Sunny Sprinkles

Team Kebap! From left to right, Una, me and Nico with Alesia in the back. (or Russian Gridiron, Sunny Sprinkles, Grandmother Willow and Cookie Cutter) These guys are the fiercest Kebappers I know.

Kebap.  “Obscure meat product in pita bread, accompanied by salad and chilli,” according to urbandictionary.com.  I like their other definition, “Hungarian fast food usually served with french fries.”  Kebap day is Wednesday.  This week it couldn’t have come any sooner.  We even got nicknames today.  Mine is Sunny Sprinkles. (Thanks Una.)  We also have Cookie Cutter, Grandmother Willow and Russian Gridiron.   This is the best club ever.

It took a lot of work, a lot of kebaps that I had to eat, but I am going on my second week on the team and I’m loving every moment.  (If you’d like to join, you can be an honorary member.  You just have to sing the Kebap anthem and eat Kebap at least once a week.  For more details contact me on Facebook or by email).

Class, class and more class
Earlier that morning, I had another class with Helena.  Pilates. My abs will never be the same.  As I walk to school, I keep reminding myself to walk with better posture.  If you just picture yourself walking really tall or try to smell the flowers on the trees as you walk by, you will do just fine.

After a lively discussion about English grammer in a Spanish grammer class, we needed a break so that’s where the Kebap came in.

This is Kebap. If you've never had one before, you need to go get yourself some Kebap. Trust me, it's worth it.

After Kebap, I  got to play with Gonzalo, the four-year old.  We played cowboys and indians and read books about “Nacho,” a little boy who likes to eat breakfast and brush his teeth.  We’ve read this book a few times, and every time we read the part about Nacho brushing his teeth, little Gonzalo has to run to the bathroom to show me his toothbrush.  We also played wtih Pokemon cards.  Gonzalo wins every time.  I’m not sure how that happens.  Is it because he’s really good at card games, or because I don’t understand Pokemon?  We finished up our “English lesson,” by playing with a soccer ball in the hallway. He kept yelling, “Goal! Goal!” every time he got the ball past me, which happened alot. Someday I think Gonzalo will be a soccer player.

Later tonight, in my English class with the labor union, we learned how to order in a restaurant, and I realized how completely different it is to be a server in the United States and a server here in Spain.  Here a tip is optional because servers are paid on a salary set by the government.  Well, in the U.S. I wouldn’t think too highly of someone who left me less than a 20 percent tip.  At least they know the norm for the states, just in case they ever get me as a server.  Anyway, I got to act out the part for the server, while they were the guests.  Everything was going well, until David pointed out that I “forgot” to bring their dessert.  “Oops, right away, right away,” I said.  He laughed and said remembering the dessert is important if I want to get a good tip.  They learn so quickly.

This tweeting bird, from Twitter, is more effective when he's direct. He's talking directly to the consumer.

Get to the point!
While I was searching for makeup at a local shop (I only went to this shop because they were handing out coupons for a free gift) I decided I needed help so I asked Dori if she could help me find the right color of foundation and blush (after I told her I am from the states and to please have patience with my Spanish).  When I showed her the makeup I normally used, she was very blunt.

“Me parece más bonita así,” Dori repeated several times while testing out the store’s makeup.  (You look much prettier like this.)  Hey, I did buy the makeup and will probably go back if I need anything else.  Maybe there is something to be said about being direct.  If people communicated more directly, maybe marketing would be more effective.

My host mom is the same sometimes.

“Pero, no piensas que comes demasiado chocolate?” my host mom said when I asked her how to make a chocolate cake/cookie recipie to take with me to a Bible fellowship. (But, don’t you think you eat too much chocolate?)  She thought I was making the cake for myself.  Suffice it to say, I’ve been cutting down on chocolate since then.

At the moment, I am heading to a café to finish making plans to go to Italy or Barcelona in two weeks.  Ciao!  Look out for another exciting blogpost tomorrow.  In the meantime…try some Kebap.

English 101…from a Public Relations Major?

(This blogpost will only be in English, because tomorrow’s will be completely in Spanish!)

