First, if by any chance you were counting, I’m sure I’ve miscounted again!  Since I tend to miss writing on the weekends; I decided I’ll just count the next day I write, not the days of the week!  I haven’t missed more than two days in a row, so I guess if it makes sense to me, that’s all that matters – so sorry to bore you with that one!

This week is Open Classroom week at the community college where I teach.  Faculty have volunteered to open their classrooms to other faculty.  The purpose is not for observation or evaluation, but simply to share teaching and its challenges and pleasures.  I have a full week and today was the only day I could visit others; so I attended an Intermediate Algebra class and a Human Growth and Development class.  I picked up quite a few little ideas, such as buckets of items at each table for those who “forget” (extra pens, ruler, etc.)  This was in the math class and contained math tools, but it seems like a good idea that I think I’ll try out in one of my classes.  In the other, I was fascinated by the professor’s use of PowerPoint and presentation of materials.

I was reminded that I really need to do something about my terribly rusty, and honestly, none existant math skills as a learner myself.  I keep thinking about taking a refresher course; and I think I’ll try to get it in this spring.  The morning hours spent doing this chore makes me think about how much time I spend figuring out ways to teach material to these students who are so spread out along the learning spectrum.  (We are a state supported, open door college.)  This is an okay thing, but I was thinking about how much I wished I could have more time to learn myself.  To improve my math skills, return to my study of Spanish, finally learn how to play the autoharp.  How will I solve this dilemma?  Today I’m thinking about me as a learner who wants to learn.  Tomorrow I’ll be thinking about me as teacher as I have several colleagues coming to visit my Open Classroom!

We went into one station and had to catch a taxi to another to catch another train to Winchester. (Yesterday we returned to London). We met this couple in Salamanca in school and really hit it off. They are delightful folks and gave us a few days of wonderful hospitality!

The first day they took us to tour Winchester College -

a very old what we would call high school: over 625 years! For you fans of a certain wizard book — does the dining room remind you of anything?

We then went to tour WInchester Cathedral (yes, the one of the old 60′s song!).

This is a scuplture by Gormley in the cript of the cathedral — really one of the most stunning sights we’ve seen this trip. This photo does not do it justice at all.

We had tapas at a new local restaurant. Here we are!

They took us to a town nearby to enjoy an open air sculpture garden as well. We spent the next day touring the Cathedral again, seeing a few things that were closed the next.

Yesterday, they had arranged to come into London and join us and another couple of friends of theirs for an evening at the theatre. We went to see “Como Aqua para Chocolate” in Spanish! Nice way to begin to wind down our trip, huh?!! It was a small theatre in a tunnel under either a bridge or the subway, I wasn’t sure. It seated about 100 on benches. It was a great play!

For a couple of days, we’ll tool about London and before you know it be on our way home on the Queen Mary II – really hard to grasp actually!

We had a great day and a half in Cadaques! I’ll post more another time – now it’s time to get to bed as we have an early train to catch!

Adios Espana! Mi me gusta mucho todo Espana!

A couple of weeks ago in Madrid, hubby and I had a bad head cold. Hubby’s was much worse and we spent the 5 days in Madrid before coming here resting up and recuperating. We never know where germs come from, of course, but I think our trip to Morocco wore our immune system down; and that’s probably why we got ill.

We arrived in Salamanca about a week ago and seemed well. The middle of last week I awoke in the night with an awful sore throat. Well, I figured it was the same cold and went to the pharmacy, drank juice, ate soup in restaurants, etc. Over the weekend, it got progressively worse with hard swollen glands and as my kids love to know “yucky green stuff”!

So after a rough night last night, when we got up at our homestay this morning, I decided I had to see a doctor. I was pretty sure it was a bacterial infection and not a cold. After some great help from our homestay mother calling the school to ask what clinic to go to (thank goodness because our Spanish would not have worked); we set off to walk the few blocks to the clinic.

The front desk person was actually the same as home; busy, too much to do, and even after saying we couldn’t speak that much Spanish (oh, I didn’t mention that I have no voice left anyways), she rattled away. Somehow we figured out what forms she needed, although I do think she was a bit impatient with us in the end.

We were sent to room 3 and fortunately only a couple of people needed to see a doctor right away. But I was glad not to be first, because I could figure out what to do. A nurse does not come out to get you; you wait until the person in front of you comes out of the doctor’s door and you just go right in. Interesting.

