Hodge Podge of Pensamientos

So today’s post will be a hodge podge of thoughts and stuff.  Since I haven’t been traveling most of January and February I’ve mostly just been hanging around, going to school and planning the rest of my time here. 

1.) My bestest friend Sara is coming to visit me in June and we’re going to travel together for about 2 weeks before we go back home to states.  So!! I’m super excited and am going to start getting all of that together soon.  I have to start booking hotel rooms and transportation throughout Spain, so it can be cheap and affordable for the both of us.

2.) I’m going to Cadiz in one week to celebrate Carnival!  It’s only like one of the biggest celebrations in Spain, it’s right up there with well known celebrations such as the Tomatina and the Running of the Bulls.  Cadiz holds the largest celebrations that last two weeks, and it’s the weekend before lent begins, so there’s lots of singing and dressing up and funness.  So me and Camille are going to look for a great carnival costume.  Which is basically like Halloween, in February.

3.) My favorite Peruvian left me last week. :(  She is such an amazing person and I will truly miss her.  She was wonderful and kind enough to let me join her and her family for Christmas while I was here by myself and I spent 4 amazing days with her sister and her family in Germany before I set off on my own for the rest of the vacation.  We had a goodbye dinner for her at her apartment.  She lived with some other good friends of mine here so we all went over and celebrated (drank a lot of wine) and ate really good food (mostly amazing Peruvian food) and took lots of pictures and cried a lot.  But hopefully we will be reunited in Peru one day, or in the US, or perhaps fate will look upon us and we will run into each other on a train in some other country in the future.  I don’t think any of us are going to stay still for long and we will continue to travel and see things.  So maybe one day….one can only hope and wish and dream. But for now, this person is no longer here in Spain.  She’s in England for a couple months perfecting her English, heading back to Germany for a couple more months and then finally going home to Peru in July.  She has truly blessed me with her kindness and I can’t thank her and her family enough. God is so good. <3

   

4.) I’m going to Santiago de Compestela in May for our long weekend!  I can’t even express how excited I am about this trip.  For those of you who don’t know, Santiago is Spanish for James.  So I’m going to the city named after James, Saint James, one of the apostles of Christ.  And it’s said that some remains of Saint James are at the church there. It’s a huge pilgrimage site for Catholics, Christians and all faith and non faith people.  You can walk the Camino de Santiago from Portugal, Southern Spain and France to the site of St. James’ bones.  Needless, I’m not walking it, I’m flying there from Seville, BUT, I’m going.  I’m really excited and feel even more blessed that I have been able to grow in my faith here in a different way.  I’ve seen so many sites that are important to me, and to the faith.  And I’ve met so many people that have reinforced my faith, helped me stay true to it, and that have been so tolerant and loving towards me, even if they don’t agree with me.  I’ve been able to share about myself and what my believe and have some wonderful banter.  And my wonderful friend Jess has been supporting me and giving me great advice from the states.  Basically, I’ve been really blessed.  I can’t wait to go to Santiago and experience and see just one more thing to remind me why I love God so much.

5.) School has been fine.  Now that we’re in our second semester I feel like I really connect with all my students really well, both at Clara Campoamor and at the private academy.  There’s a new dynamic in the room, and I’m really comfortable with the material now.  I’m getting better at teaching English, coming up with engaging ways to teach and to help them learn.  One of my students that has been struggling with speaking even used some new vocab when she was telling a story the other day and I was like “OMG YES, YOU USED THAT RIGHT!”  I’m also learning how to handle the different personalities better in the room, who to pair with who and trying to get them to get better at working together.  I think I’m starting to get the hang of the whole teaching thing…..  Now, this doesn’t change the fact that teaching English isn’t my favorite thing, but I’m not horrible at it anymore.

