Working away!

Just a little note and some pictures to show you the latest here at home. This week there's no school and therefore I have no private classes in the afternoons so we're taking advantage and doing some more home improvement work. The wall as on the right as you entered the house was in bad shape and so we got out the mortar that we used in the patio and have patched the worst parts. By the end of the week we're hoping to paint the room.

It's finished now, and I must say it looks pretty darned good! I think if my private classes go south I might be able to cut it as a brick-layer. ;)

Baby Bela

It's been a while since I wrote about my baby, so here's small update and some pictures:

Bela has Peter Pan Syndrome: she doesn't want to grow up because she LOVES our laps. :) Right now it seems to be working for her because she is still pretty small. We'll see what happens in a few month's time...

Controversy with France

After the recent (unfounded) accusations from France that Rafa Nadal (Spanish tennis player) and Spanish athletes in general were using steroids, I've just received this picture from a friend. Hee hee hee... (translation at the bottom)

The comparison between the famous French and Spanish omelets... What's the difference? The subtitle reads: We don't use steroids, we put more eggs into it! (for those of you who don't know "eggs" is a vulgar term equivalent to "balls" in the States). I thought it was a clever play on words.

Finals

If you're wondering where I've been for the past week, the answer is studying! I can't seem to get things under control enough so that I don't have to cram in the last week/s before my finals... Oh well. I have been getting up around 6am for the past week and a half and catching up on classes with a sleeping puppy in my lap (that part made it all a bit nicer!) ;).

I don't tend to keep up with classes during the semester because usually I can't attend them "live" and I can never seem to find the motivation to watch them once they've been uploaded into the "virtual classroom". In the past, a lot of the classes have just been repeats of the reading and so they were also a waste of time; however, this semester it turned out there was a lot of information in the classes that wasn't in the reading, which meant I needed to do some serious catch up before the exams. I probably watched about 15 hours of classes in the past week! And that of course wasn't all of them. I did feel decently prepared for most of my exams though, and so Friday I stepped onto the train for Seville without too many pre-exam nerves.

For the second time now, I stayed with a friend of ours who lives in Seville and once again the exam location was walking distance from her house--perfect. My exam Friday evening was the one in my ICT Applied to the English Classroom class. It was pretty easy. I felt a little bad because just before the exam I made a comment to a classmate that I didn't think it should be too difficult and she responded that she was worried because there were a lot of definitions, etc. They give you two hours for the exams. I finished in 45 min. The poor girl behind me looked at me with a mix of shock and envy when I turned in my exam and headed out. I should have told her I was American...

Saturday was pretty tough. I had my three hardest exams all back-to-back: Teaching Theory of Natural Sciences, Teaching Theory of Social Sciences and Teaching Theory of Spanish Language (in that order). The first wasn't terrible, but I was scribbling up to the very last min of my two hours and my hand hurt a little. I dashed to a nearby shopping mall to grab something fast for lunch and then raced back for my Social Sciences exam--UGH! That was pretty killer.

Most of the exams always have a multiple choice portion and even though the questions can be tricky and they dock points for a wrong answer (as opposed to being equal to 0), I still feel like having a multiple choice section gives a little wiggle room in terms of the final grade. Well, this exam was entirely written. There were four short-answer questions (1/2 a page each), one practical question (two pages) and one essay question (4 pages)! The good thing about this test was that as a study guide the teacher gave us a long list of all the possible questions so we could study accordingly. Of course, since I wasn't in class, I realized this a little late. I was able to study (answer) most of the short-answer questions, but I didn't have time for much else. The practical questions I had worked on weren't on the test...and the essay question was totally a shot in the dark. I answered my 4 short-answer questions as thoroughly as possible to guarantee the full four points and then pulled out my best B.S.ing skills for the rest of the exam and crossed my fingers that from the load of #%&@! I put down on the page, I'd be able to scrounge up one point to make a total of five, the passing grade.