Went in with my symptoms written out by me on a 3 x 5 card, since my voice wasn’t working. And all went well! YEAH! While I knew it wasn’t an emergency (we would have needed a translator for sure); I am so rarely this ill that I knew what I needed and was worried I’d be able to express myself.

Other fascinating things about the examination: they take your temperature under your arm (that hasn’t been done to me since I was a little girl:), and in order to hear my lungs, I had to take both my shirts off. There was none of America’s fussing with paper gowns, just take off your clothes for the doc!

So after writing up my diagnosis, I got the sheet and a prescription and off we went to the pharmacy. By the way, we were sent to a private clinic and this visit cost me 40 Euros! (which I was told by my insurance company before I left the US that with a receipt they would reimburse us).

I had three kinds of medicines prescribed, one an antibiotic. I held my breath waiting for the total and she said 12, 75. I actually gasped and said “what?” I was sure that in my illness I had missed the 100 that surely went in front of the number. Nope! 12,75 euros. I asked my homestay mother about this later, and she said that it’s always this inexpensive and that elders in Spain get their medications for free.

Well, after one day of medicine, I’m already feeling on the slope to wellness again. I’m proud of myself for having enough broken Spanish to get myself what I needed (and I have to say it helped hugely to have a hubby along!) How difficult it must be to be ill where you don’t speak the language and be all alone.

Tomorrow I promise a posting more cheerful about the beautiful towns of Segovia and Avila.

The school has evening lectures and programs. Last night we went to a lecture about Dali (actually understood very little of it!), but it’s good practice in listening to the language. This evening we went to see a very interesting movie: Mal Educacion. It was subtitled in Spanish, so we could actually follow it quite well. It’s an independent film that is famous here in Spain (although we’re not sure if it’s liked or not.)

Last night and tonight we have enjoyed the company of several “older” students such as ourselves and gone out for tapas and beer:)

Here’s a few pictures from school:

This is the front door of our apartment. Very nice place only 3 blocks to the school and 3 blocks to the Plaza Mayor.

This is the first block we walk. It’s been a very rainy week so far.

This is the next block we walk.

This is the last block we walk to the school. Old Salamanca is really lovely. I’ll post more pictures over the next few days of the town.

And then we arrive. Here is the front door. It’s not easy to see from the photo; but there’s about 3 small buildings with a courtyard. This school is larger than the one in Granada.

Tomorrow is our last day of classes here in Granada although we don’t leave until Saturday. We take the train to Madrid for less than two days, then we fly to Marakeesh to join son and daughter-in-law for a week’s vacation. So we have no idea of when we’ll be able to connect, so please keep checking my site!

Here’s what we’ve been up to for the last three days.

Saturday: We took a bus trip with the school to Cordoba to see the important sites there. There were about 12 students from 3 different schools and about 6 countries. The tour was given in Spanish! The guide would not speak English (part of the idea of immersion); but did do many of the talks in slow clear Spanish; so I think we got more than half or better at times. We did read our tour books so that we had some idea of what he was going to say. We left at 8 am and returned at 9 so we were tired. But the sites of Cordoba are amazing. We saw the Cathedral/Mezuita; the ancient Jewish quarter, a Roman site and other things in the central city. We also went in the bus to see another ancient site of the Muslims.

The Cathedral/Mezuita is breathtaking, and I mean that literally. I wished that I wasn’t on a tour so that I could sit and really take it in. It really touched me – the beauty, the reality of the oldness of it, the spirtual presence of so many religions in one spot. Really truly breaktaking.

The bus ride on the way was lovely as well – fields and fields of olive trees. We stopped for a break in an olive oil producing area and got to taste a few local products.

Sunday

We thought we would have a slower day, right! Our homestay gave us a sandwich and fruit and we walked around the city. We went back up to the view of the Alhambra and mountains. Ate here and there, and then waited to see one of the processions.

It is Semana Santa here in Spain – a huge deal! Another astonishing event to see — each church has a procession of many many people wearing all types of costumes. Each church has a particular set of colors and one or two floats. These floats are carried on the shoulders of about 40 men at a time. A band plays a very fascinating piece of music that has a rhythm that they march to. Every now and again they set the float down, and then to see the float get hoisted up again is amazing. I wish we were seeing these processions with someone who knew all about them and spoke English – I have so many questions. YEt, to just watch is to see a passion enacted that is moving.

