won" (the real winner, regardless, was Julia because Marina is diabetic and couldn't eat any of the candy...so even though Marina got 18 eggs and Julia got 15, all of the candy goes to Julia. Because of this I gave Marina a big thing of Orbitz gum...bubblegum flavored which doesn't exist here. So she was happy) While we were counting, one of the neighbor kids came up and started playing with the eggs. Out of nowhere this kid (who is probably three/four) starts naming the colors of the eggs and asks "where ees green?" He also started counting the eggs with us, but stopped when he got to thirteen. He randomly took a blue egg and ran away. I have no idea who he was but the girls were impressed he knew so much English. I just wondered where the hell he came from and who he was, haha.
So, to end Easter, I started out with a basket of 60 eggs...four big ones, six little ones, and fifty normal ones. After some of my students STOLE some, and the neighbor kids, and me forgetting where I hid some...and I gave some to Javi, the little brother of my private class kids....I had 28 eggs. Epic fail. The good news is that was enough to use for my class the following day. That's all I really needed.
Moving on to titular topic #2....fire drills. Now, in America, fire drills usually occur a.) throughout the year, b.) when the whole school is present, and c.) at the beginning of the year. Not in Spain! Actually, most schools have some sort of plan but from what I've seen, they don't have drills. They don't practice. Ever. HOWEVER! My school is wonderful so we just had our first one (read: only one) of the year. It happened last week (May...a month before school is out) and all of the 2nd graders were on a field trip (hypothetically, if any of my students were unfortunately going to be burnt to a crisp in a fire, I'd vote them. They would have been AWFUL to deal with during a fire drill.)
Now, I went to Zionsville High School, so we weren't in the "city". The school had a lot of property and the students just stood in a single file line outside of the building. I never thought about what a fire drill would be like in the city. It's CHAOS.
So first of all, nobody knew about the fire drill. The teachers knew it was on a Friday, but the students didn't. They had sent fliers home to the parents telling them it was sometime this week. They don't tell the kids so they don't freak them out I guess. Anyways, Isabel, my teacher, was gone because her class is 2A, 2nd grade. So first of all, I had my entire 1st grade class in the morning all by myself. Do you know who told me that? My first graders. When I walked in, "Chelsea Chelsea! Isabel isn't coming! It's just you!" Good to know. Luckily I had a million games prepared from my thesis so I thought I'd take a shot at playing "Soccer" with vocabulary review. Also, the kids had been studying Science so two of my kids had brought in insects they were talking about. One brought in "silk worms" which are just those little annoying worms on leaves, apparently...and another brought in a giant ass snail the size of my palm. I was so thrilled. Daniel refused to put the lid on the snail because then he'd be "upside down". I tried to explain it didn't matter but he also didn't care.
That's Daniel's snail. Gross.
Anyways, after they calmed down we played Soccer. I talked to them in Spanish and made them promise not to tell anybody, it was a secret. I love days I do that. Anyways we played but Spaniards get so intense over soccer. It's insane. Kids were pushing, shoving, kicking, and hitting their classmates. Also keep in mind this is my favorite class. I told them that it was just a friendly game, it doesn't matter who wins. It's just to practice English and have fun.
One of the students piped up and said "yeah, you don't have to scream and hurt my ears, or hit people....it's not a real soccer game!" I said "Yes! Exactly! It's not a real.............wait, even in real soccer games you don't need to hit people! Or scream! You can be excited if your team wins but fans of the other team are still friends too. You don't want to hurt them...."
Lord. I'm not qualified to deal with this. Or what came next.
So luckily my 2nd grade classes were gone, which means I was free for the fire drill. I figured I'd just stick with the class I was with. Their teacher, Silvia, explained that we were going to have a fire drill and we were going to walk a few blocks to a nearby Plaza (note: taking all of the children, including the infants, three or four blocks away from the school. TERRIBLE). They were going to hear an alarm, a loud noise, and that's when they leave.
Right. In the states a fire drill sound is just really loud...it sounds like a school bell and there were flashing lights. This alarm sounded like an immediate bomb warning straight out of World War II. When I heard the alarm, it gave me chills. I look down and all of my 1st graders are grasping at my legs with their little fingers and nails and looking up at me stricken with terror. They all were trying really hard not to cry. The alarm was so terrifying! Anyways their teacher asked me to just watch the back and make sure nobody was left behind. That upset the girls who wanted to hold my hand and didn't settle well. We walk and we walk and we walk.....and then walk some more....and eventually get to the plaza. They have to make sure that everybody is there, so we ended up waiting thirty minutes for the whole thing to be over. Meanwhile the kids are asking me a million questions, none of them I have answers for. "How long are we going to be here? Where is Silvia? When do we go back? Why do we have to pretend there is a fire?" and so on. One student asked me a question but asked it quickly and really excitedly so I just smiled and nodded. All of the students were buzzing about something for a little bit but they all have such high pitched voices and talk so quickly I have a hard time understanding their Spanish. Finally their teacher walked up and asked what was going on and one of the students said that there was a real fire in the building and that a student was stuck inside. Silvia asked why they were lying like that and they told her that I told them. They then got yelled at for five minutes by Silvia, calling them liars and saying I would never tell them that and they got their recess taken away for two days. I felt really bad...I tried to tell her I was confused and might have said that but apparently this student lies a lot anyways. Ooops.
It was imperative all of the students stand in line during the fire drill, to keep track of everyone, but all of the kids at one point were huddled in a circle because this massive grasshopper, literally the size of two clothes pins, was flying around, jumping on the students and wreaking havock. Finally the Nun walked over, pinched his hind legs, practically threw it over her shoulder and marched it over to the bushes and chucked it over a wall. That ended that chaos quickly.
The walk back to school was quite pleasant. All of the students were trying to hold one of my fingers (which doesn't work because I only have ten) and every stair we hit I told them to count....which annoyed all of the other teachers, especially on the three flights of stairs where we ended up counting to fifty.
So, anyways, that is the end to my crazy Season Finale. Perhaps tomorrow I can squeeze five more stories into one post...and finally be caught up. Stay tuned, it's gonna be a good one with pictures and videos.
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