Rainy Avila

After getting off the train in Avila, John and I notice that the weather has dropped about 15 degrees since leaving Madrid, plus the sky is overcast and rainy. Any time we decide to take a vacation anywhere, it’s COLD. Only after I return to Madrid do I discover that Avila has the reputation of being a notoriously cold town.

We follow the “Tourist Information” signs which instead lead us to the walled city: it’s impressive, especially with the backdrop of angry clouds. This is what I love about escaping the big city on the occasional weekend — I feel as if I’ve stepped into another century. I imagine the 15th or 16th century royalty bustling about inside the walled plazas, the guards stationed on the towers overlooking the town, on a day as rainy as this.

Since I haven’t come prepared for such weather, we do what we always do best: go on a coffee and lunch tour of the place. Various coffees, some beers, a kebab (because never again will I voluntarily eat another bocadillo) and some excellent conversation. We pride ourselves on the fact that at least we stepped foot outside the train station, and that we DID go up on the wall, even if for a short while. We must come back one day in the spring when Spain’s weather lives up to its expectations.

A New Year, a New Format

Welcome back to my travel blog, I know it’s been awhile…I’ll be sticking to English from now on.

And welcome to my new metro stop at Concha Espina. I am now living in the northeastern part of Madrid, quite close to the renowned football stadium, Santiago Bernabeu, and right across the street from the Berlin Park, where you can see several slivers of the Berlin Wall mounted in a fountain.

I work at a bilingual school called Ramiro de Maeztu, 5 minutes away by bus from where I live (pretty damn lucky). I’m one of the six “Auxiliares de Conversación,” and I basically work in small groups with first graders to improve their speaking, vocabulary, and reading. These kids get taught about four classes a day in English, including science and arts, and the only classes taught in Spanish are math and language arts, so it’s a pretty intense bilingual program. The fifth-graders, for example, are learning about angiosperms and gymnosperms and plant reproduction, stuff they don’t even know in their own language. My kids are learning the parts of the body, healthy foods, the seasons, numbers, etc.

Spanish kids seem to have had no prior disciplining and are immune to being screamed at and dragged around numerous times a day. Sometimes, explaining mind-numbingly simple exercises, telling them to sit down and shut up 50 times in a row, hearing “Mabel” from 25 differences voices at the same time, and seeing the vacant look of “I have no idea what you’re saying”….all make me want to shoot myself. Sometimes. But I’m actually starting to quite like it. I don’t actually teach an entire class, so it’s not an overwhelming job, but one of the challenges is not being allowed to speak Spanish. So really, there is a lot of dramatization, gesturing, and pointing going on. By now I know almost all 75 first graders by name, including the multiple Ana’s, Laura’s, and Pablo’s.

PS. Spanish people have to start thinking of more creative names for their kids.

Madrid is the same old city as it was when I first arrived – a mixture between energetic and slow, scenic and urban. Also half of it is under construction, entire roads, even. But Sol is finally finished! And it’s beautiful, with the Madrid bear statue and the fountains. In a year or two Madrid will be completely transformed. I’ll put some pictures up when I can.