I can´t believe I´ve been here for two weeks already! It doesn´t feel like it in the least. I finished my first week at school. It was exhausting and great. There are so many facets to my job and I am always doing something different. 4 of my 12 hours are spent in class with a teacher. 2 of the classes are with first level; one is Natural Sciences and the other Math. Then, I have 2 English classes; one with third level and the other with fourth level. There are four levels in the school and they correspond more or less with 7th-10th grade. In these classes I do a lot of pronunciating of words. The students spend a lot of time alternating between repeating what I say and staring at me. Many of them are very good at doing both simultaneously. My other 8 hours are spent outside of class with teachers. These hours are split into 2 parts and sometimes overlap. With some of the teachers, I help them go over materials they plan to teach, in English, in their classes. Other teachers simply want help improving their English. The school in is the beginning stages of being a Bilingual School. In this type of school, students don´t just take English classes, rather, in addition to English classes, they also have some of their other basic subjects taught partially in English and partially in Spanish. However, it is just starting and their proficiency level of English is still very low and their desire to learn English is often lower. Lucky me. ;-) I need to use my novelty to my advantage to try and get them interested.
One thing I have had a difficult time adjusting to is the noise level. Everything ECHOS is Spain. Their buildings are made of Cement, Brick, Tile, Marble, Metal.... They don´t have much use for material that absorbs sound like carpet, wood, drywall, wallpaper. Today one class was working in groups and I was trying to go around the room to help them pronounce their exercise, but couldn´t for the life of me hear what they were saying in any language. Even in the teachers´lounge it is difficult. When there are only a couple people in there, I can hear just fine, but get the whole bunch of them in there and I have to stand right next to the person trying to talk to me. No wonder Spaniards don´t require as much personal space as Americans do, they can´t hear each other if they stand very far apart! Another thing that shocked me was on my first day when the bell rang in between classes. I asked how much time there was until the next bell and I was told there is only one bell. Students actually just go to their next class. Frequently, students are in class before the teachers are. There are 6 hours of class everyday, but they are not the same 6 subjects each day. Teachers have quite a few hours a week when they don´t have class. They are not required to be in school if they don´t have class. For example, if a teacher does not have class the first hour, but they do have class the second hour, they can show up just before 2nd hour. And I mean ´just´ literally. One morning I arrived for first hour, which starts at 8:30, and the teacher arrived at 8:29, at which point the students were already sitting at their desks. This is not uncommon! And then if a teacher doesn´t have a fifth or sixth hour, they can go home. It is all very different and interesting.
Thankfully, I have made a friend in Puente Genil. Marta is a teacher at my school. She is a year older than me, this is her first year teaching, and teaches the third level English class that I´m in. She isn´t from P.G., so she doesn´t know anyone either. She did by chance run into a classmate from High School the other day, so now we are 3! Last night we ended up walking around town for an hour trying to find a certain office so we could sign up for an aerobics class. It´ll be great. We´ll be able to keep busy together. We even got to talking and Halloween and Thanksgiving came up. I said Thanksgiving was my favoriate holiday of all and they decided we are going to celebrate it together! This is awesome because it is a non-existent holiday here!! Now I have the girls to spend Thanksgiving with (we´re working on more people) and Juanmi and Toñy to spend Christmas with. Yipee.
There´s still more I want to share, but I´ll let this settle in for a minute first. I hope you are enjoying my tales of adventure because I am loving living them!
The first two are random streets in Puente Genil. The last three are from my terrace!! I have a view of the country side. There is a cover for when I want shade. In the one photo I've pointed a few things out for you. The writing is smaller than I thought, but if you click on it, it should open up bigger. One box is pointing to where I hang my clothes to dry and the other to where I work.
