Back to the Beginning

Our first day out with our tour guide.

 With my studies out of the way, a little bit of back-blogging is in order. ;)  As most of you know, Emily and I were in the States from the end of June through mid-July.  Angelines and a friend's daughter were there for the first two weeks and then Em and I were on our own for about ten days.

Our trip was mostly family oriented.  Having a baby means there are a lot of people who want to see "us" (really her).  Not that I mind.  I am of course, the number one fan of showing off my most adorable daughter. :)

However, we did begin our trip with some (mostly) pure tourism--Philadelphia.  I say "mostly" because, of course, although Independance Hall and the Liberty Bell are alluring attractions, my dear friend, Miriam is, much more so.  Our plan was to visit Miss M. and make a more gradual adjustment to the time difference.  As it turns out, thinking that a stop on the East Coast would lessen our jet-lag was a huge error; we managed to extend it by at least three or four days.  Travelling with a baby means jet-lag like no other.  Adults will lie in bed in a half-sleep until a semi-decent hour to get up...but Emily was up and babbling at 8am Spain time: 3:00am Eastern Standard.

All of this means we ended our days in the nation's first capital completely wiped out by 6pm.  Still, we were able to see some of the city and of course Miriam's company was enjoyed to it's fullest.  And although things got off to a rough start--our friend's daughter lost her bag!--we did manage to see the most important emblems of the city, visit a ship festival on the Delaware river, enjoy an Israli dinner, eat fresh-baked bagels and stroll along the Schuylkill waterfront.

It was a brief visit, but we enjoyed as much as sleep deprivation would allow.  After just three days we said our good byes and headed West.

Can you tell her dress is red, white and blue for her visit to Independance Hall?

Liberty Bell and Independance Hall in the background.

TFG

That stands for Trabajo Fin de Grado--my final project to obtain my Education degree here in Spain.  I am done.  100%.  I turned in my paper before our trip to the States (more on that in future blogs; I promise!) and yesterday was the defense.  I'll cut to the chase and give you details in a minute: the panel really enjoyed my presentation and my paper/proposal.  They gave me a 9.1 out of 10 which ammounts to the highest grade posible: sobresaliente. :)  I was on cloud nine.  It felt great to be done, but to go out with such a bang was icing on the cake.

The panel is made up of two professors from the UNIR (my university) and one professor invited from another Spanish university.  Since this is just a four-year degree more or less equivalent to a Bachelor's the defense is pretty minimal.  My presentation could be no more than 15 minutes and then an additional fifteen minutes or so for the panel to ask questions about my paper.

I was the very last presenter of the day.  They'd been at it since 9am with two hours for lunch.  My presentation was at 7:30pm.  I was nervous about being last because I know what it's like to be in that kind of situation where you're expected to be paying close attention for hours on end.  I was sure that come time for my presentation, the panel would be more than ready to be done, and I'd have to really work to keep their attention.

When I walked in the room, I immediately recognized one of the men--the president of the university!  As it turns out, he is also a specialist in Personalized Education (a key part of my paper: *gulp*).  Before I began, another member of the panel introduced herself as being a specialist in photography!  All of this was apparently coincidence, since the panel members have no control over the papers they read/grade.  I was just a bit nervous going into it knowing that there were two experts in my specific area watching and listening to what I had to say.

All went well.  I actually felt quite calm during the presentation, and I'm sure that came across.  They got a huge kick out of my Andalusian accent, and specifically complemented me on my level of fluency. ;)  More importantly, however, they were very impressed by my paper and genuinely interested in what I had to say.  I think we went over time with the question answer period because there was just so much to comment on and talk about.  Really, we could have continued all evening.

Once they had confered about my grade and called me back into the room to tell me, they ended by encouraging me to please consider continuing with this line of study in a Masters or Doctorate program because they thought I had really hit upon something original, cutting-edge and nonetheless sadly under-developed in the field of education. I was quite flattered to say the least.

So now I'm done.

In many ways this degree has been more important to me than my studies in the U.S.  I did my Bachelor's in the States almost out of intertia.  Not that I didn't enjoy it or think it was important, but I was too young (I think) to really know what I would do with my degree or even how it would influence my future.  I knew it was important, but that was about it.