Once again I was writing up to the last second and by this time my hand was ready to fall off. My Language Arts exam was fine except that it was hard to focus on what I wanted to say because I could swear the tendons in my right hand were swelling. I was beginning to wish I were ambidextrous! Even though I take extensive notes throughout the semester (many of the classes have all the reading uploaded online so I can't underline in the book), I'm still not used to writing so much at one time, especially not under pressure when I'm gripping the pen as though my life depended on it. But even if I were to relax a bit more, the real issue is that they give you very limited space for your answers and so you have to write small if you have a lot to say, regardless of how good you are and summarizing and being concise.

Today was my last exam: Education in Visual Arts. It was fairly easy, although I did have a lot to say and so once again my hand was hurting after an hour and 3/4. I finished at 10:20am and headed back to my friend's to pack before catching the train home. It was a good weekend really. I think I did well on all the exams except that one, although I do hope that I was able to pull a five. Repeating that test would be a nightmare, let me tell you.

So now I am home with my girls. Angelines has been slaving away all weekend with Carnaval celebrations here in town. She dressed as a pirate and was apparently interviewed by the local TV station--something she HATES! All the pubs in town got together to throw one big party and split the $$. It's a good idea, but a lot of work and she didn't go to bed "last night" until 8 am this morning! Now she's at it again since this afternoon are the celebrations for the kids. So Angelines was virtually gone all weekend, too and my poor Bela has been somewhat neglected. Some friends fed her dinner for us Friday and Saturday and even took her for walks, but she was mighty happy to see me this morning! :) I love dogs!

I just got back from a LONG walk with her and she's curled up by the wood stove sound asleep.

Life is good again.

A Waggley Tail

"In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag."

--W.H. Auden

I just wanted to share this with you. I got a 10 on my final project in my Technology in the English class. :) This brings my total for my work during this semester to 100% (4/4 points), so even if I just pass the exam I'll still get a 7/10 total in the class.

If I had a tail, I'd be wagging it just like my little Bela. And just to make me feel even happier, this is the teacher's comment (the story she mentions is the one I wrote on storybird): "And I have enjoyed a lot with your story... I am glad that you have also enjoyed creating your material using the tools shown in the last three units. I am really sure that you will be an excellent teacher. Good luck on your final exams!"

Candelaria y Compañía

February second is Ground hog Day for us, but here in Spain they celebrate the candelaria. No large rodents or shadows involved in this fiesta, instead we have big bonfires and stuff ourselves with chorizo and filetes--yum!

The tradition comes (if I'm not mistaken) from pre-Christian times when people lit fires to light the long winter nights and celebrate the beginning of lengthening days. Of course the solstice was back in December, but really about now is when you can start to appreciate the change in daylight.

As with most heathen traditions, the church adopted this one and it became a celebration honoring the Virgin here in Spain. The fire's light represents the light of the Virgin Mary. Another tradition during this holiday is the presentation of new babies to the Virgin: babies born in the past year are presented to the Virgin in a special mass.

Last Thursday my friends and I celebrated the candelaria with a roaring fire, lots of food and drink and plenty of sevillanas (no babies or Virgins present). The official celebration, however, was this weekend. There were huge bonfires all over town. The next morning it reeked of wood smoke in the streets and there were plenty of people complaining about the ashy mess they had to clean up from windows, patios, balconies and front doors. ;)

For the weekend's celebration a friend from Sevilla and her boyfriend came to town. Sunday, we met up for our pre-lunch cervecitas in Leiva bar and in the end everyone decided to come over to the house to eat rather that order at the bar. It's been a long time since I had company over--it was fabulous! Luckily that morning I happened to have made stuffed eggplants and I had a garbanzo stew in the fridge that I was planning to freeze. There were seven of us and only one eggplant was leftover when we were through.

As usual, the un-planned get-togethers are the best. We threw a table cloth down, set the table, brought in all the chairs we have, heated the food and crammed around the dining room table for a great lunch.

Comer bien acompañado alimenta más. ;)

Storybird.com

Have any of you heard of Storybird.com before? I learned about it through my "Technology in the English Classroom" class this semester and I have fallen in love with the site and the philosophy behind it.

