Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Here we go.

NOTE: FALSE
Ignore everything below (but you can still read it). The Internet man came today and set everything up, then proceeded to say that our router will arrive in 48 hours. Still. Waiting. Fooey.

After 4 weeks of living in Motril we should soon (as in today) have Internet at our piso. After signing our contract with the company almost 2 weeks ago they finally called earlier this week to set up an appointment. They had said that they would come between 5-10 days after the signing of the contract, and today is day 11. Awesome. You have got to love the Spanish customer service.

With us having Internet my pocket book and my stomach will benefit.

Going to McDonalds everyday to use their Internet makes me feel guilty and each time I went I had been buying a cheeseburger or a small fry. I have probably spent more money at McDonalds the last 2 weeks then I will on our Internet the next 3 months! Our Internet is 10 Euros a month (for the first three months) and I will pay a third of that 10, so roughly 3 Euros and 33 cents. That is three cheeseburgers at McDonalds. Or 2 cheeseburgers and a fry, or three fries. You get the point. I will be saving money.) I spend that in three days at McDonalds, and will be spending it in 30 days at our piso. I guess I could have sucked it up and not used the Internet everyday. But what would I do without reading my Michigan sports blog, ESPN, FoxNews, the NY Times and Skyping with my lovely girlfriend everyday? Not be American that’s what. The things that keep me connected to my country...

My body will also thank me. In the United States I rarely ate McDonalds, and if I did eat some sort of fast food McDonals would usually be my last choice (Wendy’s is were it is at...). I will admit, there were days where that all so American cheeseburger tasted so good. McDonalds is one of those places you can always count on to make you feel home, and it had been my home for about an hour a day for the last two weeks.

When I was in Honduras earlier this year I was able to consistently run up and down Celaque 3-4 times a week. I kept this schedule for a good portion of my time down there, and at one point was probably in some of the best shape of my life; running up that mountain was no run through the park. With Internet at home and no more McDonalds in my belly I am hoping to start running here in Spain. My roommate Emily has consistently been able to do it, and I think it is time I get going on it myself. Being a man of time management I think I have a good idea of where I am going to insert it into my "busy" 20-hour a week work schedule.

So, game on and here we go.

Hasta Luego.

*This was posted at school with no spelling correction (well, there is spelling corrections but every word has a red line under it because its Spanish corrections). I will edit it later, so if you are reading this message I apologize for poor writing mistakes in the above post.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Halloween.

So this really isn't a blog post. Rather it is for my own benefit.

Below is the Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin cartoon that I found online. I am working on planning a lesson for my EFL students and I am going to plan a listening and writing activity around this cartoon. I think it is really well done and will give the students a good idea of what halloween is all about. I am posting the video on my blog so that it is in a more common forum for me to let it load when I do the lesson. The school also has a filter and I know I can access my blog at school.

The holiday is becoming more and more popular here with students beginning to dress up and even go trick-or-treating. Enjoy the video if you want to watch it! Happy Sunday!

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Free Video Hosting

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Honduras vs. Spain. Part 1.

Six months ago I was in the middle of my tenure as an EFL and social studies teacher at Abundant Life Christian Schools in Gracias, Honduras. Teaching here helped me in several ways, two of which being that it allowed me to teach my content area (social studies/history) and it allowed me to teach English, preparing me for some of the things I would face teaching here in Spain. But how do these two places compare? Yes, Spain is a developed country in Europe and Honduras qualifies as one of the poorest nations in developing Central America, but are there any similarities? If so what are they? Are the differences that large?

I am going to write a series of entries comparing what I saw in Honduras and what I have seen and experienced so far in Spain. This may be biased because I have yet to be in Spain for as long as I was in Honduras, but that gives me an excuse to write further entries down the road revisiting these topics after being here for a longer period of time.

Round one: STUDENTS.

Being a teacher it was interesting to compare the students I taught during my student teaching experience in the United States to the students I was teaching in Honduras. Now I can compare my students in Honduras to my students here in Spain.



