My husband dead!

It's been 2 weeks, wow. I apologize for not updating for such a long time but nothing of interest has happened recently and I'd rather put nothing on this blog than something that isn't interesting or funny. For Halloween my mom sent me this stuff ------->

I don't really like candy corn that much (an entire bags worth? no) so I brought the remainder of my supply to school and shared it with the teachers. They were all freaking out! They had never had this before and thought it was so tasty. Even the other English assistant was like "Whaaaa!? Candy Corn!". She said it reminded her of home a lot (me too). Never again will I underestimate the nostalgic power of Candy Corn.

For a size comparison of that peanut butter container (2lbs 8oz) here's another picture:

 I was going for something similar to the bowler hat painting hahah.

There isn't much rhyme or reason to this post other than a few interesting things that have happened to me recently. I went to a cave party...which is literally a party we had in a cave that we found under my friend's apartment complex. My friend Claire lives near the Alcazar (the castle) and in the garage of her complex is a door that leads into this medieval cave/tunnel. It used to be connected to the castle. I can guarantee that there will be plenty of parties in the cave this year :).

Angel's Class by idiomsir?

This is an audio track I took of my loud class in a room that sounds echo-y enough to be a cave. Turn to this up to full volume and you'll understand how it feels to be in their presence. They were asking each other History questions in English. There's obviously also a large amount of Spanish going on too (duh). This is a typical class for me.

Next are some videos I have taken in the past week. Two weeks ago my class acted out a short story called Lamb to the Slaughter. This week another teacher liked the idea so we did it again with a different class. I decided that videos had to be taken because there are so pretty funny moments to note. The first video starts as the girl on the right (playing a guy named Patrick) just told his pregnant wife (played by the girl on the left in blue) that he was leaving her. It (leaving someone) was kind of a weird phrase to explain to the kids. I was like "It's kind of a like a divorce, but not really but kind of. When two people don't love each other any more one of them might just leave/go away." A short synopsis of the story: A man is about to leave his wife for another woman, woman kills man with a frozen piece of lamb, which she then sticks in the oven (the drawer in the teacher's desk haha) and then she goes to the store and buys some groceries, then she comes home and calls the police and when they come they don't discover anything and she invites them to dinner, where they eat the weapon (the lamb) that she used to kill the husband. This first video starts after the wife kills her husband.






My favorite part of this first video is towards the very end, when one of the kids says "there is some frozen dew here (or some word I can't quite make out)" (or something very similar to that) referring to Patrick's body. Now, the entire time they're acting this play out the kids are just kind of winging it and not saying the lines exactly (obviously, if you listen to what the kids actually say), BUT this one kid really wanted to take the play to a whole new level and kept asking me if we could do all of these really complicated, ridiculous things. He wanted everyone to say their lines accurately and wanted the lamb (which was just a dictionary) to be hidden out the window because its cold outside and that would act as a 'freezer' of sorts. I was just like, No, no no no no to everything he said mostly. SO THEN at the very end he adds that frozen dew line which is extra hilarious because A) its not even in the play and B) half of these kids can't form a complete sentence most of the time, yet one of them adds his own line and its about frozen dew, how does he even know what that is! It made me laugh.




This is the second video and has its own share of highlights.
-In the first scene the kid forgets his line for about 20 seconds until the teacher bails him out
-the pregnant wife has no baby bump and doesn't pay the grocer for the food she gets (which the teacher and I laughed about)
-"My husband dead!"
Police-"We have to find the weapon."
Wife-"Would you like to have some supper?"
Police-"....yes."

Halloween and other things

Halloween is not important in Spain. Monday was the saddest Halloween I've ever been apart of. I did not dress up because I had just gotten back from a weekend in Burgos (which consisted of drinking nice, cheap beers and nursing hangovers) and none of my friends were dressing up. Halloween is a Celtic Holiday so you'd think the Irish would have kind of spread the tradition throughout Europe by now...but nope. Everyone laughs at it in Spain (and France too, I hear) and the people who do dress up all look the same: zombie makeup, which is just a really white face with maybe some blood and black raccoon eyes. Lame!

Adding to the sadness of my Monday also was the fact that I was at a bar and during the DJ's "dance music set" (heavy air quotes), they played Grease.......I'm talking Grease Lightning. And it was in no way sarcastic, lemme tell you. Now just let that realization sink in....

I have taken a few interesting pictures since the last time I posted.

 Here is the cathedral in Burgos. Once you've seen one cathedral, you've kind of seen them all! It's a massive, amazing, churchly structure.

 This is a sign in my school's gymnasium. My favorite is the title, slightly cut off in the top left: English ZONE. Maybe I should enter class every day while cracking my knuckles and telling the kids its time to GET INTO THE ENGLISH ZONE.

 Today I had two gym classes and I basically played Ping Pong the entire day with the kids. I think this is going to happen a lot because I mentioned to the gym teacher Eloy that Ping Pong is my favorite sport. He had me teach kids how to hold a paddle and hit the ball, hahah really tough day for me. If its possible to click on the picture to enlarge it, one will notice that these tables are just colored pieces of that ply wood that you might for example find at a new construction site or  decide to burn in a bonfire. The paddles we use are plastic and have felt cloth where you hit the ball. My Ping Pong Elitism left me without words the first time I saw this setup but Eloy says that the kids will ruin a net after a day (yeah I haven't even mentioned the 'net', it's also as you can see a piece of wood) and that the paddles pretty much have to be the strongest material possible because they'll be broken easily as well.

I tried to make a sound recording of the kids in Angel's class today because they were insane as always but my ipod wasn't working :(. Another time.

AND FINALLY: Nothing like walking through Cuellar seeing a guy carrying a couple of dead baby pigs on his shoulder.

*insert joke about Greased pigs*