seññooooor

Yesterday was round three of after school classes. It went fairly well, though I think I went a little fast with the mothers, and also ran out of time with the kids. They were so slow making Little Red Riding Hood puppets that we didn´t have time to play Halloween BINGO with candy corn. I liked them better when there were only five, now there are seven, ranging from 5 to 9 years old and things are a bit more hectic. My youngest kid, Carlos, talks to me almost the entire time in a sort of monotone whine --
´´Seññooor, what do I do now?´´
´´Seññooor, look, I only drew 6 legs on the spider not 8.´´
´´Seññooor, will you help me cut this?´´
´´Seññooor, my scissors are glued together.´´
I´m not quite sure why he calls me Señor.

But despite the neediness and wide range of abilities they´re still adorable. After class Maria, who is 6 and almost never talks, asked if she could take home one of the puzzles they´d played with that day (by ´puzzle´ I mean pieces of the worksheet with labelled Halloween drawings that I´d cut up into rectangles). Of course I agreed and she asked if she could keep it ´´para siempre´´ (forever). My heart melted a little and I said yes and helped her put it in her little jacket pocket. Then as I was rearranging the desks I found a few pieces of the ´puzzle´ she´d taken and hoped she didn´t actually try to put it together again.

más fotos

Here are some pictures from the botellón a few weeks ago, lest anyone think that Raquel is a figment of my imagination. She´s the one in the pink shirt trying to look sultry.

This weekend has been surprisingly okay, more peaceful than boring. It was a little expensive though...$75 for the bus rides I didn´t take and the bed I didn´t sleep in.

Saturday there was a 5 on 5 soccer tournament in the park, where the skateboard thing was last weekend. There was some loud music playing, a lot of people watching, and a table with some expensive gourmet wheels of cheese. I couldn´t tell if they were being sold, or if that was the prize for winning the soccer tourney.

the crew

I took this picture at the lunch/meeting we have every Tuesday. (I guess technically Afrika the psychologist took it). These are all of the teachers at my school. Starting at the top left of the table and going counterclockwise:

Pepe - teaches the 1st / 2nd grade class, and PE. Pretty quiet but seems like a genuine guy.

Erika - thinks Pepe is handsome and positions herself accordingly. Sub for Elena, who is in Ireland.

Marie Carmen - wearing the smock that all the preschool teachers wear each day to protect their clothes. Somehow the smocks never seem to get dirty.

Miriam - English teacher who doesn´t speak English. Seems very strict with the kids at times, also does some cool science projects with them.

Me

Lola - just returned from two weeks of vacation, she got married and went to Italy. Teaches 6th grade but has also been wearing a smock lately, I guess just to look hot.

Nuria - very nice, teaches kindergarten. She, Miriam and Erika are the teachers I carpool with every morning. Never without a scarf around her neck.

Raquel - school principal, also teaches the 3rd / 4th grade class. Offered to play tennis with me someday.

Isabel - sub for the other Isabel who is also in Ireland. Snappy dresser and all around cool person. I was sad to say bye to her on Thursday.

Inmaculada - living up to her reputation by not leaning forward even when Afrika said she couldn´t see her.

wrong PIN

I was planning on going to Sevilla and Granada this weekend to meet up with Joe Leiker, a guy from Topeka. I was really excited about it. I packed last night so I´d be ready to go today after school, I had everything ready except money. I´m completely out of cash so I went to the ATM to withdraw a bit of cash for the trip (though I´d already bought bus tickets and reserved a bed in a hostel online with my credit card). The machine kept telling me I´d entered the wrong PIN, so I entered a few more numbers that I thought might be it. Then I tried the original PIN and clicked ´´current account´´ instead of ´´credit account´´ (that´s what I´d been pressing because I was taking money off a credit card). It turned out that ´´current account´´ was the correct answer, and my original PIN number worked, but by then I´d entered 3 other numbers and so they put a freeze on my account and kept my credit card. It was a 4:15, the banks here all close at 2:00 so I couldn´t go in to claim it.

I´ve been a lot more emotionally volatile lately, so the whole ordeal was pretty upsetting. I told Belén what had happened when I got home. She couldn´t understand why I was so upset. I told her I was really looking forward to the trip, but didn´t tell her the other part of why I was upset -- that being alone all weekend sucks hardcore and makes me really lonely and homesick. I´ve also been getting weird vibes from her the past couple days, like she was mad at me about something. I asked her about this. She explained that she and Raquel were sort of annoyed with me because I haven´t bought any of the communal household stuff (napkins, tin foil etc) but was about to go on a trip. Also because they thought I wasn´t doing my fair share of household chores. She said she had been thinking that she´d been wrong about me, that I wasn´t the kind of person she thought I was.

