Let me start off this post by saying ‘Happy Thanksgiving’ to all of my fellow Americans. You should feel very proud and lucky that you’re hearing those words come out of my mouth (well, in a figurative sense — you’re actually reading those words) because, as much as I hate to admit it, I almost “forgot” that today was Thanksgiving Day.
You see, today started like any other day. I woke up, got a shower, got dressed, and went to the school to teach class. I went through most of the morning normally — the same way I would any other morning — completely oblivious to the fact that today was Thanksgiving. Later in the day, when I had a free moment, I decided to check my email and, lo and behold, I had a message from my mom in the States wishing me a “HAPPPYYYYYYY THANKSGIVINGGGG” (I write the phrase in capitals because that’s how she put it in the email).
It wasn’t until I received that email from my mother that I realized that today was Thanksgiving. It’s funny, really. Since I’m living in Spain and Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated here, the whole fact that today was the day just “slipped my mind,” so to speak. Still, my Thanksgiving story does not end there….
After I realized that today was Thanksgiving, I mentioned something about the holiday to my housemates. Of course, they explained to me that they already knew all about the holiday from watching American movies on TV. They then proceeded to elaborate further on how the “Americans” wake up very early on Thanksgiving morning to go outside and kill the turkey that they’re going to eat for dinner. This made me laugh a bit because, despite being an American who has celebrated Thanksgiving pretty much every year of his life, I have never “went outside to kill a turkey.” I then explained to my housemates that I preferred to buy my turkeys “already dead” from the supermarket and, although it may have been disappointing for them at first, they seemed to accept the new information rather well.
So, to end this post I’d like to remind everyone in the USA to be careful with those axes when they’re killing their turkeys. After all, we don’t want any accidents, do we? Continue reading this post…
As most of you probably already know, I’m an English teacher by trade. I work in a high school here in Burgos and I also teach a few private English classes on the side. I enjoy all my classes (both at the school and the private ones) and really like working with my students. Still, no matter how much I enjoy my job or like working with my students, there arealways those days when things just don’t seem to go right.
Today was one of those days. You see, I just got home from a private class with a “very energetic” five year old student. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a great kid, but keeping his attention is a task. Let me give you an example….
The topic of today’s lesson was “fruits.” I went to my young student’s house with my colorful “fruit book” and I also brought along some plastic fruits to use as visual aids. I read him the fruit book a couple of times and everything went fine. After a while, my young student was starting to recognize the fruits in the book pretty well… so I decided it was time to whip out the plastic fruits and do some vocabulary practice — bad idea. My dear little student saw the plastic fruits and went totally “loco.” He began to grab the fruits from me, hit me over the head with them, and he even went as far as to step on my plastic apple leaving it totally squashed. Of course, he did all this while laughing uncontrollably and saying “frutas, frutas” in Spanish.
What have I learned from this ordeal? When using plastic fruits with five-year-olds, be careful that they don’t throw any at your head. You may also want to watch their feet just in case they get the urge to trample a plastic apple. And always carry a “back-up” supply of plastic fruit — something is bound to come up missing. Continue reading this post…
As some of you know already, I’m currently in the USA visiting my family. My time in the USA is coming to an end and over the next few days I will be packing and leaving again for Spain. As a result of my travels, the blog may be a little empty for a day or two. I’ll be sure to post something new next week once I’ve returned to Burgos. If you’d like something to read in the meantime, check out the category archives on the left hand sidebar or the tag archives on the right hand sidebar and be sure to leave me some comments! Continue reading this post…
Those of you who read my blog often know that I recently moved to a new apartment. After the move, I decided to make a short video (“MTV Cribs” style) to show everyone what my new, improved place is like. I’ll admit that my video might be a little bit “low budget” in comparison with a typical “MTV Cribs” episode; but still, I think it’s worth a view. You should especially pay attention to the hodgepodge of decorative items we have scattered through the house — Disney in the living room and half-naked girls and saints in the hallway. It’s quite interesting, if I do say so myself.
When I first arrived in Spain in September, I signed a lease that would last until June and, well, June is here and my lease is up. I’ve decided to move to a new apartment that is more centrally located rather than renewing this lease, which means that this week I am going to “make the big move” to my new place.
Right now, I’m in “packing mode” and am sitting in my room looking around me. I have boxes scattered all over the floor, a large garbage bag full of things I’m going to throw out, open suitcases, and lots and lots of dust (it seems like whenever you move you find dust in places you never thought possible). I guess to get through it all I just have to keep in mind my nice, new place waiting for me.
Hopefully, by this time next week I will be all moved into my new place. I’m going to take the move a little slow because here I do not have a car and thus have to move things by foot and rely on friends with cars. Continue reading this post…
Here I am at a lookout point over the canyon. You can see the Ebro River behind me... I'm squinting from the sun, but that's ok.
I wanted to share with everyone some pictures and stories from a recent trip that I took to the Ebro River Canyon located near Burgos. I took the trip with some other teachers from the school where I work and, honestly, before going I wasn’t really expecting a lot. You see, before we went, the other teachers told me that this would very much be a “rural” trip — we would be visiting small “pueblos” in the countryside and walking along rural routes. Since I consider myself a “city boy,” I wasn’t sure if I was going to like this trip very much… but I went anyway.
After going on the trip, I have to say that I was quite impressed. The villages that we visited were all very pretty, the landscape was very green (I didn’t even know things got that green here in Castilla y León), and I had the opportunity to see something that is a little less “touristy” and a little more “Spanishy,” if you know what I mean. Plus, it was nice to leave the city behind for an afternoon and get a breath of fresh, country air.
Really, I think the pictures from this trip speak for themselves. Below, I’ll leave a few more pictures for you to take a look at. If you still want to see more, you can check out my “Pueblos of Burgos” album on Picasa. Continue reading this post…
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