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Sunday, December 7, 2008
Diciembre ya
Hola,
I can't believe it's December already. I'd say I miss the Oregon weather but it's about just as cold here..it actually snowed a couple days last week, well just enough for everyone to stop and look up for a moment.
The teaching hours have been good and steady. I was able to teach a little about Thanksgiving last week and even brought the beef jerky to share with all the students-they loved it. The pictures I've posted are of some of my academy classes with young and mid teens. I've enjoyed them the most, and the picture with my Oregon t-shirt was after a little Oregon geography lesson in which they drew maps and discovered why the team's called the Trailblazers ( which two spanish players are playing for.)
A couple of weeks ago I got to see a good Flamenco show here in a small venue where we were sitting about 10 feet from a small wooden stage. 4 dancers, guitarists and singers. It was a pretty powerful show which you could feel the floor shake under the dancers stomping and very spontaneous music which represents the mixed cultures of the Spanish heritage. Took a few pics that you can see.
Tomorrow's the Spanish holiday of the constitution. Only two more weeks until the Christmas vacation. I'm looking forward to my friend Walter coming to visit this week! At the beginning of the holidays, we have a little European excursion planned..
Well, he'll be staying here in Madrid with me for a week until my classes are done and then on the 20th we're planning to go to Barcelona for a couple of days to see the next great Spanish city. Then we'll be flying to Rome where Walter's dad will be staying during Christmas and try to see as many sites as we can. After Christmas, my friend Simon who's a teacher here from London offered to show us around London for a couple of days, so we'll jet on over there. Since we'll be up in the area of our ancestors, we figured we have to go visit Ireland and so we'll fly over to Dublin around New Year's time. Hopefully we can take a train to some other parts of Ireland and see the countryside before we head back to Madrid. So, really excited about this opportunity and taking some great photos.
Thank you all for your continued prayers and support. I'll really miss you all around Christmas time. I'm continuing to pray as I'm deciding as long as I'm enjoying this teaching experience to see if there are other opportunities or what God wants for me next.
¡Dios siempre tiene el control!
Love,
Kyle
I can't believe it's December already. I'd say I miss the Oregon weather but it's about just as cold here..it actually snowed a couple days last week, well just enough for everyone to stop and look up for a moment.
The teaching hours have been good and steady. I was able to teach a little about Thanksgiving last week and even brought the beef jerky to share with all the students-they loved it. The pictures I've posted are of some of my academy classes with young and mid teens. I've enjoyed them the most, and the picture with my Oregon t-shirt was after a little Oregon geography lesson in which they drew maps and discovered why the team's called the Trailblazers ( which two spanish players are playing for.)
A couple of weeks ago I got to see a good Flamenco show here in a small venue where we were sitting about 10 feet from a small wooden stage. 4 dancers, guitarists and singers. It was a pretty powerful show which you could feel the floor shake under the dancers stomping and very spontaneous music which represents the mixed cultures of the Spanish heritage. Took a few pics that you can see.
Tomorrow's the Spanish holiday of the constitution. Only two more weeks until the Christmas vacation. I'm looking forward to my friend Walter coming to visit this week! At the beginning of the holidays, we have a little European excursion planned..
Well, he'll be staying here in Madrid with me for a week until my classes are done and then on the 20th we're planning to go to Barcelona for a couple of days to see the next great Spanish city. Then we'll be flying to Rome where Walter's dad will be staying during Christmas and try to see as many sites as we can. After Christmas, my friend Simon who's a teacher here from London offered to show us around London for a couple of days, so we'll jet on over there. Since we'll be up in the area of our ancestors, we figured we have to go visit Ireland and so we'll fly over to Dublin around New Year's time. Hopefully we can take a train to some other parts of Ireland and see the countryside before we head back to Madrid. So, really excited about this opportunity and taking some great photos.
Thank you all for your continued prayers and support. I'll really miss you all around Christmas time. I'm continuing to pray as I'm deciding as long as I'm enjoying this teaching experience to see if there are other opportunities or what God wants for me next.
¡Dios siempre tiene el control!
