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| A Lovely Friday Morning in Jávea |
On Sunday night as I finally stepped off the bus to arrive in Jávea, I somehow missed a step and ended up falling onto the ground. The most ironic thing about this is that, normally, I am only one of maybe three people taking the bus, but on Sunday, the bus was absolutely packed with people travelling to Valencia from Alicante. I was very embarrassed; my fall was by no means quiet and delicate. On the contrary, it was rather loud and dramatic. The most pleasant thing, however, was that after falling, a group of abuelos (Spanish grandfathers) helped me up. I love my abuelos! As soon as I got up, everyone asked if I was okay. I replied that I was okay and said thanks and hurried home as quickly as possible. I realized later that during the fall, a button must have popped off of my favorite coat. Great!
I was exhausted when I got to school on Monday morning. All of the teachers asked how my trip was and I told them all that I had a really great time. As I was heading to the 2nd grade class, the English teacher told me that all of the 2nd-graders asked about me when I was out last Wednesday. She told me that they were so confused that she was teaching the class instead of me, “pero, nos toca LaTasha” they all said. I thought that it was funny. Later that day, I found out that I had missed a whole unit in my Valenciano class. But I caught on quickly. When I got home, I accidently dropped and broke the wine glass that I got as a gift from the wine tasting and wanted to bring with me back to America. Fabulous!
On Tuesday, I apologized to the infantil English teacher for leaving her alone with the 4-year-olds and the disastrous 5-year-olds last week. She told me that the 4-year-old class was really worried about me when I didn’t show up. When I entered the class, all of the kids ran up to me and gave me a hug. It’s good to feel loved! I had an extra cup of coffee during my lunch break that day (to prepare for the 1st grade class). Now, whenever the 1st graders see me come to their line outside and know that I’m going to be in their class, they cheer my name. I have no idea why they like me so much, especially since I’m always asking one of them to stop doing something. For example, on Tuesday, we went outside as a class to gather some small sticks, unfortunately though, a couple of the boys saw huge tree branches lying on the ground and instead wanted to have a sword fight with each other. Needless to say, it was a disaster.
On Wednesday, I gave an “American Food” presentation to my 4th and 5th graders. The majority of my classes have been working on a food unit so I thought that it would be perfect to review all of the vocabulary and cooking terms that they’ve learned and also show them a bit of American culture by preparing a PowerPoint presentation about American food. I started off the presentation by asking everyone about the first things that come to their mind when I say, “American Food.” They said expected things like hamburgers and fries, apple pie and hot dogs. Next I showed them a variety of restaurants in Spain as well as food products and asked, “What do all of these have in common?” When some of the children found out that all of the places and things were American, they were quite shocked. The purpose of the presentation was to show the children that American food consisted of more than a hamburger and French fries. So I showed them things that we typically have for breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert, and we also compared typical eating times and portion sizes between Spain and the U.S. The kids were very surprised to find out that Americans normally eat dinner very early. I also talked about the typical dishes that we have on holidays and included some specialty food, like BBQ and southern food. Because the children were learning cooking terms in their classes, I also included a recipe for my favorite dish, Macaroni and Cheese. I ended the presentation with a video that my family made 2 years ago on Christmas day to send to my family in another state. In the video, my mom walks around the kitchen talking about all of the food items that she prepared. I thought that this would be perfect.
The children really enjoyed the presentation. At the end of it everyone said that they wanted to go to “America,” even my British students, which actually surprised me. A few of the students also came up to me afterwards and asked if I could print out the Macaroni and Cheese recipe, lol. The English teacher also enjoyed the presentation; she asked if she could have a copy of it to show to her future classes.
Not only were the children able to review a lot of the food vocabulary they had learned, but they were also able to learn a lot about American culture, which I believe is my purpose here. The children get really confused with distinguishing between the U.S. and Great Britain so I think that this presentation helped a lot. At the end, one of my students even asked if I was from America. Despite the number of times that I have labeled myself an “American” in class, it’s as if she was finally seeing the difference between being “americana” and being “inglesa.” I also think that I showed the English teacher a great new way to incorporate material from the lessons into a fun and interactive presentation. I’m so tired of just working out of the book, and I know the kids are too. I think that I will start preparing a cross-cultural presentation like this for all of the units in the future.
Thursday was a funny day. In my 3rd –grade class, I got up to help some of the students with their work, and when I went back to my seat, I discovered that my water bottle had disappeared. I looked around the room and saw what appeared to be my bottle on one of the students’ desk. But I didn’t say anything. I later asked the English teacher if she knew what happened to it and she suddenly recalled the student saying, “Oh there’s my water,” and picking it up and taking it to her seat. She laughed and said that she didn’t even think about it. I laughed it off too. Later, she asked the girl if she was sure that it was her water bottle she picked up, the girl said yes. I told the teacher not to worry about it but she told the girl that she knew that she was lying because it was hers. The girl later got in trouble for lying to the teacher. Ouch! I bought another bottle during my break because I was really thirsty.
Later that day, the 5-year-old class, as always, was a disaster. In that class there are at least 10 students that are always talking or out of their chair or fighting, and it was no different this time. Normally, having the 4-year-olds after the 5-year-olds is such a relief; but on Thursday they were acting up as well. After we called their names to say good morning, a few of them started making this sound with their mouth and their fingers. The English teacher told them to stop, but they kept doing it. Eventually, it turned into almost the whole class doing it. The other teacher and I decided to wait with our hands folded and an angry expression on our faces until they stopped. I must admit, it was very difficult for me to keep a straight face. The kids were looking at me while making the sound with smiles on their faces like they thought it was so funny and they wanted me to laugh too. After about 10 minutes or so of doing this, the teacher talked about how disappointed we both were and I ended up taking the 5 children who weren’t making the noise outside to do English activities while the other kids sat in silence. Later that day, we found out that it was the music teacher a.k.a. my roommate who taught them how to make the sound with their mouth. We both laughed about that.
On Thursday night my roommate and I took an hour walk along the shore. Both of us want to lose a little weight, so, in addition to our aerobics class, we decided that we were going to try to take daily walks. The walk was very nice. It wasn’t cold outside, and we talked so much about different things that it didn’t even seem like an hour had passed. I had a glass of wine that night that made me very sleepy so I went to bed early.
On Friday (my day off) I woke up very early. I decided to take advantage of the early hour and the beautiful day (and knowing that I wouldn’t run into my students because they would be at school) by taking a stroll through the town, so I put on my tennis shoes and work out gear and walked along the shore and to the beach. Once I got to the beach I sat down for about 20 minutes and just thought about how lucky I feel to be where I am and how I’m really going to miss Jávea, and Spain, when I return to the U.S. Oh, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I was also thinking about what I would eat for lunch. As I was making my way back to my part of town, I came across a dark-skinned man and got really excited. If you have talked to me at all since I’ve been here, you would know that I am probably the only dark-skinned person in this town. As I was passing the guy, he shot me a smile and said, “ahí va la morena” (there goes the brown-skinned girl). I thought that it was hilarious because I was thinking the same thing about him. On my way home, I decided to stop by the British supermarket to buy bagels and cheese for the macaroni that I plan to make this weekend. My morning was perfect; I had a great walk, enjoyed the nice weather, and got some grocery shopping done.
And my week was also great!
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