Other than those three things, life has been quite mundane.  I’ve got Cadiz and a return to Malaga coming up in the coming weeks.  Then commences the long wait till April when I see my parents again!! :D Hopefully there’ll be a day trip in between somewhere, but it’ll be fun!  OH! And I started reading a Spanish book from the library.  I’m successfully about 110 pages in, in only a week in a half.  Basically, I’m reading at a fairly normal pace for myself with few references to the dictionary.  I’m proud of myself.  AND, I’m understanding a lot more on the street now and can speak with relative fluidity.  I will never know every word in the Spanish dictionary, and I still struggle with some structures, but for the most part, I’m doing really well.  Snaps for me! :D 

Much love to everyone at home and to anyone else reading my blog.

Vienna

FINALLY! I get to tell you about Vienna. 

Well, I wish there was more to say, other than the fact that I LOVED seeing Sophie again.  Once again it was just about my favorite trip, and I got to see so much of Vienna this time.  Sophie showed me around and went into some

So here’s a quick run down of how my time went with Sophie.  I spent 4 wonderful days with her and I saw so much of Vienna this time!   Sophie and I set out to do some adventuring of our own.  We ended up at the Sissy Museum and got to see all the old china from the royals all those years ago and see some of the rooms.  Sissy was one of the most famous princesses of the royal family in Austria, but she tragically died and now a lot of people are really interested in her history and everything about her.  So the Sissy museum was really interesting.  Then she went off to study and I took time to wander around the city and see the churches I wanted to see the first day.

She went off to study and I went off sight seeing, and wandering around.  This is what

At this church I caught a phenomenal free organ concert.  Where I also feel asleep for a bit of time….(I was tired and it was prime siesta time!) and where I later went in the hopes of finding confession in English….but alas, I ended up doing it in Spanish….in Austria. haha. But the church was gorgeous and well worth my time

 

THIS is the national library.  Where the public can go in and check out books any time.  It’s MASSIVE.  Basically, I was jealous and want my library to look like that.

THIS is the inside of the national library mueseum.  Inside the museum they had cool old globes, and lots of old books and old games and pictures.  It was really cool to see and to look at all old globes of stars and such.

Another pretty church, as always.

After the first day of sight seeing we spent the night in with her family and watched a super cute kids movie in English that she’s never watched in English before.  Then we got ready to head into the city to visit some museums, grab lunch and overall meander around town.  That night she kindly brought me with her to hang out with some friends for the night at a couple bars where I discovered two things:

1.) It’s totally okay to smoke inside a bar in Austria, even in the non-smoking section…..  They were required by law to make a “smoke-free” zone in all bars and restaurants, but a small glass wall with no door is sufficient enough.  Or no walls at all….and just some posts that make it seem like an area that’s separated.  Also, they still have an ash-tray on the table and clear the ash-tray off for you when bringing your drinks…..Hmmmmm.  I don’t think the law is working very well.

2.) I’m still awesome at darts! All those years playing at Kristen’s house actually paid off.  We played with an electric dart board machine, but it still was awesome and I almost won, but Sophie bested me!  I was supposed to get exactly the number of points I had left and every time I got more points than necessary it added points on my score! Stupid machine!  Either way, I was wonderfully surprised to find that I could still play.  It made me really want to play again when I get home.  To Kristen’s basement I go!

The third day we decided on going to look for the graves of all those famous musicians that hark from Austria and Vienna.  So we made our long trip to the outskirts of town in the gloomy rain to find the cemeteries where those famous musicians are buried.  After walking around and getting a bit lost we finally stumbled upon the suspiciously conveniently placed tombstones of Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss and a couple others.  I saw suspiciously conveniently placed because they were all in the same place….and me and Sophie joked about how we find it hard to believe they knew these people would be famous and be visited by everyone in the future.  So maybe the gravestones were moved, or maybe happenstance was really on point when they buried these composers.  We were also confused because Mozart was supposed to be in a different cemetery…but he was at this one *suspicious eyes*…..

I was clearly excited about “seeing” Beethoven! 

