Hi all. I'm sorry. Again. For not posting in so long. Good news to all who have complained to me...I've made it one of my (many) New Year's Resolutions to blog atleast once every two weeks. Since I have informed you of this, you are now also responsible to remind me if I falter. :)
Well it's been since Thanksgiving...a lot has happened but I don't remember anything exciting about Thanksgiving to tell you except that I couldn't get my 1st graders to understand that it was the Pilgrims & Indians who met in America...in the end they all think it was the Pilgrims and the Italians...if there's one thing I've learned as a teacher, it's that you can't reach them all. I didn't have any plans here for Thanksgiving this year, so I bought Turkish food (thought I was pretty clever) and watched T.V. Luckily Rebecca & her friends were having a meal later in the week and she invited me. It was perfect...they made turkey breasts, green bean casserole (which I don't love but since I don't have access to it, it was delish), mashed potatoes, gravy, and broccoli & cheese casserole. I was going to make cookies that I had but set the oven for Farenheit instead of Celcius which burnt the shit out of them. It was a nice Thanksgiving dinner...and one of my teachers on the actual day gave me a present, because she's new this year and didn't exactly know what the holiday was all about. She gave me reindeer earmuffs & some cute Christmas-themed clothespins. It was just so sweet & adorable. It made me laugh.
Christmas was also pretty hilarious...it was a time to teach me how much America has an influence on Spanish culture. I started the Christmas holiday in class by asking my 1st graders how to say Navidad in English. One of them eagerly raised her hand and yelled, "JINGLE BELLS!!!" haha...so I started laughing and I said "Jingle Bells?" and she was super adamant, "Jess!!! Jess, Jingle Bells, jew know....(starts singing) Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, jingle all da crail!" I usually try to stifle laughing at the kids but I just couldn't get ahold of myself and ended up crying, laughing so hard. This same student, Carolina, is one of my favorites. Her brother Pedro is in 5th grade and they both have these doe eyes and innocent demeanors and are happy all the time. Turns out Carolina knows a lot about Christmas (and if you try to correct her she gets sassy, which I love haha). I asked what the name of Santa's special red-nosed reindeer's name was and she (eagerly, as always) told me his name was Ruffo (roof-oh). I giggled, as always, and told her it was so close, but his name was Rudolph, or Rudolfo in Spanish. She, matter of factly, told me that no, in Spain "we say Ruffo". I looked at the teacher who rolled her eyes and told me they call him Rudolph, haha. It was the best beginning to the crazy weeks of Christmas.
Christmas quickly became a typical Chelsea-holiday. I made a craft that all of the kids thought was bad-ass and by the time we finished I was sick of the craft, almost sick of Christmas, and begging for normalcy. My grand idea this year was making paper stockings that the kids could "sew" together with yarn and hang up to get candy from Santa. I'm very crafty but sometimes not too detail-oriented, so I drew the template wrong, making things more difficult than necessary. I also found out quickly that I might have doomed myself because I told the kids all these amazing stories about Santa and the chimney etc. etc. (my 6th graders still believe...Rocio, one of my English teachers, told the kids they could hang up the stockings for "Santa" in air quotes, and about half them replied, panic stricken, with, ".......so he's not real?!" Oops. In their defense my brother has still to this day not actually verbally recognized he knows it isn't true). I told my kids "be sure to hang them in the living room! If you don't have a chimney you can just tack it on the wall or put it some place visible, I'm sure he'll find it!"
All of them got excited and decided they were going to hang it in their bedroom...throwing me into crazy mode screaming "NO!! Noooo...Santa doesn't go into bedrooms! You have to put it some place visible!!" One of my innocent first graders made sure to tell me that he was going to put it someplace very visible...just in his bedroom. Finally I got smart and told them, "LOOK! This is very important. You need to put this someplace visible, and since someplace visible is probably a common area, you have to ask your parents for permission. Tell your parents what it's for and ask them where the best place is to put it." It's scary sometimes how wonderful I am at lying to these kids (see St. Patrick's Day last year...I caught one of my kids last week leprechaun hunting at recess). I could just imagine in my head, them waking up Christmas morning looking at their little cotton-ball covered paper sock wondering why Santa doesn't love them enough to think they are worth three pieces of hard candy. Then asking me why I lied to them.....or worse, making me explain why he didn't come. Even my best lies have their limits...