I explained that the only reason I was going on the trip was because weekends alone are very lonely, and I was planning on buying all of the kitchen stuff when I got paid (we´d agreed to that a while back), and didn´t know that she had such a tight budget and had been making sacrifices in her shopping. I also told her we have different standards for how clean the apartment needs to be, and that I hadn´t cleaned because it hadn´t looked dirty to me....plus I do a lot more dishes than they do, and I´m the only one who takes the trash to the garbage bin that´s a block away because that stuff seems more important to me.

The whole thing probably sounds trivial, but it actually was a pretty good ´heart-to-heart.´ I cried...she rubbed my back and told me not to cry...etc. So even though I´m still in Toledo, and my credit card is in the cajero up the street, today has a happy ending because Belén isn´t mad at me anymore.

el aparato digestivo

In Miriam´s 3rd/4th grade science class on Monday the kids learned about the digestive system. Miriam is the English teacher who doesn´t speak English, so she went over all the organs and their functions in Spanish, then I went over a simplified version in English. Miriam stressed to me the importance of having the kids repeat, repeat, repeat. So my part of the lesson went something like this:

me: The digestive system takes the nutrients out of the food. It starts in the mouth. Then we swallow and the food goes to the esophagus. E-S-O-P-H-A-G-U-S.

class (in unison, more or less): ESOPHAGUS.

me: ESOPHAGUS.

Adrian: Esophagus.

me: Esophagus.

Álvaro: Esophagus.

me: Esophagus.

Alfonso: Esophagus.

....and so on, with all 11 kids in the class repeating the word. Then we moved on and did the same thing with stomach, small intestine, large intestine and, you guessed it, anus. I pronounced the word ´´anus´´ loudly and slowly about 15 times in all, and the kids all said it at least once, and I think I did a pretty amazing job of keeping a straight face that day.

lost boys

In the park there is a big, flat court area where I usually see a group of about 20 little girls taking figure skating/roller skating lessons. Yesterday, however, there was a big skateboarding competition there. About 30 teenage boys were skating around, the youngest kid (the one with the red and white t-shirt) looked about 10, the oldest ones looked about 18. They reminded me of the Lost Boys from ´Hook´, because there weren´t really any parents around, and one of the older guys (black t-shirt) looked Rufio-esque.

Rakel

Graffiti is pretty big here. On Tuesday this week I saw an interesting message painted on the side of a building next to the tennis courts. Something like ´´Rakel, love means nothing to you...´´ then something about getting tired so soon. Two days later, in an alley right next to our apartment I saw another message, this time ´´Rakel you have been my one true love and look what you´ve done to me, you have tried to put me in prison.´´ I´m keeping my eyes peeled for more on the Rakel saga. I´m also trying to figure out why graffiti is so much more common here than in the states.

Jaime came to Toledo yesterday and we played another tennis match. It went almost exactly like the last one, he won the first set 6-4, I won the second 6-3 but we didn´t have time to finish the tiebreaker because we only reserved the court for two hours and our time was up. The court in Almorox cost 6 euro for two hours, here in Toledo it was 12 euro (about 16 bucks!) for two hours. I asked Belén why there aren´t free public tennis courts here. I thought maybe it´s because land here is so much more expensive. She said it´s because if it was free people wouldn´t take care of them, they´d paint graffiti on them etc. I don´t know if I´m satisfied with that answer, seems like a one or two euro per hour charge would keep the graffiti artists away just as much as six euro an hour...

alumnos

I haven´t had a chance to take pictures of any of the kids, so for now I´ll just describe them a bit. Pink track suits are pretty popular for the girls in Yunclillos, as is the name María. Some of the boys have little rattails, and the names are a bit more varied...we have a Nacho, Rafa and Monseis. I don´t know if this is a Spanish thing, or just a new trend in backpacks that I dídn´t know about, but over half the kids have backpacks on wheels, like little carry-on suitcases. I know it´s bad to have favorites, but my favorite kid is probably a 2nd grader named Noura (pronounced Nora). She and her older sister moved to Yunclillos recently from somewhere in Morocco, so they know neither Spanish nor English. Noura understandably doesn´t know what´s going on a lot of the time, but she is almost always smiling and excited about everything the kids are doing.

