17 Again

I haven’t written a blog post for a while. Not really sure why. I haven’t really been any more busy than usual; life mainly consists of teaching, baking and just generally pottering around the Basque Country. However, today the weather is positively horrific and I’m stuck inside. I’m looking out of the window and it would appear that we have been engulfed in a cloud of torrential rain and angry wind.

Thus it’s a perfect time to write something. I should be doing two university assignments, preparing for next week’s school trip to an activities centre and replying to my hundreds of emails but that’s far less interesting.

I thought I would compare my school in Basque Country to my own secondary school in England as it’s something that’s been occurring to me a lot lately. I look back fondly on my days at Teign School in Kingsteignton, although I was mostly preoccupied by how straight my hair was, not pissing anybody off and taking embarrassing mirror selfies with my Sony Ericsson W810i #throwbacksaturday. FYI this was 10 years ago:

Not a lot has changed really. At Larramendi Ikastola in Mungia I am not a fully-fledged teacher yet neither am I student (though I most certainly look like one and often get mistaken for a 17 year old). So one of my favourite past times is to compare the only two secondary schools that I’ve ever really spent time in. And while these do not speak for all schools of their respective nations they do shed light on a few cultural differences.

I think the main difference is that Teign was one huge secondary school. As is pretty much the norm in England, one goes to primary until aged 11 and then progresses onto secondary. Larramendi is roughly the same size as Teign but primary, secondary and even a nursery all combined. There are quite a few schools like this in the area. I’m not really sure what purpose this serves although I’ve come to the conclusion that it must help with the jump between schools. I remember being extremely excited but generally quite terrified to leave Rydon Primary and head to Teign. You go from being the top of the school back down to the bottom. The big fish to the small fish surrounded by sharks who could flush your head down the loo at any uncalled-for moment. Although the timetables differ slightly and there is a primary area and secondary area, students regularly mix at Larramendi which seems to work pretty well.

At Teign, one moves from class to class. To get from Music in D block to RE in the 6th form building would take a good 5 minutes whilst navigating through the streams of students, not getting wet (it’s England, it’s always raining) and sticking to the one way system (yeah nobody did this). The struggle is real:

Contrastingly, at Larramendi, the teachers go to the class. Apart from the exceptions such as Chemistry in the science lab or PE (obviously), pretty much every lesson is taught to the students in what can only be classed as their form room. Again, this seems to work. Lessons are started on time, students can’t go missing, and all their stuff is in one place. Instead it’s the teachers who run around like headless chickens. Luckily, as previously stated, the school is smaller so the teachers all seem to have this under control.

There is no opportunity to buy food at break here at Larramendi. No vending machines. No tuck shops. Not even a charity bake sale (I’m still working on this one). ‘The Hatch’ at Teign School was somewhere I spent a lot of time. Despite taking an apple with me to school every day for 7 years I would regularly indulge in cookies or brownies at break time. I was a relatively healthy teenager with a weakness for baked goods. I would still tell my 13 year old self to do this. Living with a teenager has opened my eyes to the amount of pressure that teenage girls are under to look and feel perfect. I’ll save that for another blog post.

Cooked lunch at Larramendi Ikastola is provided for all students and staff (for free yaaay). There is a 3 week menu rotation but generally consists of veg, lentils, soup, pasta and meat. It’s pretty decent I’m not going to lie. It means no child brings a packed lunch with them, although most of them seem to have sandwiches of some kind for snacking on. It also means that there are strict time restraints in order to get everyone fed. I particularly enjoy holding students back after class at lunch (the ones who’ve pissed me off) and watch them panic as they realise they’re going to miss their slot. Mean right? Of course, I don’t let them starve, I just make them think I’m going to.

At Teign lunch was mayhem. I generally stuck to the cold food queue and bought baguettes or sandwiches. We had to pay daily for our food but the most common way to do this was through your smart card (bet you’d forgotten about that one). This made us feel like real grown-ups and taught us about the dangers of spending all your money on your credit at the beginning of the week when your mum has only just given you £5 to top it up.

