Daily Life in Logroño

  This week was tiring! But also really good. I finally started teaching at my school, and I'm excited to be completely into my normal routine. But you know me. I always love to pack as much as I possibly can into life and be so busy, but then sometimes it's a bit much. It's also just been the first week of going to school and private tutoring and voice lessons and choir and having a boyfriend who I just want to spend time with all at the same time. And you know, living in Spain. I spend a LOT of time walking and riding the bus. I have been getting between 10,000 and 20,000 steps every day, which is crazy! And some days, I ride the bus six different times. And I'm still figuring out my rhythm of grocery shopping, laundry (including hanging clothes to dry on the line), and when to talk on the phone to my family. None of them are awake until about 3 pm my time, so it's always after that. I have to force myself not to stay up too late talking to them because sometimes that's finally when we can. But it's all been such an adventure and such a good challenge!

Ok, about my school: 

I am a "language assistant" at my school, so I don't have my own classes that I teach all the time. I visit every single English class in the whole school (middle and high school equivalent). I also have a different schedule every day for four weeks! Then I repeat it each month/four weeks. Luckily, it's really organized and written out clearly for me. I work with like twelve different English teachers, and every single one is SO nice. I really, really like them all. None of the teachers have their own classrooms. They have a big teacher's lounge/work room place just for English teachers. It's one huge table (actually two pushed together) and all the teachers have an assigned chair where they work and an assigned shelf to put their teaching supplies and other stuff. They are very communal and seem to all be good friends. They talk a lot and then will go silent again as they work on things. 

Also, the culture and schedule of the teachers is wild to me. It's so nice! I looked into what I would need to do to become a public school teacher in Spain. You have to be a Spanish citizen though, so that won't be happening anytime soon. But school is only from 8:30 to 2:30, which is short compared to the US. The teachers only have a 30-hour work week, and they can choose three of their free hours to not show up, so they really only have to be there 27 hours a week! And they only teacher for 18 hours a week. The rest are spent planning and preparing and having meetings and doing duties. They also go across the street to the cafe a lot. The school day has two breaks for teachers and students. One is 30 minutes and the other is 20. My head teacher lady took me over to one of the cafes across the street and introduced me to the two bar tender people and I sat and talked with some of the other teachers over tortilla patata (remember, it's not a tortilla thing, but an potato omelet thing that's so delicious) and coffee (or coca cola zero in my case, which is how you have to ask for it for them to know what you're talking about). There are just six classes/periods a day and one teacher told me that she never teachers more than four of them. So yeah. If you know anything about the life of a teacher in the United States, you can relate to my amazement!

So I LOVE the students! They are just cute and nice and wholesome. Some language assistants in my program are observing for two weeks and then just doing some soft-core conversation practice with groups. I think I came off as very capable, so they are really letting me teach when I'm in their classes. It's fun! I have a couple classes every single week and a couple that are every other week, but most are only once every four weeks. So the nice thing, there's not very much prep. The downside is that I do almost the same lesson every day for a month. So hopefully I don't go too crazy with that! haha I've been giving them a presentation about my life, what I like to do and all the places I've lived. I have a lot of questions and activities with it, but I'm getting a little sick of talking about myself. Shocking, I know! 

The middle school classes (which are not called that here) are good. They are loud and crazy and very typical middle schooler-ish for sure, and my voice gets tired quickly. The older high school kids are my favorites! The last two years of high school are different here. The year kids turn 16, they can be done with school if they want, or they can either choose to do a vocational training path or the academic/university prep path. The academic path, called Bachillerato (which is a word I always mess up), also allows them to specialize in either humanities, science, or social sciences. All the classes I have more than once a month are Bachillerato classes (16-18 year olds who want to go to college). They are awesome!

My schedule is different every day between 8:30-2:30. For my program, I can only work 14 hours a week at the school. Sometimes, I have multiple-hour breaks, and I have to prep or go home or hang around somewhere. Sometimes I don't start until 10:30 or 11:30 which is amazing! I think I'm really going to like my school. I'm already getting famous haha. There aren't many adults in the school that every single student gets to meet and have class with. The younger ones especially love to call out to me, "Clarissa, Clarissa, how are you?" in their cute Spanish accents.

Lunch:

I've been eating lunch at Cristian's house almost every day. Lunch is the big meal here as I've mentioned, and it's SO nice of them to have me. Mondays I don't have to go to my school, so I've decided that I'm going to cook for them every Monday. I'm a far worse cook than either of them, but I do my best. I made meatloaf and mashed potatoes this week, and it took FOREVER. I am opting for chicken pasta that will hopefully be much easier tomorrow. I also try to buy them some groceries when I can to help pay them back for all the super delicious food they give me. On Thursdays and Fridays I can take a siesta after lunch, which is the best! The other days, I have to rush off to tutoring. 

