Reassurance

It's official, today marks the completion of my second month in Spain. Even though, it feels like I have been here much longer, I am starting to enjoy each day more and more. I've been fighting this unsatisfactory feeling that I want to be traveling or seeing something all the time as I know these 9 months are going to fly by. I am trying almost to hard to take advantage of my limited time abroad, to the point where I'm blinded as to what "taking advantage of" really means. I get antsy to leave Sevilla but due to time, money and my job it's not always worthwhile to pick up and leave for a weekend. Plus working with kids is exhausting, so most of the time I just want to pop in a movie and eat candy. This weekend is a Spanish holiday and therefore a 4 day weekend. As I was strolling down the street today, happiliy making my way to the gym, I realized something. I was observing the large amounts of families, teenagers and elders out of the street enjoying the beautiful fall day with a cool breeze and vibrant blue sky and I noticed something in common about everything that was happening around me. Everyone, including myself, was so at peace with the world seemed sincerely happy. I realized I shouldn't be so ansty to leave such a beautiful, pleasant city and that I should better appreciate the simple fact that I am LIVING in Spain. I thought about how I don't always want to commute an hour to school to be there for two hours or want to tutor the rascals or want to cook. But then I thought about how cool it is that I can do all these normal daily activities in SPAIN and that should be satisfactory within itself. I mean how cool is it I can eat my cereal and banana and drink my coffee for breakfast every morning while watching to sunrise over the city from the 8th floor of my apartment?!?! It's the little moments I am experiencing on a daily basis that I need to learn to better appreciate.

Last weekend I did manage to get out of the city and took a day trip thirty minutes outside the city to a town called Carmona. My friends and I enjoyed the small streets, white houses, wine, pastries, beautiful views and SILENCE!!! You almost forget how much constant street noise you experience in a city and how life moves a bit faster in Seville. The village of Carmona was extremely relaxed and rarely did you hear more than a few cars or motos at a time.

Free wine samples! I think I liked it...

View from the "Parador Carmoa", a beautiful hotel

 

Street View

 Typical Spanish architecture!

The "center" of town

 

Captured two happy Spanish men, please notice how well dressed they are for a stroll around town

The sunset on the bus ride home!

 

 

This week of work was a rather enlightening one, mostly because of Halloween. I was interested to see how the Spaniards had adopted the holiday from America and what they made of it. The younger kids at my school had been preparing for the classroom decorating contest and dance contest. The classrooms ranged from having some spiderwebs and cut out pumpkins to a giant girl doll attempting to look like a mummy. I managed to make it on the wall of one of the classrooms as one boy named Pepe drew a little stick figure of me and wrote "Estoy muerte. Soy Mandy". (I'm dead. I'm Mandy). I wasn't really sure what to think so I playfully got him back and with the help of some of the girls in the class and drew a boy stick figure and wrote "Me llamo Pepe. Soy un Zombie." (My name is Pepe. I am a Zombie), while that is not funny really at all, the kids thought it was hilarious. Winning. On the actual day of Halloween, there was a performance put on by the bilingual program. It attempted to explain the history and traditions of Halloween, yet the kids couldn't be quite and the acoustics were horrible so I don't really think anyone heard anything. My favorite part was watching the dances some of the kids had prepared. These 14 year olds had picked a song (anything from Lady Gaga, Thriller, Chris Brown, and "I'm sexy and I know it") and choreographed very elaborate dance moves and costumes. There were definitely the awkward dancers but there were some kids that might be the next winners on "So you think you can dance" as they managed to move their bodies in ways they probably shouldn't know how to do at the age of 14, but you can thank YouTube for that one. During this whole presentation I was invited to SHARE a KIDS SIZED DESK with probably the smallest girl of all my students. While she was small, that seat was not meant for more than one person, but I enjoyed sitting with the kids and it certainly brought a smile to their faces. I took out my camera at one point and they literally started screaming "foto, foto! camara camara!" I think they were a little excited. Also, random but some of the kids have started giving me fist pumps or "pounding it". They absolutely love it and I secretly do too.



 

 Students dressed in costume for their dances and SO excited about the picture!

 

Yep, this dance, a classic group of 13 year old girls all trying to strut their stuff to today's pop hits. I've never seen someone flip their hair so many times in a matter of 3mins. But they did do a great job.

 

 

 

I was excited for Halloween with my tutoring jobs as it would give me a solid topic to talk about. It kinda worked. For my more fluent student, Rosa, I printed out the lyrics to "Monster Mash" and took out some of the words and then made her listen to the song and try and fill in the missing words. I haven't really challenged her yet and this activity kinda made her mad cause it was hard. bahaha. I secretly loved it cause she always thinks she knows everything there is to know about English. Don't worry I am nice to her most of the time, I let her put purple and blue dye (made for Barbie dolls) in my hair. As for the kids who don't speak English very well, I tried to teach the classic (aka necessary ) Halloween vocabularly with pictures and sounds. Javier kept saying bitch instead of witch. That "w" proves to be more and more of a challenge for non-native speakers everyday. But I couldn't help but smile everytime he said it and hey, maybe he has a point. On my way home that night, I saw a few kids dressed in costumes as they were most likely on their way to a friends house. As there aren't really houses to go door to door trick-or-treating they don't really do that here. I went out with some American friends to a dance club for Halloween and that was the most festive place I saw all night. There were some very scary masked people dancing the night away. While I enjoyed my night out, I still would have liked to enjoy some Reese's Peanut Butter cups (they DON'T have them here) while enjoying some repeat Halloween movie on Disney Channel. As it was certaily interesting to experience Halloween abroad it did make me miss being home for something so familiar.

THIS WEEKEND I returned to my roots...Granada! My excuse for returning to this city I had spent 4 months getting to know 2 years ago, was to run (for the 2nd time) the Granada Half Marathon (el media maraton). I went to Granada alone and mostly did my own thing. Luckily a friend of mine happened to be in town as well, so we roamed around, ate food, ate more food and drank tea. Granada has to be one of the most beautiful cities I have ever traveled too. I can't even really put it into words. It's the combination of the architecture and colors of the buildings, the plazas, the fountains, the Sierra Nevada mountain range, the Alhambra and the strong Arab influence that creates a beautiful atmosphere. Spending a mere 2 days in Granada made me realize and remember exactly why I wanted to come back to this country. It gave me confidence and reassurance in my decision to spend 9 months here. That said, if you ever come to Spain you MUST hit up Granada. Oh..yes...the half marathon! There were about 2700 runners and 215 females. Two years ago when I ran it there were only 50 women total! So it was exciting to see the numbers are growing. I did well, missed my time goal by 2 mins but overall a PR, an enjoyable event and motivation to keep training for life. The only bummer was that my awesome race shirt doesn't fit. It's a large but the thing is Spanish women are tiny people slash I have rower arms, aka I look like one of those guys at the gym that are trying to rip through their t-shirt. No bueno. Maybe it will just have to be a wall decoration.

 My "large" race shirt and bib number!

 

Sad news, my camera died and this is the only picture I have from the whole weekend. The view from my hotel!

 

 

Well, I think that's all I have for now. My neighboors above my room are having a birthday party (we can hear them singing) and blasting some salsa music. How rude they didn't invite us?!?! Maybe I'll just venture up there and see how they react to a angry blonde girl at their doorstep. Just kidding.

Kinda.

 

Until next time. Un beso.