Christmas in Madrid

Light Show

Let me tell you one thing—Christmas this year was the bomb. Now, it was no family Christmas with the knowledge that most of the rest of the people I care about live in the same valley or one state over. While the ocean did present its emotional difficulties, I still really enjoyed my Christmas. As mentioned 75,000 times before, Kristin and Jeremy came to visit for about five days and we had a blast. We walked around the city looking at old buildings and beautiful parks. We went to the Christmas market. We played jillions of games of Euchre, Rook, and Nerts. We cooked tons of good food. We went to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve (technically Christmas Day, I suppose) in the gorgeous cathedral by the palace. We ate churros and chocolate. We went to a wild version of The Ugly Duckling—in Spanish and including break dancing along with ballet. We went to the Prado (and yes K & J found the lactating Virgin Mary painting). On Christmas day, we woke up really late (10:45), opened our stockings and then made a rad breakfast. Unfortunately for one sweet rolls recipe I read one tablespoon of salt instead of one teaspoon but they were salvageable…just pretty salty. We ate royally and then attacked the presents. Thanks to everyone for all the zesty items you sent! Um, seriously, between Astin and I, we got 11 boxes of tea. This is especially excellent because the tea here is awful. It’s the weakest tea in the whole world, perhaps. We’ve bought zillions of types and they’re all lame. But NOW we are enjoying cup after cup of full-strength almost-heaven. This has consequences later, at say 3:00 in the morning, but it’s fun while it lasts. After presents we all stumbled to various locations for a nap. Then later that evening we went to a free concert which was rocking. Okay, not literally rock music, but I am struggling with the adjectives today. No, it was an awesome opera-style singer and a string quartet. Salve for the soul. Then we went on a self-guided light tour. All in all, it was a beautiful time. Two extra people made all the difference in the world for what would have otherwise been a bleak holiday. I’ll post some pictures above. Woot!

Packages from The Girls, J.A., and S.B.A. are still in-transit but I’ll let you know when they get here! In the meantime, thank you so much to those who called, sent cards, sent packages, sent messages, etc. This week I begin the slow process of thank-you cards and walking off that Christmas candy. :D I hope you had a lovely holiday and I want to hear about it!

The last week before Christmas has come and gone. I hope you are all enjoying time with friends and family and writing ridiculous things on people’s present tags (Anne, carry the torch in my absence, please). I ended all my classes on a good note. Well, I have one more class on the 23rd, and then I will be home free for 2.5 weeks. Yessssss.

Well, this is just a pretty short blog to say that I'm excited for Christmas. Kristin and Jeremy are coming and we're basically going to have a pretty rad and wild time. Sugar cookies, Rook, etc. Feel free to call and wish me salutations during the break.

Other than that, I miss you and wish Spain were not quite so far from the U.S.

Lookit, lookit, lookit

So I have this adult student with an intermediate level. She speaks English well enough for me to teach the class entirely in English with a few specific translations from time to time. But as you may know, a sense of humor is one of the last things to come in learning a language. So much of humor depends on understanding multiple meanings of a word as well as multiple contexts. As you know, my sense of humor relies heavily, if not depends entirely, on word substitution. I do not go grocery shopping. I navigate the plains for suitable food for my tribe, etc. Generally, in lessons, I keep my sense of humor to a bare minimum, only using humorous gestures and body language, etc.

However, I forgot about that in the last lesson with my adult student. I whipped a paper out of my notebook very stylishly and rapidly. With great flair, you might say. So my student laughed and commented and mimicked my gesture, adding some martial arts-like movements of her own. So I said, “That’s right, I’m a martial arts master.” This is when she said (with a very thick Spanish accent that switches “n’s” and “m’s”), “Sonttimes I understan you perfectly. An other tines, I do not understand *laughs to self* one thing that you are saying.” Poor lady, she didn’t stand a chance, and waved her hands in front of her face to indicate dismissal of the whole comment.

Also! I have a dread now. Just one. I like my hair too much as it is to dread my whole head, but I do have one now. See picture below for details and special offers.

Come again?