This has so far been an interesting comparison for me. My students in Honduras, especially my EFL students, were very enthusiastic (for the most part) to speak English and learn the language. In my EFL class I was constantly writing new words on the board and being asked, “how do you say _____?” as students scribbled the words in their notebooks. Even in my history classes most students made the effort to use English (mostly because that was the rule, English only, and the students for the most part did. Plus, I only taught in English so they had no choice). In Honduras learning English is a privilege. It allows for the students to have better access to further education, jobs and whatever they decide to do after school. Therefore we preached the importance of learning English and more often then not the students responded.


Not the case in Spain.

Thursday after school I asked some of the teachers how the students in the bilingual classes I work with our selected to be in this particular program. They told me it was the parents who decide to enroll their students in the bilingual classes (they start in the 6th grade at my particular school, therefore the kids did not have a bilingual education at the primary level). I was told that if a parent wants their son or daughter to be in the bilingual classes they can be, however other qualities are looked at (mostly grades and if the particular student can handle the bilingual classroom along with the content), but if a parent wants their kid in the program, even if they are a D student, they will be in the program.

With that said, at my school, which has 1200 students (I think that was the number), I have one class of 28 first year English language learning (ELL) students and one class of 28 second year ELL students. English is not all the rage here.

I have had this conversation with many people, including Spaniards (even an Italian who was in my 4-week Spanish class in Sevilla). The conversation has basically gone like this: Spaniards and Italians don’t feel the need to learn English. Which to me is fine; I don’t want to come off as an egocentric American who thinks everyone should know English. But I have also had conversations with Spaniards who admit that Europe is changing, especially with the European Union, and English is going to be a lot more beneficial and important to know now and will be in the future then it has been in the past. Spain alone has an unemployment rate of over 20 percent and many Spaniards are trying to make themselves more marketable by learning English. This is the sole reason why I have my job; the Spanish government passed legislation in the early 2000s setting up this bilingual initiative bringing bilingual education to the public school systems and offering native English speakers to come and work for a year in the schools as assistants.


It may sound like I am being harsh on the lack of drive of my students to learn English here in Spain, but I was very frustrated this week with my students at both my school (La Zafra) and at the academy I work at. No matter how many times I told the students to talk English to each other and me they kept on speaking Spanish.

I will say that there is one major difference between the students (really not the students themselves, but the setting) I had in Honduras versus the students I have here in Spain—in Honduras I was teaching at a private bilingual school where English was the focus for the students (hence “bilingual school”). Here in Spain I am teaching at a public Spanish school where the focus is not entirely on bilingualism. In fact, I sometimes even get frustrated with the teachers I work with because often they get trapped into speaking Spanish with the students (grated they are all Spanish anyway, but if the point is for the students to learn English, why speak Spanish? This mostly happens because even though most of the teachers I work with our “fluent” in English, many still struggle with it. Which is fine, but its not helping the kids a whole lot with their “bilingual” education. I guess that’s why I am here...). This is a common debate among educators, the pros and cons of a “private” education, but when the focus is something like a bilingual school I think you do see a lot more drive out of the students at a private school like the one I was at in Honduras.

Thoughts? Comments? Ideas on how to get my students motivated to use English more often here in Spain? Digame (talk to me).

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

History Geek. Part 4. With a birthday twist.


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This past June I had the awesome experience of celebrating my 24th birthday with my students in Honduras. They threw me an extraordinary birthday party at school with food, cake and even a piñata. Celebrating your birthday in a different country doesn’t happen every year, so when it does it is a birthday worth remembering.



My good friend and roommate Emily turned 24 this past weekend and we all decided to travel to Granada to celebrate (unfortunately Michael Lynn had been sick all week and didn’t feel good enough to come until Saturday afternoon). It was also my first time in Granada and it gave Emily, who studied there for 6 months while in college, an excuse to serve as a tour guide for her favorite town in Spain.
It also gave me the chance to explore another historically rich Spanish town.

We arrived late Thursday afternoon and visited with both of our weekend hosts (Emily stayed with her host family and I stayed with my friend Palmer, a 4-week groupie). Friday night Emily and I eventually took off for tapas with her friend Juan Carlos and his friends.

