'British Culture'

I mentioned a few times that the third years (14-year-olds) have been working on a project based on different aspects of British culture. Last week they completed their projects and their work is now on display in the school foyer. They all ended up getting incredibly stuck in (well, nearly all) and developing a genuine interest in what they were researching. I can't say that all the information is factually correct ('The Royals' group, for example, casually skipped a few hundred years in their family tree) but they seemed to enjoy themselves and they certainly reveled in the opportunity to be a bit more independent in their studies. Success!

London

(They are now all completely fascinated by Boris Johnson. "But he's very freaky, no?")

 Media

(I think this group had a few motivational issues...)

Food

(The verdict: the Brits are addicted to grease, fat and cheese)

Education

(The girls working on this topic are genuises. They should probably run the school)

British Teenagers

(I certainly did not endorse the inclusion of a picture of One Direction)

The Royals
(I can't tell you how much they loved the story of Prince Harry gettin' naked in Vegas)

The Welfare State

(Just like at the Olympics opening ceremony, the NHS takes pride of place. Hooray for the NHS!)

Good old Spain

Another update from sunny-rainy-sunny-rainy Spain (it’s not just British weather that seems to have taken a turn for the bipolar recently, trust me).

Since my last post I’ve been on two school trips, posing as a responsible adult. Truth be told, faced with the prospect of a school trip I still very much want to run to the bus to shotgun the back seat and pull silly faces or wave at passing motorists out of the window. So it was a full time effort to maintain the respectable teacher façade. The first trip was to a very interesting exhibition in Oviedo about the lives of the Iberians. We met in the school foyer ready to leave at 10.30am. Suddenly, a girl raced up to the teacher to tell her that she’d forgotten to get her mum to sign her permission slip. I shook my head in pity, knowing from personal experience that she probably had a long lonely day sat in the school library doing homework ahead of her. But wait… this is Spain… I should have known… the teacher just shrugged and told her to get on the bus and bring the permission slip another day. When we arrived in Oviedo there were smatterings of snow from the night before so the kids sprinted around, climbing onto rooftops and lobbing snowballs at each other, at buildings and at total strangers. The teachers just looked on, totally nonplussed. The second trip was to the remains of a beautiful pre-Romanesque church. This time, the kids got their kicks out of trying to push each other out of windows and down stairs and running into bars and cafes at random to see if they could steal straws. At one point I tentatively asked the male teacher if perhaps the students should be making some notes or at the very least listening to the guide. He looked at me as if I’d asked him whether flying pigs truly exist, exhaled slowly and said "In theory." But aside from being flipping mental and far from traditionally well-behaved, the students were great company on both trips and we had a lot of fun.

On Saturday a few of us drove to Llanes which is a stunning little coastal town about 55 miles away from Gijon. It was a bloody great day. We parked up and walked along a cliff which provided us with some pretty fantastic views – to my right were the snow-capped peaks of the Picos de Europa, to my left the sea was crashing and smashing against the rocks and straight ahead was the town itself with a little golden beach to boot. This is definitely one of the most special things about Asturias – the sheer variety of the landscape and in such close proximity. We spent a few hours mooching around and taking in the sights, stopping for lunch halfway through. After lunch, we went in search of a landmark that Jean and I in particular have been super keen to see. In Llanes stands the house where they filmed ´The Orphanage’. If you haven’t see it, I’d highly recommend it. Unless you’re of a nervous disposition. I saw it at the cinema when it first came out in 2007 and can honestly say I don’t think I’ve ever come quite so close to crying with fear. But it is fantastic. I promise. The road where the house is situated turned out to be full of houses that could have fit the bill – deserted, dilapidated, dark and steeped in scary movie clichés. 

We then jumped back in the car and went in search of an inland beach up in the cliffs and to find some geysers that were rumoured to be in the vicinity. Finding the beach was easy enough but the geysers proved to be slightly more elusive. But we eventually found them and they were well worth the wait… I don’t think I’ve ever really thought about what a geyser actually is or what one would be like but I can tell you now that they were freaking cool. They sounded like sleeping dragons and the force of the spray shooting up through the ground was pretty spectacular. Unfortunately due to the delay in trying to locate them, we ended up having to walk back to the car, through fields and woods, in the fog and rain, in the middle of the countryside, shrouded in darkness. This was far from ideal considering we’d spent a good chunk of the day thinking about horror-film clichés. Eventually we made it back alive and by the time we arrived back in Gijon it was all I could do to crawl into bed with a cup of tea. The sign of a good day well spent.

Last night three of us went to see the latest Almodovar film ‘Los Amantes Pasajeros’. I LOVE Almodovar. I love the non-sensical and risqué style of his films. So to see one of his films in Spain without subtitles was definitely on my Year Abroad checklist. Despite the rest of the world often quoting him as being the face of Spanish film-making, he tends to split opinion pretty drastically on home soil so when I mentioned to a few of my teachers that I was really keen to see his new film they immediately launched into speeches outlining how and why his films are full of bad morals and horrendous stereotyping. On face value, that may be true but it’s all done with tongue jammed firmly in cheek and with more levels of irony than you can shake a stick at. ‘Los Amantes Pasajeros’ was a throwback to the films he made in the 80s during La Movida movement, without the dark and disturbing edge of his some of his more recent films. It was colourful, it was silly, it was incredibly risqué and I loved it.  