On the whole, this was a much better week than last week. Thanksgiving is a thing of a past and Christmas planning is very exciting. Kristin and Jeremy are coming for the holiday so we’ll have a little family here. And some vicious Rook tournaments, from what I understand. :D

In order for you to understand how hilarious my students are and how funny teaching can be, I have collected some examples of “English” as provided by my 6 and 8 year old. Bear in mind, I am not making fun of them, believe me as a language learner, I am not making fun of them. Just explaining why teaching is hilarious. I have also provided translations from “English in process” to “English that English speakers understand.” Broosh your drem (make your bed), stecklums (carrot), hahrot (breakfast), aranandeck (rectangle). Now, this is just pronunciation. These girls are not to a spelling level, so the above words are strictly phonetic. The last one, aranandeck, was my personal favorite, because my student was developing a new method. I like to call it, “Just keep adding syllables that resemble sounds you have a vague recollection of. By doing so, eventually you may add enough of the right syllables from the same word.” To be fair however, this was a good week with many, many light bulb moments with my students. I learned that some of my efforts were not in vain. However, the third person and tricky little words like bread and carrot continue to present problems.

I’m posting some pictures from some walks I went on.

Snolidays (Holidays spelled with "sn")

This was my second Thanksgiving abroad. In a row. Thanksgiving isn’t a huuuuge ordeal in my family since we live so far away from our other relatives. It’s a small but insanely delicious gathering of about five people. But I missed it greatly nonetheless. Thanksgiving week was probably the roughest to-date. I taught until 10pm that night and then caught the metro home, arriving at 10:30. Astin and I went to the restaurant next door and had kind-of cold ravioli for the first course and Spanish Tortilla for the second. The night was looking a little doomed but we ended up talking to the staff of the little restaurant and they were so sweet. We talked about English and about family in America and the lady (possibly a co-owner?) gave us her business card and told us to come there for whatever we needed. It was so wonderful. Plus, they gave us a few things on the house, which is always excellent. :D

Many of you may be aware that Christmas falls in the month of December this year. You may be aware that it does this every year. You may not. In preparation for Christmas, some people have sent me some gifts. I have fluffed them and arranged them festively around the tree that we do not have. We went all the way out to IKEA to buy some sort of tall plant that would serve as Christmas tree now and “ambience” later. HOWEVER, it was closed for some holiday we didn’t even know about. So I just arrange the presents around a stool that will later hold a tree. I personally think they already look awesome. I have also cut out some snowflakes to prep for our ambitious decoration plan.

That is all for now. Thanks to those of you who have sent letters and e-mails and boxes. They have been incredibly appreciated.

P.S. In our empty metro car on the way back from the fruitless IKEA trip, Astin and I did cartwheels in the aisles.

Dear Loyal Followers,

As many of you know, I usually post every weekend, usually on Sundays, but NOT last Sunday. This is on account of—a busy week and not much unusual happening. It is also due to the fact that a certain organ of mine was preparing The Monthly Torture Chamber. During such times of preparation I tend to be rather emotional and it is best for me to keep my thoughts to myself.

Now that preparation has ceased and Torture has commenced, I am in much better spirits. The wave of homesickness has, for the most part, passed and I am THOROUGHLY enjoying the packages that arrived from home. Do not worry, Kimberlea, enjoyment of your package consists of just gazing at it longingly and being excited for Christmas morning.

In other news, I have become much more Spanish. This is because I finally, with Astin’s help, chose a pair of boots. Unfortunately the lady gave me the wrong size, so I have to take them back and hope for the best. Now all I need is a dreadlock mullet.

My students continue to crack me up, especially my 6 and 8-year-old girls. Although we have been learning food for three sessions, the 6 year old continues to pronounce “bread” as a very nasally “bron” and carrot as “zano.” This is a great improvement over her usual method which is, “Look like you’re concentrating really hard, open your mouth and utter some kind of sound. Whether this resembles any language known to humankind is unimportant. Just get a sound out at the same time you make a really focused-looking face.” This is the same child who sneezed all over my sticky tack and later on the desk we were using. I thought that was neat.

I have two new students, both adult females. This is very nice because we do things besides oversized flashcards and ridiculous games. I also have a new teenage girl with a really high level—Advanced Level 1. Advanced Level 1 is ludicrously far from “False Beginner.” I tell you this to point out the irony of the “Student Info” card that my work gave me. I arrived with cheesy beginner level games and then spent the whole class speaking with an almost-fluent student. Also neat.