The week of April 11-14 was the last week of the second term at school. Since Easter was so late this year, the second term was much longer than usual and as such, all the teachers were pretty exhausted and in need of vacation. Thus, we celebrated la semana cultural, or cultural week, which according to Tomás is basically an invention of the teachers so we don't have to work as much haha. Cultural week basically just meant that every day that week there would be a little workshop or some sort of activity planned in the last two hours of class, between 12 and 2. 

On Monday, these two actors came and put on a little play encouraging kids to read. Tuesday was my day! I had to put together some activities for the 3, 4, and 5-year-olds, and the 1st-4th graders. For the preschoolers, I had to come up with something that was short, simple, repetitive, and that would keep their attention. So, I finally decided that I would work with the classic book, Goodnight Moon. Since I didn't actually have a copy of the book, I first had them watch a version of it that I found on Youtube. Then, I printed pictures of all the objects and went over all the vocab words of things to which they were saying goodnight. Then, since the video kept their attention really well, I let them watch it again. It was short and sweet, and I think with all the repetition they at least learned the word "goodnight."

The activity I planned for the 1st-4th graders was the one I really put a lot of time into. With these kids, I figured the story could be a little more complicated, but since the level of English still isn't too high, I'd have to do something to get them interacting and following along with the story. I decided to use another classic--If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. 

The first thing I did was find and print of copy of the book in black-and-white for my first graders to color. Francisco García colored the cover and Amina colored the other page pictured below. After laminating the colored pages to make a book for the class, I also made a powerpoint of the book using screen shots from a Youtube video I found of someone reading the book.

So the day of the activity, I had the library all set up to tell the kids the story. I had the powerpoint projected onto the wall for the kids to see and I had brought along the items that really would tie the activity all together--PROPS! If you remember the story, it says "If you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to ask you for a glass of milk. When you give him the milk, he'll probably ask you for a straw. When he's finished, he'll ask for a napkin..." etc. So, I brought an empty box of milk, a glass, a straw, a napkin, and all the other items that the book mentions. Before reading the story, I passed out all the props so that every kid had one, and we went over the vocabulary. Then, as I read the story to them, as each person's item was mentioned, they had to hold it up in the air for everyone to see. While this did mostly lead to the smarter kids yelling at the not-so-smart and/or spaced-out kids to hold their item up, it was also very effective in keeping them engaged and understanding exactly what was going on in the story.

My "Cruji Cookies" i.e. really REALLY crunchy cookies

After I finished telling the story, the kids all looked like they had really enjoyed the activity. And to top it all off, I told them I had a surprise for them...I had baked chocolate chip cookies for everyone! Their eyes lit up and I'm pretty sure they couldn't have been more excited. They were almost too impatient to wait for me to bring the cookies to them in the classrooms since they weren't allowed to eat in the library. I had stayed up til 4am the previous night baking them because I had to put them in 6-8 at a time since that was the most I could fit on the biggest pan that we had (which, incidentally, wasn't even a cookie sheet but a glass casserole dish haha). Also, I didn't have baking soda, but instead baking powder. I followed the advice of a website that I found which said that to substitute powder for soda, you just had to double the quantity and omit some of the salt. I did that exactly and my cookies turned out kinda cake-like when they first came out of the oven, and then after about half an hour they were REALLY hard. Tomás nicknamed them "cruji-cookies" from the word crujiente which means crunchy hahaha. The ones that were super hard either got eaten by the two of us or, when we got really delerious, we catapulted them out the kitchen window using wooden spoons with the goal of having them land on the roof of the next building. I was the only one to successfully land one! Also, I got a text from Tomás the next morning informing me that the street below and the roof of the next building were COVERED with pigeons hahahahhaha. This is the crazy retarded stuff that I'm going to miss the most about being here.

"Amigo Invisible" book exchange (like a Secret Santa type deal)

Anyway, back to cultural week, Wednesday, each level kinda did their own thing. Thursday, everyone older than second grade went on an excursion to some park in Granada. I opted out of the excursion because I would've had to get to school like an hour and 15 minutes earlier than normal. Since all of my Thursday classes except one were with the kids who were on the excursion, I got to go home early at 11...beach day for me!