This time, I made a concious decision to go back to school because I needed my degree in Education to continue doing what I've discovered that I love--teaching.  This degree has been very closely related to my life and work since I began five years ago and it hasn't always been easy to maintain motivation or find time to work between other life events.  The fact that I have finished despite it all, and especially getting such a great grade, honestly make me very proud of myself.

As I left the building, I had the sensation of watching myself. I felt so grown up, so professional in my dress clothes and glowing from an exhilirating discussion with doctors in my field of work--I couldn't believe the woman I was seeing was me!  Little Viola from PHS, standing in Madrid, Spain after having finished her second univerity degree, this time with a family and work in mix (!?¡).  It was a wonderful, but strange feeling.  Apparently I'm an adult.

Piggy Playtime

Just a cute video to share.  I don't know why the focus was going in and out...darn camera.  Emily wasn't really interested in her pig, but she's so darn cute, I wanted to share the video anyway.  I just love how she sits by herself--such a big girl!

Discovering Spaghetti!

...And here's the video. :)  Hope you like it as much as Em likes spaghetti! ;)

The Dirtiest Diaper

So some of you know that we have begun cloth diapering.  Emily has extremely sensitive skin and so we have switched over to cloth in hopes that the lack of chemicals and bleaches in disposable diapers would clear up her chronic diaper rash.  I made the purchase on Amazon--the cheapest diapers I could find at about 6 bucks a piece.  I bought twelve and since for some silly reason they wouldn't ship to Spain, my mom brought them to me when she came.  So it's been about a month and a half with the cloth diapers and so far so good.  I wish I could say they worked miracles and her diaper rash went away for good, but alas, that isn't so.  We still struggle with a pretty nasty rash although for nearly a week now her little bottom is looking better than ever--not even a red spot!

Anyway, it's been a month and a half of diaper washing for me.  Being nearly 100% breastfed still, her diapers are pretty easy to wash and not really even too stinky.  I liken it to when your dog licks you: you don't mind, 'cause it's your dog...but someone else's dog kinda grosses you out.  Same with poop, it turns out.  I don't really mind washing her diapers, but I'm sure most of you can't even stand the thought! ;)

Spaghetti selfie! Bon appetit!

Things have become interesting on the diaper front since we've begun introducing solid foods.  And by solid I mean actually solid.  We are not giving Emily blended baby foods at all.  She eats what we eat, or a version of what we eat.  The interesting thing is that it seems as though nearly all of what she eats passes through unchanged!  I find bits of carrot, pepper, tomato, etc. in her diapers daily and I am amazed that her little digestive system doesn't do a more effective job of breaking this stuff down!  It turns out that teeth and chewing really are an important part of digestion!

But I'm getting off track.  Except for bananas, it seems as though most everything else changes very little on it's trip through her intestines and therefore her stool has continued to be the trademark liquid yellow of a breastfed baby.

Yesterday she had spaghetti.  She loved it!  I will post a video in a minute.  It was adorable how she sucked down the noodles!  Angelines, of course, was worried she'd choke and wanted to pull the noodles back out, but I insisted that she leave her be--I am an expert at swallowing whole noodles (see Ramen post from a few weeks back!) and know that there's no harm done so long as it's going down the right pipe.  Sure enough, Em was fine and slurpped down noodle after noodle. :)

It was all fun and games until she went to the bathroom today!  I haven't washed a dirtier diaper in my short experience of cloth diapering.  Talk about full!  I will spare the details...but let's just say I won't be smiling quite so much the next time spaghetti's on the menu.

...But the pictures are pretty cute, right?  This family certainly knows how to have fun with food!

For some reason Bela has begun taking more of an interest in the baby lately... ;)

Between Bites

Once again, I am eating and blogging.  It seems that weekends, when Angelines is at work and I've put Emily down for the night, are really the only time I can squeeze a blog in!  Aside from a quick video here or there. ;)

And once again, I am working on my project...or rather taking a study break to eat.  This weekend has been very productive, I'm happy.  I know I haven't really blogged about my topic so you're all in the dark as far as what I'm working on is concerned; all, that is, except my mom who's been my sounding board from the beginning. :)

So the short answer to the question: "What's your capstone project about?" would be: it's a lesson plan.  The longer version would be something along these lines: It's a lesson plan grounded in research that uses CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) to combine the teaching of arts edcation with English as a means of furthering personalized education.  Whew!