Finally, there’s no such thing as parents evening at Larramendi. The parents have to arrange a meeting with their child’s tutor for whenever is convenient for both parties. I do not understand the logic behind this. The result is that teachers are constantly in meetings, there are parents wandering the corridors most days and parents have to give up work or siesta time to come in and hear that their child is doing well and there was no point in them coming in. At least at parents evening we got to have a good nosy at all of our classmates parents/siblings and my parents could hear from more than one teacher how much of a quiet, pleasant and hard-working nerd I was.

There are plenty more differences and, as usual, I could write forever. But I’ll stop there and let you get on with your day. I’m off to procrastinate some more and make banoffee pie.

A Life More Ordinary

Things have got a lot colder here in the depths of Basque country. The radiators are on and I’m wearing layers again. I actually wrote an entire post about the decision of David Cameron and the British parliament to join France, Russia and co and bomb areas of Syria in order to try and obliterate ISIS. Then I deleted it and decided not to write about anything too serious. There is already enough seriousness on the internet. Plus this blog is only really for friends and family to keep up-to-date with where I am and what I’m doing. Therefore this is simply about what I’ve been up to over the past couple of weeks.

Basque Country in the Autumn is simply stunning. It’s as though an artist has come along and has splattered the countryside with a thousand different shades of gold and orange. In the mornings it’s misty and we arrive at school in the dark but by lunchtime the sun is shining and the days are crisp and pleasant. It does rain here, a lot, but I find it’s easy to forget about the wet and windy days when, on nicer days, the scenery is just so beautiful. Below is the view from my bedroom window on a typically chilly and frosty morning and the other is the view from our kitchen window, later in the afternoon.

Life now consists of more normal, wintery activities such as going for a tea or coffee (or a ‘colacao’) with friends, a chilly walk along the coast, baking scrummy cakes and filling long evenings with trips to the cinema and the Guggenheim museum. I’m actually super enjoying this level of normality. Doing simple ordinary things has made me feel perfectly at home here in Spain. Popping into town on the bus to go to the shops, making chocolate chip cookies, occasionally studying etc. It’s pretty much what I’ve been doing for the last 4 years.

Last weekend some friends and I went to see The Hunger Games and have a drink down in Getxo (where the rich kids hang out). I was a tad disappointed with the film and left the cinema feeling a bit underwhelmed. I thought the action was great, if terrifying at times (there were some horrific deaths), and the visual effects were pretty good (that’s all I’ve got I’m afraid, I am no film reviewer). It just felt like there was something missing from the final instalment of what have been a great series of films. I’m pretty sure I would have thought this had I watched the film in English too. My Spanish is improving and I reckon I got about 60% of the dialogue. The fact that I’ve read the books probably helped. When we went to see Everest in Spanish a couple of months ago I hardly understood a word and had to make do with enjoying the epic, scenic shots of Nepal and putting up with Keira Knightley (or Keira Knightley’s voice dub) sobbing.

The changing season means that, as in England, running takes a back seat. My normal running route takes me into town and back (we are sort of in the suburbs) along a path called the bidegorri. Sadly I can no longer do this as it’s often getting dark by the time I arrive home from school. There’s a subway under the main road which gives me the creeps in the dark and I often feel as though a dementor could appear at any moment. There’s even a flickering light to add to the already-tense atmosphere. What I have discovered is that, should I need to run away from anything such as dementors, I wouldn’t do very well as my fitness level has decreased dramatically. I could put it down to things such as the stress of teaching teenagers, being too busy to exercise or my change in diet but I basically need to eat less cake and drink less beer. Having said this I hope that, in the event of a dementor encounter, my magic would be of a high enough standard by now to produce a life-saving patronus charm. I’ve always hoped that my patronus is some kind of handsome wild cat like a leopard or a cheetah.

Most likely it’s a sloth or a koala.

