Por fin, el puente! (Finally the extra long weekend!)

This weekend is the puente. Fortunately, we have an extra long weekend so that we can travel. I was planning on going to Valencia to visit my friends, but it wasn't a good weekend for everyone, so we postponed that trip until Thanksgiving weekend. Instead, I decided to go visit my Sevillian family in Sevilla. Sevilla is such a wonderful city and I am so blessed to know this nice family here in Spain. I always feel so welcomed when I come to their house. I'm still working very hard and I have started saving up money for the following year so that I can also work and travel in South America. Currently, I am making my résume to send to employers in Lima, Peru! Ciao!

La Vida Granadina (Life in Granada)

First off, I want to apologize for not posting a blog last week. I have been super busy with work and I barely have a chance to take a breath during the day. Tomorrow, I will start my 4th week of work. I normally wake up at 7am, leave my piso to catch the inner city bus at 8am, and then catch the pueblo (town) bus around 8:30. I arrive at the elementary school at 9am, where I teach until 2pm. From 2-5 pm I study Spanish and ironically, English, in order to plan for my next lessons in the academy. I leaven one pueblo and take a bus to a different pueblo to teach classes from 5-9pm in the academy. Finally I take the 9:30 bus back home and arrive back in my piso between 10:30 and 11:00pm. Once I get back, I quickly run to the gym and work out for just  a few minutes. Then I run back, shower, prepare all my food for the following day and fall asleep. THAT IS A TYPICAL DAY IN GRANADA from Monday through Thursday! The good thing is that I don't have to work Friday through Sunday and I have plenty of time to rest on those days. Luckily I am making extra money to be able to save for the following year if God allows me to continue traveling and teaching abroad. I am also learning A LOT about how to teach English  to foreigners, especially Spanish-speaking people. Needless to say, all this experience working with all different ages will look very good on my résume!

Today, I attended an evangelical church in Spain for the first time in my life. I was surprised to find over 100 Christian Baptists huddled in a tiny building singing praise and worship songs and preaching the Bible accurately. My heart was gladdened to meet the Sunday school teacher from Mexico City. He is an older man that has lived in Spain for over 30 years. However, he does not have a southern Spanish accent, so I find it much easier to understand him! :) After the service, which they call "culto", I wrote signed up on the college group list so that they will hopefully call me to hang out on the weekends. I need nothing more than encouraging brothers and sisters in Christ in Spain right now. If I'm correct, I think I heard that less than 1% of the entire Spanish population are Protestant Christians. By the way, even though their word for church service, which is culto, looks terribly similar to our word "cult", their word does not have the same meaning as ours. It literally just means a church service and they are genuine Christian Baptists seeking God.

Well, right now I am about to go out for some tapas (food that you get when you order a drink at a bar) with some friends. The tapas are VERY cheap and you get a lot of food for the money. This is by far, the cheapest town to live in that I have ever been to in my life. I have posted a few pictures of Granada that me and my friends took one weekend. Hope you enjoy. Please pray for me, because the work load is very hard during the week. Also pray that Jesus will open up the Scriptures to me and bring my into a deeper relationship with him so that I will have a renewed mind to know and demonstrate the will of God and be able to effect the Spainards around me in speech and deed! Love you all!



Here is my new favorite Spanish band ------------->

Pa' Trabajo! (To Work!)

This past week was my first week of classes. I am working in an elementary school with kids from 3-12 years old from 9 am to 2 pm every day in a pueblo (town) right outside of Granada called Churriana de La Vega. All the kids are adorable and they already love me! I usually play fútbol (soccer) or baloncesto (basketball) with them during recess every day for half and hour. I enjoy working with most of the teachers at the school. It's funny that everyone here, including the kids, learn British English from an earlier age. I'm beginning to realize that I may actually have more of a southern American accent than I thought! (or at least that is what everyone here tells me)

Between 2pm and 5pm I usually go to a local bar and talk to the bartenders or whoever happens to be there. This is a good opportunity for me to practice my Spanish or, ironically, practice my English. I bought a basic English grammar book that I have been studying for one hour every day. I am beginning to understand why people say that English can be difficult to learn. I think that studying English grammar will not only help me become a better English teacher, but will improve my Spanish as I begin understand the grammatical differences between the two languages.

At 5pm I go to an academy in another town a little further away called Cullar Vega. The actual academy is called "Underground" (named after the Metro in London...the biggest metro system in the world). Every room in our academy is named after a different Underground Metro line. There are 3 of us teaching. There are two American girls and me. Our boss is in his low 30's and is from England. The academy has been running for over 5 years. I have around 5 different classes, each class being from 3 to 10 students in size. One of the classes being 7 girls who are all friends, so please pray for me! I teach a wide variety of ages at the academy ranging from 13 to 50 years old.

