Moving on up to Madrid

Here are a few highlights from my last week in Sevilla. Antonio, my Spanish teacher at CLIC, took us to a film museum with exhibits of Goya award winning films (Spain's version of the Oscars). I was pleasantly surprised to see Jeff Goldblum's picture, because he starred in the Spanish film El Sueno del Mono Loco. Here I am with Madelyn, one of my classmates.

I enjoyed living in Sevilla for a month, and highly recommend traveling there if you're in Spain.

 I also highly recommend Dulce Regina. The coffee and cookies are delicious (but not as good as Katie Walker's of course). And it's a good deal, only 2 euros! I probably went there every other day on my way to school and will miss it now that I'm in Madrid.

I arrived in Madrid on Sunday and stayed at Hotel Husa Princesa until yesterday. The hotel was lovely, but didn't include wifi which is why I'm a bit behind on blogging. (They were asking for 9 euros a day!) I explored the city a little bit, walking from my apartment near Atocha Station to the hotel in Princesa. Here is the Bank of Spain, which is about 25 minute walk from my apartment.

 This is Grand Via, one of the main streets in Madrid. My roommate Armando told me it was designed to look like the architecture of New York. I told him the buildings were too white, clean, and short for New York. 

After getting the keys to my apartment, my first priority was getting my bed set up. The room already had a mirror, shelves, a desk, chair, and much more closet space than my room in New York. Score!

 

 I took a picture using the app Photosynth, and this is what I ended up with.

 This is the view from my window to the right. It's been raining on and off all day, but I don't mind because it finally brought fall weather to Madrid!

And out my window to the left

Yesterday I went to Atocha Station to take the Cercanias train to Alcobendas where the school I will be teaching at is located. It's about a 45 minute commute. 

And there's a green house inside Atocha with cute little turtles.

I met the two other language assistants at my school, Denise from Australia and Justin from California. I met the language coordinator, the principal, and most of the teachers at CEIP Antonio Machado. Everyone was very kind, warm, and welcoming to us. Justin worked as a language assistant at this school last year, so I will be going to him with all my questions. There are about 400 students ages 3-12. I will be working Tuesday-Friday from 9:30 - 4:30 with a 30 minute break for breakfast at 11:30 and a 2 hour break for lunch from 1 - 3. I will be teaching 4th and 5th graders science and english. 

Yesterday, all the teachers went out to lunch together in Tres Cantos, where Tasio (the P.E. teacher) lives and his father owns a restaurant. We spent 3 hours eating, drinking, and speaking in Spanglish. The teachers are as eager to practice their English as I am to practice my Spanish. The principal asked if I could tutor her children after school once a week and that she would tell her friends to contact me if they're interested!

Finally, I took a food picture! We had salad with anchovies and salmon, olives, gazpacho, squid with mushrooms, melon, and ice cream. 

There's always so many more pictures I could post and stories to tell, but I'm trying to hone my editing skills. However, I will say that this week I missed New York a lot because my best friends (Seth and Dana!!) from Oklahoma are visiting. Send BK my love. XO