Week Two - What a week it's been!

So I want to start with an apology and a thanks for your patience!  This week has been such an adventure, filled with learning, meeting new people and a lot of fun!  At the same time, it's been extremely time consuming!  I've been taking notes all week but didn't have time to organize my thoughts into coherent posts.  I'll do my best tonight but please keep in mind that I've done about 10 hours of homework this weekend and my brain is a bit fried so please excuse any mistakes.  The work doesn't take all that much brain power but it is very time consuming.  

Day 6 - My first day of school:

School started today.  What a long, great, information filled day.  The teachers are amazing and from what I understand, they took it easy on us today.  We had an overview of what we're going to be learning and doing. In addition, we started with some lessons and even observed a recent grad (yes she graduated on Friday) teach a C1 level class.  There are 6 levels in total, starting with A1 and ending in C2 so C1 are pretty advanced.  She played a few games with them including Pictionary, story-boarding and the one where you say a word and the next word has to start with the last letter.  For example, dog and then great.  And that's another thing we learned - teach by using examples.  See how fast I learn.  I'm well on my way to being a fantastic teacher.  They also showed us around the joint and all the resources we have access to.  In addition, they provided us lunch, which was a mix of typical Spanish foods like paella, meats, cheeses, potato things - one like a pie and was croquettes, olives, breads, and even a glass of vino (wine).  My classmates are fantastic as well.  Everyone is so friendly and they all have such interesting stories of why they're here.  

Blog - Day 7

Another intense day of learning but I have to say that TtMadrid, www.ttmadrid.com, is doing a fantastic job of breaking down the information into sizable chunks for us, at least as much as possible. Today we learned about verbs, grammar terminology and did another observation. Today we observed one of our teachers who had been doing this for a few years.  She was great!!  The class was also a lot of fun!!!  They did three different games that incorporated the lesson.  I had asked after yesterday's lesson which was all about sounds like Zoom!, Ring!, Slam! if all the lessons were that much fun and was told 'it's all what you make it'.  And today I know that's correct.  

I had dinner with two gals who are in the class with me.  Great people with really interesting stories and backgrounds!

Also, I've heard some people mention that Madrid has 340 beautiful days a year.  I guess Colorado wasn't enough with 300 beautiful days - I needed 40 additional beautiful days.

Blog - Day 8

More learning about lesson planning, classroom management and a third observation.  I'm learning so much of what we can expect in our new careers from these observations and let me tell you, I have a lot to look forward to!  Fun, games, creativity and meeting new amazing people are all in store for me.  Life doesn't get much better that this (assuming I make it through the training).  

I had lunch with three of the gals from class and had cocido again, Madrid's national dish- just as yummy as the first time I had it!!

Dinner and drinks with my fellow classmates.  Great people and great conversations.  I love hearing everybody's stories!  I had croquettes that came with fries and 4 glasses of wine.  All of a sudden it was 11:30 - I guess time really does fly when you're having fun!!

Blog - Day 9

More learning - lunch at school (left over Cocida) - chatted with some of my peers and teachers. We were supposed to have working lunch but that didn't happen. 

So part of our training is learning a new language so we can put ourselves in our students shoes.  Half the class is learning Russian and the other half is learning Croatian.  I'm part of the Croatian group.  It really is amazing how this process and teaching methodology works.  By the end of the 50 minute session, the students were able to say with proficiency, "hello my name is ____, I come from ____, I am feeling <either happy, so so or sad>, I am ___ years old." They could also count to 10 and count to 100 by 10's.  Totally blew my mind.  I observed this class.  The Croatian class is next week so I'll be able to do something similar by then.  See the pic of the sentences and words in Russian.

Stayed late to finish assignment.  Then home - stopped for two small sandwiches for dinner. Did homework and went to bed.  By the way, I love the portions here.  I haven't felt full since I've been here.  It's a lot of smaller meals.  The big meal here is lunch which is great!  I've been part of the 'clean plate club every single day since I've been here.  I think back in the States I was a member maybe 15 times in my entire life... 

Blog - Day 10

Fun day - games in the morning.  We learned about the power of games in the classroom - which is right up my alley.  What a great career choice - I'm now going to be paid to teach and drill home concepts via games.  As a group we were tasked to come up with a game to teach the group and play.  As it turned out all 3 groups choose the same concept - 2 of the groups did the exact same one.  Needless to say, it was a ton of fun. 

In the afternoon we worked on our lesson plans for the class I'm going to teach on Monday. Yes, you read that right - I'm teaching a class on Monday afternoon - my 2nd week of school. And the craziest part is I'm feeling pretty good about it.  I have my lesson plan outline and I'm going to turn that into my actual lesson plan later today.  I think if I follow that, keep the excitement/enthusiasm at a good level (I tend to get over excited - I need to keep that in check), bottom-line everything (say as few words as possible) and remember to breathe I think I'll be OK.  According to the teachers, if we don't puke or pass out, were in good shape.  

After school, we had dinner and drinks with some alumni from last month.  It was fun and we wound up staying out till 1:30. Again, needless to say, I slept really well!!!

More to come - probably mid-week or over the weekend.  According to the alumni, week 3 is the killer week where everything that's due catches up with us.  Wish me luck that I make it through.  Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section.  I love hearing from you all!