semana dos – teaching, travel and tinder

banks I’ve cried in: 2, words I’ve had to learn how to say in English: about 20 (including heterogeneous ?!), worksheets printed out: 75, google searches of how to work the printer at school: 4

Some people might say that moving country to teach in a primary school is a bit stupid if you have no experience with teaching and have never had to deal with 25 7 year olds before … and they would be correct. A lot of my time in class is spent looking at the kids with the hope that they have any idea what I’m saying while they gawk back at me, bewildered. Their level of english really varies depending on the quality of the bilingual teaching they’ve received in the past. Some classes are really switched on and bright, and lots of the kids go to English academies where they get extra english tuition, and then in other classes many of the children don’t know how to read, even in Spanish. I’ve realised pretty early on that dealing with kids all day is draining because you have to make EVERYTHING fun and – unsurprisingly – a lot of the course material is dull. (shout out to my mum who does this 5 days a week, i dunno how you’ve not gone mental yet.) Some of this teaching might be a bit easier if the classrooms were as well-equipped as they are in the UK with things like smartboards, but generally it is chalkboards (!!) all round here, so i have become the QUEEN of making worksheets. top tip: always include a picture that the kids can colour in when they’ve finished working and then they will like you.

An embarrassing side note is that here they teach the kids to write in cursive from literally day one, whereas I had the standard comic-sans handwriting education like everyone else at home. Instead of the kids thinking that my handwriting is easier to read, I was laughed at by an entire class who took delight in calling out ‘is that meant to be an R or an F?’ soo I’m either never writing on the board again or I need to learn cursive.

This week I also experienced my first of many Spanish national holidays which meant that school was closed on thursday so I had a 4 day weekend since I don’t work Fridays. I’ve been feeling a bit cabin-fever-y so I decided to get out of our little pueblo and get to a city and visit Anna (who also has a v funny blog – annagetstanned.wordpress.com ) in Córdoba. Our weekend was v cultured (read: we went to the mosque, ate paella and drank rioja) and I also got to return to the things I miss so much about living in a city: cordoba actually has bars and a nightlife!! It was so nice to realise that I’m not as much of an idiot abroad as I think I am and that anna is having the same struggles with Spanish bureaucracy as I am.

My friends seemed to think that i would find amor while I was here but it is not looking likely (which isn’t surprising since I’m not exactly a serial dater in england), but it has provided a good explanation of just how small my town is.. there are literally 5 guys on tinder from my town over the age of 20, and after I swiped left on all of them I realised I was gonna have to increase my distance which I thought would work well until I matched with a guy who lives in TANGIERS, MOROCCO. 😦

Come back next week when we will (hopefully) (probably not though) get answers to questions like: am I a permanent resident here yet? do I finally have a bank account? will the temperature ever drop below 33 degrees? does anyone in Spain own a kettle?