I forgot to add another interesting detail of Belén´s family in Almorox. Her parents, her oldest sister and her boyfriend, her oldest sister´s boyfriend´s parents, her other sister´s husband´s parents and her boyfriend´s grandparents all live in the same neighborhood. Basically, it´s like mom, Jen & Rene, Eva & Luis, Carolyn & Eric and Mark´s grandparents all living in a neighborhood only a little bigger than Indian Woods.

Last night Belén had the idea that we should all have a slumber party in the living room, on my mattress of course since it´s the biggest. I figured it´d still be a little cramped having all three of us sleep on my double bed mattress, but didn´t really care because I knew I could just take a siesta today if needed. We watched Kyle XY together in bed, but then they left because it was too cramped and I slept alone on the living room floor.

1st day of AMPA classes

Yesterday I began teaching the afterschool classes that AMPA is paying me for. The first group was four mothers. Three of them knew virtually no English, one knew a little bit and said she doesn´t know if she´ll be back next week...I guess she was bored. But the other three seemed to enjoy it. I was a bit nervous before the class started, but since there were only four students it was pretty relaxed. I asked if they wanted to buy some sort of English workbook to study from etc, but they didn´t (Isabel says they´re cheap) so I made a bunch of copies today from Nuría´s English books, so that should last me a while.

The group of little kids was adorable, there were 5 in all, ranging from 5 years to 3rd grade. It was by far the easiest group, I read a story, sang songs and played games with them and they seemed to really have fun. They´re so enthusiastic about everything.

The last group was supposed to be three 6th graders and a 5th grader, but only one boy showed up. We went over parts of the face and body and then played hangman. His spelling and knowledge of the sounds of letters was pretty poor. I´m really glad I didn´t bring Boggle.

Rosa, the mom who drove me to catch the bus back to Toledo, told me they will probably cancel that last class due to lack of attendance. But I think they might want me to teach it one more week, just to see if anyone else shows up. The was the group I was most anxious about, because their English isn´t that good, but they also seem to be getting to that age where they´re not as enthusiastic about learning and maybe too cool for some games. If anyone has any ideas for things to do with 1-4 6th graders please let me know!

Almorox...scroll down for pictures

I played tennis with Jaime yesterday. It was a really good, close match, I played really wel but he ended up winning 6-4, 1-6, 7-1 in the tiebreaker for the 3rd set. The court wasn´t clay, but it wasn´t exactly the same as back home. It was slicker somehow, like a hard court that´s been rained on a little bit. I called out the score in spanish, he called it in english. We got some comments from people hanging out in the park around the court. One kid told us we were really good, another guy said something about me being a professional.

Last night we went out into the town of Almorox, population 2,000, and the bars were packed. The discoteca sounded like it was hoppin too, but I can´t say for sure because we didn´t go in. Even though the music was ridiculously loud and I couldn´t hear anything, it was still cool being in a little Spanish bar where, unlike in Toledo, I was pretty sure I was the only American. After the first bar we went to a different one to play futbolín (foosball!) but unfortunately the table was really packed and no one wanted to wait for it to open up. But apparently foosball is pretty big here, so I´m looking forward to more opportunities to play.

Today I played a homemade version of Scattergories with Belén, Jaime and Elena (the 21 year old psych student). We played where you had to think of both english and spanish words for each category. I didn´t quite dominate the english column like I thought I would. I think I´m just mentally drained from all this spanish.

We ate vegetarian paella today for lunch. It was excellent. Dessert was ice cream, but when Belén´s sister Kristina offered a spoonful of ice cream to Guille, her 2 year old nephew, he didn´t want it. Instead, he just coughed on it. Guille´s been coughing and had a runny nose all weekend, so I figured Kristina would toss aside the phlemy ice cream...but she ate it.

I also got to meet Sergio, Belén´s brother-in-law who no one likes. Belén told me a while ago that he doesn´t treat her sister very well and also thinks he knows a lot about everything. I sort of saw what she was talking about this weekend, but not completely because I couldn´t understand him very well. Even when he was speaking directly to me, and I asked him to speak slower, he didn´t. Inmaculada, the teacher Isabel doesn´t like, does the same thing. I´m beginning to think it´s a little test of character, how willing people are to adapt in order to communicate with me.

Aside from Sergio, Belén´s family is wonderful. They really took an interest in me and helped me learn a lot of new words and phrases. Her mom sent me home with some leftover paella and a garbanzo bean dish. It was a fantastic weekend and Belén told me I´ll have more weekends there if I want.

