"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. "

Soooo it's the beginning of December and I'm really only writing like my...fourth or fifth blogpost. It's more difficult than I had imagined. I thought I'd have some super exciting life to talk about and make you all jealous. But that's really just not the case. 


What has been going on here in the past month. Well one of the only things really worth talking about was Thanksgiving. Five of us Americans decided to make a big feast since none of us got to celebrate at home with our families. So we got a big turkey. JUST KIDDING. That would just be TOO easy. And since Spain likes to freak with us we had to get chicken. Yes, chicken on Thanksgiving. A chicken........smh.....however the rest of the meal was pretty traditional. Stuffing, rolls, mashed potatoes, gravy, and some dessert. We all basically ate until we were nearly unable to move. Fat kid problems. Overall it ended up being a really nice Thanksgiving and it was definitely nice to have a little taste of home, if only for the day. 


What was next......well, I went to my first FOOTBALL match in Europe with a Spanish friend of mine, Gabriel. His cousin plays for Athletic de Bilbao and we were able to get to go see the match. The teams playing were Athletic de Bilbao against Granada, both Spanish teams. ***Note to American sports fans: You do not know how crazy fans can be until you've experienced a football game in Europe. These people are LOCO, seriously. Screaming, singing, chanting, clapping, and whatever else. Now I'll be honest. I'm American..and a girl..I legitimately know nothing about football. Especially these European teams. (I'm a "fan" of Real Madrid because the boys are hotter and the jerseys are cuter.) That's about the extent of my knowledge on the topic. So I guarantee my 10,000,000 questions were a little more than obnoxious to Gabriel, and probably every other person around me. I honestly was more interested in the atmosphere of the stadium with all of the fans than the game. This conversation (translated into English) probably occurred 3 or 4 times:

Gabriel: DID YOU SEE THAT??!!!!
Callie: .....yeah.....
Gabriel: Oh my god, that was incredible!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Callie: Yeah...........I can't believe it..................

I legitimately had no idea what was going on for 90% of the game. My bad. All in all, though, it was one of the best experiences I've had in Spain thus far. It really was one of those things I'll remember forever. 


I mean, I'm not sure what else really is going on. At the academy the students have been doing well. They've been having exams and of course, all of my kiddies are passing with 9's and 10's. So I'm so proud of them. There's been a song here that's gone viral, called Ai Se Eu Te Pego. Some Brasilian song:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcm55lU9knw


Anyway, there is a dance that goes along with it. And it's pretty catchy. So since a few of my students know the song I've decided to bribe them with candy, since they'll literally do anything, including disowning their families for candy, in order to do the dance in front of the class. Mostly for my own selfish entertainment because it's the most hilarious thing watching these kids do this awkward dance. They love me though. :)

That's basically all that's up with me. I'll be going to Madrid on December 23 to pick up my friend at the airport! We're spending the night in Madrid, heading back to Logroño for Christmas, and off to Barcelona from December 30 - January 2. I'm SO looking forward to traveling and spending New Years in a different way than I normally would in the USA. 


I'll try to update a little more frequently now, since I legitimately do nothing all day everyday when I don't have class.


Stay safe and HAPPY DECEMBER! <3


Adios!

"Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave, and impossible to forget."

The blog I'm writing today is going to be "dedicated" to a good friend of mine that I've met here in Logroño, Tara Witt. It seems to always be true that you meet some of your greatest friends in the most peculiar of situations. As Danielle and I were sitting at Palacio de Deportes (our basketball arena) all of the people around us were Spanish. Loud, passionate, screaming people. Now before I continue, let me just tell you about this one Spanish man that may possibly been the only person I would've liked to KNOCK OUT while I've been in Spain. He's about 5'5", has some circular glasses, and is bald. I'd say he's probably about 45 years old. He carries this MASSIVE drum around with him and feels it's necessary to hit the damn thing like he's trying to get his army to retreat from war. For God's sake calm it down. Not to mention there's an echo in the arena so when he's BANG BANG BANGING, it's BANGbangbang BANGbangbang BANGINGbangingbanging. So let's continue. Danielle and I hear the song "The Final Countdown" and I made some comment and began singing the lyrics..in English of course. I then receive a tap on my shoulder, I turn around and see this brunette girl wearing American Eagle - of course I noticed, I worked their for two years. She proceeds to ask, "Are you guys American?" in perfect English. AMEN, I thought in my head. If it were about to be some drunken Spaniard asking me some question that I wouldn't understand I was going to flip. We then all began talking and we learned that Tara was married to one of the players, Matt, and was living in Spain with him for a few months. Immediately after that, Tara and I just hit it off. We had shopping days on Gran Via - our main shopping street, nights out on Calle Mayor - the Bars, sleepovers with Lifetime movies and AMAZING grilled cheese sandwiches, and roadtrips to away basketball games. She's become one of my best girlfriends here. She's flying home back to Ohio, USA on Tuesday next week.

 

Tara and Me at LA Cafe before the basketball game

I'm so glad to have met her here and I know she'll be someone to stay in contact with from here on out!