Something awesome about the entire province of Granada (including Motril) is that tapas come free with a drink. The city of Granada takes this tradition to a whole new level with the size of their “free tapas.” They were amazingly larger than anything we’d been getting for “free” in Motril (in reality, most places charge a little extra for a drink. For example, a beer in Sevilla was 1.00 Euro, with no free tapa. In Motril and Granada beers range from 1.50 – 2.00 Euros with a free Tapa). After engulfing two enormous plates of tapas with Juan Carlos and his friends we took off to our respected weekend homes and planned to meet up early the next morning to head to the Alhambra, one of the most visited places in all of Spain.


As most of you may know (or might not know) Southern Spain was ruled by the Moors for over 700 years. This North African Muslim people had a great influence on Southern Spain and many of their structures still stand, with many being used by the Christian kingdoms who eventually defeated them in 1492. The Real Alcazar and La Giralda are examples of the Moorish influence in Sevilla, with the Alhambra being the best example of the Moorish empire’s once impressive capital city in Granada.

With the Alhambra being such a popular tourist destination Emily and I decided to meet up at 8 am and head up the hill to where the Alhambra sits. We met up, took a bus to the top, and when we arrived to the visitor center we were met with several hundred people and the announcement (at 8:30 am) that there were only 90 tickets left for the morning and 180 tickets left for the afternoon. Emily knew it was going to be busy, and so did I, so as we sat in line we both figured that we were number 271 and 272 in line (if you can’t figure out the math, that would mean we would just miss getting tickets...). However, an announcement was also made about some automatic ticket booths. We thought that these booths were for people who bought tickets online ahead of time and were where these pre-purchased tickets could be printed off (we didn’t think that you could actually BUY tickets at these booths), so we continued to stay in line. While standing in line we heard a couple in front of us speaking English (with an American “accent”) and as most international travelers know (even in a town like Granada that is swarmed by American tourists and study abroad students), when you hear English you need to figure out where they are from. We began to have some casually conversation with Oscar and Natalie, a couple from San Francisco who were on an intense 2-week tour of Andalucía and Morocco (they had already been to Morocco, Tarifa, Malaga, were in Granada for the day, and were still heading to Sevilla and Cadiz). Natalie decided that she was going to go check out these ticket booths and disappeared for about 10 minutes. Upon her return she was waving two tickets and said that she bought them from the mysterious yellow booths that were tucked back behind the souvenir shop. Emily and I dashed out of our long queue to the machines where we purchased tickets for the afternoon.

Now, the Alhambra is a massive complex that includes gardens, a convent, several palaces (built by both the Moors and the Christians), and a fort. The main palace was the hot ticket item and each tourist is assigned a 30-minute spot in which they are allowed to enter the palace. Our tickets let us into the Alhambra anytime after 2 and allowed us into the palace at 4. It was 9:30.


With Emily mentioning that she had lived in Granada for 6 months (therefore knew the city pretty well) and the fact that Natalie and Oscar were only visiting Granada for the day, they asked if they could hang out. Emily and I were more then willing and they seemed like a cool couple (which they proved to be).

The four of us caught a bus down to town and made our way to a café for some coffee. After sitting for over an hour Emily noticed that one of her favorite places, simply known as “the bread lady,” had opened her shop close to where we were eating (we had planned this…). This woman was evidently known for her fresh baked pastries and bread and Emily introduced us to chocolate filled lemon muffins. After this we proceeded to walk around Granada looking at its cathedral and several shops and plazas.




We eventually became hungry and stopped in one of several bars where we ordered drinks and were again blown away by the size of the “free” tapas. After a second round of drinks and tapas 2 pm was quickly approaching so we decided to head back up to the Alhambra.

For me, seeing such incredible architecturally rich and historically important places cannot be describe in words. Therefore, enjoy these pictures from the Alhambra.