Clara and Rodrigo are hard at work. I have so much fun with these two!

Recently, it seems like all I do is attract people who want to learn English.

On Tuesdays I teach Clara, 13, and Rodrigo, 11.  On Wednesdays, I teach/play with little Gustavo, 4.  Later Wednesday night I teach six adults who truly need to learn English to get a job, or to succeed in their current job.  On Thursdays, I teach Marina, 17, and Victor, 11.  And the other day, I got offered another “teaching position,” for Rodrigo’s best friend Roberto.

Hm…funny, I never pictured myself teaching 12 students when I decided to major in PR.  But, according to Susana and Pilar, my advisors for the Wednesday class, English teachers are in high demand in Europe, especially in Spain.

And it’s not just English.  In a previous blogpost, I mentioned how one of my students, Marina, can speak quite a few languages and is currently teaching me French.  Most students here learn two other languages besides their native language.  Why? Maybe it’s because Spain is in Europe and the United States isn’t.  Still, you’d think that kids would start learning a different language in preschool.  It’s definitely easier on the kids.

Gustavo: the little one
Gustavo’s mom, Gema, was so proud when he learned how to say nose in English.

Marina is the coolest!

“Necesita aprender más vocabulario,” she said.  (He needs to learn more vocabulary.)

Well even though it’s alot easier to play with his puzzles and bowling set (he is four anyway) I still think he’s learning.   When Gema was searching for a parking spot and couldn’t find one big enough (parking is sometimes a free-for-all) his little voice piped up from the backseat, “no problem!”  Later, after she had driven around the block three more times, he changed his mind and said “sí problem.”

Class with the c.c.o.o. (comisiones obreras)
Every Wednesday, I get to teach English to six people at the comisiones obreras (labor union).  After about only six classes with Sofía, Adrés, David, Exuperancia, Amalia and Angela, I’ve started to consider them part of my family.  At the beginning of the semester I have to admit I was nervous.  I thought they would laugh at my attempt to speak Spanish.  Guess what?  They were as nervous to speak English to me as I was to speak Spanish to them. Who would have thought?   After two months, we’re all a lot more comfortable. Actually, one of the students used to be a teacher, so she helps me out when I just can’t explain something completely in Spanish.  I’m so thankful for Sofía.

Last week, we learned phrases about giving directions, “How do I get to the museum?” “Turn right,” or “turn left,” or “go straight until the corner.”  This week, we’re going to pretend to be in a restaurant.  I will be the server (as always) and they will ask me about items on the menu. As long as I can explain the annoying presense of the server at the table (it’s not very polite to bring the check over before you ask for it here) I think we will be just fine.

Rodrigo and I have so much fun playing the games on this show's Web site. Check it out if you're teaching English to 11-year-olds.

Communicative or traditional?
Right now there is a huge debate/division in my class about which teaching method is better, communicative or traditional.  Pilar is a firm believer in teaching people how to defend themselves in the new language by learning phrases without necessarily understanding the grammer behind them.  Susana thinks that grammer is crucial, and people need to understand why the phrase is formed how it is.  Me?  I think that both ways are important.  And so do my students.  Whenever we learn by playing games, it seems like the subject sticks with them better, even though I try to answer their questions about why I pronounce “later,” “laider.”  I didn’t have a good answer for them.  “Um…that’s just the way it’s pronounced?”  All I know is that listening to “I will survive,” so Clara can fill in the words on the sheet of lyrics is way more fun than giving her a grammer lesson (she gets enough of that in school!)  Also, that “Inn between the lions” is my new favorite kids show (best Web site with games ever).  Sometimes, when you have fun learning, you learn more.

Teaching = learning
Usually, when we’re in conversation, a Spanish word or phrase comes up and I quickly jot it down to study later.   So, when I talk about my students, I really mean teachers.  Even though I practice English with them, I’m learning more about my own language, Spanish and even better, life lessons.  I wouldn’t give up this experience for the world.  And my student’s dad taught me how to make a chocolate cookie cake.  I wouldn’t give that recipie up for anything.

In the end, I love public relations.  I love designing and writing, and I can’t wait to get back to Sunshine to finish up my PR internship in May.  But I think, after I try out public relations for a while, I might just have to give teaching a whirl.