I have to say that I did not feel prepared by any means on my first day. I have to prepare many of the students to pass a specific English exam. Once they pass the exam they receive a certificate proving their level of fluency in the English language. One of my main problems is that my "short" clases are 1 hour and my other advanced classes are 2 hours long. However, I usually have very little time to prepare lessons for my classes. I leave my piso (apartment) around 7:30 in the morning and get back at 10:30 at night. As soon as I get back from work, I run to the gym and work out for 30 minutes because the gym closes at 11pm. After that, I shower and cook all my food to put in tupperware for the next day. I usually get to bed around 1am and get up at 7:00am to do it all over again. Needless to say, I am SUPER busy from Monday through Thursday!

I really believe that by the end of this year I will be a great English teacher and will be prepared with the experience to teach all ages. I was kind of thrown into all this work without any prior experience or planning, but thanks to the Lord that things have been going smoothly and my students are actually learning. The only thing that I am very tired of is the BUSES! I ride the bus from Monday through Thursday an average of 2 hours per day. The time would be cut in half if I had my own vehicle. It takes forever because of so many stops and many times it is very uncomfortable because by the time it gets to my stop there are no remaining seats left and it is really crammed for the long ride.

Finally, besides not liking riding the buses so much, I can't complain much because this city is absolutely beautiful. There is so much to do here and the people are generally very friendly wherever you go! Above is a song that I really like....

Mi nuevo hogar! (My new home!)

Last week I said my goodbyes to my familia sevillana and headed off to granada via train. It was a hectic train ride because all the americans going to Granada had soooo much luggage and no where to put it on the train. However, we made it safely to our hotel and had a week to search for pisos (apartments). I definitely found out how much of a rookie I am at piso searching. I stayed with 2 roommates in the hotel and we searched for pisos for 4 days straight. It was the roughest week yet. We walked from one point of the city to the other many times without success. Finally, we found a website worth more than gold. After using this website we no longer had to depend on ripping numbers off of signs and streetposts. The best idea was to pay 10€ for a week and have access to everyone's phone numbers. This made things a lot easier and I ended up looking at over 10 different pisos. It was difficult at first to decide between what zones I wanted to live (there are several very cool zones), but I eventually decided on the one closest to my bus stop for my pueblo that I am teaching in.

Both of my roommates are Spanish from nearby cities outside of Granada. Pedro is a legit magician. He brings his cards everywhere he goes. I am truly proud to call him my compañero. Bani, who I met yesterday, is my other roommate, but she doesn't come back again for another week. They are both studying here at the University. Our piso is nice. However, it gets kind of annoying having to turn on the butane tank and strike a match every time we want hot water. Then after using the hot water, we have to go back to the kitchen to turn of the gas tank. Things could be worse though. And of course we have a BIDET in our bathroom.

 We live right in front of a huge shopping mall, and right behind the mall is the biggest zone where it is legal to hacer botellón, which means to drink in the streets. There are literally thousands upon thousands of students doing botellón on the weekends until 8 in the morning right outside our piso. Luckily, I don't have to work on the weekends so sleep isn't a huge issue. 

I have met many Spanish people already and exchanged many numbers. There are ALWAYS people in the streets everywhere you go, and the coolest thing about Granada compared to other Spanish cities is that every time you order a drink (beer, wine, etc.) it comes with a free tapa. A tapa is a type of snack that they cook for you. Sometimes you get to choose which tapa you want from a menu, but other times they just serve you a different one every time. It's very cool and cheap! Definitely a great way to spend some time out with friends.

Tomorrow, Monday October 3rd, will be my first day at work. I already went to the pueblos (towns) to visit my school and my academy where I will be teaching. I teach art and science to kids from 3-12 years old from 9am-2pm Monday through Thursday in a town called Churriana de la Vega.. I then have a three hour break to have lunch and prepare for my next classes in the academy in another pueblo from 5-9pm. I will be working A LOT to say the least. The good thing is that my salary will be double that which it was going to be with only one job. I am going to be very busy studying English grammar to prepare for teaching advanced English classes in the "Underground Academy" in Cúllar Vega, a town right outside of Granada. 

Unfortunately, I have not had enough time to take a lot of pictures of Granada like I did of Sevilla. I will post them as soon as I do. In the meantime, I have attached some pictures of Granada and a video link to this blog.