Well I had a lot of fun at school this past week. And I’m not being sarcastic. I had prepared a powerpoint of about twenty or so slides to teach the students about Halloween and I gave the presentation a total of nine times to an age range of six to eleven year-olds. In the younger classes it was a little boring because they don’t have as strong a grasp of English so they didn’t have many questions for me, but in the older classes it was better. I had a couple of kids ask me about throwing eggs at Halloween because apparently that is a big part of Halloween based off of the American television they’ve seen. One boy actually admitted to having been a part of egg throwing here in Spain. The teacher was surprised at this revelation and informed the children that if they witness any friends throwing eggs they should call the police. It’s interesting how the Halloween that has caught on over here is the darker side of it. For example, there is no dressing up as a princess or a puppy dog, only scary things like vampires, witches, frankenstein etc. Also, the lack of candy corn over here is rather depressing. I had a fun time trying to explain that candy corn is a sweet and not a vegetable. On Thursday it was basically fun day in preparation for Halloween, so I either was giving my presentation or helping with decorations the entire day. In one class we decorated the door to look like a mummy and in another class we made a witch and in the last class of the day I cut out the eye holes of masks. My hand was a little sore from that!
Gift from one of the students
On Wednesday my flatmates and some of their French friends and I went to see The Maze Runner and it was pretty good. I’m proud to say that for a movie in Spanish I followed everything rather easily so it felt like quite an achievement. Movie theater experiences are different here for a couple of reasons. First of all the lines to buy tickets are crazy long, but that may be because Wednesday tickets are only 3,90 euros. We waited in line for about fifteen to twenty minutes (you wouldn’t want to arrive late or right on time to movies here) and we were worried at first that we wouldn’t get tickets because there was a screen that showed how many seats were left for each movie and it said only thirty-two remained when we first got in line. However, practically no one in front of us wanted to see The Maze Runner because there were still twenty-eight spots left when we finally bought ours. Another different thing about the movie theater is that they wouldn’t open the door to the theater room until about five minutes before it started. Now this was kind of annoying because the hallway became quite crowded before we could at last go in. Also there was assigned seating, so you need to make sure and buy tickets together if you want to sit with the people you came with. I have to admit that although I liked the cheaper price for Wednesday movies, I prefer good old American movie theaters to the kind here.
I didn’t do too much on Halloween, but in honor of the day, I thought I would watch an Alfred Hitchcock movie. I settled on The Birds which didn’t seem as scary as I had remembered but it does make you look at birds a little differently for at least a day or too. I also made deviled eggs, which I had been planning to make for the last week or so, and happened to be a fitting titled food for the day. I had a Halloween-themed day with the girls I teach in the nanny-speaking program and we made bats using toilet paper rolls. I also gave them Halloween stickers that I’d brought with me from the states. I had originally brought them to share with my students at the school, but that was before I realized how many students I would be teaching and I definitely didn’t bring enough.
My deviled eggs
A cute little bat
This weekend consisted of me catching up on some TV shows, writing essays for the master’s in education program I’m applying for, going grocery shopping and cutting my bangs (or as they say in Britain, my fringe). Really it was an uneventful weekend, but in two weeks I’m going to be off on a little excursion to Italy so I’m saving up my energy and spirit of adventure for that. Which by the way I’m super excited about! Sayonara until next week.
I thought I'd share a couple pictures of the view on my drive to school
It's like a desert with tons of sandy hills
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