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Published: July 19th 2008
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Well I have made it through my first week on the CELTYL course!! I have enjoyed my first week although it has been a lot of hard work. I am lucky enough to be living fairly close to International House - it only takes about 10 minutes to get here every morning which is great. There are 9 of us on the course altogether and we are quite the multi-cultural bunch. We are ranging in age from 21-50 and are from England, England again, England but living in Switzerland, England but living in Spain, Ireland but currently living in Spain, half American half Swiss, Italian, Argentinian but living in Sweden, New Zealand but living in Switzerland!!
Everyone on the course is really nice and we´ve had a lot of fun together so far.
The work is hard and I am generally in college from 8.30am until 5.30pm and then there are lesson plans and essays to think about in the evenings! Still Barcelona is a beautiful city and I am intending to fit in some sightseeing while I am here!!
Lessons have been interesting so far and we have been swamped with papers and worksheets and various teaching materials and
ideas. I am spending the first two weeks working with the younger class, the 8-10 year olds. We had some unassessed teaching time at the start of the week so we could get to know the children a bit. We currently have 7 in the group: Alvero, Carlotta, Maria, Beatric, Julia, Pol and Adria. They are sweet kids and a lot of fun. They have rather different levels of English so preparing lessons can be awkward as we have to cater for all abilities. They are very keen to use their English though. After teaching them ´Hello! How are you? I´m fine thanks and you?´in the form of an incredibly irrating song the kids all started using it as they came in in the morning... unfortunately they all seem to speak in the pattern of that very annoying song! My first couple of assessed lessons were ok, very nerve wracking but I survived!!
I have managed tio make the most of the fact it is the first week and the pressure hasn´t built up too much. I went out on Thursday night with some of the girls from the Spanish course. Another multi cultural group we were English, American,
Swiss, Turkish and Brazillian! I am enjoying the international community here - it´s great fun to meet people from so many different places. We went to see some Flamenco dancing which unfortunately was cancelled due to some non-existent rain. Ok, the sky was a little overcast, but there wasn´t any rain at all, despite the Spanish assuring us that it would definately rain, any minute now. We just went out for a meal in the end. We ate at a nice restaurant just off La Ramblas. It was a lot of fun, we ordered lots of different dishes (and then got very confused when we had to pay the bill as we couldn´t remeber who had ordered what and who had ended up eating what!) A live band played a mixture of Spanish and Brazilian songs and at the end Tatiana ran over to them to talk in Portugese and discuss Brazil. We walked home fairly late - as we walked along La Ramblas waiters came out of all the resturants and clappe dtheir hands at us.... apparently this was supposed to encourage us to come inside!
Today has been another fun day. I wasn´t doing assessed teaching practice
so I could relax a bit and just have fun with the kids. I got good feedback from my lessons and then we all went onto the terrace for free snacks and drinks.
I spent the evening walking down La Ramblas to the waterfront. It was fun to see the various street performers. I walked down to the sea and sat by the water which was very relaxing.
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Jeannie
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What a beautiful place
Hi Anna I am so envious. You and Katherine in amazing places. International house looks like those buildings in Paris. I thought it would be modern. Loved your balcony view.