We have been able to catch several of them – there are 4 to 6 each night in Granada. Actually, it’s quite hard not to see them as they block the streets and we’ve had to be sure to have our map handy in order to find our way around. If you’ve done your math, you’ll figure out that’s about 25 or more churches in one small area of the central city.

Monday

We had school as usual and decided after an early dinner (7:30 pm) to go back to Paddy’s Pub and have a drink to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Well, there was a procession in front of it. It took about 20 minutes and a lot of pardoning ourselves to just get across the street. But, the best part, we got to see the float from the pub! And we enjoyed meeting some great people and talking in English for a while.

The top two pictures are just two of the floats we have seen so far from amongst the crowds. The bottom left is the float we saw while inside the pub. The last, sorry it is out of focus – the camera’s battery was about to give out – is inside Paddy’s Pub while the float went by. This is for my siblings — Happy St. Patrick’s Day! I know Dad would have appreciated my downing a Guiness while watching the Virgin Mary go by!!

Well, the two of us decided to take a little walk last night after classes until the tapas bars are open (You cannot eat anywhere until 8 pm here). A classmate had told us he had found a bar with Guiness on tap. We were up for a beer with some substance (beer- cervaza is very cheap and very pale here). We found the place, and had a great conversation with the pub-owner — Paddy of Paddy’s Pub. A true Irishman who had bicycled and lived in many parts of the world. His interest is world and US economy and we had a great discussion, not to mention a true pint of Guiness!

Then off to find our favorite row of restaurants and tapas bars for a bit for dinner. On the way we came across a beautiful church (not hard in any Spanish town we are discovering!) with its floats and stuff ready for the Semana Santa celebrations next week. The floats are truly astonishing. We hope to get to a couple of the processions next week, and I’ll post photos.

So off to our dinner. We decided to eat in a place that had quite large tapas servings so we could just order a couple of them. We decided to try to do the whole thing in Spanish even though this place had menus in English.

We ordered (or at least we thought we did)! a glass of wine for Rich and a bottle of mineral water for me. The bottle of water came with a glass with ice, lemon and what I thought was a little bit of melted ice in it. Any guesses, yet?

During the meal, I began to feel more and more light-headed and thought “jeesh, that’s a huge buzz for a beer!”. Well the bill comes, and one of the lines is Smirnoff! We try to discuss it with the waiter, he discusses it with the bar, and we figure it out! I don’t ever drink vodka, so I was clueless that in fact what I thought was water was a shot of vodka! No wonder I was tipsy!!

So we had a slow walk home! Rich had to be on guard for us both as I was in no state to see any foolishness going on about me!

So beware using your new-found language skills! (But I slept well!)

Well it is Wednesday already and we have pretty regular days. We get up and eat at 9, go to school to use the wireless and do homework. Lunch at 1, and back to classes for 3 till 7.

Last night we went to a lecture in the school about Dali — understood about 5 % of it! But the slides were nice!

We did have a short “conversation” with our homestay hostess this morning and actually managed to understand each other about our weekend plans. We’re going on a school trip to Cordoba and need to tell her about our food needs for the day. The trip will be in Spanish, of course, but we don’t want to miss the opportunity to see the sites there.

We manage the restaurants, tapas bars and stores a bit better with our very limited Spanish. And, each morning when we go buy a pastry, even the women in the shop is helping us with our pronunciation! We did take the 40 minute each way walk to the Train station yesterday before classes to buy our ticket to Madrid. We are traveling to Madrid the weekend of Easter and didn’t want to risk not getting a seat on the train.

That week is called Santa Semana here and is very special. Thursday and Friday are total shut down of the country, and everyone travels those days to see family, etc.

So back to the studying!

Today is our fifth day of classes in Spanish and we are exhausted — physically and mentally! But somehow we are enjoying it!

We have breakfast each day at 9 am with our homestay, get dressed and go to the school to study and for Rich to check his business out online. We return to our homestay for these incredible lunches (Lunch is the huge meal here.) We are staying with a lovely woman, but we must work hard with our Spanish in order to enjoy her company! I must say our decision to live with someone was a good one. As tiring as it is; we must try to practice our Spanish in order to figure out what we are eating, and what we do to do in her home to be polite, etc.