Halloween was a GREAT success. I was a gatita (kitten). I was quite unsure of what to expect when dressing up and going out. When I was on Facebook and pictures of my friends costumes were being uploaded I was thinking "SLUTS!!! But they're so cute!!" As the movie "Mean Girls" tells us, "Halloween is the ONE day a year where a girl can dress like a slut and nobody can say anything about it." So Dani and I, being the Americans that we are putting on our short dresses, short shorts, black tights, and high-heels. We left the house and basically got more attention, mostly unwanted, than we could have imagined. The costumes here are either quirky, goofy, horrifying, or nothing at all. No girls were sexy nurses, no sexy cops, no sexy firefighters, no sexy witches, no sexy anything. We sort of stuck out like a sore thumb. However, we did have an amazing time - looking good, of course. It will be one of the experiences I remember for the rest of my life. 

Meeeeow

That's basically all I've got to talk about now. 

ATTENTION: My mother, Cindy, and I are starting a mother/daughter blog. It's going to be about our experiences as a mother having her baby living abroad and a daughter being so far away from home. I will link it to this blog once it's started.

All is well in Spain. Happy. Healthy. Teaching lots. Learning more.

Love to all,

Callie

"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn."

The past two weeks have been, how do you say, chaotic to the maximum. I'm not even sure where to begin. As I haven't been blogging on a regular basis...or really at all...it may come to a surprise that I'm, you know, still alive! WELL, good news, I am. The week before we began school we spent most days going back and forth between the two academies painting rooms, binding books, washing windows, assembling chairs, etc. Whatever could have been done at a school prior to it opening- we did it. After the week of, not necessarily hell, but pretty damn close...we were fairly ready to begin classes. But oh wait, we were missing one thing...CLASSES. The academy was more than extremely disorganized. I mean, we've been here for 2 months already, the least we could have was our classes lined up. However, I must say, as hard as we were working assembling the schools - the directors were working the same, if not harder, on the schedules.

My first class began at 12:30 in the afternoon on October 3. I got my schedule at about 11:45am and was told to "write a lesson plan" for a group of first and second graders. I was SO prepared and went into the classroom ready to be singing some Old McDonald and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star until those little hoodrats told me that, "Those songs are for the BABIES." Well, uhh, to me, you look like a baby. Soooo....waa. Just kidding. Kind of. Anyways, I finished the first week after being in the academy most days from 12-8/9 and to say the least...I WAS EXHAUSTED. Those kiddies kicked my freakin' ass. I couldn't even bring myself to accept offers to go "grab a drink".

The next week proceeded to get worse. The Black Plague's back in Europe, and I survived it. Okay, okay, not to that extent BUT I was extremely sick for about 5 days. Swollen spleen, swollen lymph nodes, high fever, body aches, shakes, the whole shebang. But apparently, according to the Spaniards, "it was just a cold". YEAH, OKAY, WELL WHEN YOU WRITE MY OBITUARY - YOU SURE AS HELL AREN'T PUTTING. "Died from a cold." That thing was extreme. But enough about that though, I'm healing fairly quickly as the days go on...with God knows what kind of medicine from Spain. GRACIAS DOCTORES. 


Well back to work tomorrow to finish up the week and get back into the swing of things.


I promise to begin writing more frequently as things get settled down.


Thanks for the patience!


PEACE N BLESSINGS <3

First few days in Europe!

What an amazing experience this has already been. I've already met some very friendly, fun, interesting people while spending our first night in Madrid. Madrid, for me, was one of those things that you can read about and hear stories about, but until you actually are there you don't really understand what the culture is like. Going out at 9pm and staying out until 3:30-4am is very different from the United States. First, not only is it a select group of people (i.e. teenagers) that go out on a random Tuesday night, but it seemed as if the whole city was out in the plaza, at tapas bars, clubs, restaurants, etc. The atmosphere in Madrid was very warm and welcoming and I'm so thrilled to visit again soon. 


Next is Logroño, when we left Madrid I wasn't too sure what to expect. We took a four hour bus-ride here to arrive to nobody...Christina, the director of the academy we are teaching at, was to be contacted when we arrived in Logroño so that she could meet us at the bus station and give us our apartment keys. After waiting in the bus station, arriving at the school with all of our luggage to nobody there and then sitting outside of the school with no idea what to do except stay in a hostel overnight until we could figure out what to do in the morning...you could say all three of us were a little stressed out. Danielle and I decided that the best idea was to purchase "pay as you go" phones so that we could get in contact with the only connections we had in our new city. After about an hour of waiting outside the school Danielle got a call on her phone from Ana (the owner of the school) and Christina's sister. She then gets in contact with Christina, whose number was apparently given to us incorrectly. Christina soon showed up, very apologetic, at the school and brought us to our apartment. 