Way back when I was hemming and hawing about what I should do for my project, I decided that the most practical was to do a lesson plan (of sorts) pertaining to English teaching, since it is very likely that I will be teaching English and can perhaps someday actually put my plan to use.  Not all of the capstone projects are so practical.  Some are purely research based, some are original research, etc.  And although you might be thinking that it's obvious that I would choose English, you're wrong.

I decided to go back to school to get my degree in Elementary Education here in Spain primarily because I decided I loved teaching...just not teaching English!  I suppose that's not entirely true, but the fact is that I am a curious person and love learning about lots of things (thus teaching a variety of things).  Limiting myself to English education just seemed too boring.  I wanted to be able to open up the posibility of teaching science, art, math, or language arts.

In choosing the topic for my project I was going back and forth as to whether or not I should even deal with English at all!  But the more practical side of me won out and so here I am; however, you'll note that I am combining it with arts education to spice things up.  In fact, CLIL is really about teaching content through an additional language so it's right up my alley. :)

I have dcided to focus on photography--a long-time love of mine--and the manipulation of images through new technologies (Photoshop, etc.).  Surprisingly there are some parallels between my current project and my thesis from way back at Pacific on ficcion vs. fact in literature.  I have chosen to work with the art of Catalan photographer, Joan Fontcuberta who plays constantly with the line between what's real and what comprises fiction.

His most famous photographs are part of collections that are entirely "false" so to speak.  For example, in one show he worked with another artist as well as taxidermists to create an elaborate farce about the astounding Darwinian discoveries of a Dr. Ameisenhaufen, a German zoologist from the 50's.  The alleged doctor discovered many fantastic creatures such as a centaur-like animal with the body of a monkey, flying elephants or legged snakes.  All of these discoveries were documented along with the "original" sketches of Dr. Ameisenhaufen.  The re-discovery of these amazing documents was displayed in a show called "Fauna".  After viewing the show, they found that 30% of visitors between 20-30 yrs, with university training believed the photos to be true!

Many of his shows run along similar lines, challenging the idea that so many of us have of photography as an objective reflection of reality.  When really, the truth is that even when there is no manipulation per se, all photography is subjective because of course we only take pictures of exactly what we want others to see...  And so in my project I am using his work to introduce the idea of photo-manipulation and challenging the students to look critically at the images that surround us, particularly in advertising.

The final product is due the 26th of June.  As some of you know, I will be in Philadelphia with my dearest friend Miriam at that point so the due date for me is a bit earlier.  So far I have finished a first (very rough) draft of the theoretical framework grounding my lesson plan and am plugging away at the acutal classroom application part of it all currently.  We must include all the worksheets/presentations that we mention as materials in the write up, so I am not only writing, but drawing up powerpoint presentations and worksheets like crazy! I would like to turn in the first draft of my actual lesson plan tomorrow, but I'm not sure I'll have all the materials made.  As it stands now, I am pretty much finished detailing each session, but I have yet to make up some of the materials.  We shall see.  Perhaps it will have to be Tuesday.

Wish me luck.  I'm back to work. ;)

A Li'l Drinker!

Another day in the life of Emily's lunch-time adventures!  Although most days she's very interested in her food, she still isn't great about getting much of it into her mouth.  Today's meal was a bit of rice, boiled carrot, squash, pico and a slice of nectarine.  She was pretty interested in the rice; so much so that Angelines couldn't help herself and began feeding her from her own fork.  Emily loved it!  I think she stuffed herself on rice!  But the highlight of the meal was by far when she took it upon herself to drink from her glass.

They say that you needn't give breastfed babies any other liquids, although it's a good idea to offer water with food.  Angelines has been giving her water in a glass for several weeks now.  The truth is she drinks really well.  The times we've tried a sippy cup it just hasn't worked at all...and I'd just as soon she not get used to a bottle even this late in the game.  Today after helping her drink a little, she seemed like she wanted to do it herself, but wasn't quite sure how to grab the cup.  She kept wanting to do it with just one hand like she does her food.  Angelines helped her do it with two hands once and that was that!

Here's a quick video for you all--so cute!




Just to clarify, the first time there was nothing in the cup; and she had been doing much better than you see here before I thought to grab the camera.  Pretty good, huh?