Field trip time

I thought I'd go ahead and post a picture of my school. The school is basically composed of different buildings based on grade. This picture is of the main building which houses the library, the office, staff lounge, and cafeteria. As you can see, it's a relatively new school, maybe 20-25 years old.

On Tuesday, I went with the first graders on a field trip or an "excursion" as they're called here. We went to the Guadarrama Mountains which are north of Madrid, about 30 minutes away from my school. First, we took a charter bus to a nature museum where the kids watched a movie and went on a tour of the gardens and learned about the different plants and animals that live in the

mountains. Then we drove a little further to La Pedriza which is a mountain range that is known for its distinct, rocky surface as you can see in the picture. Hiking is really popular there, so we took the kids on a hike and ate lunch in the woods. It was surprisingly a pretty long hike, especially for 1st graders! Since the ground was really slippery and full of rocks, the kids were falling all over the place at the beginning, but luckily after awhile they got the hang of it! It was tough keeping them all together because they all wanted to walk over every rock and stop and play, but overall I had a really good time! I told the kids that when I am in the mountains I speak Spanish (so they wouldn't think it was going to be a common occurrence) so I felt like I really got a chance to get to know them. They're all so funny and sweet and I finally feel like I know all their names now! It's hard learning 42 different names, much less Spanish names, and there are tons of repeats!

As Javi said, I have a little fan club of a couple of girls who loved walking with me and holding my hand. During the hike, I'd always have 2 girls per hand which made it a little difficult to walk around! It's much more common here for students to hug their teachers and hold their hands, so now whenever they see me on the patio (the playground area where they line up for class) they love to come up to me and give me tons of hugs.

The 3rd graders are obviously a lot more grown up and their level of English is really high. They understand almost everything we say, but they still have a tendency to speak to us in Spanish. The teacher, Eva, doesn't seem to mind so maybe it's part of the learning process. Despite this, they still have a much higher level of fluency than most American kids.

This week I only have a three day week because tomorrow is a holiday here in Spain. It's basically like their Columbus day as well as a Saint's day. My roommates and I are planning on taking a day trip to a castle south of Madrid. Can't wait!