Maybe of not much interest to anyone more than our children are photos of parts of our days here in school this week. This is the apartment house we are living in. It is one of four in a complex. We live on the 9th floor and there is this teeny tiny “lift” that takes us up and down each day.

It is about a 10 minute walk from the apartment to the school. First we cross a big intersection, then have a walk through a lovely park with a playground next to a huge town building. Next we walk across a foot bridge that crosses the “river” which is really a huge concrete basin. It does seem to have more water in it each day but we don’t know why.

And by the way the weather has turned quite cold – in the 40s during the day. We understand that it snowed in Madrid earlier this week!

Then we stop at a bakery which we discovered to get an afternoon snack. This week they have us in classes from 3 to 7 pm which is during the later part of siesta and most of the shops are closed until 5 pm. (Many open from 5 to 10 at night.) So we figured out that we had to buy a snack for our 4:45 break at 2:30 before we go into class.

And the next picture is the front of our school. The last picture is Rich standing in front of our favorite bakery shop.

We hope to sleep in a bit tomorrow and then spend the weekend walking about Granada. The Alhambra is sold out days ahead, and we don’t have a ticket to see it until the 15th, and then for only an hour! But there are gardens and other sights around it apparently that are free so at least we can go see some of it. And, there are many plazas and churches to walk about and see as well.

This past Saturday we enjoyed our last day in Seville with souvenir hunting (can’t tell you what we bought until the recipients receive them!), but thank goodness we left some extra room in our luggage.

We also, after some reading, choose a flamenco show to go to as our send off to Seville. It was a tourist spot in the Santa Cruz area near the Cathedral and was quite good. Designed for tourists, but clearly a small family devoted to the art and everyone had a part! It was really exciting. We were just two rows away from their feet and wonderful to watch.

Sunday we spent packing and sitting on benches after we checked out of the hotel waiting for our train. We had reserved seats but there’s no first class between Seville and Granada. It was fine until we got off in Granada. The huge crowd trying to get on the train wouldn’t give way to those getting off – what a madhouse. Rich had the smaller bags and got off, then I was literally jammed half way down the train steps with a 45 pound bag in front of me — I had to push it into people’s bodies to get down the steps – then I was trapped. Rich had to leave his bag and push back through the crowd to help me drag my bag against the crowd. Crazy!

We found a taxi (thought ahead and wrote the address of our homestay on a piece of paper); but the driver could make no sense of it. He called the dispatcher; then attempted to ask us more about it (no English, no Spanish). But in the end he was incredibly kind. He got us to a complicated apartment complex, and called the schools’ office. The school was no help and told him to call the hostess. It was Spaniards in action — we don’t have much Spanish but we could tell he was telling her off! He then called our hostess for us; and her daughter came down to get us.

By now it was about 9 at night – our hostess gave us a delicious dinner and we went to bed. We are on the 9th floor of an apartment complex.

Now, the funny part! We have what was clearly a child’s room – two small barely twin beds, a dresser, an armoire! We’re clearly students now! Our hostess is a lovely woman, proud of her family and a great cook! I think this is where we will gain speaking skills. She talks quite fast most of the time, but this morning was clearly putting us through our paces with – reasking us our names, our children’s names, our ages, etc. in slow Spanish. We even managed a few sentence exchange about Presidents of both countries!

We started classes yesterday – 4 hours every afternoon. This is a photo of the student’s Salon (hang -out space). We’re hoping they switch us to mornings next week as it doesn’t allow for much sightseeing.

Now a word to my students: I’m pretty sure the last couple of days has felt to me like some of you have felt the first days you’ve come to campus: you don’t speak the language, don’t know the culture of what is appropriate, don’t know where the bathrooms are even. Yesterday was scary to me in many ways; not of bodily safety, but of how do I get my way through this and can I? I was reminded of my favorite theorist: Howard Gardner.

I had the privilege in the 80s of meeting him when he came to a school I taught at in Connecticut (Mead School). His phrase has been published since, but he told the teachers there that our school was a good place because we understood that it is not “are children smart?” but “how are they smart?”

I, like any learner, doubt my abilities at times; but I know it’s not “Can I learn this language?”, but what is the best way to go about learning it. After two classes with a great teacher, I think I’m making progress! I know even 2 months in this country won’t make me fluent, but I do now see that at least I’ll be able to have a short conversation with someone and even order my wine without the phrase book in my hand for security!