"All over the place" post.

I have now been in Jerez for one week. Yay! I celebrated by eating a lot of dessert food. Mmm. (Note: I will not refer to it as junk food because it was quality delicious) Chocolate! I have some awesome cousins who sent me an email about World's Finest Chocolate and now I can't stop thinking about it!

My friend Abel (who is the nephew of my housemate and lives literally right below me) hooked me up with a bicycle two days ago and I love it! The most difficult part is getting it in the tiniest elevator you can imagine to take it to the 8th floor, which is really the 9th. I hold it vertically. The other part that causes me a bit of... (oh no, spanish/english word loss...) anxiety? is leaving it locked up when I go somewhere. Abel said if it gets stolen it's not a big deal, but I would be sooo sad. I bought a motorcycle lock for it and that thing is a beast. It looks like a big metal garden hose cased in blue. I could use it as a weapon if needed and it would be lethal.

I have found the equivalent of Calle Sierpes in Sevilla, the street with all the shopping. It's called Calle Larga (Long street). Ironically, it is rather short. I mean, not unusually short, but not that long either.

School is going pretty well. I really like being in a school environment. This week I've been observing classes. There are four English teachers and they seem to get a little nervous when I'm there. I can't wait to ask the students if English got harder after I arrived. Next week I will start giving classes. Today I got some of my books... I hope to get the rest soon. What we are going to do is split all the classes in half. One day a week I will take half of them (no more than 15) and we'll do conversation, listening, and other exercises that involve my "perfectly pronounced English". Every time the professors say that I have perfect English I laugh.

I'm a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of students I will have. There are between 20-30 students in every grade. There are 10 grades, plus 50 preschool students. Start doing the math...

Today though, I realized that means there are between 250-350 adorable Spanish children (and teenagers) roaming the streets of Jerez who all greet me "HELLO ELLEN!". It's pretty great, I must say. Today I went to the class with the 14-15 year-olds and when I walked in there was much rejoicing. I'm glad they like me. I hope they continue to like me this next week when I have them alone. I've decided to be as strict as I can be the first week (which probably isn't that strict).

Some other time I will explain the Spanish school system, but for now, I've been extremely weirded out by the practise (I've been asked to use British spelling) of one of the English teachers. He reads their grades aloud as he hands back exams and chastises them for not passing. There is not the grade inflation here as in America, over half the class failed the first English exam. Yikes! Compared to him, I will be an easy teacher. I want them to not feel ashamed speaking English with me, to feel comfortable enough to make mistakes, but also challenged.

I went to the three year old class and helped with English today. They have a puppet named Cheeky Monkey. I thought it was hilarious. We also sang the "Hello Song". It goes "Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello. Hello, Hello, Hello Hello Cheeky Monkey!" They love it. And they are so adorable that I want to gather as many as possible in my arms and squash them with love. Oh my goodness. One boy kept calling Cheeky Monkey "Puky Punky".

I am definitely not fluent in Spanish. Plus, let me give you a run-down on jerezano Spanish. If it has an "s" sound, they don't lisp. Instead, they just don't say the word. Also, I've noticed a lot of elimination of "d" and sometimes "t". Who eliminates such important things? Example: I bought a lock for my bike. The word is "candenado" --> plural "candenados" The plural sounds like "candao" Almost portuguese! Whatever though, I think when I go to Barcelona next weekend with Amanda (AHH!!!), the Spanish there will be like a sweet balm to my ears; though it won't be nearly as sweet as Amanda's American English.

In conversations with more than two people, I get lost pretty fast. Once there are more than four or five people, I stop focusing and just look around. That gets awkward in a hurry when they suddenly say "What do you think Ellen?" "Uh... what?" However, I do pretty well one-on-one. I'm hanging out with a cool Spanish girl tonight that I met on my ridiculous night out last weekend. She was the only one who gave me her mobile phone number. Plus she seemed really chill. I'm excited to hang out, we'll see if anyone else joins us.