La ultima dia en classe...

Today was my last day in class and it was bitter sweet. I have learned so much in the short amount of time I have been here. I was able to use just about everything I learned in class when we were out exploring Madrid. One of the things I especially liked was the ability to come back to class the following day and ask questions about vocabulary/incidents/sites/events from the day before that may have tripped me up. I have pages and pages of new vocabulary words and half a composition book filled with my notes from class.

When I think about what has really pushed me the furthest in regards to my learning, it really has to be the immersion this experience has provided for me. I learned the past tense and subjunctive tense of Spanish many years ago as a student, but I was not only able to re-learn it here, but I was able to practice it not only in class but outside of class. While in Spain, everything I read, hear, and almost-everything I say is in Spanish. I am, however, grateful for the English translation button (represented by the Union Jack not the US flag by the way) I could use when getting money from a bank! Outside of some electronic devices: bank ATM, metro ticket dispenser, bus ticket dispenser everything else has been in Spanish. Ordering off an all-Spanish menu was quite interesting...no pictures to help!

I am so grateful for the patience of my two Spanish teachers, my fellow classmates (especially when they had to listen to me struggle through hot topics such as U.S. gun control, immigration, and the latest "stand your ground" case in Florida) and every Spaniard who I have spoken with these past few weeks. I have learned so much from being a student again. It is very humbling to walk into class not knowing what questions I am going to be asked and knowing that at some point I am going to be required to share the answers to work I either completed the night before or just minutes before in class. Being a student is hard...I will never forget that.

My teacher Marisa was not only a great teacher but a great artist! Pictures really do help!

 

So just a few corrections but not many! YES! Thanks Sergio!

 

 

 

My class: Lee from Korea, Thiago from Brazil, Valentine from Switzerland, Sarah from Vermont, Gladys from France, yours truly, Tayla from Brazil and Chiara from Italy

Mi Último Día de Clase

Today was my last day of class.  Over the course of the past three weeks, my Spanish has improved immensely; however, I am still clumsy when speaking. Over the past few days I have thought about how I can maintain and build off of what I have learned. In the States, the easiest things to do is to seek out opportunities to speak with native Spanish speakers and watch movies in Spanish with English subtitles (my language training wheels/security blanket). In preparation for this trip to Madrid, I watched Mexican soccer games on Univision.  It helped a little. It was very easy to do this with World Cup qualifiers going on.

My Spanish grammar teacher, Laura, is very clever.  One example of this is how she presented a Chupa Chups to me today. Towards the end of the lesson, she asked us what things are inventions from Spain. We went around the room guessing (apparently espadrilles are from Italy), and she told us that a wringing mop bucket, a fregona, is a Spanish creation as well as Chupa Chups. She shared with us that the design on the wrapper is by Salvador Dali, and then gave it to me.

This was extremely thoughtful, especially because people in these classes are so transient.  Receiving something uniquely Spanish from my Spanish teacher was a special moment for me. Gracias, Laura!

The culture and history of Spain is also very different from that of the States.  In the US, there aren't any royal palaces. Catholicism isn't nearly as ubiquitous where I live. One of the norms of class is to go around sharing what we did the day before, what we plan on doing that afternoon or the weekend, and so on -- very good speaking and listening practice. When Celeste and I went to the Palacio Real a week or so ago, I shared with the class that it was amazing and breathtaking, and I couldn't help but think about how so much money went into creating and maintaining this way of living and governing whilst people outside of the walls were starving. She replied (in Spanish, of course), "Isn't it the same as today?" or something along those lines. I didn't think of it that way, but it is so true regardless of time or place. There will always be those who have, and those who don't regardless of governmental structure.

Being in class with teachers like Laura and Julia helped me think about my craft as a teacher and how I can better accommodate my students that start mid-year, that are English-language learners and how to best meet their needs, and how to balance working with students at different levels and not neglect those who aren't immediately being helped. Being on the other side of the desk for three weeks was an extremely humbling experience.  I am grateful for this opportunity to learn from these two teachers as well as my classmates. Muchisisismos gracias!

 My class: Tony from Austria, Matt from LA, John from Manchester, Carol from The Netherlands, Julia and  Laura, our teachers, Camila from Sao Paulo, Ploy from Bangkok, me, and Jae from Atlanta. A very diverse group!

-dorothy

Sobre arco iris...

It's hard to believe that our time in Madrid is quickly coming to an end. What I have learned in my Spanish classes these past three weeks has helped me immensely in the "real world." I have had the privilege of traveling to several non-English speaking countries, and honestly communicating has never been a problem because so many people speak English. I feel, however, that here in Spain the Spaniards expect you to know Spanish, so you are forced to communicate in their native tongue. I really appreciate this. They are patient when you struggle through the language and they are willing to provide you with words, but they expect you to work it out.

