First off, you may notice that I've changed the name of my blog. I thought that "My Travels" wasn't really appropriate for this year, since it's more about me living and working in Madrid this time around. (Although I still do hope to do some traveling!)
Now to the good stuff: my first couple of days at school....
Overwhelming! But overall, good. I'll be working 25 hours a week (24 class hours and 1 hour of prep time). While this may not sound like a ton, because of the Spanish school schedule (which includes a roughly 2-hour break for lunch from 1-3), I actually end up being at my school for 8 hours on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thurs day. Monday and Friday are a little easier - I'm only there in the morning. So the first couple of days have pretty much been me introducing myself to the students and having them ask me questions about myself, about the US, etc. I'm working with kids aged 8-16, though, so there is quite a range of English speaking ability. Overall, the kids were really enthusiastic, and actually participated a lot more than I had expected. They seemed pretty excited to have me there. And the teachers were also really welcoming. One of the English teachers is also new to the school, so he was really nice and kept assuring me that he was just as lost as I was (although I think he might have the advantage, being Spanish and all...). Overall, I think teaching is going to be more work than I might have anticipated, but I'm hoping I'll settle into a routine and start to figure out how to handle the different grade levels.
This weekend was a mix of relaxation and work. We finally got internet in our apartment on Saturday morning (yay!), so we've all been pretty much online constantly since then. The highlight of the weekend, however, was definitely Saturday night. Our friend Greg had told us that there was an opera playing at the Teatro Real (Royal Theater) that he really wanted to see, and that tickets were only 4 euro. I had never been to the opera, or the Teatro Real, so Katie R and I decided to go, and convinced Katie C to come with us. We met up with Greg down at the theater and bought our tickets (apparently you can buy last-minute discounted tickets at this theater if you're 26 years old and younger - the discount is 90%, so you only pay 10% of the original price). So we bought 43-euro tickets for 4.30 - just another reason to love Madrid.
Now, unfortunately for Greg, he got the date wrong on the opera performance - so the "opera" tickets we had bought were actually tickets to a flamenco dance performance, which we only realized when we took our seats and looked at the program. Also unfortunately for us, the male principle dancer had broken his ankle at a rehearsal the day before. Luckily, neither of those factors ruined the performance for us - it was absolutely amazing! I've seen flamenco shows before, but this was pretty different. About half of the numbers were the female principle dancer (María Pagés) dancing alone, accompanied by 2 guitarists, a male and female singer, and a couple of guys doing percussion/rhythm. The dancing was beautiful, and I was especially impressed by the two vocalists. The other half of the numbers were a group of 8 dancers, 4 male and 4 female, doing choreographed flamenco dances. The fact that all the dances were choreographed was interesting, because for me, I think a big part of flamenco is the spontaneity, and the freedom that allows the dancer to express what they're feeling right at that moment. And yet, that passion still came across, especially in the solo dances. So, even though we were expecting the opera, we were all blown away, and incredibly happy about our lucky mistake.
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