Storybird is a site dedicated to "art-inspired" storytelling, as they put it. You can create your own ebooks on the web page, but it's not one of those cheesy mad-lib-style story generator sites. They've got tons of great artwork from different illustrators so what you do is choose the art you like and then click and drag it onto the pages. Essentially you write a story to go with the pictures rather than illustrating an already written story. It's a really neat idea and the art they have available is fabulous! There's also the option to invite friends to co-author stories with you. Some of you may be getting invitations soon. ;)

In class, it was presented as a creative option to enhance reading and writing skills. It's definitely got a lot of great applications as an educational tool in the classroom, but it's also just good fun! I've always loved writing and having such wonderful pictures to illustrate is fabulous. The Storybird finished product is really beautiful and another fun feature is that you can order any Storybird in a hard copy to have and read as a "real" book.

The following is my first Storybird. I'm pretty pleased because after they reviewed it for the public library (they check all stories for content before adding them to the library--all must be child-friendly) they posted it in the "New & Noted" section of their read page. :)

Enjoy!

The Perfect Shape on Storybird

I hope you'll be inspired to write your own and share. :)

Our Fire Fiasco:

Okay, don't worry, it wasn't really a fire fiasco (I was going for alliteration), but rather more of a wood stove fiasco. The story goes thusly:

Last winter, when we first moved into the house we noticed that sometimes the upstairs bedroom, through which the wood stove pipe passes, leaked smoke. Well, we talked to our landlord and she assured us that the pipes are new and had recently been cleaned, so we need only buy some special heat resistant caulking to put around the joints. We did that this past summer.

So this winter has come and we had been thoroughly enjoying our wood stove, although it did seem to smoke up the salita a bit every time we'd open the door to put on a new log! However, the last straw was about two weeks ago when black ooze was discovered seeping from one of the joints in the upstairs bedroom, despite the caulking we'd applied! The whole house smelled like a BBQ. I think this must be the same liquid they use to flavor steaks! We also noticed that smoke was leaking from one of the joints in the pipe downstairs and it was impossible to put wood on the fire without being smoked out of the house.

We stopped lighting the fire.

The trouble with our chimney is that the pipe doesn't go straight out of the roof. In the upstairs bedroom, it makes a right angle and heads out the wall where it makes another 'L' turning upwards. I was sure that in the outside 'L' there had to be a blockage because aside from all the problems in the house, the chimney had been dripping that same black ooze onto the sidewalk outside! Anyone who's visited Spain and knows about what clean-freaks Spaniards are, will understand that having a huge, black, sticky stain outside one's house is quite unacceptable, not to mention the fact that it was splashing up onto the facade of the house (and the neighbor's!). Gross. The whole situation had just gotten completely out of hand, so we call a man to come clean the pipes.

Yesterday he came. Angelines spent the morning helping take apart all the pipes, clean them out and reassemble them all. He wasn't a real "chimney sweep" so to speak, just a handy-man we know and who agreed to do the job. There were no wire brushes involved. Instead, they were stuffing newspapers through the pipes with a broomstick to clean them out...then carrying them to the dumpster and beating them to shake out any leftover soot. :) (There's more than one way to skin a cat!)

I was observing the process, standing by the dumpster, when the man looked up at me, "Have you seen Marry Poppins?," he asked, "This is something like that." :) I agreed, but then told him I wanted to see what kind of a dancer he was... he just smiled. Around 12 o'clock the job was finished and our "chimney sweep" left. We spent the rest of the morning cleaning the floors and re-caulking the pipes just in case.

Last night, we had a roaring fire for the first time in two weeks. It is just in time for the Siberian cold front that the weather man has been warning about all week. Apparently it's wreaking havoc in the rest of Europe. We'll have to see what it does down here on the Mediterranean. Whatever the weather, we've got lots of firewood and now a nice clean woodstove--what a difference!

Chim-chimney, Chim-chimney, Chim chim charoo

We will be warm whate'er the wheather will do!

;)