first day of school!
I had a really good first day of school. ECA doesn't start class until 9:00, so teachers need to be there by 8:45, which is a welcomed change! Kids came at 7:30 at my last placement. Our school day goes a little longer into the afternoon (we dismiss at 4:00), but I don't mind the trade off. Typically I'm more of a morning person than a night owl, so I'm hoping that I can utilize my mornings in the future.
I walked to school today, and it's a nice 10 minute walk to the edge of town. I was able to find it pretty easily after only walking part of the way there yesterday with Pilar.
The morning starts with Bible- my students are studying the New Testament this semester. This is the last subject I'm going to take over, and to be honest I feel very unqualified to teach Bible! I've never experienced anything like this since I'm a hoodrat public school kid, so it will certainly be interesting. Also in the morning we have math and language arts. All subjects are in English, and they have spelling, reading, grammar, etc. in the English language. They have a short morning recess, and then after lunch at 12:30, they have another half hour to play. When lunch/recess is over, the students come back inside for social studies or science, their special, and PE. They have PE almost every day, and in addition they have Spanish, art, music, or computer lab each day. There are also several ELL (English language learner) teachers in the school. Every other Friday, the school has chapel altogether with the high school and elementary. For the most part, the daily schedule is very similar to what I've experienced at other schools. Today I found myself feeling a little bored since there are only 10 kids in the class- and they are all extremely independent, bright, and well-behaved. Each student can get almost individual attention and instruction, so I'm figuring out my role right now as I'm just observing.
After school, I walked back to the house. I planned to go to Día, the grocery store, to pick up a few snacky foods and some toiletry items. They didn't have as many options as I was expecting for healthy foods, so I ended up with some yogurt (the Greek still only has 3 grams of protein- is that even real?), some nuts, wafer cookies, and crema de cacao. I'm pretty sure I probably blogged about that stuff while I was in Sevilla. I bought a jar when I left and rationed it until I knew I was coming back to Spain. It's basically chocolate nut butter swirled with white chocolate nut butter and like 10004% sugar.
I also had time and decided I wanted to go for a run tonight. It wasn't super warm, but I decided it would be a good way to see more of the pueblo. About 1 mile in, it started to rain. I ended up running 3 miles and seeing a lot of one side of town, and I was able to navigate back to Pilar's house with no problem!
It's already 9 pm here, so I'm showered, eating supper, and getting ready for tomorrow. I slept fairly well last night but woke up pretty early and was wide awake, and then I got really tired around noon. I think having a set routine is working out to my advantage for battling jet lag, and all around I feel great, considering.
I walked to school today, and it's a nice 10 minute walk to the edge of town. I was able to find it pretty easily after only walking part of the way there yesterday with Pilar.
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| A street en route to ECA... Camarma reminds me of Little Whinging where the Dursleys live in Harry Potter. |
The morning starts with Bible- my students are studying the New Testament this semester. This is the last subject I'm going to take over, and to be honest I feel very unqualified to teach Bible! I've never experienced anything like this since I'm a hoodrat public school kid, so it will certainly be interesting. Also in the morning we have math and language arts. All subjects are in English, and they have spelling, reading, grammar, etc. in the English language. They have a short morning recess, and then after lunch at 12:30, they have another half hour to play. When lunch/recess is over, the students come back inside for social studies or science, their special, and PE. They have PE almost every day, and in addition they have Spanish, art, music, or computer lab each day. There are also several ELL (English language learner) teachers in the school. Every other Friday, the school has chapel altogether with the high school and elementary. For the most part, the daily schedule is very similar to what I've experienced at other schools. Today I found myself feeling a little bored since there are only 10 kids in the class- and they are all extremely independent, bright, and well-behaved. Each student can get almost individual attention and instruction, so I'm figuring out my role right now as I'm just observing.
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| Lunch today- lentils with some kind of meat (?) and peppers... I actually really liked this. |
I also had time and decided I wanted to go for a run tonight. It wasn't super warm, but I decided it would be a good way to see more of the pueblo. About 1 mile in, it started to rain. I ended up running 3 miles and seeing a lot of one side of town, and I was able to navigate back to Pilar's house with no problem!
It's already 9 pm here, so I'm showered, eating supper, and getting ready for tomorrow. I slept fairly well last night but woke up pretty early and was wide awake, and then I got really tired around noon. I think having a set routine is working out to my advantage for battling jet lag, and all around I feel great, considering.
The mystery meat looks like bacon or some kind of pork. It actually does look good! This is what the students eat too? Do they get milk or other things along with it? Just interested in school lunches and how they differ from ours. I have always heard that school lunches in other countries are way more healthy and fresher than ours. - Debbie
ReplyDeleteWe all bring our own lunches, but that's probably due to the private school factor and the size of the school. Most of my students bring sandwiches, but they're also mostly kids of American parents, so their food is pretty normal. The few Spanish students that I have bring things like pasta or quesadillas or sandwiches too.
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