Tuesdays

My father has requested more information on my everyday life in Logrono, so I´m starting with my job here. I´m teaching English in several schools in pueblos outside of Logrono. My role in the classroom is pretty maleable, but mainly it´s to expose the children to a native speaker of English.

Contrary to popular thought (or really just what I thought), not everyone in Europe is bilingual. In fact, I am going to just make the blanket statement that most Spaniards only speak Castellano (what we call ¨Spanish¨) unless they live in the Basque Country or Catalunya (or one other place that I can't remember), and then they speak both Castellano and either Basque or Catalan. So the children I teach are learning English from non-native speakers, meaning the teachers have very strong Spanish accents. Many of the English teachers here speak to me in Spanish because they are embarrassed of their English, and they all complain about how poor the English education is in Spain. I must agree, but also acknowledge the fact that I didn´t start learning Spanish until I was 14 and that most US citizens feel content just to know English. So this program I´m participating in is a good one and hopefully it will get bigger with time, as I only see most of the students once a week if even that frequently.

I´m not a particularly good teacher I don´t think, but the students seem to like me. I´m rather inefficient at passing things out and other stuff you don´t think about but that takes time away from class. By Thursdays, though, I usually run a better lesson. Unlike some of the auxiliares here, my schools are really enthusiastic and thrilled to have me in the classroom, and I´m given more responsibility. Basically, I am the teacher for the day that I´m there. I don´t have to discipline the students but I do have to entertain them and try to get them to speak English for an hour each period. It´s a small task considering that it´s what allows me to live in Spain, but sometimes I take it too seriously and get annoyed at myself when activities go wrong.

Another thing to explain is the Spanish school day. Because I teach in pueblos, the school day is still broken up by siesta. In many places, the schools have switched to a 9 to 2 schedule or something that reasonably resembles that. My school days start usually between 9:30 and 10:00 am with a half hour coffee break (for the teachers, recess for the kids) around 11:30 and then a 2 hour break from 1:00 to 3:00 in the afternoon. Most of the children go home for lunch/siesta and are returned to school by a parent. Some stay at school and eat lunch from 1:00 to 2:00. Then the teachers eat lunch from 2:00 to 3:00. Every meal is 3 courses: a soup, a meat, and fruit and yogurt. We usually eat for about 35 minutes and then go to a cafe and have more coffee for 15 or 20 minutes before the children come back and class resumes from 3:00 to 5:00 pm. I eat lunch with the teachers at my schools on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and I really enjoy it.

Okay, so Tuesdays. I really enjoy Tuesdays because I get to go to three different pueblos everyday. I teach in a CRA (CRA Moncalvillo to be exact http://www.cramoncalvillo.org/), which is a rural school system with schools in five pueblos. One of the schools only has seven children. The morning begins at 9 when I meet Rosa outside of the place she does yoga, and we drive to Nalda in time to start class at 9:30. My first class is an hour with fourth graders (I think?) and there are 9 students. One of the kids, Juan, is the son of a Canadian man, so he speaks perfect English and Spanish, which can be frustrating at times as he is also a 9-year-old boy and likes to contradict me. But other than that the children are well-behaved and the view from the classroom is really pretty.

This isn't even the view from the classroom in Nalda. I've yet to take a photo of that. You can't really see it, but on the closest slope, there is a medieval structure that no one knows what it is. They think it's a hermitage.

An old photo of Nalda that I didn't take.

I didn't take this one either. I think it's a view from Nalda.

After class, I have coffee with Rosa, and the two other English teachers, Mirian and Bea. Apparently Nalda is a very politically divided town, and everyone knows whether you are a liberal or a conservative. They were explaining the situation a few weeks ago, but I didn't understand. I'll have to ask about it again. But we go to the "conservative" cafe. Hopefully only because it's across the street from the school.

After coffee, I go to a different school every week. Either Sorzano, Viguera, or Medrano. These schools are all very small. Viguera is gorgeous. It's considered the gateway to the mountains in La Rioja, and the school is adjacent to an old church.

Another photo I didn't take; this one's of Viguera.

I took the two above from the windows of the classroom.

Someone else's view from Viguera. I couldn't really find photos of Sorzano or Medrano, but there is a great casa rural that we park in front of in Sorzano. You must look: www.casajosephine.com.

From the alternating schools, I go to Entrena for the afternoon, and I do this every Tuesday. You have to drive up a hill a little ways to get to Entrena and then on the way you drive on a plateau with vineyards and it's beautiful. In Entrena, I have an hour of nothing before lunch, but now Rosa is organizing a group of teachers and I am going to help them learn more colloquial English. They are going to pay me. Rosa is just so amazing. She's always looking out for my well-being, and she was like, well you have this hour at our school (I'm supposed to teach 4 hours a day, but I have to stay at the schools for 8 hours because they are outside of Logrono) and you aren't making money when you could be, so we will pay you to teach the English teachers.

So after that hour, I eat lunch with the other teachers from the whole CRA (not as many as you'd think, maybe 12) and we get coffee at this really funny cafe where there are only old men inside. Actually that's most cafe's here during the day.

After lunch, I teach a sixth grade class. There's a large concentration of interesting haircuts in this particular class. One little girl has shoulder length hair but the crown of her head has really short, spiked, boyish hair. It's like a pixie cut with a 2.5 inch radius on the top of her head and then everything else is just standard girl hair. I have no idea who thought of that one. And then of course there's the obligatory rat tail and maybe a mohawk or two. So normal here.

Then I teach a class that's third and fourth grade. It's huge--maybe 24 students--and they're all really cute and funny and like to run and hug me when I walk into the room. Then school ends at 5:00 and I ride back into Logrono with a teacher named Christina. My only complaint about Tuesday is that I don't get to stay in each pueblo longer, and they are all the prettiest pueblos of the week. I would really like an hour to walk around each one. But maybe one day.

Both Entrena, neither mine.