Mozart’s (first?) grave

Schubert’s grave

They were all meticulously cared for with bright flowers even in the winter time, which makes me think they take especially good care of them in the winter because they know visitors come to see the graves.  It was stilly really cool to see.  Then we we found our way to the second cemetery where Mozart’s second(?) grave was located.  This one both Sophie and I liked better.  It was simpler and very nice.

 

Then when we were finished we headed off to Klosterneuburg (I think I spelled that right!) to my favorite part of the trip.  Sophie’s family has the coolest friends.  Their friends were having a party for no good reason and of course I was invited to tag along and spend time with good people, good beer and good food.  The only thing I’m sorely dissapointed about is that I didn’t get a picture of the food they served.  Can you guess what it was?  PAELLA!  Really, really good seafood paella.  Seriously, it was some of the best I’ve ever had.  They cooked it on one of those gigantic pans and had soooooo much food.  I could only eat one serving, but it was the best serving ever.  I can’t escape Spain. :D Imagine one big pan that looks like that!  It was really big and really good.  haha.

But that wasn’t the best part of the night….if you can believe it.  Sophie’s family is a family full of musicians.  So it only makes sense that they have awesome musician friends who throw parties and naturally set up all the equipment for a band in their living room so people can just start playing whenever they want.  So yup, that happened.  Throughout the night people just walked over to the equipment, teenagers and parents alike.  They played everything from modern music that’s on the radio to classic rock, and even a couple German or Austrian songs (those of which I didn’t know).  I met some very interesting and very nice people.  Everyone was very welcoming, and given that I didn’t speak German, they spoke in English to me and had some great things to say.  The whole night was passed with good people and good music.  I took an incredibly amount of videos and such, but I haven’t had any luck uploading them while in my apartment with the weak internet we have here.  Maybe one day I will get them up.

Oh yea!  Sophie’s mom finally used some liquid confidence worked up the nerve to sing some beautiful blues music.  She was so good!  We stayed at the party until about 1AM and then headed back to Vienna with Sophie’s car so I could go to church on Sunday in English!  We worked very hard to find a church in Vienna that had mass in English, since I was missing it so much, and finally found it.  So we spent the night in her families apartment in the city.

 

Sunday was a very uneventful day, and since it was my last full day in Austria with her we woke up at a decent hour, and Sophie lead me to the church with the intentions of dropping me off to go study for a bit, but she just ended up joining me.  Then we met up with some of her friends and wandered around and went into a free army museum.  Wow it was really boring!  But the guys we were with wanted to go it.  So we sucked it up and hey, who am I to complain about a free museum.  So Sophie and I walked through it quickly, pausing at the most interesting things (AKA: WWII Hitler propaganda) and looked at the gorgeous ceiling.  I decided that I wanted to buy this building as well and was going to host a wonderful ball. 

      

 

After finally ditching the boring museum for lunch we packed up our stuff and headed back to her little town outside of the city and on our way back home I pointed out a really pretty building on the hill top and Sophie realized she forgot to show me the COOLEST PART of where she lives.  It’s a really, really old monastery.  I’m talking like almost 1,500 years old! Unfortunately when we showed up it was pretty much closing, but it was gorgeous inside and Sophie said she got confirmed inside.  It’s apparently really famous because it’s one of the oldest ever.

It’s called the Stift Klosterneuburg.  You should read about it here because the history is really interesting and there’s a saint buried in there. 

But that pretty much sums up my entire stay in Austria.  It was amazing.  I saw great people, spent time with one of my favorite Austrians’ and my favorite Austrian family. I hope one day I can host Sophie in the amazing way she hosted me.  And I won’t forget my incredibly Christmas vacation.  While I might not have been able to be home with my family in the US this was certainly a great way to wrap up my time traveling alone.  I’m actually glad that none of my friends stayed, because if they had I would not have had the incredible experiences I had traveling by myself.  I encourage everyone to go on a vacation alone, because it is an amazing experience.  You never know who you’re going to meet or what’s going to happen to you.  But one thing is for sure…you’ll have an amazing experience.