I was supposed to go to London the Friday before I came home, but my teachers ended up scheduling the off-school-property dinner that night. They have a luncheon with all the nuns each year but they wanted to be able to drink and have fun sans-nuns. I don't think they had one last year but if they did I wasn't invited...and most of my teachers were really anxious for me to go so I decided I couldn't miss it. It was totally worth it...I met a few of them in the Metro to go together and they told me before I go to prepare for the "novatadas". Not understanding what that was they quickly explained it to me and it turned out it was hazing. I laughed, figuring they were joking. Except when I got there I quickly found out they totally weren't. Once we all got seated they wanted somebody to give a speech. I looked around, smiling cluelessly, wondering who was going to do it but for some reason somebody insisted I do it. I thought they were joking so I laughed it off and was like "yeah yeah, ha ha." Until they pulled me out of my chair and started pounding on the table yelling "SPEECH! SPEECH!" with their silverware. This is why I love them. So I asked if I could give the speech in English and they said yes. So I started to say that I was glad to be there with all of them, etc. etc. until the guys (who I don't work with) started boo-ing me and yelling "NO EENGLEESH! SPANISH!!!!! NO UNDERSTAND!!!"............................and while I'm not shy at all it's really difficult to give a speech in a different language when you're trying to impress native speakers. I survived and ended up saying something like "I'm happy to be here with good friends, good wine, and good food. Let's drink." Haha....classy I know but they were pleased. We ate an 80-course meal with an open bar of champagne and wine....I don't like either but I got strong-armed into drinking more than I probably would have considering the circumstances. Plus wine affects me quickly. While I was mildly affected by the drinking they were peer-pressuring me into, they all got completely shit-faced which was so hilarious. SO HILARIOUS. I was the most normal person there. It was nice though because I was able to let my hair down and be more of myself instead of school-appropriate. We got to the restaurant at 9:30 and didn't leave until 2 a.m. In the time we were there they had started atleast three (bread only) food-fights (which was hilarious as well because the principal was there, who's like mid-50's and terrifyingly intimidating). I figured when we were done I could just walk home and get a pretty early night...I had no idea they were actually wanting to go OUT OUT afterwards. The teachers at my school are between the ages of 26-38, I wanna say, and I believe many of them are kanoodling or have kanoodled in the past. There are two couples that are married and another who live together. Anyways, they all wanted to go out to a disco so I figured I'd tag along for a little bit (plus it was apparently not an option to leave, they wouldn't let me when I tried). We went to a few clubs/bars and everywhere they went they continued their mini-hazing by introducing me everywhere as "guiri" which means foreigner (it's like gringo in Mexico) and trying to find me a boyfriend. Everytime I tried to slip out they yelled "you can't leave! We have to find you a boyfriend!!!!" I was completely enjoying myself, however, because all of the teachers who I don't work with tend to avoid me (because they're afraid they'll have to speak English) were so drunk they actually WANTED to speak to me in English. It was hilarious. So completely hilarious. "Chelsea!! It's very crowded inside....many peeeeple! No can go, beeecause dare are too much peeeeple. Ees eemposseeble!" After 3 a.m. it's hard to find a place that is not completely packed or has a line a mile long outside so I was finally released and got home around 5:30 a.m. Even though I had hoped to get home sooner, I think we all bonded quite well and I was even able to tell them how I think it's funny Spaniards say "jew" instead of "you" when they pronouce words. So now in Spanish when we speak they all refer to me as "judio" (jew) just to keep the humor in both languages.
Right before I left I got pretty sick with an annoying mix between a cold and a flu. One day I had a fever and was incredibly dizzy. The next three days I was congested, coughing, and couldn't breathe. This made making it to the airport extremely difficult and annoying. Luckily I didn't have any problems when I left...........little did I know what was going to happen once we were in the land and once I finally landed. That will be a long post that I will write on Sunday.
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