Teaching and Intercambios

Hola, familia y amigos! 

Things have been going wonderfully in Sevilla!  I absolutely love my life here and am enjoying every moment of this beautiful, history-filled, warm city.  For the past two weeks I have been teaching Engish at the Catholic school I mentioned in my last post.  It is a worthwhile and fun experience but is also proving to be a challenge at times.  I am teaching 12 and 13 year olds.  The way it works is that I have three groups of students and work with each one for 30 minutes.  The first group is rowdy and frankly obnoxious, so at first I was very overwhelmed and regretting my decision to teach.  Thankfully the second and third groups are well-behaved and eager to learn, so after having them on the first day I felt more at ease.  Teaching is quite rewarding, especially when my students remember something I taught them the previous week.  It makes me feel like what I’m doing is worthwhile, and even though I only see them once a week and don't know them very well, I am proud of them when they say things correctly.  One of the challenges that I face is that I am only allowed to speak to the students in English.  If they don’t know a word or understand a concept, I am tempted to translate it for them into Spanish but I have to explain it in English in a way they’ll understand.  I slipped up once when the kids were saying the names of animals and kept saying "bear" but pronouncing it like "beer."  I corrected their pronunciation and told them that a "beer" in English is una cerveza.  Their teacher probably wouldn't have been happy that I didn't say "it is a yellow, bubbly, popular alcoholic drink that you're too young to have" but it is what it is, the kids got a laugh, and their teacher will never know.

            Something else that I’ve been doing is meeting with my intercambios.  An intercambio is a Spanish student who wants to improve their English.  The idea is that each of us SUNY students gets an intercambio to meet with once a week to speak in both English and Spanish.  It is a great way to practice our conversational skills and make a new friend.  Sadly, it proved to be a failed system this semester when only 1 out of the 10 of us were paired up with an intercambio.  One of my roommates told our favorite doorman Pepe that she didn’t have one and he found her a lovely 22 year-old student who lives in our building to be her intercambio.  I was slightly jealous, because even though all of my classes are taught solely in Spanish, I don't normally get to practice my speaking because we listen more than speak in class.  Therefore, my comprehension is almost infallible, but my speaking still needs some work.  I asked Pepe if it would be possible for him to find me and intercambio too, and about a week later he handed me a piece of paper that said Juan and had a phone number on it.  The next day I got a phone call asking if I wanted to go downstairs to meet his family.  I was surprised when got to the apartment and found a mother and two little girls with huge smile on their faces, eager to kiss me on both cheeks and welcome me inside their home.  The girls, Natalia and Marga are 8 and 11, respectively.  They are so sweet and cute as buttons!  The younger one is a bundle of energy.  I go downstairs to their apartment twice a week now to play with the kids and talk to the parents.  Just having gone four times, I can already find myself having an easier time expressing myself in Spanish.  Natalia loves playing hangman and we switch off between English and Spanish words.  If I guess the letter "r", she always asks me if I mean "ere" or"errrrre".  The latter is a rolled "r," which I am unable to do.  Natalia is intent on getting me to roll my r's and promised me candy when/if I finally succeed.  It is so cute when she tries so hard to teach me and sticks her tongue up against her teeth and demonstrates it for me over and over.  I wish I could do it just because a) it would be cool and b) she would be so excited, but I had to explain to her that it is hard for me because in English we don't make that sound.  Her 8 year-old self does not want to accept that and still makes me stick out my tongue and make horrible, ugly noises.  When we play hangman she won't write down "errrre" unless I say it correctly, and therefore, I lose whenever there is an "erre" in the word she picks.  

Now that I have intercambios who I listen to and speak with conversationally, I am able to pick up on certain phrases and grammatical things that they say.  My intercambio parents, who are just as warm and lovely as their children, correct my pronunciation if I say something wrong and tell me if I say a word of phrase that is proper Spanish but not typically said in Spain.  For example, I said “usualmente,” which means usually, which is correct but apparently no one really says it.  Instead, they say “normalmente” which is obviously normally.  It’s something small but helpful.  If in America someone said “thus,” it would be clear they are not from there (or that they're pompous.)  It’s not like that my accent, pale skin, and green eyes don’t give me away as a foreigner already, but I want to speak the best, most understandable Spanish possible.  Even though I don’t have a college student as my intercambio, I am so thankful that I have this family to spend time with.  It is sort of like having a part-time host family.  The mother, also named Marga, told me to call her or come by if I ever need anything.  She also asked if I would ever be interested in babysitting and I said that I absolutely would be.  When I came to Spain I didn’t expect to be working with kids so much, but I’m pleased that it has worked out this way. 

Thanks for reading!  Come back within the next day or so, as I will be blogging about my trips to Madrid and Paris!

Hasta luego! 

Elyssa (or as they say here, Eleeeeesa)