I miss my running when I can’t do it as, at the moment, I’m not really doing any other form of exercise (aside from the not-so-regular horse riding). However, I was invited to play ‘padel’ for the first time on Wednesday with some other language assistants and one of their host dads. It’s very similar to tennis or squash except there’s no strings on the racket and you play it inside a huge metal cage. This was an enjoyable experience for me, though I will not be changing my career path to that of a professional padel player any time soon (ha, what career path?).

Things were made more exciting by the fact that we played on the middle court of 3, next to basketball courts and various other pitches and were therefore surrounded by my students. I also saw the lovely man who set up my bank account for me. Oh the joys of teaching in a small town.

Christmas is on its way but you wouldn’t necessarily know it here as they don’t really do the big build up. However, we do have 4 advent calendars in the house thanks to my lovely family and friends in England who felt it vital that I get my daily dose of Cadburys chocolate throughout December. Cheeky Monkey and Tormenta have never had an advent calendar here before (they don’t seem to exist?!) and were super excited at the prospect of opening a small door to find an even smaller chocolate behind it for the next 24 days. To make things even better, one of my advent calendars is an Avengers one. I wasn’t quick enough to hide it from them so we rotate who gets to open the door and eat the chocolate.

The only other clue that Christmas is around the corner is the bus loads of school kids that come to visit the house of Olentzero (Basque Santa, see previous blog post for more details). I only found out a couple of days ago that it is simply chance that I live next door to Olentzero because people from all over the Basque country come here to Mungia to visit him. I had no idea how lucky I was. I’m sure we will visit at some point and when Cheeky Monkey asked what I was going to request for Christmas I said maybe the ability to speak Spanish fluently, an endless supply of baking ingredients or for the UK to not bomb Syria. I think I’ll have to ask for something smaller like a pencil case. I need a pencil case. At the moment my highlighters are loose in my bag somewhere.

Having said that there is little sign of the festive season, we did find some Christmas lights in Mungia recently. This is a photo of me and the daughter of a family friend who has taken a liking to me. She’s super cute and has taught me the colours in Basque. We have fun drawing and colouring-in whilst the grown-ups talk about the weather and other important things. I think I might bring her home with me when I come back at Christmas time.

Cloudy With a Chance of Tortilla

I have decided that teaching an English speaking class can be considered in terms of making a tortilla de patata – both of which I am currently in the process of learning to master. Tortilla de patata is possibly the most Spanish (and most delicious food) you can eat in Spain and we often refer to it as a Spanish omelette. This common gastronomical speciality, in its many varieties, can be found in every bar and café from Bilbao to Seville.

I have been eating tortilla de patata since arriving here and have made it my mission to learn how to make it. I’ve watched host dad, expert in tortilla de patata creation, cook this legendary dish many times and I was able to try my hand at it for the first time this week. It was a surprising success. Host kids weren’t really able to tell the difference between mine and host dad’s, as much as they tried to.

There is a distinct lack of tortilla in this picture…

Whilst making my homemade tortilla I was thinking about how the process is actually not that different to teaching English. I shall explain;

First things first, like taking an English class, preparation is key – one cannot simply throw together the perfect tortilla. No, no, no. The process begins with peeling the potatoes and dicing them into small chunks/slices which then go into a large oil-filled frying pan to soften. Here’s the important bit; the chunks/slices have to be the perfect size. If you cut the potato too big the tortilla is too chunky. It takes longer to cook and is more difficult to consume. Too small and the tortilla won’t stay together when you attempt to cook it.

The size of the potato chunk is like perfecting the level of English of the students in your class. Make it too easy and your students lose interest and will more than likely turn their attention to something else. Make it too difficult and you will get a similar result. The content is too much for them to digest and will either take longer to get through or students will simply look at you like this:

Once the potato chunks are suitably softened they are transferred to a bowl where they are combined with a gazillion eggs. For 2 tortillas (for a very hungry family of 5) this tends to mean 8 eggs are required. Yet once again this is super important. Too much egg and your tortilla is depressingly runny and will not hold. Not enough egg and, well, this just is not a tortilla. The balance of egg and potato is of paramount importance.

