I.E.S. Marques de Lozoya

I think I've already discussed that I.E.S. Marques de Lozoya (Mar-keys-de-Lo-thoy-ya)(say it with the lisp, its ok)is the school that I'm working at this year. There are about 70 teachers and its always someone's birthday! What a random comment, right? Well in Spain, on your birthday, you give the gifts to everyone else. Go out to the bar? You buy the drinks. Come to the teacher's lounge on your birthday? Better bring some cookies, Ben needs a midday snack! Sometimes teachers buy everyone a coffee for their birthday (their tab is about 60-70$). If I am somehow rich around the time of my birthday then I might consider that option because there should never be a shortage of espresso (or any kind of other teacher pleasing substance such as cookies) in I.E.S. MdL. The reason for that I'll discuss briefly in a section called Kids Please Try to be Quiet, You Just Ruptured My Eardrum. But ahem, that's for later.

When might teachers have time to take a coffee break in between their strenuous (enter: sarcasm) 50 min classes? Well first I think I need to share another interesting detail about my school: there is no cafeteria. There is no "lunch" period per say. THERE IS A PERIOD, but I have grown accustomed to calling it (in my head no less) the Chaos Period. Similar to Chaos Theory in how little I understand about what is actually going on, this period occurs twice throughout the day, once at 1015-1030 and 1215-1230. I swear when the bell rings at 1015 and 1215, there are shrieks and screams of joy, fear, hatred, Spanish, hunger, rage, you name it. The moment the bell rings kids swarm into the hall and proceed to pull little snacks from out of nowhere and eat them while screeching away with their little friends all over the school. Teachers make a B-line for the espresso bar.

Kids Please Try to be Quiet, You Just Ruptured My Eardrum
I have a class with a teacher named Angel (something something something something) Salvador. His name translates to something like the Savior Angel, its funny but not important. What is important is that when I'm trapped in a small room with the worst, most echo-y acoustics of all time while a bunch of kids scream ANNN-HEELLLL ANN-HELLLL all at the same time in whiny voices similar to that of a puppy kennel, I want to take a few shots of alcoh-....Espresso to keep myself from going crazy. Angel told me one time after a class "I feel like I need to start using drugs to be able to deal with this class" haha. And so I cannot fault any teachers (or certain assistants) for their espresso (cookie) habits, because otherwise I really think a lot of these teachers would go insane.

I'm going to give you a little overview of some of my teachers.

Beatriz (Be-a-trizzthe) (Be-a-lisp-the-rest-of-the-way)

me : *sitting, reading my kindle one day*
B: WHeneh the Poh is so Elmo.
M: ......?
B: Weeneh the Pooh is so Emo.
M: WHO? Winnie the Pooh????
B: Yeah, he's so Emo.

(This is an Emo Spongebob for reference. Emo stands for Emotional and Emo kids are kids that wear black and sulk around. It's similar to Goth but less Satanic haha)

Another teacher overhearing us: Emo? What is Emo?
M: It means Emotional.
B: Yeah, you know those kids that dress up in black all of the time and are so depressed.
M: Yeah...but why is Winnie the Pooh Emo? I think he's happy, wouldn't you be happy if you were eating honey all day? C'mon, that sounds great.
B: He's so depresssssing though! He lives in that tree and his friend is that dumb Pig and all he does is eat. (I vaguely remember her responding that Winnie is maybe eating his sorrows away ahahaha)
M: Why not his friend Eeyore, you know? The donkey who's always walking around with the deep, sad voice?
B: Well with a friend like Winnie who wouldn't be depressed!

Felix
I only have one class with him once every two weeks but we talk everyday in the teachers lounge. He's been teaching for a long time (since 93') but he still looks like he's in his mid-late 30s. He's the typical Bachelor teacher and is always trying to get me to download the cool APs that he has on his iDevice. He wears H&M most days (I know this because I was shocked by the teacher dress code of jeans and t-shirts, and he told me that he buys all of his stuff at H&M). I don't really have any funny stories about him yet but he's a really nice guy.

Anna - Head of the English department but the teacher with the thickest accent(?). I typically have Bachillerato (batchy-er-rato) classes with her AKA the sixteen year olds who act like I'm pulling their teeth when I ask questions or make them do anything. The only time I ever get them to respond is when I tell them what I did on the weekend (went drinking, read a book, etc) and they are of the age (at 16 most kids are allowed to drink alcohol in Europe fyi) where that's what they do most weekends minus the book reading. I told them that I was reading something similar to Harry Potter (I'm reading Game of Thrones and before you go thinking that that is a terrible thing to compare to Harry Potter, just wait) and so I'm like:

"Harry Potter...Harry...Potter??? HARRY POTTER. HP. Boy wizard...Harry Potttaaaaaaaaaaa?"
*blank stares from the entire class*
I start to laugh because I think its absurd that they don't understand what I'm saying. Yet I continue
"Hair....REEE...POtter? No, nothing?" Then I write in on the board and they all have this epiphany and are like 'Arry Potter! Why didn't you say so Ben!? They really didn't say that last sentence but they acted like it. So then I'm like

"Ok so who here has read Harry Potter?" The answer to that is no one. Someone said they had seen the movies and I wanted to just scream Avada Kedavra! The movies SUCK! I did still tell them that the movies suck but I didn't kill them, no...but none of them have any clue what HP is, nor do they know what Lord of the Rings is about. So in the end I just went to the board and wrote 'Game of Thrones'. Then I'm like

"You know what a game is obviously. Do you know the world throne?.......You know, what a king sits on?...A King...Un Rey?"
"Ohh yess yes yess Ben we know what a king is now, rey is king."
Me: "Ok so do you know this word, throne? It's the chair that the king sits in. A chair of kings...una silla de reyes" I start to build an invisible chair in mid air in front of them because apparently the word silla (see-ya)(means chair)(one of the easiest spanish words ever!) is utterly lost upon them.
"OhhhHHH yes, TRONO! Trono Ben, trono."

I do not find that there is a huge difference between Throne and Trono. A non-Spanish speaking person could probably get around Spain by the simple fact that so many English and Spanish words share like 50-80% of the same letters. Moral of the story: Bachilleratos are lazy, so whatever.

I'll save my other teachers for another day. I'll try to update this again on Thursday before I head off to Burgos (2 hours north) for the long weekend.