¡Cumpleaños Feliz!

After 22 years of living life, I think I’m just starting to realize how important it is to enjoy life and spend time with the people you love rather than working on homework.  Seriously, in five years, will I remember the people I spent time with or that paper that I spent hours laboring over?  I’m thinking it will be the people.  And that works great for me.  I get homework done faster and enjoy life more.

This is the weekend before my birthday, in Granada. Keep checking the blog because the next blog post will be all about our trip to the south of Spain!

Saturday, I got to celebrate my birthday…in SPAIN.  I kept smiling all day at the littlest things, like the fact that the sun was shining and it felt like summer.  My host sister, Helena and I walked all the way to Alcalá Magna, the local mall complete with H&M and a grocery store, to look for some comfy walking shoes and ended up finding a pair of boots for only nine euros.  My host sister said, “Most times, you end up leaving with something completely different than you had in mind.”   True, and after two more months of all this walking, I will never need to drive again!

First surprise:  My host mom made a cake for me to share with the fellowship in Madrid later that day.  It was beautiful. I can’t believe she put so much thought and heart into this cake that she wasn’t even going to get to eat! There was a slight miscommunication about what time we were supposed to meet our ride to go to fellowship..so picture this:  I had a cake balanced in one hand, a bag with a Bible, a notebook and pretzels in the other hand, speed-walking down the street in heels to make it to the gas station on time.  We proceeded to belt Celion Dion on our way to Madrid.  And I won’t lie.  That was one of my favorite moments of the day.

Second surprise: After our teaching and songs, the fellowship had a few presents for me, pair of pants, a red shirt that says “dream” on the front, a small pair of sparkly blue earrings and a birthday card that plays “happy birthday,” in high-pitched, piercing notes every time you open it.  That birthday card was my favorite.  The two little ones, Obed and Esperanza, could not get enough of it.  Finally Cerafin, one of the believers, asked me to please hide the card somewhere they couldn’t find it.  The fellowship sang about five variations of Happy Birthday before I opened my presents and again before I blew out the candles on my cake.  I’m pretty sure these people like singing.

Oh just hanging out on a beach in the middle of winter with my friend Alesia.

A birthday feast: Emerance, the fellowship coordinator’s wife, is so sweet.  Every week, she prepares a huge meal for everyone to share, complete with Fufu, rice, fish, buñuelos (beneights) and platanos.  Can you say abundance?  This weekend was their last fellowship in Madrid because they are moving to the United States to live and work in Iowa.  Let’s just say there were smiles, a few tears, and a lot of giving thanks as we sent them on their way.  We stayed until 11 p.m. hanging out with the kids while the adults watched a soccer game in the living room.  And when I say “hanging out with the kids,” I actually mean “acting like kids.”   I used the pretzel sticks I brought to pretend like I was a walrus. My mom would be so proud.

I got home around midnight and got to skype with my family! I am so thankful for my friends and family all over the world.  It was a wonderful day filled with abundance and blessings, and I couldn’t have asked for a better way to spend it than with such awesome people.

Best picnic in the history of classy picnics.

And that’s not all.  Sunday, my friend Alesia and I decided to head to Madrid again (about a half hour train ride from Alcalá) to hang out in the Parque of Buen Retiro because it was such a beautiful day.  You can’t get much better than 70 degrees and sunny!  We went to a grocery store in Madrid and bought juice and sparkling water, olives, crackers, cheese, apricot jam, guacamole, chips, chocolate.  Can you say best picnic ever?  We even bought a whole pack of spoons, plastic cups and lime green napkins.  We used so many napkins.  Apparently, people in Spain have something against wasting paper, so we all use fancy cloth napkins.  I can’t even explain how or why it brought so much joy to my soul to use as many napkins as I wanted and then to throw every single one of them in the garbage.  Wasteful? Maybe. Satisfying? Absolutely.

