VIDEOS (Under the Sea & Jump Down Turn Around

A few months ago, we entered our 2nd grade and 5th grade students in "singing in English" competition. The competition will be through videos so we had to record the students singing their songs and then send it to the judges. If they get selected, they will be asked to perform it in the capital of our province, Córdoba, for the public. We have been working really hard in the bilingual music classes, learning the lyrics slowly, and creating some coreography to go with it. The parents came up with wonderful costumes and Bram and I and some other teachers put together the backdrops for this competition. The first video is of the 2 second grade classes singing together. "Jump Down, Turn Around" The second video is the 5th grade class singing "Under the Sea."


"Jump Down, Turn Around"




"Under the Sea"

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.

fruit

I just bought 5 apples, 5 oranges, 3 potatoes and a cucumber for only 3 Euros.

2 continents, 3 countries, 4 days

I have never smelled so many different scents in so few minutes. With each step I took through the Medina of Tetuan, Morocco, I felt like I was going further and further back in time. The Medina is the oldest part of the city, where the streets are the smallest and you feel like you are in a labyrinth of food and spices and smells. One of the neatest parts of the day was when we heard the call to pray, ringing out from the little mosques in all corners of the Medina. But, it wasn't a bell or a clock tower striking. It was more like a monotone cry that almost sounded like the voices were electronic. The sounds of these men traveled through the market from whichever mosque they were occupying. Many of the men stop what they are doing to gather 5 times a day on the old Persian rugs, leaving their shoes at the door behind them, just to pray.
We started the trip by driving down the coast of Spain. Then we got in a boat and traveled across the water from Europe to Africa. The first city was Ceuta, which is still in Spain but on the continent of Africa. It was beautiful. It is basically a little strip of land that sticks out from the continent and is surrounded by water. You have the option of swimming in the Atlantic ocean or the the Mediterranean Sea. It was really cool to stand on the land and look to my right to see one body of water and to my left to see the other.
Next, we crossed the border to enter Morocco and drove to Tetuan. The view from the hotel was spectacular. The mountains we were facing were called elephant mountains (or something like that...) because one of the mountains kind of looks like an elephant. :)
Tetuan was where I tried my first Arab tea at a tea salon. The tea is drenched with sugar and floating mint leaves. During this experience, I was surrounded by men. It is very rare to see a woman out at night. Even during the day, I was one of the few women without my head covered.
The Medina was filled with little trinkets to buy and different types of dried fruits and nuts and other foods to eat. The streets were so filled with people that at some points we couldn't move. Every corner led to another corner which led to another corner and every hole in the wall was a window or a door of someone's house. People actually live that closely packed together. Above the streets were hanging sheets, I suppose to protect from rain or sun and the ground held stray cats and garbage.
I was met with the same feelings when we entered the Medina in Tanger the following day. It didn't feel quite as old or packed with people but the size of the streets were the same. The Medina in Tanger led us to this amazing lookout point where you could see the Northern coast of Africa and look over at the city of Tarifa. We also stumbled across a small tea room where about 7 or 8 men were about to gather to play some music and have some tea. (In Morocco, there is absolutely no alcohol.) We were fortunate enough to be invited into this tea room to listen. The walls and floors were covered in Persian rugs and instead of tables, there were spokes in the ground to hold up the tea. The music was wonderful and some of the instruments, I had either never seen before or only seen in my music history text book. On the wall were written words in Arabic for one of the songs/chants and they played very lengthy tunes without any music at all.

The rest of that night was filled with tasting some of the Moroccan food and being surrounded during dinner by people watching the Barcelona soccer game. (Barcelona won, of course.) There was also some souvenir shopping and chasing sheep down the tiny streets to try to get a picture.


The next day we crossed back over to Europe and then crossed the border into another country. Although Gibraltar is located in the Southern part of Spain (Andalucia), it is British territory. My dream of someday seeing and walking on the Rock of Gibraltar was finally fulfilled. :)
There were monkeys roaming around freely, climbing on the cars and stealing people's food.
Another wonderful moment was driving to the southern most point of Europe to see the lighthouse.

I think one of the coolest aspects of the trip was to be able to clearly see the influence of the Arab culture that was left behind, all throughout Andalucia, after they were forced to leave that area. I have been living in an area of Spain where much of the original Arab architecture still remains. The old tiny streets, the patios decorated with flowers, the walls lined with tile.... These things may appear to be very "Spanish" but actually came from the Arab influence. Even in a now English city, sits a Mosque, seeming to be out of place in front of the famous "Rock of Gibraltar" and the modernity of the city, but instead is untouched and still used.

observations

1. People in America like to dress like people in Europe to be a little bit different and more trendy. The thing is, when you live in Europe and you wind up looking like everyone here and not looking different and trendy. Now, what is trendy is to where clothes from the United States.

2. Spanish people use white out all the time. The kids even have little bottles of white out in their pencil cases for when they make mistakes.

3. This is probably because they teach the children to write in cursive from the time they first learn to write. Even a little 5 year old, who I tutor, writes in cursive and never in print. Also, the cursive they use is different. They keep some letters in print like the capital "G" or the "k" and then continue on with the rest of the word in cursive.

4. The students have pencils and erasers. This sounds like the American students except for the fact that NONE of the pencils that they use have erasers. Did the concept of putting them together not reach Spain yet...? :)

taking Spain for granted

After biking through the city of Munich, climbing the Alps in Salzburg, and riding pedal boats up and down the Vltava river that runs through Prague, there is still something sweet and serene about running through the rolling hills of Spain, surrounded by millions of olive trees. With only a little more than a month left, it's easy to begin to realize how much has been taken for granted. I remember when I first got to Spain, everything was foreign and exciting and different. I used to go for walks or runs on this path that sits above my little town, just to be in the mountains, to breathe in the fresh country air and see the sun set over the sea of olive trees. Of course, with the colder weather, came fewer and fewer walks but also less appreciation for everything. The characters in my story slowly became real people with real families and jobs and problems and dreams.
About a month ago, groups of people from France, England and Germany came to Spain to work with the teachers in my school on a project that links the 4 elementary schools, internationally. They come up with ways the children can learn about each of the different cultures by sending each other things and doing the same activities despite the difference in languages. In order for everyone to communicate, English was the languaged used, which meant that Michelle and I had to translate everything for these few days. Taking the people on tours of our little town of Cabra and then to Granada to tour the famous Alhambra, made me realize how much I have gotten used to seeing things here and how much I have taken for granted. Watching their faces change with appreciation for the architecture and the cultural traditions that are so different from their own, made me realize that I am lucky to still have more than a month left in Spain. So often have we (the American girls here in Cabra) complained about so many luxuries that we miss about the United States that, in turn, we forget that there are things we will never find in the States except maybe in Epcot, Disney World or a restaurant imitating this foreign culture. When we were driving back from the airport after our wonderful trip to Munich, Salzburg, Vienna and Prague, I was overwhelmed with the landscape we were driving through from Malaga to Cabra. I felt as if I had just arrived for the first time all over again. Everything was so green and the mountains were glistening orange as the setting sun spewed its purples and blues and pinks all around us through the clouds.
I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to live here and experience the people, the typical food, the architecture, the traditions and the amazing landscape. I look forward to embracing this next month and a half ahead of me and appreciating the moments I have left. :)