Love,
Kyle
Friday, November 28, 2008
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Friday, October 31, 2008
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Mis primeras clases
Hola y buenos dias de Colon/Columbus!
Well I had my first couple weeks of classes, and apparently after talking with the fellow teachers, as of now I have one of the highest amounts of hours, 25 /week. Include hours of lesson planning and hours of traveling per day, that equals a fun week. It is going to be fun and challenging, so I'm giving it a go and seeing how I like it.
Here's my schedule in detail:
M-Th: Leave the flat about 7, take the metro about 50min to first company at 8-9 which is a group of 4 men and 1 woman at a Pharmaceutical company where they are being required to take a 1st certificate english exam next spring,so they're upper intermediate level, and the class follows that preparation along with business english which includes skills for more formal language and areas where they use english in the workplace which are frequent. They're all very nice and enjoy the hour for speaking practice and are mainly focused on the exam in the future which not only do I know little about but will take all the blame for whatever happens I guess. Last class we did some worksheets on common idioms which they haven't heard before like "Don't beat about the bush, get straight to the point, i heard it on the grapevine (which I alluded to the song), can't make head or tail of it," they enjoyed it.
On MWF I leave there and go on metro for 30min to an individual class at 9.30-10.30 with a man in his 4th story office with a nice view. He just wants to keep his english going with some practice, he's a little lower level than the others and specifically mentioned wanting english for chatting with business partners during golf.
MW then I have a break until 1.30 to plan and get some breakfast before having an individual at the academy. Angela is from another company and is pretty high int/advanced, and wants to improve more business english also as well as pronunciation, technical writing. She comes from Portugal and we talked about many people she knows who speak english fluently have a real good accent because unlike Spain, in Portugal they don't voice-over any of the english speaking films,tv, and exposed to it alot more when young. I began to notice how much clearer her english is than other spanish speakers.
MW then I have a break until 5.30-7 with an academy class of intermediate, 6 15-16 yr olds. They're at a pretty decent level, but may be challenge to keep them interested, as they're mostly parent-inspired to be there.
T-Th I go from 1.15-3.15 at a different company I take the bus to, with two different groups, who are about proficient and want to maintain fluency and learn more real use of language,phrases,etc. Here I travel with a Scotsman from the academy who teaches at same place.
Then T-Th I take a bus from 6-8 to an apartment where two siblings, a 14yr old girl Violeta and 16yrold brother Diego. As well as english in school, they've had private teachers most of their lives. Violeta wants to take her 1st cert exam and Diego his advanced exam. I sit down with them an hour each. They're both extremely bright and I got to be sharp on my grammar rules or Violeta will start quizzing me. The first day she did and had me try to pronounce the longest word she could think of in spanish after I told her my low spanish level, and then I fired back with antidisestablishmentarianism. She said it perfectly. Then I rush on the bus back to the academy at 8.30-10 with another intermediate group of college age students. So after speaking with fluent young kids, now its a challenge to grade my language with these adult learners at much lower level. And they're a pretty quiet group which takes a little more to get them talking with one another.
The last class only on Friday evenings is with some low intermediate 13-14 yr old boys and one girl. 2 are brothers and another their close friend so their outbursts of laughs are frequent and its a pretty fun two hours. They're full of questions. All ages take english in school until 16 or 17 years old, but they don't get much speaking practice so the academy is their chance for exposure and practice. The academy's full of resources, materials and people to help you out, english, spanish, french, german teachers, one other American boy starting out named Andy from NY. I try to get plans for a week for all the classes and organizing's the key, so its all good for me.
Oh, yesterday I just happened to see the Tennis master's series first round here at Madrid. A friend of mine David and couple of his friends invited me. The qualifying round only 8 euros for a ticket and we saw two matches: two unranked spaniards, and the second was Robby Genepri from US vs a guy from Serbia, Genepri won. All the players are there, Nadal Federer, but their matches are more expensive, but maybe I'll see what the price is for next saturday.