Much love and thanks to all my wonderful hosts! <3

Salzburg Part II

So after a wonderful day seeing the Sound of Music I decided to dedicate the rest of my days in Salzburg to Mozart and Castles!  There’s a gorgeous fortress on top of the big hill that took way too many years to finish because each new Bishop Prince person kept adding to it.  And inside is a cool museum with some torture objects, none of which were used, but were stored there, along with the most breathtaking views of Salzburg that you could get. 

                           

Torture object, but I have no idea what it did.  It wasn’t used, so I think I’m in the clear on needing to know that information.

 

How can you not find those views breathtaking?  The city is simply magical. 

I wandered around the Fortress for the better part of the day that I had dedicated to the Fortress and also found a small marionette museum!  In the museum that had some really old marionettes that I don’t think were used in anything special, but it was still really cool.  They showed the different parts of them and you could even try your hand at working at marionette, but I forgoed that attempt because I simply have no idea how to work them.  I had a really simply marionette when I was a kid, but I never knew how to use it.  They had marionettes from all sorts of shows, from the Sound of Music, to The Magic Flute, and some of many other characters and famous shows they perform in Salzburg.

Oh yea! And when I was leaving the Fortress, I think, I came across some really cool ruins they found underneath the Fortress.  They were digging around one day and found old stairs and a chamber from a civilization that was long dead, but then built on top of.  They had two holes were you can clearly see some stairs and an alley.  They was really cool to see, and it’s always interesting to learn that we are constantly building over old things and and old civilization.

I also took the opportunity to explore the two Mozart houses that are in Salzburg.  While you’re not allowed to take pictures inside the museum, it was still really interesting.  And I found I was able to enjoy the houses much more because I wasn’t focused on snapping a picture of every singly Mozart thing I saw.  They had a lot of original artifacts from Mozart, letters written by him, his family and friends and to him.  They even had some original pieces of music and his folders and stuff.  They have very little furniture of his, but they were able to find some pieces from that era to decorate the house and set it up in a way that it might have been.  Either way, it was really cool.  I went to the house were he was born and spent the first couple years of his life and I went to the house were he spent most of his childhood with his family.

 

Mozart’s house and me in front of it!

  

Mozart’s Birth House

 

The only photo I managed to take inside.  The kitchen I think

It was really interesting to walk around the house and think about how rich they must have been to be able to afford something so big.  Way back then you had to have some money to get that much house!  Mozart grew up well, and I didn’t know a lot about him, to be honest.  So I learned about his life and how his father really knew that he was incredibly talented from a young age.  They seemed to know that Mozart was going to be a sensation if they could get him and his skills out to the right people.  I learned how cagey and crazy he was at times, but how brilliant he was, and that he unfortunately overshadowed is equally talented older sister. Just walking through a building where probably THE most legendary pianists lived and was born was a very awe inspiring experience.

Another day I dedicated to wandering around and even went into the Royal Residence Halls.  They are very old and I can’t remember who lived there, but I think it was the Bishop Princes that lived there.  The halls were so pretty and the ceilings were decorated with incredibly paintings and amazing furniture. 

 

 

I spent my last day meandering around the city and attempted to walk to the Augustinian Monastery where they make beer.  I was told that I should go to the Brewery and try the beer, because we all know that beer in Austria and Germany is good.  BUT, it was closed….those damn monks.  haha.  They close a couple days after and before the new year, and they were opened the day before, but not the day I went.  Oh well.  It was still really pretty and worth the walk. Overall, my trip in Salzburg was totally worth it all!  I saw so many things I’ve always wanted to see and am so happy that I went on my own.  Now that I’ve traveled alone I definitley would do it again.  It’s so rewarding to be able to navigate all by yourself in a new city.  Granted, this is a small city, but it had so much to offer and I got to see whatever I wanted and take my time doing so. After this trip I headed over to Vienna for my last leg of Christmas vacation and met with Sophie.  Check out the photo album for a full account of things I saw!