I knew that my Spanish was going to improve. What I wasn't expecting was just how much I was going to fall in love with the country, the culture, and the people of Spain. As I am typing this the bar/restaurant below has every table filled with the neighborhood gente. Children are playing in the play set just yards from where their parents are drinking cold beverages (most likely tinto de veranos) and eating an array of tapas. Almost every night for the past two weeks we have been serenaded by sometimes a trio of musicians (guitar, saxophone, and bass player) or just the solo sax player. Tonight it was just the sax player. As I write this, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" is crooning outside. The days and nights have been quite warm here in Madrid, but tonight we have a nice breeze going and it is rustling the leaves of the trees outside our balcony.

We have seen, done and learned so much while here in Spain. Ordering food, asking for directions, figuring out bus and train information, buying groceries, and just sight seeing have all helped to build our Spanish language abilities. One of the things that I noticed as well, is that unless you pay extra for the English audioguides, very little in this country is written in English. This has also helped tremendously with learning Spanish. Good thing for Google translator! :)

Below are just snapshots of some of the many experiences we have had...

El Palacio Real where the monarchy of Spain used to live.

 

This little Spaniard was galloping his way along the sidewalks of Madrid...too cute!

 

Cervantes's characters Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are seen everywhere in Madrid. Here is a larger than life statue of the two friends near our apartment in Plaza de España.

 

We had the privilege of hearing this Spanish musician playing the gaita while we were walking along the tree lined paths in Madrid's Parque de el Retiro.

 

Palacio De Velazquez, a building in the middle of the park, was filled with modern art. The "water" at the bottom of the dock was thousands of strips of canvas painted to resemble water.

 

The modern art was definitely interesting and created by the same artist...

 

The teepee in the center is covered with thousands of pieces of Brazilian paper currency. The "sticks" were actually bones and the white wall surrounding the piece was thousands of candles stacked on top of each other.

View from inside the giant wooden tube you saw in the same picture as the teepee.

"Amerikkka" is the title of the piece you see below.

 Guess this gives us insight on how the artist views the U.S.

 

 

bottom of the art piece

top of the art piece

 

 

We spent last Saturday Segovia, Spain. For such a small town, there was a lot to see.

 

The Cathedral de Segovia

Roman aqueducts

The day we arrived was the same day they were having a folkdance festival. We were able to not only see some traditional costumes, but we saw them dancing. The French looking dude, in about 1 minute after this picture was taken would grab Dorothy and include her in the dancing (sorry I missed the photo op).

 

Traditional dress of Segovia

 

Entering the Alcazar of Segovia

 

One of the rooms in the Alcazar. You really can't tell, but the row above the red walls are actually wooden carvings of the kings (and some queens) of Spain.

Prepared for battle.

 

 

This statue is located in the epicenter of Madrid at Puerta de Sol. If you want to experience all that Madrid has to offer Puerta de Sol is where you begin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a funny for you

So I brought my Kindle with me to Spain. In my quest to improve my Spanish, I downloaded a book called First Spanish Reader. It is basically a middle level book of fairytales and proverbs all in Spanish. On the Kindle, I can read two pages in Spanish and then the following two pages provide the English translation. I began reading a line of text and when I got to the last line I thought, "Wow! I understood EVERYTHING written in that line." It was then that I realized that what I had read was in English and not Spanish. : )

Things are making sense...well for today at least...

We had three new students join our class today. Gladys is from Paris, Sarah is a teacher from Vermont, and don't-know-his-name-yet-because-I-wasn't-in-the-room-when-he entered is from Korea. This was after losing three students from my original class. It is very interesting to see my teachers adjust to the needs of the new students. Keep in mind that when a new student enters Don Quijote, they have to take a written and oral comprehension test. Based on the results of the test, they are placed in a class.

We are in the middle of learning about the different forms of the subjunctive tense. I know exactly how it feels to just be plopped mid-stream into a lesson/concept that everyone else has been studying except for you. It is not the most comfortable feeling. Luckily we all know how it feels and the teachers are pretty good about testing to see how much the new students know without embarrassing them too much in class. As a teacher, I have always found it difficult when a new student enters my class after the school year has started. You have to determine the student's background knowledge, their strengths, weaknesses, etc. My teachers here at school have this happen to them on a weekly basis! (I can learn a lot from them.) Some students come to Don Quijote and stay for as little as week. Others of course will stay for months and will move to different levels of classes. There is one guy in my class that is from Switzerland. He didn't speak a word of Spanish before he came to the school. After 8 weeks, not only is he an excellent speaker, but he knows his Spanish grammar. He will be at the school another 6 weeks. Pretty impressive.