Before I left for Spain one of my good college buddies, on his way home from spending several months teaching and working in Africa, stopped in Granada and visited the Alhambra. He went on to say that it was one of the most incredible things he has ever seen. I agree. The Real Alcazar in Sevilla was impressive, but this complex, with its antiquity and incredible details, was incredible. A must see for anyone who ventures to Spain (which is why it was so busy in the first place…)

After 3 hours of walking around the Alhambra, and seeing the exhaustion on our new friends face, we decided to head out. Before leaving we swapped information with Oscar and Natalie and wished each other the best of luck.

Fast forward from late Friday afternoon to Saturday early evening when Michael Lynn was finally in town and the three of us went out for tapas to celebrate Emily’s birthday. We went to one of Emily’s favorite places and after devouring some again rather large “free” tapas Michael Lynn and I surprised Emily with our best attempt at a birthday cake—an assortment of seven different flavored small pastries with candles in them. They were delicious.


After tapas we met up with some of my 4-week immersion friends and hung out the rest of the night.

Consider my first visit to Granada a success, and definitely not my last.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Fifth Home.

Holland, Michigan – Born and raised in this small town on the shores of Lake Michigan and Lake Macatawa. Big Red and the sandy beaches, along with Tulip Time and everything Dutch. One of America’s happiest towns.


Ann Arbor, Michigan – The best college town in America has proven to play an important role in my early adulthood. From my Maize n’ Blue love to the city/campus fusion. And nothing beats its restaurants and bars.


Dallas, Texas – Enter the real world? All the teaching jobs are in Texas? Good idea and the advice was inspiring, but 20 plus schools did not have any interest in my services. Next?


Gracias, Honduras – The opportunity that came calling that I grasped and throttled. I had new life adventures in a different culture and grew personally and professionally through 6 incredible months of having my own first classroom and students.


Motril, Spain – Pending, but so far a place that has the potential to grow on me and a place that I am sure will have difficulty leaving come June.


I was fortunate. Growing up I lived in the same house for all but 6 months, and those 6 months were the first 6 months of my now 24 year life. I hear stories of how “my dad was in the military, we moved every two years” or “my dad lost his job and we moved half way across the country when I was 15” and I cringe of thinking about that process. I knew one home growing up, and it was a spectacular setting on 6 acres of green grass, woodlands, and a small creek that routinely demanded my attention.

I am now living in my second different country in 8 months. My current home is the town of Motril. With a population of just under 60,000 it isn’t exactly a bustling city like Sevilla, but it is a quaint town situated about 2 kilometers from the shores of the Mediterranean.

I have begun to notice that there are two groups of people in Motril, the students who attend the schools me and my roommates teach at, and then their parents and grandparents. There really isn’t a 20 something crowd. I blame this on the fact that Motril does not have a university and it is less than an hours drive away from Granada, which is where all the young people are living (one because there is a university there and two, it’s a pretty awesome city). In fact, many of the teachers at my school live in Granada and drive the 45 minutes down to Motril every day, five times a week. There are also two other American teachers (a couple), one who works at Michael Lynn’s school and the other who works at Emily’s school who also live in Granada and take the bus back and forth each day. That is over 2 hours of commuting each day for the American couple and an hour and a half for those teachers at my school.

That sheds a little light on what Motril is like, that even some of the teachers who work here don’t live here. However, even though it’s not a bustling place like Sevilla or Granada I have thoroughly enjoy it. Mostly because of this:


And this:


Growing up near Lake Michigan I love looking out at water, and looking out at the Mediterranean isn’t that bad of a deal. Also, I fell in love with mountains while living in Honduras. So, to turn 360 degrees from looking at the Mediterranean and see those mountains (which will be snow capped come winter) is a pretty awesome deal too.

Therefore, Motril has the natural perks of having the best of both worlds with mountains and water, but I am going to have to work a little harder to meet Spaniards.

I am really looking forward to the next 8 months, and although I will be traveling all over Spain and hopefully Europe, Motril will be my home.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Correo.

When I was in Honduras earlier this year I was addicted to Pringles. Ask any of the other teachers I was down there with and they will say the same. I always had a can of cheese or sour cream or onion sitting in my room. In fact, my addiction went so far that when my friend and fellow teacher Kirsty flew home for a law school interview at Washington University in St. Louis she brought me back a can of Pringles. I’ve always liked Pringles, but I really never grew up on them. In fact, rarely would you ever find a can of Pringles in my house. Even in college, I really never bought them. However, when I moved to Honduras and I did my first grocery-shopping trip with the other teachers I saw Pringles on the shelf and needed to have them. Why? It's simple: to me those Pringles were a little piece of America that I could take in while overseas.