Much love. <3

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New Year, New Month, New School?

Yup, you read that right.  New school.  Not that I’ve moved from Clara Campoamor, but I am now working at two schools.  I showed up in January and everything was fine, I said greeted all the teachers again, jumped right back into things and then BAM!  Belen hit me with a bunch of news all at one. 

1.  SHE’ PREGNANT! :D I’m so happy for Belen because I know she’s been wanting a baby, so that was exciting news.  She’s having twins and my only regret is that I won’t be here in August when she’s due. 

2. I have to go to a new school for a couple hours now.  I’m now going to Alonso Sanchez, which is another high school literally across the street from Clara Campoamor. 

I go to Alonoso Sanchez on Thursdays’ now from 9:30-1 and work with a couple teachers there.  Apparently, they had an auxiliary last year, but she never turned up and in November she officially quit.  So they were without someone from the beginning and kept thinking she was going to show up.  Apparently not, so the natural solution to things in Spain is to ask other schools for their resources for FREE!  Yup, for free.  So, after talking with the bilingual staff we decided that they get me only for 3 hours on Thursdays.  I’ll go to Clara Campoamor in the morning for my one class with Maria Eugenia and then instead of having prep hours with my teachers I now have to go across the street and with with a history teacher and science teacher there for a while.  Now, honestly I wasn’t that surprised.  I heard about this happening on FB among other auxilaries, but they complained much more.  The real problem, is that this school is taking hours away from my original school, prep hours which these teachers actually use and I enjoy.  AND, they are not compensating Clara Campoamor for the hours I’m working there.  In other words: I recieve 700Euros from Clara Campoamor for working 12 hours.  Now I’m working only 9 hours with them but they are still paying me 700 Euros and I’m working for Alonso Sanchez for 3 hours and they are neither giving Clara Campoamor money for those hours nor are they paying me.  BOGUS!  My school is getting cheated out of money, but it’s all politics and the Junta won’t give me anymore money since I’m technicially still only working 12 hours.  I then found out they stole another auxiliary from a nearby elementary school as well.  Oh well, I’m not too upset about it, but it stinks.  The staff is very nice and the coordinator is very nice as well.  I think I’ll be happy there, the kids have a very high level of English so I can see a lot of opportunities, but it still stinks.

ALSO!  My very first day there, yesterday February 6th, was the day that Clara Campoamor was having visitors!  We have a sister school in London and the students traveled down to Spain to see some sites and visit the students.  They’ve been writing back and forth all year so they got to meet each other.  It was so much fun and the kids had a blast.  I unfortunately couldn’t be there for the beginning of the day because I was at the other school.  But I went over right away and waited around until about 2PM for the group of kids from London to show up and we fed them really good Spanish food, and danced the afternoon away.  All in all, I was at school from about 9:30-4:30!  I was exhausted from the day, but it was so much fun and worth seeing my students have a blast sharing their culture and their bright, sunny, and friendly attitudes together. 

One of my students family’s owns a Flamenco House in San Juan, a little pueblo outside Huelva and she always brings her Flamenco flowers and make up whenever there’s events at school.  So naturally, with the English students coming to visit she brought her box of trinkets and started whipping them out to show the English teachers and to show us.  Then, she so kindly did my hair up and placed a flower smack dab on top of my head with the comb and everything.  I just needed a Flamenco dress. haha.  But it was so fun and she did the same for the other English teachers and one of the students as well.  She really enjoys dancing Sevillana so she then took out her castanets and the other girls started clapping and singing.  So her and another student began to dance Sevillana while everyone else watched.  The afternoon turned from there into a big dance party, full of learning Sevillana, dancing to hilarious Spanish songs, the Macarena, the Cha Cha Slide and the Gangma Style.  I had a great time dancing with my students and seeing them have so much fun with the English students.  I might have been exhausted by the end of the day, but it was all totally worth it. Check out the photo album to see what we did!

 

                                              

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