As I worked on my homework tonight, I began realizing that things are starting to "click." Unfortunately, it has taken a good two weeks to really begin to feel comfortable in class. I am sure this will change at some point tomorrow when I am asked to complete an in-class assignment and have to look around the classroom with a "what the what" look on my face. There is one thing I have decided and that is that I am going to continue with my Spanish studies. In the past two weeks I have been here, I am have grown immensely in regards to my auditory and oral ability to communicate in Spanish. I may not know all the grammatical rules, but I am able to get around it with what I do know. There have been several instances where I have wanted to respond to something that has happened in Spanish and not in English. I actually had to take a few seconds to think about what my English response would be. Those moments, though few, have really made me realize how beneficial an immersion program really is. There have been moments when I am typing this blog that I have almost written my response in Spanish...maybe that will be my next entry...just a free flowing response in Spanish and English.

The title of our blog is "Dancing in Spanish." I am not quite ready for the full-length dance, but my words are definitely choreographing themselves to the music of the language.

The Escorial

Today is Sunday, so we (me, Celeste, her mom and Aunt D) took a bus to The Escorial which is northwest of Madrid. This place was built by King Philip II in the 16th century as a place for Catholic learning and spirituality. The inspiration for this palace came about after he won a battle on the feast day of St. Lorenzo, a Christian Spaniard and a saint who was martyred by Roman pagans by being burned to death on a grill. The shape of the Escorial is in fact a gridiron. The grill's handle is the palace where the royal family lived. The best way to describe this place is austere. The art housed in The Escorial is amazing: Heironymos Bosch, El Greco, and Titian, are just a few of the artists whose work is on display here. 

 Ninety percent of the written descriptions of the art are in Spanish with no English translations.  Walking through this huge palace looking at the paintings and frescoes and reading about it all in Spanish, I learned two things about myself and how I am acquiring language: one is that I caught myself not constantly needing to mentally translate the Spanish I was reading into English to understand it all. The second is that I was able to keep this up for only about an hour. After that, I reached a point of diminishing returns and got mentally tired. I just stopped reading and only looked at the art without seeking more information about it. Granted, the theme of all of the art is religious, so I chalk up not needing to mentally translate so much to knowing the stories and scripture behind most of the paintings (I'm not too good with the apocryphal themes) and also to being exposed to the language for several weeks already. It started to click a bit! It is a good feeling. I have a very long way to go, but it is reassuring to know that I have grown a bit in learning Spanish while in España.

The Escorial

El Greco's El Intierro

Inside The Escorial's biblioteca

 

 

As it stands

Learning to converse in Spanish in three weeks is a lofty goal.  I am far from conversing with anyone in Spanish beyond ordering food, making change, asking/commenting about the weather, or simple introductions. I have picked up on the language of commerce, frankly because that is the easiest thing for a tourist to do. I have re-learned how to use high frequency verbs in the present tense, present participle, and 'cheater' future tense (i.e., vamos a visitar; ir directamente a dormir al hotel).

Heading into this final week of class I am humbled, to say the least.  After studying Spanish consistently in high school and college for six or seven years -- albeit over a decade ago -- I find it very frustrating that I can barely string four words together and say something that makes sense to anyone else.  Reading and writing comes much easier; speaking and listening is a whole other ballgame.

The goal for me in class this week is to relax and not sweat the mistakes.  I will strive to take more of a Zen approach and be liquid; conform to the vessel that is around me instead of mentally forcing what I think should be. Maybe then in class this week when the conversation inevitably turns to controversial social issues, I can relax my furrowed brow and bypass the potential botox appointment needed to undo the constant perplexed look I must have for about three hours every morning in class. Seriously -- piecing together isolated words from a class discussion about monasteries, monks, mentally ill young girls, prostitution, transgender Thai dancers and transvestites -- which sounds extremely interesting-- and it's frustrating to not be a part of it. I had to be patient on the outskirts of the discussion and check with Matt, the other American student who sits next to me, to see how far off the mark I was with what I was comprehending. I was not too far off.

                     Our teacher, Julia, and Matt talking about the different names for kinds of jewelry.

--d

It wasn't me...

One of the great things about our classes in addition to improving our Spanish is getting to talk to our Spanish teachers. Today we learned a lot about the tradition of bullfighting. Whether you agree with it or not, la corrida del torros (bullfight) is very much a part of the fabric of Spain. There are many "stages" to the bullfight before the matador even steps into the arena. It was also interesting to learn that the younger generation of Spaniards do not necessarily support the practice. It will be interesting to see if the tradition continues...it has already been banned in Barcelona and the Canary Islands.

