Last week and next week:
Hey everyone! I haven't posted in a while, but last week wasn't super eventful here. School was the same, except one of my teachers (my favorite, of course) hurt her back really bad and most likely will not be able to continue teaching us. So, we are supposed to have a new one tomorrow--we'll see! We did go on a small excursion last week in my culture class to an art museum close to our school. It was all art from La Edad Media (medieval age) and most of it is very religious, and kind of weird. A lot of weird religious art freaks me out, so the excursion was just ok for me. Plus, our teacher (who is a woman) has the WORST B.O. ever. None of us could even stand by her without holding our breath or turning our heads away from her.. We all felt terrible, but it was truly awful. So, that probably didn't help too much!
Aside from this, the only other "different" thing I did was go to a Canterbury English class. A couple of my friends and I decided to sign up for this class which is a 2.5 hour class teaching us how to teach English to non-English speaking Spaniards. It cost 10 euro, and we are supposed to get a certificate allowing us to be certified to teach...well, not exactly. So, the class started 30 minutes late because half of the class (it was us plus FSU students) showed up a half hour late. We basically went through this packet explaining that you should be creative and flexible when you teach...duh, as well as explaining certain grammatical things. Literally 1/2 of the stuff in there, most of the class was like what is this? The names for verb tenses (ex: present progressive, etc.) that they used are based off of the verb tenses they have in Spanish, just basically directly translating them to English..so none of the class knew what exactly the name of the verb was, we just recognized it and then once we went through it, it was like oh it's actually called this in English. Naturally, frustration level in the room is increasing. We also played word games, did a crossword puzzle and played hot seat... not really sure how effective those were. To make the night even better, our "teacher" told us that the certificate we will receive basically allows us to put up flyers saying we are native English speakers and can teach Spanish to non-natives... all of which we could have already done without this certificate. Then, she says that in order to teach at an academy or a company we need to take a month long class in Madrid while working in Madrid at Canterbury English, all of which costs 900 euro........ SO, needless to say, the entire class was not too happy! Oh well! I guess I'll always have an option after I graduate.
Like this week, this weekend was uneventful as well except for Friday. ISA took us on a trip to the botanical garden here in Valencia. It was really cool. I don't know much about trees, but I learned a lot so that was nice! The first tree we saw, though, according to our tour guide was from Virginia... I pretty much turned away and hoped he wouldn't ask if anyone was from there, because it looked like an oak but like I knew the answer! Turns out, it WAS an oak tree, biology did me some good after all I guess!!
After our tour of the garden, a couple of us went to eat and shop in Nuevo Centro (Valencia's first mall). On the way there we passed these little tents, that looks like a soon-to-be market of CHRISTMAS things :) Clearly, I was thrilled and ran toward them. Apparently, they will eventually have tons of Christmas stuff there... Needless to say, I will be there quite frequently come December. I'll post pictures when I'm done writing this.
Other than that, this weekend Samantha and I have pretty much walked around our area of town a little and have been watching Law and Order: SVU and Criminal Minds a lot. We did do/are currently doing our homework that is due Monday and getting ahead and doing our homework that's not due until we get back from Sevilla/Morocco!
So, this brings me to next week!!!! Tomorrow (Monday) night, I leave for Sevilla (Seville) which is in southern Spain. We are there Monday night and all day Tuesday and leave Wednesday morning at 4 AM for Morocco. We are then traveling to and from, and in Morocco from Wednesday-Monday (31 of October). We get back to Sevilla that night and then we are staying there until Wednesday afternoon. So from this Monday night until the following Wednesday night I will not have internet access. I will update my blog the weekend after we get back from Morocco! I am going to bring a journal so I can write everything we did down and then transfer it to my blog. I plan on taking TONS of pictures--like me on a camel, watching the sunset in a desert, etc.--so be prepared for a huge post of pictures when I return!!
Hasta luego! ADIOS!
