Home Sweet Spain

It's my second year in Spain. Things are a lot less scary this year. Instead of feeling like I am fighting to survive the language, I am feeling comfortable and adjusted. I feel like I can actually enjoy meeting people and getting involved in activities through the community and in my school. This year I am teaching music to first, second, third, and fifth graders. I'm also teaching math and science and I'm loving it all. I feel more prepared before I go into the classes now that I have the experience and I feel closer to the students so it's easier to get through to them. For Christmas, we are prepared Carols and traipsed around the school caroling and knocking on the doors of other classes to sing our songs. Click play on the video below. :)





I haven't been traveling as far and wide as I did last year but I have been able to start accomplishing my goal of exploring more places within Spain. So far, that has included Monturque, Cadiz, Valencia, and Tenerife. I've also been on a few trips with one of the choirs to sing in some nearby towns such as Benemejí, Moriles and Doña Mencía. They are all small towns similar to my town, Cabra. We sang in concerts or masses for different events in each of the towns.

Monturque & Cadiz

Monturque is a small town very close to where I live in Cabra. In fact, we went there by bicycle. Me, Bram and Josecarlos rode from Lucena, where Josecarlos lives, to Monturque, explored a bit of the castle and museum there, and then rode home to Cabra. Monturque sits up high kind of on a small mountain, which is cool because from up there, you can see really far and the view is very beautiful. The castle is neat, too, but the coolest thing about Monturque is that is has these underground cisterns that the Romans used as their water source.
They have it set up so you can walk through and read about how the cisterns were built and how the people accessed them.



Cadiz was also beautiful but in a different way. It is an island off the coast of Spain but connected to the mainland by a large bridge. One part of the island was the inspiration for the construction of an area of Cuba right along the coast. Apparently it looks exactly the same, so much so, that Hollywood movies have been filmed in Cadiz, appearing to be set in Cuba since Americans can't actually film in Cuba but create plots that take place there.