Tutoring:

Here, tutoring is called "clases particulares." Everyone with primary school students who can afford it wants a native English speaker to come talk and play with their kids. Of course, as an informed English language professional educator, I know that being native or having a native-like accent isn't very important compared with being intelligible, but they don't care about that. And I profit off of their way of seeing it. But I digress. 

I have three families with kids ages 6-10 that I tutor. One is super far away and doesn't pay that well, but I agreed to tutor them months ago, so I feel like I need to keep them. One of the others also requires the bus but it's only 20 minutes away instead of like 40! But all the kids are really cute and well behaved. I had some of them watch a video of the read aloud to "Caps for Sale" and then draw/label the tree, the man, the caps, and the monkeys. It was a real hit! 

Voice Lessons:

A huge financial blessing for me is that I can give voice lessons online to five of my Nevada voice students. They are all homeschooled except one who has a free period to practice her viola in the morning, and so we can have lessons between 8-10 am their time, which is 5-7 pm here. I love all of them and it's a lot more accessible than riding the bus across town. And I get to put my amazing keyboard to use. 

Choir:

Twice a week, I go to choir. I really enjoy it even though I am STRUGGLING with all the Spanish lyrics. It's really a good place to practice my listening. So often I get impatient with how awful at Spanish listening I am, but I'm giving myself lots of opportunities to practice. For whatever reason, the chairs at choir are awful for my back, and we don't ever stand (which I hate especially as a soprano now), but other than that I'm very happy with the experience. We're singing all these "Riojana" songs which are really well-written, beautiful choral music about La Rioja. This tiny region, like the size of Elko County, has so much unique history and culture. Europe is so cool! 

Church:

I love the ward here. It's small and full of people who are often related to each other. There are lots of Latinos, who I automatically love, and everyone is just so nice and friendly and kind. I have already been ministering twice with my amazing companion! It was two of our sisters' birthdays already. I LOVE watching Cristian do his calling. He's the first counselor in the Elder's Quorum presidency, and he does a lot. He is in charge of a big ward party where we will showcase and celebrate all the different countries ward members are from (mostly South American countries and Spain). Beyond, his calling he is so outward-focused and service oriented! This week, he mopped the whole upstairs of the church after our really fun YSA cake-decorating activity after everyone left just because he felt like it needed it. He is an important builder of Zion in this town, and it's so fun to see. Cristian and I were invited to give the prayers in sacrament meeting again today which was cute (we did it at the special YSA sacrament meeting in Bilbao). It's also so scary! I'm not scared of public speaking at all, but in Spanish it's a different story! 

I didn't even talk about General Conference. It was wonderful! It aired in Spain between 6 pm and midnight, and that's when we mostly watched it. We watched the evening session (which started at 2 am) the next morning. So many people in our ward were very excited to tell me that they saw me in the Conference video. I don't know how cute I looked, but I felt very popular hahahaha. 

We also go to institute on Friday evenings. It's about like other church meeting here in that I try really hard to listen and participate in Spanish for about 30 minutes and then I really lose steam and kind of give up. Haha "Poco a poco" as we say. The YSA are small but very mighty. 

In conclusion:

Lol, I had to keep my informal heading thing going. I am really, really loving Spain! The food is amazing, the outdoors and pretty city is really good for my mental health, and I'm getting a lot of things figured out. I have so many friends! My American roommate, Natalie, is AMAZING. The Spanish roommate, Char, is kind of a wild girl, but we love her. Marcela is so sweet and giving and fun and wonderful. And Cristian just makes me so, so happy. We've had a really great week together. We had a couple goal-setting/planning session tonight that just made me so happy. Spain is beautiful! 

On the other hand, doing something this new and big is so exhausting. It's hard to move to a new country and not know how to do anything and not understand so much. I was talking with Desi and Liberty about that. If someone had told me that I had to move to Spain and learn Spanish and forced me to do it, I might really hate it. But since I'm choosing it with all my heart, I love it. I'm so, so glad I'm here, and I feel empowered with the hard parts because I chose them and it's worth it. It's like going on a 50 mile hike (not that I've ever done that). I imagine that most people who do or run a marathon or something wouldn't appreciate being forced to do it, but they are so happy and proud of themselves when they choose to do it, don't give up, and then succeed. I am so proud of myself and the life I am building here. So many miracles had to happen for me to be here in this situation. :) So, here I go into another busy, crazy, tiring, exciting week! 

Also, as always, thanks for reading!