After finding the right train (trusting in God really helps wonders) I got back to Alcalá with plenty of time to finish a ten page paper for my Spanish movie class.  Hey, like I said, there are some things that we just have to get done, but will I really remember how late I stayed up to work on that essay about Almodóvar’s film?  Nope. I’m going to remember laughing with Alesia in the park that one day with the random picnic and the lime green napkins.

A day of flamenco and opera.

I’m sitting in a hotel room in Granada, Spain stuffed with the most delicious food I have had so far here.  Hotel Carmen, you are my favorite.  Tomorrow, we are headed off to see some Flamenco music and dancing.  But before that, I thought I’d give you some background.

Check out her posture. This gitana dancer has got to be strong. The real pictures of Flamenco dancers are coming soon!

Last weekend my friends and I got the opportunity to hear some Flamenco guitar music at our university.  Did you know that Flamenco music is actually gitano?  Gypsy music.  According to Roshan Samtani, our guide to all things gitano, people haven’t really studied Flamenco music  so this field of research is still relatively new.  He did live with gypsies for years and years.  I guess he should know!

Flamenco focuses on the rythm and the feeling of the music rather than the content.  It’s so raw, powerful and precise.  The precision is all about the beat.  We tried clapping the rhythm while Roshan played at the end of class.  Let’s just say it was the best rhythm section this side of the Pacific Ocean.

According to Roshan, music is fundamental.  It maintains and perpetuates historical memory, bonding us and bringing us together.

“Music isn’t just something to listen to at bars,” said Roshan, also a writer and teacher.  “It’s something so much deeper than that.  It’s a symbolic system.”

After learning about the history of Flamenco, I had a few questions.  Why do we listen to music?  And why do we choose to listen to certain types of music and not others? What is it that makes a sound beautiful?  Questions to ponder…while you listen to the video of a cantante gitano (a gypsy singer) below.  If you want to find out more about Roshan, check out his Web site by clicking here.

The Audition
So where does the opera fit in?  Well, I decided to audition for yet another choir (along with the University choir I’m in along with teaching English, classes, homework, traveling).  Later that day, I hopped on a bus to find the cultural building halfway accross the city where I was going to audition.  After getting a little bit lost (even after a month I still have yet to work out the bus system!) I finally asked the bus driver where to find calle (street) Octavio Paz.  I wandered around for a bit, again asking at least seven people where to find another street.  Finally, I found the center! And wound up sitting next to Ursula, the self-proclaimed “best soprano” in the choir.  I think some of her confidence gave mine a boost because I rocked that audition!

But in the end, I decided that one choir in Alcala is enough for me.  (Check out my previous blogpost about breathing for more info) And while you’re finishing up reading the post, listen the song below that I learned in one day before my audition, just the first minute or two.  It gets kind of intense after that.

After learning to singing classically for so long, I find it difficult to wrap my mind around singing Flamenco.  How can a cantante gitano sing all over the place and still make such a strong and beautiful sound while keeping the rhythm? Well, I guess my brain is getting a workout.

I am beginning to realize how important music is to bring cultures together, no matter the musical genre.  We talk about music to make connections.  (OMG I love Lady GaGa! You do?! Me too!)  Music helps us learn. Earlier today I used a partially filled page of lyrics to Whitney Houston’s famous “I will always love you” to teach my student how to listen to and understand music in English.  Music also makes us feel.  My family tells me when I sing, I’m happy.  Well lately I have been singing all over the place. I won’t lie: I even tried to sing some Flamenco. (Although I think I’ll stick with opera).

So here’s my question for you: why do you listen to music?

Only $3,500 left to go!

I am almost there.  I still need about $3,500 for room and board and travel expenses.  Every donation makes a difference.  Contributing $20 each month for the next three months will make it way easier to pay my room and board.  Giving $100 will take a HUGE portion out of expenses.  I have a win-win proposition for you.  You share of your financial abundance.  I share all my experiences with you.

And do you want to make a super easy donation?  Here is one of the safest ways to use your credit card to make a quick donation.  In the next few days I will be posting a donation button for easy access to PayPal, where you can make a donation directly to support my study abroad experience.  Keep your eyes peeled.  In the meantime, please email me at agailhouse@gmail.com if you would like to make a direct donation.

Thanks so much for your support!