El Día de Hispanidad

Thursday evening I was alone in the living room, eating a hot apple and watching Saved by the Bell in spanish, getting ready for a somewhat boring 3 day weekend, when something wonderful happened. Belen came home, with her mom and oldest sister, and they invited me to come home with them for the weekend. So I´m writing this from Belén´s bedroom in Almorox.

Today was a national holiday in Spain. It was on October 12 that Columbus reached America, so they celebrate that, el día de Hispanidad. I went with Belén, her boyfriend Jaime, and two of her sisters, Elena and Kristina, to a town called Avila. It´s similar to Toledo, there is a cool wall around El Casco histórico and lots of cathedrals and such. I tried a dessert called yema, which is a specialty of Avila, but not that tasty because it is an egg yolk cooked with sugar. We went into the biggest cathedral, and by the time we left the town square was full of people, and some gigantes y cabezudos (´giants´ and people wearing huge heads). Eventually people started walking around the outside of the old wall that goes around el Casco, sort of like a parade, so we walked with everyone and watched the big headed people scare children and hit them with brooms. (I have some pictures that I will try to post this week).

Belén´s family is eerily similar to ours. She is the youngest of 4 daughters, their ages are 30, 28, 21, 19. The eldest is a special education teacher, the next oldest does administrative work with a private medical insurance company, and the 21 year old is studying psychology. One big difference -- her parents are first cousins. They met when they were 18, fell in love, then found out they were cousins and by then didn´t care.

After Avila we drove to a huge lake and had a nice, secluded picnic. It was a gorgeous day, the lake was beautiful (there were actually trees, unlike most of Toledo) and I was probably the happiest I´ve been since I got here.

I ate exactly what Belén and everyone else ate today, at the exact same times. I probably had a bit more than everyone else at lunch. And by dinnertime, 9:00, I was starving. I felt like I might faint. I don´t know how the Spanish do it every day, eat lunch at 2 and wait till 9 for dinner.

We watched the news at dinner tonight. It seems like a lot of crazy stuff is happening in Spain right now, people seem more passionate about politics than back home. There were some bombings or something in San Sebastian, which is where my German roommate from the orientation is living right now. It´s also the center of ETA activity. I also feel very unaware of what´s going on in the states...basically all I´ve heard is that Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize and kids are going crazy with guns.

no soy psicóloga

I made it to school the past two days in a row, and I´m feeling more comfortable there and starting to figure out what I´m supposed to be doing. Yesterday was an especially cool day. I was with Isabel (the sub) for a couple classes in the morning, then at 11:00 I was scheduled to go to Inmaculada´s classroom to help with the 3 year olds, but apparently they´re not going to start learning English until November, so I had a free hour. Isabel did too, so we stood in the narrow walkway between the side of the school and the fence and talked for a while. I sort of felt like I was sneaking around, or getting away with something, because everyone else was working, and because Isabel was smoking. Then Raquel, the principal, came and stood with us and smoked and I didn´t feel like that anymore.

After school I met with Raquel and several mothers who are leaders of an association called AMPA -- Associación de Madres y Padres de Alumnos. None of them had names, they were all just introduced to me as ´´la madre de ___´´. They are going to pay me 240 euro a month to teach three classes every Tuesday, from 3:30 to 6:30. One group will be 1st and 2nd graders, one will be 6th graders and one will be parents who want to learn English. There are 12 kids in all, and 8 parents, so the classes will be small. I start this Tuesday. I´m very excited about it, but also nervous because I´ve never actually formally ´taught´before, and because they are paying me so much they are probably expecting great things from me. If you have any ideas, tips or websites that you think would help, either for teaching kids or adults, please let me know. I started planning stuff today, but it´s difficult because I´m still not quite sure what level the kids will be at.

I feel like I´ve been privy to some interesting gossip lately, both in the car on the way to and from work, and in the teacher´s lounge. Unfortunately I don´t understand most of it, though I am sensing a bit of jealously towards Isabel and Elena, who are teaching in Ireland this month, and who are also taking 8 students to Poland in mid-November for a week. I´d be jealous too.