Over the last 10 months I have spent 6 of them in Honduras and 2 of them in Spain. It has been incredible to finally step outside my comfort zone and the borders of my own country and do something I have always wanted to do—travel. However, with traveling comes things you miss, and in general, at least for me, these things congregate into missing one thing—America (these things do not include family, friends and a very special Spartan fan, which will always be first). Those Pringles in Honduras represented America for me. They were something that I had access to that allowed me to stay in touch with my culture, even though I was loving every minute of being in a new culture (while maybe not ever minute in Honduras…there were some challenging times).



I remember watching my mom take bags of Cheeze-It's out of their red and yellow box and put them into a brown shipping box. When I asked her what she was doing she said she was sending them to my uncle. My uncle has lived in Spain for over 20 years, but he doesn’t have access to Cheeze-It's, so he has my mom, every so often, send some to him from the States. No matter how long you are overseas, from 8 months to 20 years, you miss things about your culture, about America. Although I am doing very well in regards to not missing too many American things, the time may come (like it did in Honduras on several occasions, granted Honduras was much more difficult to live in then Europe) when I just need something American. Chances are that I might be able to find that “it” American thing here in Spain, but chances are also pretty high that I won’t be able to.

Here is my address:

Tad VandenBrink
C/ Escribano Valderas
Bloque A 1˚C
Motril, Granada, Spain 18600

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

What was done before the Internet?

This is where I casually apologize for my long delay of posting a new post.

This is where you answer back “no pasa nada,” which basically translate to “no worries,” which is the Andalusian way of life.

Glad we’ve taken care of that. Now to the update.

Piso. Check.
First day of school. Check.
Second job. Check.
Car. Check.
Internet. Pending.

Life in Spain has officially started (the last 7 weeks have been vacation…)

Piso.
Michael Lynn, Emily and I are the happy renters of a gorgeous piso on the west side of Motril. It is new within the last 5 years and very modern. It has great views of the Mediterranean from the large balcony that all three of our bedrooms, as well as the living room, have access to. Enjoy these pictures.


Our balcony.


Our living room.


Our kitchen.


Michael Lynn's bedroom.


Our full bathroom (there is also a half bathroom not picture).


Emily's bedroom.


Our view out from the balcony. That is the Mediterranean.


My bedroom 1.


My bedroom 2.


My bedroom 3.

We are paying 500 Euros a month plus utilities, and we figured after utilities (water, electric, and Internet) our monthly costs will be roughly 600 Euros—so that is 200 Euros a month per person. That is pretty good compared to what I was expecting, and as you can see the place is pretty nice. Me gusta.

Our landlord has turned about to be pretty awesome as well. Marian lived in London for 10 years; therefore she is fluent in English. She even teaches a little bit here in Motril. She is currently pregnant and both her and her husband own pisos, with the one we are renting being hers. This is really important because this isn’t just a renter piso, it is actually her piso, and therefore she is very concerned about its condition and keeps it in great shape.

She also has a lot of connections here in Motril, including knowing a lot of people who speak/teach English and people who are looking for English tutors. More on this below.

School.


Friday was my first day of school and I have been back two days since (Monday and Tuesday). I am starting to grasp what my role is as a Language and Cultural Assistant here in Spain and I think I am going to enjoy it (go figure right?). It is as follows:

1. Spend one hour each week speaking English and/or planning a small lesson with the content area teachers in math, science, social studies, English, technology and art.
2. Spend 30 minutes of class time once a week in each of the above classes being the English expert by helping with the lesson or executing the lesson I planned with the content teacher
3. Work with the gym teacher for two one-hour gym classes leading the class in all English.

The only disappointing part of this setup is that I am only spending about 33 percent of my time each week with the students. Being a teacher that is what I love the most—being around the students and getting to know them. I will have to see how this goes.

