My week in review

Hello again!


This has been an exciting week for me! Since my last entry, I've gotten my bike, been to the gym and orientation, AND I've started work!

My gym is awesome. Like I said in the last post, it's like a 5-minute walk from my piso, so I can go in the morning and do my own workout and then go to a class at night if I want. With my habit of frequenting the gym and running often, my roommate Tomás has come to the conclusion that I have a problem: vigorexia. HAHAHA. But really, he as convinced my other roommates that I really have a problem. They like to remind me of it often.

At the gym on the ground floor, there's an olympic-size swimming pool, a huge 3 ft...sorry I mean 1m...deep pool, an enormous jacuzzi, steam rooms, two huge aerobic rooms, and all the locker rooms. On the second floor, there is another aerobics room, the sala de fitness, where all the machines and weights are, and a sala de bike, where they have spinning classes. Outside in the back, there are several pistas polideportivas, or multipurpose courts, for soccer, tennis (grass I think?), squash, and probably various other games.

Now here's the sad part, the pro volleyball team Unicaja Almería USED TO practice at my gym. Now apparently they practice somewhere across town :( Also, I can't even access the volleyball/basketball court(s). There are signs that say they are renovating, so I'm not sure if that's why the team moved to practice somewhere else/why I can't use the courts or what, but I am definitely bummed. While Unicaja Almería doesn't practice at my gym, the place where they play, Pabellón (pavillion) Moisés Ruiz, is really close to my piso. In fact, I can see it from my bedroom window...

 They have their first game sometime next week, so I'm gonna go by there sometime soon to check ticket prices, etc. I don't really want to go to the game by myself, but I don't think any of my roommates are interested enough in volleyball to go with me. One of Martín's friends, Raul, and his girlfriend, Stefy, who I met this past Friday, both play volleyball and are setters or as they're called here, colocadores. When I met them, they told me they'd be down to buy a net for voleyplaya, or sand vball. Hopefully we'll be getting a net soon and/or they'll want to go to some games with me.

Also, Raul told me that he knows some girls that play on an official team and he would ask them if they need an extra player. He isn't sure where they practice since the players are from all over, but if I could get on any sort of team, I'd definitely be willing to travel a bit for practices and stuff. I miss volleyball wayyy too much to pass up an opportunity like that.

This past Saturday, Lourdes was out of town, but I went to botellón with Luis, her boyfriend, Alberto, one of their friends, and Mari, Luis' brother Pedro's girlfriend (sorry that's really confusing). It was at Alberto's house, which is really close to the centro, or downtown. Botellón ended up turning into the whole night and we stayed there til around 5am. At 5, Alberto decided that he wanted me to have Luis's bike that he'd be borrowing, so when Luis took me home, Alberto went ahead of us on the bike haha. Sooo at 5am Sunday morning, I finally brought home my new bike!

It's a sort of hodge-podge bike that seems to have been repaired with parts from other bikes (you can probably see the red part below the shocks on the front wheel) but it works well enough for me. It's a 21-speed, aluminum, mountain bike...unfortunately the gear-adjuster thingy with 7 settings is broken, so it's really only a 3-speed bike haha. But most importantly, it was free and I get to use it all year! So, no complaints here!

I went to orientation on Tuesday. There were about 60 other auxiliares de conversación (that's my official job title) there. The first girl I met, Frankie, was from England. She was really cool and we exchanged contact information, but she teaches in a town an hour and a half away so who knows if we'll ever actually hang out. I really only talked to a couple of people there because I didn't especially want to make any English-speaking friends to give me any excuse to speak English. But anyway, it was boring. They just explained about how to get your NIE, TIE, and bank account, which I had already for the most part figured out after a SIGNIFICANT amount of trouble (see number 12 from my last post). There were 2 nice little letters printed up for you to take to the bank and the Oficina de extranjería so that you wouldn't have to go through all the trouble I went through. Would've been nice to have had those 2 weeks ago hah.Overall, I didn't find it to be too useful. There was food afterwards, so at least I got that out of it all. 

Wednesday, I finally went to Rioja for my first day of classes! Unluckily for me, all I ended up doing was getting my schedule from the coordinator of bilingual studies, Yolanda, and then sitting in the sala de profesores, or teacher's lounge all day until 2, when I got to leave.

 Sala de profesores

Yesterday was my first day actually working! My first class of the day was with Valeria and her 6- & 7-year-old students, or 1º Pimaria (basically 1st grade). This is the class I'll be working with most of the time, but I've also got quite a few other classes, including many that are not English classes. Here's my schedule...

 CM is Conocimiento del Medio which is basically science, Mate is Matemáticas (obviously math), Arte is art, and CSGH is Ciencias Sociales: Geografía y Historia (Geography and History). The P or E after the number is for either Primaria or ESO which is Educación Secundaria Obligatoria. Infantil is preschool and the number after it is the age of the kids.

The education system here is a little different than in the US. They have educación infantil for kids between 3 and 5. Then, there's educación primaria or as it's often called, colegio, which is basically elementary school except it goes to 6th grade instead of 5th. Then after that they have ESO, or instituto, which is 4 years long...age 12-16. After that they're not legally required to go to school anymore. After ESO, there are 2 options. If you're going to work, you do formación profesional which I think is 2 years long. If you're going to go to college, you do bachillerato which is also 2 years long, and then you have to take some hugely important test that you're only allowed to take once and that determines what you can and cannot study at the university. If you want to be a doctor, you have to have a VERY high score on the test to even be allowed to study medicine. If you don't score high enough on this test that you take at age 18, you can NEVER be a doctor...at least not in Spain. Weird system.

But anyway, after my first class with the little ones, I went to English class with Yolanda for 5º Primaria, which is basically 5th grade. After that, I had an hour break, then I went to my next class with Virginia, which is Science for 6º Primaria (as you can probably guess by now this is the 6th grade equivalent--the education system gets a bit more confusing once you pass 6º Primaria). 

So far, I really really like it! It's a lot different than I thought it would be, but I am enjoying it after day one. I'm literally only allowed to speak English when I'm in the classroom, which I figured would be the case. HOWEVERRR, what I didn't anticipate is that I'm not even allowed to let the students know that I can understand Spanish. I have to pretend that I don't know a word of Spanish in order to force them to try to explain things to me in English. After a day of faking it, it makes sense why I have to do it, but it's definitely hard to stand up in front of them and act like I have no idea what they're saying when they're obviously struggling with their English and I can, for the most part, understand them perfectly.

Thus far, I really like everyone I work with. Rioja and the colegio definitely have that small town feel about them that I like so much. There's lots more I could write about my first day, but I'll leave it at that for now and just follow it up with a few pictures that I took at school yesterday.

 

Valeria's classroom, 1º Primario

 

From the other side

 

Welcome to 1st grade!

 

My little ones! Only 11 kids in the class

More to come soon! For my next entry, I'll finally write some about my roommates and I'll post pictures of Almería. Jose (I met Jose 2 summers ago in Málaga when I studied abroad there and his family lives here in Almería--I don't think I ever clarified this for anyone who's following this and didn't already know) just got into town today from Málaga, so I'm going to hang out with him this weekend! We're supposed to go out on Luis's boat and fish at some point this weekend too, so I should be able to get some good pictures!

Adios!