My roommates, the other teachers and the principal have been referring to me as a psychologist ever since I got here. At first I sort of let it slide, because I wasn´t 100% sure that´s what they were saying. But now I am sure, so, when Raquel told the moms yesterday not to worry about the kids having behavior problems because I am a psychologist, I decided it was time to set the record straight. Don´t want to set their expectations too high...

fracaso

I didn´t go to school today (again) and this time, unlike last Wednesday, it was totally my fault. The bus is supposed to come at 8:10, but last week it was coming at about 8:03 or 8:02. I didn´t think it would come much earlier than that, but today I got out there at 8:00 and it had already passed. So I took the 8:30 bus (which came at 8:20) and made it to the meeting point with Nuria at 8:40, but she was already gone. She usually picks me up between 8:35 and 8:40, so I´m sure if she had waited even a few minutes for me I would´ve made it to school, but she probably thought I was either confused about where to go this morning or just lazy and overslept. I´ve missed two of the first four days I was supposed to go to school, so I´m sure all the teachers and the principal are going to think I´m a total idiot (if they didn´t already since my spanish isn´t as good as the girl who did this last year).

I tried to go get my NIE today (national id number), but that was also a complete failure. I waited in a line to speak with this official looking man. When it was my turn, I told him I needed a NIE or an appointment to get it. When he found out I was from the US he said that the room I was in was for people from Europe, and there was some other room, and he didn´t know which room was for Americans. When I asked how I could find this out, he said I could go to the door labelled ´´information´´, but to do that I´d need to take a number and all the numbers for today were already taken (it was 12:30 and the place closes at 2:00).

I told Belén today about how I´ve been feeling sad and that I will never be able to understand Spanish. She offered to spend an hour with me every night after dinner going over vocab etc. She is so sweet.

I´m in a better mood today, as I´ve gotten three responses to my email already, and I think I might even meet someone named Nancy this afternoon. I also found a backboard for tennis in the park near my apartment. I´m going to buy tennis balls on Monday and go hit against that. Hopefully I´ll find my own Randy Noble...but if not, it´s still fun and good exercise just hitting against the wall.

Dorothy at the botellón

Thursday night is a big party night for Toledo, bigger than Friday apparently. I went with Belen and Raquel to a ´´botellón´´, which is just a huge gathering of people where everyone brings their own alcohol and drinks before going to bars or clubs. Almost all the people were students at Belen´s university, there were easily 500 people there, probably closer to 700 or 800...it was really huge. I talked with a couple of Belen´s friends, usually no one here has heard of Kansas, but one of her friends said Wizard of Oz was one of her favorite movies, so I got my first Dorothy comparison. Everyone just stands at the botellón, and we stood and talked (they talked, I sometimes tried to understand and sometimes just zoned out and did some people watching) from midnight till 3am...then they were going to go out dancing, but I was pooped so they took me home first. They were out till 6am, so I´m glad I decided not to go, because my legs were sore the next day as it was.

I´ve been quite homesick and lonely lately. Belen and Raquel go home every weekend, so I am alone a lot. Even when they are here, the language barrier seems like it would take years to overcome. I sent an email to a group of other Auxiliares who I think are living in or near Toledo to see if anyone wants to hang out and speak English a bit.

do you like living in the city or the field?

I posted some pictures last night from Belin´s computer...most of them are at the bottom, so just scroll down to check them out (luvie ;) The graffiti that says ´´quiero ser como tú´´ is a somewhat common sight around here, so I asked Belin about it. She said it is supposed to be a picture of the crown, she said it´s made by people who don´t like the king and want to be like him because he does nothing and makes tons of money.

I finished my first week of school today. I helped Isabel, one of the two teachers who are filling in just for this month while the other Isabel and a teacher named Elena are working in Dublin. Isabel is 24, really well dressed, and worked at a YMCA camp in Wisconsin a while back (she said she really liked Wisconsin). We worked with the preschoolers and then some second graders. I read a story to them about a pig who goes from living in the city to living in the country. I had to correct her a couple times, because at first she was referring to the country as ´´the field´´. After school there was a meeting to plan things for Halloween. All the teachers are going to bring stuff to make Halloween cookies, play Halloween games and sing Halloween songs...oh yeah, and make all the kids´ costumes! The 4 years olds will be spiders, 5 year olds will be spiderwebs, 1 graders mummies, and so on. I should have suggested doing like we do and just having the kids (and their parents) make their own costumes at home...but it´s too late for that now.

