I'll start with the fun stuff. Us language assistants have had a few wild adventures in the last week or two - from getting en-masse piercings, to drinking one too many ciders and daring each other to 'down the cheeseboard' in exchange for a lap dance, to jumping in fountains at 5am. We've gone a bit wild. I've taken this as a sign that we're really beginning to settle in and feel comfortable in our surroundings. Perhaps we're just delinquents. Who knows. Last Friday four of us went to a massive shopping centre in Oviedo for a spot of retail therapy. To cut a very long story short, the trip culminated in us stashing a 6ft tall Ikea mirror behind a set of lockers at the bus station because we'd managed to miss the last bus home and the bloody thing wouldn't fit in a taxi. Jean 'Braveheart' Comrie popped back the next morning to retrieve it and nobody was any the wiser. On Saturday we decided, after a flipping awesome evening of cider and dancing, to go for a cheeky dip in the sea to round off the night. If you've never done it, I couldn't recommend it more highly. There's nothing quite like a near-skinny dip (it's was a tad too public and well lit for the full monty) in the middle of the night to make you feel alive.
Rest assured, though - it's not all been cider-fuelled madness. Tess gave us a lovely walking tour of Oviedo on Thursday evening, demonstrating her highly impressive wealth of knowledge of all things Asturias. We had chocolate and churros in a little cafe and I ended up bumping into another Durham student on his year abroad. Small world. Then on Friday three of us ventured to Ribadesella which is a beautiful little village about an hour and a half away from Gijón. Thanks to it not being high season any more, most of the tourist attractions were closed. But the sun clearly didn't get the memo so we had a full day of glorious November sunshine and wandered for hours taking in the views. It sort of summed up why Asturias is such a stunning and unique part of Spain - rolling hills and mountain ridges in one direction and miles of golden coastline in the other, all within walking distance. It would be more than possible to ski and surf on the same day come December although I might have to settle for ski and bodyboard - the less cool but far easier to master alternative.
School's been going really well. I mainly get sent to an empty classroom with a group of 8-10 students with the simple task of making them talk. Sometimes the teacher provides a vague lesson plan but most of the time it's total improvisation which is pretty nerve-wracking. Today I arrived in the classroom and Luz asked if I'd received her email with the lesson plan for the day. I told her I hadn't and asked when she'd sent it. She said 1:30. This conversation took place at 2. Classic Spain. There've been some beautiful moments over the last week or so - kids really do say the darndest things. Like this morning when an incredibly keen little bespectacled girl waved her hand in the air and said "May I take you a question?? Is real that English persons eat bacon and baked beans as breakfast?!?" When I told her that, yes, we're pretty partial to the odd fry up she nearly passed out with excitement. Or last week when two of the girls took it upon themselves to transform a simple dialogue of a man and woman in a restaurant into a highly melodramatic interpretation of what would happen if Justin Beiber fell in love with Paris Hilton.
I've been taking full advantage of offers to go for coffee with various groups of teachers. The offers usually come when I'm on my way back to the staff room from lessons. Just as I reach the threshold, a teacher will brush past my and say "Hey, wanna come for a coffee?" And I've set myself the challenge of always saying yes. Even when I'd really prefer to just go hide in a dark corner of the room and avoid any sort of human contact, never mind prolonged interaction with speakers of a different language, I grit my teeth, smile politely and turn on my heel. So far, it's been worth the effort. The teachers are all great fun and I get a really good insight into the workings of the school. Never mind the fact that it's really the only Spanish practise I get day to day! It scares me how much they talk about the kids... the staff room really isn't any different to the playground in terms of bitchiness. I dread to think what our teachers had to say about us at good old Portsmouth High School.
Today marks 9 weeks since I left England, which is pretty darned scary when I think about it. 9 weeks has been enough to get used to the food, the daily routine (eating lunch at 3 and dinner at 10... that sort of thing) and the general pace of life here but I'll be darned if I ever get used to not being able to buy a pack of wotsits as and when the craving hits me or turning on the radio and hearing nothing but Gangnam Style or Call Me Maybe.
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