In our metaphor, this relationship represents the amount of book exercise vs fun activity. Something I am still grappling with. If you use the book too much, students find the lesson to be dull and will, once again, find other things to entertain themselves. This can vary from throwing giant rubbers across the room to painting each other’s nails with tipex. Incorporate too much fun and this just leads to a downhill spiral. Students come to your class expecting to listen to music every time or will throw a tantrum when you eventually announce that you’re going to do some book work. Trust me, there is no going back from this. A gentle mix of book activities combined with other, more exciting ideas should give the perfect balance.

Attention must be given to all areas of the tortilla, no potato chunk can be made to feel that others in the tortilla are more important or you risk upsetting the harmony of the tortilla. The same can be said for students, who are even more perceptive than chunks of potato. I’ve learnt how important it is to remember names as some kids take it as a personal insult if you know others’ names but not theirs. They give no thought to how hard it must be for me to remember 500 Basque names that all sound similar…

The careful cutting and placing of the ham and cheese slices in the centre of the tortilla is vital. Too much cheese and it will melt too much into the egg. Too much ham or unnecessarily large slices will lead to issues when you come to eat it. A clever tactic is to have small even triangles which fit together in the tortilla like puzzle pieces.

The placing of ham and cheese represents your class’ seating plan. Firstly, and something which is often overlooked, students need space and ideally should have equal amounts of space. Often, in order to sit next to their friends, my students will squeeze themselves into a gap the size of a mouse hole and tell me they are fine. Again, this will achieve nothing and can result in pushing and shoving and, on one memorable occasion, biting. Additionally, some combinations of students spell trouble from the start and must be dealt with quickly and efficiently.

Last but not least, timing is of utmost importance. DO NOT RUSH THE TORTILLA. This is a Spanish dish and therefore is something to be made with care. Try and rush your tortilla and you will end up with a runny, eggy, oily mess. Be too laid back and you will find yourself with an overcooked, crispy pile of scrambled egg.  Interestingly this does not only apply to Spanish cooking but in all walks of Spanish life. I am getting used to ‘Spanish time’ which usually equates to 5 minutes later than planned. It’s not quite ‘Africa time’ but still more chilled than English life. Therefore, being an English language teacher in Spain is teaching me a lot about myself. I am more patient but am improving with discipline. I am also better at preparing my classes while at the same time becoming (apparently) more laid back in my quest to improve my students’ spoken English. No doubt I will go home at Christmas and return to my English habits of tutting in endless queues and complaining when there is only one person serving at the checkouts.

One Day

This is a list of the top 7 movie or TV quotes that I feel accurately reflect one day of my life as a language assistant in a Basque secondary school. I have selected them on the basis that they have popped into my head more than once in 24 hours, some hourly. It was also an excuse to include a picture of Jon Snow in a blog post (possible spoilers ahead).

1. ‘Winter is coming’ (Everyone, Game of Thrones)

This is definitely one of the most relevant sentences in my life right now. According to my spies we are now fully into autumn weather here in northern Spain. The shops are stocking the autumn coloured clothing, people are wearing scarves more regularly and there’s a general ‘summer is officially over’ sort of vibe to Bilbao. I am repeatedly informed by pretty much everyone that it’s going to get a lot colder and it’s going to rain continuously from now until Christmas. Except this just hasn’t happened yet. A bit like how they keep saying in Game of Thrones that winter is coming and yet in King’s Landing there is no sign of Summer coming to an end. Cersei even walks naked through the city and barely catches a cold. What does it matter anyway now that Jon Snow is no longer around to save everybody from their impending doom…

2. ‘Welcome to the real world, it sucks, you’re gonna love it!’ (Monica, Friends)