So really enjoying it and meeting loads of people. Thanks for all your prayers and miss you all,
Love,
Kyle
Well I had my first couple weeks of classes, and apparently after talking with the fellow teachers, as of now I have one of the highest amounts of hours, 25 /week. Include hours of lesson planning and hours of traveling per day, that equals a fun week. It is going to be fun and challenging, so I'm giving it a go and seeing how I like it.
Here's my schedule in detail:
M-Th: Leave the flat about 7, take the metro about 50min to first company at 8-9 which is a group of 4 men and 1 woman at a Pharmaceutical company where they are being required to take a 1st certificate english exam next spring,so they're upper intermediate level, and the class follows that preparation along with business english which includes skills for more formal language and areas where they use english in the workplace which are frequent. They're all very nice and enjoy the hour for speaking practice and are mainly focused on the exam in the future which not only do I know little about but will take all the blame for whatever happens I guess. Last class we did some worksheets on common idioms which they haven't heard before like "Don't beat about the bush, get straight to the point, i heard it on the grapevine (which I alluded to the song), can't make head or tail of it," they enjoyed it.
On MWF I leave there and go on metro for 30min to an individual class at 9.30-10.30 with a man in his 4th story office with a nice view. He just wants to keep his english going with some practice, he's a little lower level than the others and specifically mentioned wanting english for chatting with business partners during golf.
MW then I have a break until 1.30 to plan and get some breakfast before having an individual at the academy. Angela is from another company and is pretty high int/advanced, and wants to improve more business english also as well as pronunciation, technical writing. She comes from Portugal and we talked about many people she knows who speak english fluently have a real good accent because unlike Spain, in Portugal they don't voice-over any of the english speaking films,tv, and exposed to it alot more when young. I began to notice how much clearer her english is than other spanish speakers.
MW then I have a break until 5.30-7 with an academy class of intermediate, 6 15-16 yr olds. They're at a pretty decent level, but may be challenge to keep them interested, as they're mostly parent-inspired to be there.
T-Th I go from 1.15-3.15 at a different company I take the bus to, with two different groups, who are about proficient and want to maintain fluency and learn more real use of language,phrases,etc. Here I travel with a Scotsman from the academy who teaches at same place.
Then T-Th I take a bus from 6-8 to an apartment where two siblings, a 14yr old girl Violeta and 16yrold brother Diego. As well as english in school, they've had private teachers most of their lives. Violeta wants to take her 1st cert exam and Diego his advanced exam. I sit down with them an hour each. They're both extremely bright and I got to be sharp on my grammar rules or Violeta will start quizzing me. The first day she did and had me try to pronounce the longest word she could think of in spanish after I told her my low spanish level, and then I fired back with antidisestablishmentarianism. She said it perfectly. Then I rush on the bus back to the academy at 8.30-10 with another intermediate group of college age students. So after speaking with fluent young kids, now its a challenge to grade my language with these adult learners at much lower level. And they're a pretty quiet group which takes a little more to get them talking with one another.
The last class only on Friday evenings is with some low intermediate 13-14 yr old boys and one girl. 2 are brothers and another their close friend so their outbursts of laughs are frequent and its a pretty fun two hours. They're full of questions. All ages take english in school until 16 or 17 years old, but they don't get much speaking practice so the academy is their chance for exposure and practice. The academy's full of resources, materials and people to help you out, english, spanish, french, german teachers, one other American boy starting out named Andy from NY. I try to get plans for a week for all the classes and organizing's the key, so its all good for me.
Oh, yesterday I just happened to see the Tennis master's series first round here at Madrid. A friend of mine David and couple of his friends invited me. The qualifying round only 8 euros for a ticket and we saw two matches: two unranked spaniards, and the second was Robby Genepri from US vs a guy from Serbia, Genepri won. All the players are there, Nadal Federer, but their matches are more expensive, but maybe I'll see what the price is for next saturday.
So really enjoying it and meeting loads of people. Thanks for all your prayers and miss you all,
Love,
Kyle
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Valle de los Caidos
Photo not mine, but it better shows how immense this actually is. The cross stands 150 meters (492 ft) high! Says somewhere to be the largest freestanding cross made.
Looks over Abbey of Benedictine monastary
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
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