I continue to have moments of elation and frustration in my studies. Today was frustrating not because of what we are learning, but because of who sat next to me. We have a girl in class who has a tendency to talk a lot - and she does it when she is really not supposed to be speaking. Today I was trying to listen to our teacher explain a lesson and she was whispering something to me. Our teacher had to stop class and ask if there was a problem. I have to say I was a bit mortified, but the question was directed at my neighbor and not me. (Phew!) The girl said she was asking to see my notes because she couldn't see the board and my teacher had her move closer to the board. I couldn't help but chuckle at the many times I have had to move a student because they couldn't see the board or because they were disrupting another student. As my teacher was handing me my homework, she gave me a look that immediately told me that she knew I was frustrated with the girl beside me.

This girl means well, but geez, we are trying to learn here. It has been interesting watching how the class handles her continuous input. Again, sitting on the other side of the desk again has been fascinating!

In España they don't use the word tarea for homework, they use deberes.

¡Deberes, deberes, deberes!

Snapshots of Andalucia

After a long week of questioning who we are as students and what we are learning as teachers, we were looking forward to exploring more of the Spanish culture by visiting the cities of  Córdoba and Granada in the region of Andalucia.

Our weekend whirlwind started at the Estación de Atocha (Madrid's main train station).

The Spanish countryside was filled with hundreds of miles of olive trees and mixed with a few spots of sunflowers.

Our first stop was Córdoba in one word...MAGNIFICENT!

One of the many doors that lead up the courtyard of the Mezquita. 

The inner courtyard of the Mezquita was beautiful. In the center was a fountain that not only provided us some much needed refreshment (the temperature in Córdoba this weekend was well over 100 degrees) and we were impressed by the drainage and irrigation system. 

Irrigation at it's best.

It's safe to drink the water...we asked.

But the majesty really began inside. We can only hope that our pictures will give you an idea of just how incredible this former Mosque/current Catholic Church really is. We were left speechless appreciating the wonders of man's architectural ability, the mixture of the various layers of decorations standing side by side, and the influence the Moorish culture had on this part of Spain.

Super quick history lesson about The Cathedral Córdoba (we will call it Mezquita as this is what the Spaniards call it): It was consecrated as the mother church of the diocese in 1236. Since then, it has been used for religious services every day. Long story short, on this location there was once a Visigoth church called San Vicente, then in 785 during the Islamic invasion of Córodba, the church was destroyed and a mosque was built. There is glass over a visigothic mosaic in the floor of this church which gives the rationale for the church to have changed the purpose of the building from Mosque to ancient Christian temple; Christians were here initially.

                                             Visigothic mosaic beneath the floor of the Mezquita

This is the Catholic altar in the Mezquita (not sure who the guy in the red is).

While were were in Cordoba, there was a guitar festival. This is just a block or so away from the Cathedral.

Granada.

By train, we traveled south to the city of Granada. This is the city where Isabel and Ferdinand funded Columbus's journey to the new world. Spain's Catholic culture was anchored here during their rule as well. This is the city where they are entombed. There was also a strong Muslim and Jewish presence in this city up to the time of The Inquisition. It is said that before this period in history, Granada was a place where three different religions were a part of the same culture. The evidence of this coexistence is still visible today in the art, architecture, food, even the city planning. Granada is a very young city. As we walked around the first evening we arrived, we could not help but notice the number of college-aged kids meandering the streets with friends. The energy was positive, and set the tone for our stay.

Illuminated manuscript of music on display in the Cathedral of Cordoba

The Alhambra

The Alhambra was a fortress built by the Moors. It has gone through many phases and changes over the centuries. Preservation of this world heritage site is ongoing. Our tour guide told us that every new tour could be different based on what parts are closed for maintenance and preservation. A person may not see the same Alhambra twice.

The Alhambra is a place to satisfy all five of the senses. There is so much to see, hear, smell, feel, even taste -- we had a break during our tour for a drink and tapas. The gardens of the Generalife (hen-er-al-eef-eh), originally from the 14th century, are so beautiful to see and to smell. No one knows what the original gardens look like because of so many changes over the centuries. The fountains' gurgling gives the environment a steady, calming feel. Our tour guide said that the Christians weren't too fond of the fountains because they felt the water was too noisy. Water is all over this place by way of fountains, irrigation, water falls. Generalife means "architect's garden," referring to the architect of life.

          Stalactite arch. Everything is meticulously carved and decorated in seemingly infinite patterns.

Typically, Muslims did not sculpt images of people and/or animals. We were told that this fountain in the middle of the Alhambra is a Christian influence and symbolizes power.

                                                    Spain's Coat of Arms in the Alhambra

                                                               Carvings from the Koran

This is the ceiling above where the Sultan would sit and listen to people in the community. The pattern is repeated stars and are to represent the levels of heaven.

This is our tour guide, Victor, in the plaid shirt showing us the evolution of the Alhambra. He led our tour in English.

This plaque signifies the room where American writer Washington Irving stayed and was inspired by this magnificent place. He wrote the book Tales from the Alhambra.