I could do an entire blog post on Friends’ quotes. These particularly wise words from Monica speak for themselves. This is my first real job. I am exhausted. Buuuuut I still don’t have to pay back my student loan, bills or tax so I’m just pretending to be a real adult. For now. Other favourite lines from my number one TV series include ‘I’m sorry, suggestion time is over’ for whenever we finish an activity in class; I think of ’15 Yemen Road, Yemen’, whenever someone asks for my address which I have yet to memorise; and, despite the urge, I have also yet to shout ¡Hola Amigos! when walking into a room. Although I do feel like Marcel the monkey has clicked on the remote control of my life and pressed the Spanish language button and has forgotten to add English subtitles. Oh and when someone tries to teach me something in Basque I sound like Joey speaking French.

3. ‘You can’t sit with us!’ (Gretchen Weiners, Mean Girls)

Oh the dog eat dog world of the school canteen. This infamous Mean Girls quote goes through my head every single day, along with many others such as ‘on Wednesdays we wear pink’, ‘I can’t help it I’m so popular’, and ‘she doesn’t even go here’. Luckily I don’t have to worry too much about where I sit at lunchtime as I sit with the teachers (yay teacher friends). This quote is also relevant for bus journeys where one has to find a seat as quickly as possible so as not to delay the entire expedition. I have taken to sitting in the same seat every morning. I am genuinely afraid of what will happen if one day this seat is taken.

4. ‘P. Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney I REMEMBERED IT!’ (Dory, Finding Nemo)

This is me every time I get a students’ name right. I get over excited and spend the rest of the lesson picking on that one child because their name is the only one I can remember.

5. ‘No no no no *clears throat* I’m Jane’ (Jane, Tarzan)

Jane’s attempt at introducing herself to poor, clueless Tarzan is me trying to talk to the really little children. I have after-school classes 4 days a week with 5,6 and 7 year-olds and this is more difficult for me than teaching a bunch of teenagers. I just don’t know what to do if a child persistently attempts to sit on his head during class, takes his t-shirt off during a game of Simon Says or suddenly bursts into tears. I did not ask to be primary/nursery school teacher and would much rather deal with assy 16-year-old girls any day.

6. ‘Life isn’t fair princess’ (Westley, The Princess Bride)

Speaking of assy teenagers. Some of my students (not just the girls) often look at me like they don’t give a s*** about learning English and will do their utmost to convey that it is highly unfair that they have had to come to my class. The response I want to give to this behaviour is similar to Cary Elwes snappy ‘life isn’t fair princess’ while he is pretending to be a nasty pirate (when in fact he is Buttercup’s long lost love). The response I tend to give is that they could go back to their class and do grammar if they would prefer. This usually works.

If you haven’t seen the Princess Bride I highly recommend it. Possibly one of my favourite ever films it has everything in it that you could want from a film; pirates, damsels in distress, giants, sword fighting, a Spanish man with a grudge, a dark forest and enchanted swamp, a magician, a wedding, a 6 fingered bad guy, the list goes on. In addition to this one quote, I often find myself thinking of ‘my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die’ whenever I go and speak to the principle of the school, Iñigo. What a chap.

7. ‘May the odds be ever in your favour’ (Effie Trinket, The Hunger Games)

This echoes through my head at the beginning of almost every class I take. I am still getting used to being a teacher, my students are getting used to me and so together we are making our way through various tasks from exercise books and games that I have come up with myself. So far in class I have managed to include looking at leaflets from Plymouth Aquarium, listening to a George Ezra song and watching a clip from the episode of Friends where Rachel makes a trifle. Many of my lessons don’t go to plan, some activities work with some classes and not with others, and I am continuously learning. In my first attempt at being seriously authoritative I had to tell a student to leave my class last week and go back to his teacher’s lesson. I am trying my hardest not to let myself get too knocked back should a lesson not go well or an activity not work. I am basically being a teacher with very little training. Not quite as important as fighting to survive in the Hunger Games but challenging nonetheless and I am repeatedly having to encourage myself to keep going. One dodgy decision, such as letting two troublesome students sit next to each other, is not the end of the world. The same cannot necessarily be said for the England rugby team.

