Valladolid

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Apparently, to get your English teaching experience in, you have to leave the english speaking countries first. Before getting back into gear for our second semester abroad, Laurel and I spent the week in Valladolid (a two hour ish drive north of Madrid) helping run an intensive english program for a group of Spanish people that work for Vodafone (like the Spanish verizon). It was 6 on 6, as in 6 members of each native language.

We met the Spaniards at a four star hotel called Lasa Sport, and played a few break the ice games that I´ll definitely take back to Swedish camp, because they were a lot harder than they initially seemed. For example, trying to order ourselves correctly according to the number we had by making only bird noises and with our eyes closed.

After that awkward fest 2008, we began talking to each of the students one on one, rotating every hour. This was a daily activity, but never really got old, because there was definitely an interesting group of people there, and the conversation ranged from the fascination of the technology used nowadays in Disneyland to the way people nod in India (apparently it´s more of a bobble-head motion). Other daily activities included playing paddle (kind of like tennis meets raquet ball), drinking heart-attack status rations of free coffee, and overeating at the three course gourmet lunch and dinners.

It was definitely one of those summer camp like feelings, where you get there the first day and everything you do and say is awkward because you´re too busy trying not to run out of things to do and say at the same time while you do and say things. It can get very socially exhausting. This is where the less bird noise oriented icebreakers came in handy. On the second night at dinner, we played that game where everyone gets a sticker put on their head with the name of any celebrity alive or dead on it, which everybody can read but you. You then ask yes or no questions to figure out who you are. This game seemed suspiciously easy for the students...

Raul: Am I white?
Everybody: yes.....
Raul: Am I Brad Pitt?
(Yes, yes he was.)

For the record, I was Brittany Spears, and figured it out after the NO answer to the question ´Do I have a good reason for being famous?´Laurel was Micheal Jackon, to which she figured out after the hesitant yes answer to the same question as Raul´s. Ah, Americans. What a good impression our celebrities must give to these Spaniards. Anyways.

Another one of the activities we worked on to extract some more English from them was a fake presentation. Well, a real presentation of a fake product anyways. We had to come up with an idea that didn´t exist yet and sell it to the other team. My team came up with the idea of Dream Pills, where you take a pill before you go to sleep and then you can dream about whatever you want to. (I bet some of you have an idea where that idea came from). The students worked on the presentation all week and on Friday pitched it to the other group. I think our group had a different idea of what fake presentation means, because it was a little more serious than a skit with a magazine face cut out of Obama, which did in fact appear in the other team´s presentation. I think it´s because our idea was so good that we actually wanted it to exist, hmmm?

But, even if my dream pills couldn´t exist, at least I still got my fifteen minutes of fame in when I stole the script of one of the other teachers who is an aspiring actress. It was her audition for a short Spanish film, and the Disney technology enthusiast Miguel Angel and I decided it needed a little bit of reinterpretation into English. It started out as a language exercise, and ended as a major reminder of why I would much rather do anything than act.

During another one of the one on one sessions, I was talking to a man named Jordi from Barcelona. Some background on Jordi: He´s a former underwear model from Barcelona who has traveled all over the world and came somewhere along the line to the conclusion that Vodafone might be a wiser career move. Jordi is, to say the least, a very Spanish man. He proved it with some very passionate poetry he read to the dinner table one night...
'to me,
your Prada handbag...
is a ripoff.´

Maybe you had to be there to catch the beauty of that one, but I´m pretty sure the full effect came through. Anyways, Jordi and I were talking about concerts which led to talking about music which lead to talking about piano which led to the bet that if he could find a piano in Valladolid then I had to play it for everyone, and Laurel had to sing. I agreed, thinking that there was no way he was going to randomly find a piano in some tiny town in Spain. But, alas, on the last night of the program, we all went into town together, and entered into some restauraunt called something de Oro, and there it was waiting for me. So, true to then bet, we apparently had our fifteen minutes of fame in Valladolid (I guess for me then 30), because after that the whole restaurant followed our group around the rest of the night with requests.

So overall it was a good week, and actually a quite productive one for me, too, because as some of you know I tendtobeamumbler and this didn´t fly too well with the spanish speakers, because they were here to learn english rather than destroy it like I do sometimes. So I got a whole week of forcing myself to talk slowly, annunciate, and use likes only when referring to my opinion on the fish (because that´s how good the food was...even the seafood was likeable which made the rest to die for). But! Back to Spanish now, and school and regular work and my normal old ...oh wait.

Yesterday, I thought it was time to go back to school, but apparently it was another holiday, because why not I suppose, and so after walking all the way out to school I figured I should stay in the area to at least say I walked there for something. I went into a Cafe, talked myself into a free tea (looks like I have a knack for that), and decided to get some hardcore reading done before studying got in the way again. But instead, I ended up being a tour guide around Madrid for a college student from Holland who was there for a football match.

And the award for the most random encounters in a year goes to....

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