Now this is where it gets good. Danielle and I were the first to show up at the apartment, as all of the cars here are compact so there was no way we were fitting 12,000 suitcases in it by making one trip. And I sure as hell wasn't about to be the last one sitting outside the school with all of my luggage, alone, in some random city that could practically be Compton for all I know. When on our way to the apartment Danielle and I were thinking, "this is probably going to be some old apartment, rickety cabinets, and twin size beds". Upon our arrival, we were dead wrong. We walked into a beautiful, completely furnished, hardwood floor, all queen beds, down comforter, two bathroom, three bedroom, two deck apartment. Disbelief would be an understatement. Not to mention they left us some liquor! ;) Living here for only a few days has already been amazing. A few trips to the market and walking around the city was such a different experience than living in cozy old Mankato. The only analogy I can make between Madrid and Logroño would be that Madrid is an NYC/LA type of atmosphere where as Logroño is more of a downtown Minneapolis. Quite the difference. 


Our problems here: 
1.) There are four locks on OUR door, it takes all three Americans to figure out how to unlock the damn thing.
2.) While cooking what we thought were hamburgers, and they weren't getting darker while we were cooking them, we figure out they're BIRD burgers, hmm...yes, chicken and some other sort of bird. They were, how do you say, sub-par. Bleh.
3.) Our remote is damn confusing, completely in Spanish, so we're stuck to watching one TV channel. Which consists of Spanish Jerry Springer, which mind you is FAR worse than the American version, and Pasapalabra - some goofy Spanish game show. 
4.) People speak Spanish so damn fast. I probably just look like a deer in the headlights when people speak to me. I just nod, smile, and laugh when they laugh. Seems to be going smoothly so far. And g-damn, my Spanglish has become impeccable. 


It's amazing here and I'm so excited to see what the next few weeks bring before teaching starts!


I'll write soon!

Ciao <3

The Final Countdown.

Thursday. Friday. Saturday. Sunday. That's all of my time left here in the good ol' US of A. As the time has been getting closer, I'm gradually becoming a little more nervous and a lot more excited. Since the last blogpost at the beginning of the summer, much has changed. Danielle decided to come to Spain. Jason, Danielle, and I will be sharing 3bdrm, 2bth apartment in the city centre of Logroño, located pretty close to the Academy that we'll all be teaching at. I can't really describe how excited I am for our trip, but I do know it's an amazing experience and I'm sharing it with two amazing people.

My next post will be sometime next week when I arrive in Europe!

Ciao

And then there were two.

In planning this trip to Spain, there were initially three of us. However, due to some unfortunate circumstances, one of our friends decided to turn down the opportunity. So I wish her the best of luck next year.

As I haven't really talked about what I'll be doing in Spain next year or how this opportunity fell into my lap, I'll fill in some blanks. Jason and I got an amazing opportunity to go teach english at a small privately owned Academy in Logroño, Spain - in the beautiful region of La Rioja. (Known to most as "Wine-Country". No complaints there.) Our friend, the one who ended up turning down the opportunity, studied in Spain a few months ago and was asked to take a year off of school to come back to teach at the Academy. She was then asked if she knew any other native English speakers that would be interested as well. With my passion for Spanish and different cultures, I was the first to jump at the opportunity. I've never really even thought twice about it yet.

Jason got a call today from our "Boss" in Spain. He got a lot of great information for the both of us and we were urged to get to Spain as soon as possible, however we mutually decided that we wouldn't be going until Mid-August, giving him time to finish up his summer internship.

I'm very grateful to have Jason to travel with, as he's travelled abroad and definitely has more international experience than I do.

I'm also so blessed to have gotten this opportunity and can't wait to be able to share it with friends, family, co-workers, teachers, etc. via this blog.

 ¡Hasta luego, Amigos!

"If you wait, all that happens is that you get older."

So here I am, on Blogspot. I suppose I've always had an interest in creating a blog, I've always thought that my thoughts were especially interesting and that everybody would be interested in reading them, however, here I am, with my fingers pressed against the keys and nothing in my mind to write about. Having nothing to write about is probably not the best way to commence a blogging experience, but if I don't set this up now, it probably won't happen.

The main reason for setting up this blog is so that while travelling throughout Europe (beginning in August 2011) my family and friends will be able to keep up with my life and travel vicariously through me via pictures, posts, videos, etc. Why I started now? I got some advice to begin practicing my writing and blogging now, before my big adventure (Thanks, Jon).

While I'm sort of on the topic of travelling, I suppose I'll put the list of places/sites that I refuse to neglect while in Europe. I've been gradually creating this over the past few weeks:

SPAIN:
- La Sagrada Familia
-Las Ventas
-La Plaza Mayor
-La Plaza del Toros
-Vineyards
-Ibiza
-Pamplona

ENGLAND:
-Westminster Abbey
-Big Ben
-Stonehenge
-Windsor Castle
-Buckingham Palace

FRANCE:
-Eiffel Tower
-The Louvre
-Versailles
-Arc de Triomphe
-Mont Saint-Michel
-Notre Dame

ITALY:
-Venice
-The Colosseum
-Tower of Pisa
-Vineyards

VATICAN CITY
-The Vatican

GREECE:
-Theatre of Dionysus
-Athens
-Parthenon
-Olympia

GERMANY:
-Brandenburg Gate
-Auschwitz
-Holsten Gate
-Berlin wall remnants
-Cologne Cathedral

I'm sure the list will expand over the next few months and I'll probably just keep the list updated.

Until next time.