28 Days Later

This may disappoint but I am not writing about my experience of post-apocalyptic Earth, as the title might suggest. I am lucky enough to be living in a zombie-less era and will instead be writing about my experience in Spain having now lived here for exactly 4 weeks. Although, Cillian Murphy’s expression as he stumbles through a deserted and zombie-infested London is somewhat similar to how I responded when I was recently told that, in addition to teaching the entire secondary school, I would have to give after school classes to 5 and 6 year-olds. Everday.

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Time is absolutely flying by and I don’t know how it is already early October. The weather is still rather lovely and warm. Similar to end-of-August weather in England. Which means it’s nice enough for me to be able to sit out on the terrace but it’s too hot to run if I go after 9am. I have only managed to avoid the latter once.

So far, I have spent most of my time either at the school or with my host family, who are simply incredible. I don’t know how I got so lucky but they are the loveliest people I could have had the good fortune to live with.

They are a horse-loving family. Host dad has joked to me that they don’t simply like horses, they are obsessed. They own three of them and Cheeky Monkey and my 13 year-old host sister (from now on known as Tormenta) are experienced riders and have lessons every weekend. This was new territory for me having never ridden a horse in my entire life. That all changed this weekend when I had my first ever horse riding lesson. Mildly put, this was utter carnage. I couldn’t control my horse to save my life (see picture below of me trying to look chilled and pretend that I know what I’m doing). Don’t get me wrong, I had a great time! I was just terrible at it. Almost on par with celebrity status, I drew quite a crowd who were keen to see the English girl attempt to learn to ride a horse. Host mum and I were in the beginner’s class and were simply going to be riding our horses around the paddock in continuous circles. This is easier than it sounds. Much like learning to drive a car one has to master steering the horse, tell him when and how to brake, and, perhaps most importantly, avoid other horses. My horse knew from the start that I was a novice and thought he’d have some fun. I’d tell him to go right, he’d go left. The group would be going in a nice ring around the paddock, we’d go straight through the middle. I would tell him to go faster, he’d stop. You can imagine how much joy this brought to the kids and their parents who were watching. And you may think I’m exaggerating. I kid you not. One of the riding instructors came to me and told me he thought I’d done quite enough riding for one day while the others attempted to take things up a notch and trot for the last 5 minutes. I simply sat on my horse and watched. We’ll save trotting for another session.

A more successful venture was perhaps our trip to the Pyranees, or los Pirineos, during my second weekend in Spain. Span fam have a holiday flat in the quaint little town of Biescas in the Tena valley, which sits an hour’s drive from the foot of Formigal. We travelled up on the Friday night and the next morning set off to trek through los ibones de bachimaña. I had a fantastic time. I’ve never been on a skiing or trekking holiday and so I spent the majority of my first experience in the Pyrenees simply enjoying the view or snapping away with my camera:

However, for a regular climber it would take possibly 2 hours to get to the top and maybe 1 and half to get back down? For us, a whole day. We kept having to stop to take off layers, have a short break, pose for photos, etc. etc. Yet it was a thoroughly enjoyable day. I took particular pleasure in having a beer at the top with host dad and Cheeky Monkey (no beer for him) while waiting for host mum and Tormenta. Controversially I much prefer ascending to descending. Possibly something to do with my genuine fear of falling down a mountain. And sure enough, I took a short tumble when climbing down a particularly easy bit. Why are there always people watching at the precise moment you choose to make a fool of yourself? Some rather lovely Spaniards rushed to my aid but I was mostly unhurt. My pride, however, took a knock and I proceeded to charge down the mountain with gusto and was rewarded with being the first back.

