Tuesday was my first stressful day with the little kids. I actually work at two schools here in Siles. My normal school (that I spend the most time at) is with the 1st-6th graders. The other school has the kids 3-5 years old and is a little farther up the hill. I arrived in Siles on a Tuesday 2 weeks ago, then last week I had to go to Jaén on Tuesday. This week Sebas wasn’t here and the teachers apparently didn’t know I was coming. They turned their classrooms over to me and I had nothing prepared. Usually I’ll just follow Sebas’ lead or incorporate myself into the lessons they are normally working on. It’s also so difficult to understand little kids. Little kids are often hard to understand in your native language, nonetheless a second language. I actually had one little 5 year old girl tell me “We have no idea what you are saying.” Great. Well I don’t know what you’re saying either, so this is going to be fun. Next week I have to go to Jaén again on Tuesday for more paperwork, so it’s going to be hard to get into any sort of routine with the little kids for another couple weeks.
I went to the school with the older kids during my lunch break and after my classes to try and talk with Inés or the other teachers and get a plan for this week. Inés was in a doctor’s appointment and I didn’t have that much luck with the other teachers.
I generally felt like a clueless idiot trying to wrangle and teach these little kids with no plan in place. Part of me just wanted to cry.
After school I went to Correos (the post office) to mail some postcards to my grandparents. After that I went home, had some lunch and took my first successful Spanish siesta. I slept for an hour and then woke up feeling better. I tried to go buy some school supplies that I could use to prep my class lessons but I didn’t know the word for markers and was not successful in describing what I want. I eventually had to leave and just say I would look up what I wanted and come back. I tried to go to the Bazar store and had a little better luck, but still couldn’t find exactly what I wanted. I tried to take some money out of the ATM to pay for rent but it didn’t work. Thank you Bank of America for screwing me over again. Every time that I go abroad, even if I tell the bank ahead of time that I’m leaving, they always shut down my account. This time I was amazed by how prompt they were. That was the first time I had tried to use my debit card in Spain and it was already turned off. I went home, dealt with the oh-so-pleasant customer support system and then went back to the ATM again. The bank says I need to contact them every 90 days to tell them that I’m still abroad. Grrr. To further complicate things, at the ATM you have 3 options for withdrawals “Current account,” “Savings account,” and “Credit Account.”
Current account=what we know as a savings account
Savings account=what we know as a checking account
Credit account=what we know as a credit card
Well, know I know. So much for selecting “English” at the ATM.
I bought a snack, went home and made dinner and then worked on lesson planning. I’m slowly getting a better idea of what vocabulary I should be using and how I should approach lessons, but it’s definitely still a challenge.
Next I got a Tuenti invitation from Gloria. Tuenti is the Spanish version of Facebook and is invitation-only. I got my account set up and then got to look at all the photos and comments from this last weekend. I also got to chat with Maria for awhile. Her cousin was in one of the pictures I took at the school Halloween party and she pointed her out for me. She offered to help me out with whatever she could help with. I need to actually try out my coffee maker because Maria wants to come over and hang out. By the end of the day, even though I’d encountered so many difficulties, I felt like I was on cloud 9. I feel like I actually have friends here and am making progress at school. Having those relationships makes a world of difference.
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