Girls Love Love From Strangers

The past two days I´ve taken the bus to the other side to town to meet up with Nuria, but today I was supposed to walk somewhere much closer where Inmaculada would pick me up. I didn´t know it was raining this morning until I was out the door, I didn´t want to go back for the umbrella because I didn´t want to be late for my first meeting with Inmaculada, plus it wasn´t raining all that hard. It only took me 10 minutes to walk to the spot, so it was 8:30. She was supposed to come at 8:40...but I stood there until 9:00, in the rain, without an umbrella, and she never came. I walked back home, called the school from Belin´s phone, and apparently Inmaculada had waited for me too. Maybe I waited in the wrong spot. Maybe Inmaculada looked for me in the wrong spot. Or maybe this is her way of being nice (the empanada yesterday) and then stabbing me in the back like Isabel said she likes to do....

So now I´m going to school tomorrow to make up for today.

Belin and Raquel went shopping this morning and invited me to come. We went to a mall. Laura, you are going to love shopping here, there is a lot of stuff that is right up your alley. There are also some pretty ridiculous shirts with writing in english. Stuff like ´´All girls love diamonds and pearls´´ and ´´Girls Love Love From Strangers´´. I guess I´ve never been a girl.

Yesterday afternoon I went running in the park. On my way home a German Shepard walked onto the sidewalk in front of me. She was probably less than a year old, and quite skinny and smelly. I petted her a few minutes, and then she just followed me home. She waited at the door to the apartment while I went upstairs and got some bread. She didn´t eat it, and a woman who passed by suggested I give her water. Again, the dog waited several minutes while I went to get water. Then I walked to the store to buy her a bit of dog food, she followed me all the way there. An old man on a park bench asked if she was mine, I said no, he said she likes me and stays with me (and some other things I didn´t understand). I was thinking maybe she could become like my pet that just lives outside, but I could bring her water and food and maybe sneak her to my room in bad weather. I was thinking I would name her Charlie, like in All Dogs Go To Heaven. I bought her a can of dog food at ´´Ahorra Más´´. But when I came back out, I was pretty sad to see that she was gone. I haven´t seen her since. But I´ll keep the dog food just in case.

1st staff meeting

I didn´t do much at school today because it was a ´special day´, some speakers came and talked about gender inequality and poverty and did some pretty cool activities with the kids. I just watched and listened to the kids talk about why only men should be mechanics and women are better at cleaning and caring for children.

After school I attended my first staff meeting, all the teachers in the whole school were there...11 if you include me, the principal and the psychologist named Africa. Before the actual meeting part we ate lunch. I forgot to cook something last night to bring for lunch. So while everyone else was heating up tupperware containers full of delicious spanish food, I was munching on 4 pieces of plain wheat bread and an apple (the only food items I had this morning that didn´t have to be cooked). But Raquel, the principal, noticed what I was eating and asked about it, I told her I´d forgotten to cook last night, and then three of the other teachers each gave me some of their lunch - some fish, some meat and a ham and cheese empanada. They are so nice to me! The meeting part was frustrating because it was sort of like that orientation in Madrid...I didn´t understand much. But after school I talked to some of the kids who were still there and that cheered me up.

1st day of school

Today was my first day of my first post-college job. I almost didn´t make it to the meeting spot on the other side of town because the bus was 8 minutes early and I had to run to catch it. I drove to Yunclillos with Nuria and Miriam (the English teacher who doesn´t speak English). I spent the morning just mostly observing...first in Miriam´s class of 9 kids, then in a different class with those same 9 kids plus 12 more. The second class was an English class with a teacher named Lola ;) She had me introduce myself, but I don´t think the kids understood much of what I said. They don´t know as much english as I was expecting them to. They´re also learning British english, they work out of this ´´Bugs Band´´ book and write things like ´´Have you got a sister?´´ ´´She´s got a guitar´´and ´´Fruits have the seeds.´´ It seems like they are just learning random words and phrases, but don´t really know pronunciation or any type of spontaneous conversation. I thought I would be talking to them more, having basic, simple conversations with them, but I think it´s going to be more just saying words and having them repeat them. In Miriam´s class this afternoon I told them how to say ´´acorns, walnuts, apple, pear, peach, grapes, lemon and cherries´´ and then had each student repeat all the words. I think things might change though when Isabel returns.

My two roommates went home for the weekend, like they do every weekend, but Belin came back last night. We talked for a long time, showed each other pictures of home and friends. I showed her the picture from the Buddy Walk of all of us with the banner. She asked about everyone´s name and then spent the next 5-10 minutes memorizing everyone´s names! ´´´Carey´´ was the hardest for her...´´Berkley´´ also gave her some trouble.