We made some friends along the way who were wearing some rather fetching head gear. They were like bandanas and had wonderfully colourful patterns on them. We complimented our companions on their bonnets and it turned out that they had a whole stash of them in their car. I have no idea why they had such a collection. Whether they regularly give them out to people they meet or whether they only ever wear one head scarf/hat before throwing it away and moving onto the next one, I do not know. But basically we came away with new bandanas of our own. I have so far worn mine whilst tidying my bedroom, changing my sheets and making shortbread. I feel I am lacking the confidence to wear it out of the house. I’m just not entirely sure it suits me…

Thus I made the decision not to don my bandana when we visited San Juan de Gaztelugatxe last weekend. We joined some family friends for the evening and climbed the 240 steps up one of Spain’s top tourist attractions to the church of San Juan before enjoying a beer (this is becoming a thing) before the sun went down. I would highly recommend this minor excursion as the views are great and it was truly a wonderful way to spend a Sunday evening. It is also a popular wedding photography venue and I will be returning here with my Prince Charming in the distant future.

I have been to Bilbao a few times now. I had to run various boring but necessary errands such as open a bank account, sort out a phone and try and get a NIE, the card that declares me a resident of Spain. Hooray! I got the bus into the city last week with Cheeky Monkey and Tormenta who had an appointment at the doctors. Host mum took over here and I had an hour or so to myself to wander up and down Gran Via and do a spot of shopping. We reconvened later on and I was treated to a Carolina pastry. This is a tart arroz (like a custard tart) topped with a mountain of cream:

I have really really enjoyed the food in Basque country so far, particularly the pastries. I had no idea that the Basque would be such good bakers. The list of cakes and pastries for me to try is never ending. Luckily, I consider myself a lover of food and will eat pretty much anything. I had octopus for lunch the other day and made my very own tart arroz with a little help from host mum. But if this continues at the current rate, I will be rolling back to England in June. It is impossible to say no to these people!

Next week Papa Sleath will be gracing Span Fam and I with his presence which is super exciting. I have been asking my 4^th year students to tell me about what there is to do in the Basque country and as a result I have been able to form quite a list of possible activities. For 16 year olds they were surprisingly cultural and, in addition to shopping and watching the football, have recommended that I go to some museums, try some particularly good restaurants in Bilbao and head into the country for some walking and photography. Yet according to the news this morning, the weather is due to worsen considerably. Typical.

The Imitation Game

I am now the English language assistant in the secondary school at Larramendi Ikastola. For anyone unsure of what exactly this entails, think back to when you had French or Spanish at school and would leave lessons to go and practice your speaking with the foreign language teacher. I am now that person. I recall our French assistant at Teign vividly, the Spanish one less so. Frenchy’s name was Angelique and had the adolescent boys going insane. I don’t really remember exactly how our sessions with Angelique went but that’s probably because it was simply fun just to be out of class for a change. And that is the exact same way my students feel about me. I take half a class, so approximately 14 students, to do speaking activities in the library while the other half remain with their teacher. I teach all classes in secondary school, from 1DBH* (year 7) to 2 Bachillerato (year 13). I therefore see almost 450 students over the course of 2 weeks. This is utter madness. Even the teachers think this is crazy. Week 2 and I am (visibly) exhausted.

*I am still struggling with the term DBH. Every time someone says it, it sounds like GBH and suggests that I’m teaching a group of abusive young offenders. Thank the Lord I’m not.

However, it has been an interesting and enlightening first 2 weeks. I spent the week prior to my first, solo lessons going into the classes with the teacher in order for the students to meet me and ask me any questions they have. It was similar to being a guest on Question Time. Questions ranged broadly from the downright ordinary and boring to the rather personal and extremely wacky. For example, one student asked me if it’s true that in England we cook everything with butter. She could have asked me anything in the world. And that’s what she went for.

The question I think I was asked in every single class was: do I have a boyfriend. The teacher and I took to responding by mimicking a buzzer and go ‘beep beep personal question’. I actually don’t mind disclosing this kind of information but went along with what the teacher thought was best. And this worked for a time, although somehow it’s already gotten around school that I don’t have a boyfriend. The difficulties of living with one of the 2^nd year students whose friends ambush you whenever you step into the playground. Interestingly, in one of my classes, when I politely refused to answer, this was followed by do I have a girlfriend. Not really sure how I feel about this.