This is the second year that my school has been part of the English program that I am working for. Therefore, there are only 2 classes of students who are part of the program, each having about 27 students in it. One class has been in the program for two years and it is the first year for the other. I will be spending most of my time with the second year students.

You will periodically here about my time at school over the next 8 months so I’ll move on to something else now. I apologize if this seems like an info heavy post, but I figured some of you might have been wondering what happened to me. I am alive and kicking.

Second job.
As I mentioned before our landlord has proven to be an invaluable connection because of her fluency in English and the people she knows here in Motril. Last Thursday morning she came and picked us up at the hotel, along with our luggage (we had actually dropped some of it off at the piso on Wednesday night) and after dropping the luggage off we went out to breakfast to meet one of her friends, Pilar.

Pilar had studied international education in the United States and earned her Masters in the States. While there she met and married an American and since has returned to Spain. She has started her own English Academy here in Motril and Marian had told us she was looking for someone to teach one of the classes twice a week. I quickly jumped all over this opportunity and emailed my resume to her later that night (this proved to be difficult because as I will discuss below, we have yet to set up internet at the piso). She got back to me the next day and asked if I could meet with her this past weekend because classes started on Monday (yesterday). I met with her Sunday night and found out that I was going to be teaching a group of 12 students every Monday and Wednesday from 4:00-5:30. This gives me an extra 3 hours of work a week at 12 Euros an hour. Doing a quick math equation this means I will be making 36 Euros a week, which is 144 Euros a month, which is going to be a nice addition to the salary I receive for being a Language and Cultural Assistant. I am hoping to find one or two students who I can tutor privately, or even someone who I can have an “intercambio” with, which is where I teach him/her English and they teach me Spanish.

Like my Language and Cultural Assistant job (which I am now going to abbreviate as LCA) I will be writing about my job at Womack English Academy over the next 8 months.

Car.
While I was in Sevilla I received a phone call from uncle that started simply with him saying “Well, its finally happened.” He went on to explain that the air conditioning is his 1992 BMW 520 had died. He and my aunt were trying to decide what to do—spend the money to repair it, or put that money towards the purchase of a new car. A week later we reconnected and he said they had decided to buy a new car. He then said that if he couldn’t get any money from the dealership he would possibly let me use the car for the next 8 months. A week later we connected again and he said the dealership would not let him trade it in (they would only dispose of it for free) and he thought why do that when I could use it while I was here. So, after talking about some of the fees and insurance I will pay for the next 8 months, the girls and I traveled to Algeciras this past weekend to pick up the Beamer and visit with my family.






It was a fun weekend hanging out with my uncle and aunt and cousin, as well as trying to figure out how to drive a manual. Now, I have driven many stick shifts during my time working at Wuskowhan (the private golf course I worked at through high school and summer). In fact, I often like to joke that I learned how to drive a manual on Porsches and BMWs and other higher end cars at the golf course. But taking a car from the turn around at Wusky to the parking lot is not the same as driving one on the road around Spain. For the most part I succeeded in getting us home. The only hiccup I had was after paying a toll. I accelerated out of the tollgate and when I went to shift from second to third I went to far left and went back into first. Oops. It is going to take some practice but I am excited to add driving a manual to the list of things I am going to learn/master in Spain (this list currently contains Spanish, driving a manual, and the flamenco). Game on.

Internet.
We are in our new piso but we still do not have Internet. This will hopefully change by the end of this week. I still have the wireless router in my room that the Americans who lived here last year used. The landlord said that she will call the company this week and ask them to turn it back on, but she said there may be some fees to do that. We really don’t care about the fees, we just want the Internet. I really hope we have it by Saturday because I would really like to watch Denard Robinson run through Michigan State’s defense.

I also hope we get it so I can get back into the habit of posting every couple of days. That is the one thing I told myself I was not going to do, go multiple days without posting. Hopefully other then me being on vacation, this will be the longest amount of time without a post.

Don’t hold me to that. I will try.

Well, that’s a long entry. I’ll get another up in the next couple of days. Hopefully by Friday.

For now, hasta luego.