The faves before the race with their race stickers

Though I normally don't work Fridays, this Friday I chose to go to school because the kids were doing something really cool. Yolanda had collaborated with the non-profit Save the Children to do a carrera solidaria, or fund-raising race. Basically, it was a 3km run throughout the town and each of the kids had to get sponsors to pay them for how much they were going to run. All of the money collected would be going to help the children of Haiti who are still very much affected by the massive earthquake that happened there over a year ago. The kids were really excited and had been preparing for two weeks leading up to the race. Carlos, one of the guys who works at the school as the assistant of one of the kids who is in a wheelchair, prepared "START" and "FINISH" banners, as well as a couple more banners and arrows to direct the kids throughout the race. Enjoy the pictures :)

Everyone at the starting line

"Rioja por los niños de Haiti"
Rioja for the children of Haiti
Ready! Set! GO!

Jesús (5yr) and Gero (5yr)

Claudia (4º) and Julián (1º)
Somebody need some water? haha

Priscila (3º) and Lidia (3º)

After MAYBE km 1, everyone was dying of thirst so they stopped at the fountain

Zaira (1º)

Yeray (1º)

Mª Eduarda (5º), Irene (4º), and Mª del Mar (4º)
Looking beat and taking a break halfway through the race haha

Lucía (4º) and Claudia (4º)

The girls of 3º
Marta, Teresa, Diana Alessandra, Lidia, Priscila, and Ana

Ainhoa (1º), Fran (1º), and Amina (1º)
Absolutely spent at the halfway point

Amina (1º) still going strong

Priscila (3º)--this girl was seriously a champ

Mario (2º ESO) getting water after the race

Juan (3º) actin a fool as usual haha

Jesús (4yr)

Rubén (4yr) and Brian (4yr) looking confused

Xavi (3yr)--SO cute!

Naiara (3yr)

Alison (4yr), Erika (4yr), and Lucía (4yr)

Nuria (2º) and Judy (2º)

Alex (2º) and Ismael (4yr)

Sophia (4yr) and Ismael (4yr)
How cute are these guys?

We finished! Cheers!
Naiara (3yr), Xavi (3yr), and Lucía (3yr)

Teté (5yr) and Augustín (5yr)--2 of the triplets

3- and 4-year-olds cooling down after the race

Little ones awaiting their certificates

My first graders

Aitor (5º) with his parents

The race was a HUGE success. The kids had a ton of fun and they were doing it for a good cause. The grand total that we raised was more than €1100 which is about $1600, and there are still some kids who say they are going to bring more money. The 5th grade was the class that raised the most money--over €200. Of that 200, Aitor, the 5th grader who is in a wheelchair, raised over €100 by himself. Props to him.

Team America before the race

Speaking of races, I completed another race the Sunday after the one at school. Kelli and I ran the Almería 10K through the port. Kelli, who had gotten second in the race last year of course got her revenge and won the race with a finish time just under 39 minutes.

My buddy who ran with me the WHOLE way

My goal was to run 7:45 miles and finish in around 48 minutes. However, I ran MUCH better than I thought I would. I finished in 46:40 with an average pace of 7:30/mile! I was thrilled with my finish time having surpassed my goal by quite a bit.

After the race, I was surprised to find out that I had placed third in my division and 5th out of all women! They even gave me a little trophy! Yay for improving! More races to come!

Back to recapping what I've been doing...

The weekend of Mar 17-19, Lulu, Luis, Alberto and I ventured to Granada to snowboard in the Sierra Nevadas before it got too hot and all the snow melted. They picked me up from work in Rioja on Thursday the 17th, we had lunch in a little bar there, and then we headed to Granada. The car was PACKED to the max with stuff because Alberto had his snowboard and boots, we all had our bags, and we had brought all of our own food for the trip because we knew it was going to cost us a ton to buy food in the tiny little resort town.

The resort town of Monachil where our apartment was

We got to Granada capital around 4:30 and then had to drive another 30 minutes up into the mountains. After we unloaded all our stuff at the apartment we rented, we had to hop back into the car and drive 30 more minutes back into Granada to pick up our equipment since the car was too full earlier to pick it up. Though it was a hassle, it was definitely worth it because we got a DEAL on our equipment rental. We were renting for 2 days and we got a buy one, get one free deal...only ended up paying 13 euros each for 2 days of equipment rental. If you know anything about renting snowboarding/skiing equipment, you know that that is insanely cheap--in the states it costs something like $30/day. The lift ticket was the pricey part of the trip (at least for me because I didn't get the student discount). It cost me 70€ for a 2 day pass, but I couldn't really pass up the opportunity, especially considering that Granada is so close and the rest of the trip was going to relatively inexpensive. The apartment we rented was only 50€/person for 2 nights which was a deal considering we had a full kitchen, room for 4, and the gondola to the top of the mountain was within walking distance.