Another popular one; do I like One Direction, Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift or Miley Cyrus? Yes I like One Direction, no I don’t like to disclose this information to many people, yes I have seen them in concert, no I did not buy any merchandise or get them to sign my bra, yes I find Harry Styles mildly attractive… It also got around school that I like music and play the guitar/piano. 2 students approached me at lunchtime one day to ask if I would help them to put on a concert for the younger students in the primary school. I transformed from helpless language assistant to director of the school Christmas performance in a matter of moments. I agreed to help them and am only just beginning to realise what I’ve gotten myself into…

Many students took question time as the opportunity to find out the extent of my Spanish and Euskera. Man I thought I was good at lying, or at least covering up when I could understand that students were speaking about me. I was told to try and convince them that I don’t speak any Spanish so that they absolutely have to speak in English around me. How do I hide that I understand pretty much most of what they say when I live with their classmate and am having Spanish conversations and lessons with the teachers?

I have frequently been asked whether I like football or what sports do I like? This is a difficult one because I don’t really like football but I vaguely know what’s going on in the football world (as with many sports, I pride myself particularly on my knowledge of formula 1, tennis grand slams and cycling tours). And then when I have to try and explain that the sport I play doesn’t exist here is always a sad and pointless endeavour. It’s like basketball, you can’t bounce the ball, you can’t run with the ball, not everyone can shoot, it’s mostly played by girls. For a bunch of DBH (key stage 3ish) Basque kids nothing sounds quite as dull as netball.

Having been questioned to a point which would put the Spanish Acquisition to shame I decided to turn the tables. I made the decision to focus my first lessons on getting to know the students a bit better and asked them to tell me something about the person sitting next to them. I have had an informative couple of weeks. In most cases this has been relatively safe with most students opting to tell me how many brothers or sisters they have, whether they play basketball or football, or what their favourite colour is. I do this with over 400 kids. It gets repetitive.

Yet the odds did suggest that I might get a few interesting and unsolicited pieces of information. For example, one of my students felt it appropriate to divulge that his neighbour is a virgin. I genuinely had no idea how to react to this. The tactic I have so far adopted when this sort of situation arises is to ignore it and get them to tell me something else. This has proven to be the correct response on more than one occasion. However, this particular student didn’t have anything else. What is the protocol here?

Moving swiftly on…

I had one lesson during which I learnt more about my students’ boyfriends/girlfriends than I did about the students themselves. I now associate many students in pairs. Interestingly, girls described each other in terms of their personality. Luckily I appear to have many hardworking, honest and friendly students. The boys opted to tell me what extreme sports they do. I am not one for gender stereotyping but there was a definite pattern. One boy told me his friend like parachuting and when I asked more about said fact it turns out that he’s never been parachuting but thinks it would be a fun way to arrive at school. Many have said they hate studying, one even said he hated studying English and didn’t see why we had to learn it. I thoroughly enjoyed putting him right. One smartass pointed out that English is not the most commonly spoken language in the world. No no, that title goes to Mandarin. I then had to politely explain that we don’t learn Mandarin because, primarily, it is not universal in the same way as English, and secondly, because it’s bloody difficult. I have also learnt a lot about the Spanish basketball team, particularly Pau Gasol the giant, and Bilbao’s football team, Athletic. Interestingly the students were keener to discuss this before Wednesday when Athletic lost to Madrid.

Ultimately the questioning exercise simply served to confirm that, not only is the fact that I have to teach over 400 kids positively ridiculous, but that I am going to have to have my wits about me when it comes to controlling Spanish teenagers. We will see what happens next week when I have my second round of lessons and whether or not I can remember any names. At the moment I can’t barely remember any of the teachers’ names…