About an hour ago I had to get stern with a class for the first time. To be honest I haven’t quite mastered the fine line between ‘I’m your friend’ and ‘but you must respect me’ so the class ended up descending into madness. I rolled up my sleeves and put on my most serious ‘don’t mess with me’ face and told them, in no uncertain terms, that whilst it’s great to be able to have fun in lessons, if they weren’t going to concentrate then we’d sit in silence for the rest of the hour. One of the boys put up his hand and said “Teacher, can I tell I joke?” I told him I didn’t really think it was the appropriate time but if it was relevant and would re-lighten the mood then fine. So he said “What’s the different between work and study?... Don’t ask me! I’m Spanish! I don’t do nothing! Hahahaha”. And the whole class fell about laughing. 

Busy bee

As we all know, time really drags when you sit on your bum doing nothing. Which is why I'm trying my best to keep busy busy busy until Easter. I got the plan off to a (literally) flying start in the shape of an all too brief trip back to Durham. I jumped on a bus on Thursday morning, then jumped on a plane, then a train, then a coach, then another train and arrived in Durham approximately 14 hours later. Easy peasy. It was a splendid weekend and a happy/sad reminder of why I miss the place so much. Friday and Saturday whizzed by in a blur of wonderfully-familiar faces, coffee, dancing, dodgems, cobbled streets and musical rehearsal and before I knew it I was sitting back on the sofa in my little Spanish flat on Sunday, wondering whether it had all been a surreal dream (although not before a incredibly special coffee date at Victoria coach station, 7am, Sunday morning, to send me off back to Spain in style. The things he does for me, eh?). Back at school on Monday a lot of my students (and teachers) were incredibly confused as to how I'd managed to leave the country and come back again since they'd last seen me leaving school the previous Wednesday afternoon. Most of them seemed to think I was mad to trade in so many hours worth of travelling for so few hours on solid ground. 'Durham's worth it.' I told them.

I've mentioned a few times my intentions to start extra curricular drama lessons. Now, before coming to Spain, I didn't ever think that a lack of red tape could prove just as problematic as too much of it. But sadly, my efforts in this venture so far been thwarted at every turn thanks to the non-existence of procedure here in not-so-sunny Spain. Do I need permission slips? What about room bookings? How should I decide on timings? And dates? Which age groups would be suitable? How many responsible adults are needed per child? Must a qualified first aided be present? All met with shrugs and blank faces. But I'm not giving up quite yet. And it certainly hasn't stopped me from forcing theatrical activity into daily classes wheresoever I see fit. Inkeeping with this theme, one of my classes has been putting together little soap operas for the past few weeks and it is providing me with constant entertainment. Last Wednesday the groups performed to the rest of the class to show off their works-in-progress. My favourite group produced a story that was set in the Vatican City but that was strangely called 'Castle'. I'm still not sure why. The curtain went up to show the Pope parading through the city in his Pope Mobile. Suddenly, Batman swooped in and killed him in cold blood. Of course, no one saw because he was wearing an invisibility cloak. But, never fear, Inspector Poirot arrived to solve the case. Turns out Batman and his girlfriend (who just happened to be the newsreader) were in it together. Somewhere in the middle there was a subplot involving Justin Timberlake and his many lovers but I had somewhat lost track by this point. 

Another facet of my 'busy' plan is to try to spend more time exploring the region. So on Saturday Jean and I took a trip to a little town of Luanco. I'll be honest, it wasn't the most exciting place to be but the weather was fine, the sky was stunning, the air was fresh and we agreed that it was refreshing to go somewhere new for the day. The climax of the trip occurred at around 4pm when, walking along the beach, we noticed a very large fish that had found itself washed up on the shore and was thrashing around in the sand. Now, when I say 'noticed', what I actually mean is that we saw it, shrieked, screamed, jumped up and down and and ran around in little circles in a panicked frenzy for a minute or two. Eventually, we calmed down and I did what any decent human being would do: rolled up my sleeves, picked up and the fish and lobbed it back into the sea. Then we stood back to admire our handiwork and watch it gaily swim back out to deeper waters to rejoin its kin. Unfortunately, 10 minutes later it was still splashing around about 2 meteres from the shore so I can't help thinking that, instead of saving its poor little life, we actually prolonged its agony. At least we tried.

(Here's me picking up the fish. Yes, the angle and my pose are slightly unflattering, for which I apologise. But it's a good action shot so I'm willing to overlook my pride.)

On the way home we also stopped by the Maritime museum which, despite our low expectations, turned out to be incredibly entertaining and an afternoon well spent. If you ever find yourself in Luanco, I'd highly recommend a visit. And then on Saturday evening we arrived back to Gijón just in time to go to dinner at a Galician restaurant with a group consisting of 5 Spaniards, 1 Scot, 2 Englishmen, 1 Frenchman, 2 Americans and a German. And no, that is not the opening line of a very long and convoluted joke. We ate various types of squid, drank Galician wine out of little bowls and fought valiantly against the multiple language barriers that we were up against. One thing led to another and we ended up going to various bars and dancing to Pulp and Florence and the Machine and I finally arrived home at 6am, absolutely knackered and more than ready to collapse into bed. Saturday was a good day. 

In about an hour I'm off to watch Barsa vs. Milan in a bar that offers the best free pinchos in town. Spain has definitely brought out the football fan in me. C'MON BARSAAAA. 

S'later!

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