Two Tuesdays Later...

Blog nog: 

With Halloween quickly approaching, we're doing more themed lessons in class, particularly since, in science, we're learning about the human body/skeleton right now. Very easy to have some fun, scary lessons about the skeleton! There's even a great youtube video called the skeleton dance that the kids love and even request at the end of class. This last week, I didn't post anything because I was sick on Tuesday and because not toooooo much exciting had happened, so I figured I'd wait another week before writing again. 

So two Saturdays ago I went to Alcalá de Henares

(A beautiful church in Alcalá de Henares). 

with Hannah, Steve, Julie, and Sam

 (Hannah slyly smiles, Julie speaks, Sam not pictured). There was a "festival" celebrating the author of Don Quijote, Cervantes, and so we went and saw his house and church and just generally walked around the city for a while. Alcalá is about 45 minutes out of Madrid by train, and it was really beautiful,

but as far as the festival goes, there wasn't too much going on. While there we toured Cervantes House

 (here we're posing in front of the well in the courtyard of his beautiful old Spanish home),

We also saw some pretty churches 

(complete with a choir!) 

Had a fun photo shoot with Don Quijote himself:

and debated about what the heck these weird clumps of hay at the tops of the buildings were (turns out: birds nests...) 

 Finally we got some cervesas and tapas and headed home. 

Then Sunday I was starting to get sick, so I've been dealing with that for a while. Monday and Tuesday I was really sick (hence no blog post), Wednesday I went back to school because I was feeling better, thought the doctor gave me a note saying I could take the week if I wanted to. The problem is that my science teacher is out of town on her honeymoon and so the kids are kind-of on their own without me, particularly because the "subs" are just other teachers in the school coming to hang out in the classroom for an hour, and most of them don't speak English. So that's a problem. It's actually been pretty good: I've had to learn quickly how to control the class, figured out which class is the worst to deal with and which is the easiest, and made sure we got through everything we needed to. It's been trying, but good experience, I think. 

Then Thursday was the strike, so we weren't allowed to teach the kids anything from the textbooks (I still don't understand why that is, since WE weren't on strike... but half the kids were gone from school anyway, so I guess it's good we didn't progress in the course. Anyways, then Thursday night was Sam's birthday and Steve and Melanie both played the open mic at Triskel's Tavern and we all hung out and drank there for a while. 

This last weekend involved watching el Clasico (the match between Barcelona and Madrid) at Steve's apartment with Grant and Eric joining, and then going to a performance we were an hour late for (to suppport a friend of Steve's) and heading home early on Friday. Saturday was very slow and Begoña and I watched the movie Australia together (so good!), then Sunday, we had pumpkin carving! I really wanted to do something for Halloween so I invited Melanie, Steve, and Julie, and Begoña came too, to carve pumpkins and enjoy roasted pumpkin seeds at my apartment while watching Hocus Pocus and The Nightmare Before Christmas. It was a really good time. I made an homage to Buffy: the Grr Argh monster (complete with grr and argh),

Julie made a bat, and Begoña did some super creepy scupltures. Steve and Melanie carved apples because they couldn't find pumpkins,

which was funny enough to begin with, and the apple ended up a little harder to handle than anticipated. I actually had to search for an hour to find three decent sized pumpkins, and to do so I first went to a market that occurs every Sunday a few blocks from my piso. Didn't find pumpkins there, but I did get a small backpack I can use for work and another pair of sweatpants, which I have desperately needed. 

Now it is Tuesday again, and I can happily say I am officially living in Spain (according the the Spanish government) because I have done empadronamiento (which basically is just telling the government I'm living here and them acknowledging it). Empadronamiento is only important because I need it to get my temporary residency card, and my appointment to turn the paperwork for that in is on the 14th of November, soooooo. 

I'm also considering doing National Novel Writing Month (November) this year, but we'll see how far I get...

And now you're all caught up! Congratulations! Here's me picking my nose and Don Quijote's nose because yes I am 12 years old.