Luis and Lulu in the gondola

Anyway, the next day, we got up early and made our way to the ticket office to pick up our lift tickets and we got up to the mountain around 9:30am. Lulu and Luis had never snowboarded before, so Alberto and I were going to have to teach them. For the few times I've been snowboarding, I'd say I'm a pretty good snowboarder. I have taught a few people how to snowboard pretty effectively, so I was expecting it to be a piece of cake, but I was severely mistaken. 

Lulu and I

Not knowing the technical terms in Spanish made it VERY difficult to explain. Not to mention, when someone's on their board, you've gotta be able to explain to them quickly, exactly what to do and how to move, and the words were just not coming to me. I got really frustrated that I couldn't express what I wanted to and pretty much gave up. Alberto took over with the two of them and told me basically to just take off and have fun. I wanted to help, but I was super frustrated and I knew it was gonna be a waste of everybody's time for me to stick around and try to teach them. 

 I was really thankful that Alberto was okay with that because I got to explore the whole mountain. I hadn't been snowboarding in almost exactly 4 years, but after run number 1, it came back to me perfectly. I guess it's a lot like riding a bike in that once you learn, you never really forget how to do it. 

I was on my own for a few hours and then I met back up with them near the lodge to eat lunch. We had brought sandwiches with us so we wouldn't have to buy expensive ski lodge food, so we just sat outside in the snow and ate and relaxed. Luis had basically gotten the hang of boarding and had been practicing by himself on the bunny slopes. Lulu, on the other hand, had fallen down backwards, caught herself by putting her hands behind her, and hurt her wrist. In other words, she was basically out of commission as she was going to be falling quite a bit more (as is normal on the first day) and surely was going to hurt her wrist even more.  

Sunset over the mountains from our terrace

The slopes closed at 5 because around that time the snow started getting pretty melted and mushy, at least near the bottom. We headed back to the apartment, showered, rested, and eventually cooked dinner. That night, we drank some but crashed pretty early cause we were tired and would have to get up early again the next day for day number 2 on the slopes.

Getting up early was a success, but unfortunately packing up the apartment and loading the car took us quite a while. We had to return the keys to the apartment that morning, so we had the challenge of loading the car with not only all of our bags, but also all the boards and boots. It was like a game of tetris trying to get everything to fit so that all four of us could still cram into Alberto's 2-door, itsy-bitsy, canary yellow (I hope you're reading this right now, Alberto hahahah) ride. The next problem was that we were going to have to leave the car in the parking garage all day where we had seen someone's car get broken into the previous day. Thus, Alberto didn't want any of our belongings to be visible, so we spent another 30 minutes taking out our boards and rearranging everything so that the shady vendors who were walking all around the parking garage wouldn't know that we had all of our stuff in the car. After all of those delays, we finally got up on the mountain around 11. 

So pristine...wish i had been the one to have carved out that lone trail

The second day, I also spent a good amount of time by myself. I was with Luis for the first part of the day, but after a few hours I went off on my own again. Alberto told me how to get to the other side of the mountain where the SnowPark was. I found that this side of the mountain was considerably less crowded, but unfortunately much flatter, more open, and with less variety of trails. The picture to the left was the view from one of the lifts on this side of the mountain. Looked like some brave person had found their way onto one of the untouched parts of the mountain and had managed a short run before realizing that it would be a good idea to stop before hitting the rocks. Being alone and admiring the beauty, size, and flawlessness of the scenery was humbling in a whole new way. Having always lived by the ocean, that's the thing that I've always been able to rely on to remind me how small and insignificant I really am. Swimming out into the water until I can't touch the ground has always made me think about the fact that I am nothing and that the sea could easily swallow and wipe me away without anyone ever knowing to where I had disappeared. But that day, the mountains took over that role. All the untouched snow reminded me that no matter how dominant we may think we are, something bigger will always be in control and able to one-up us. With that thought in my head and the wind rushing past me as I flew down the mountain, I reflected. It reminded me that the things I worry about are so petty and trivial in the grand scheme of things and that I shouldn't let myself get so caught up in my day-to-day life. 

Río, one of my favorite runs

I finished the day alone and my last run was down one of my favorite trails which was called Río, or river. At the bottom of the hill, I met up with Lulu, Luis, and Alberto, and we headed to the car to pack up our boards and hit the road back to Almería. It was great to have gotten to snowboard again after 4 years of being out of practice. Overall, it was a great weekend and I'm determined to make the few that I have left here just as good!

Also, in my last post, I forgot to list my 4th and final option of what I can do if I'm not offered a job. At Tomás' suggestion, I'll just have to marry a Spaniard! Visa issues, solved. My friends will just have to fight over who will be the lucky one to be my "husband" hahahah.