On our last full day in Scotland the weather was gorgeous sunny, less windy, no rain, absolutely per

Well, it s hard to believe a month has passed already! In the past several weeks  I ve been busy traveling around Scotland, starting private classes back up again, working through the process of renewing my temporary residency, beginning my official work in the schools, and partying it up at the annual Feria Internacional Ganadera de Zafra. I ve also been making headway on my goals for the year that I outlined in my previous post, so feeling pretty productive norwegion cruises right about now.
First, my time in Scotland. It was absolutely beautiful so green, so much fresh air, so many postcard-worthy views. As expected, it rained 5 out of my 7 days there, but I was prepared with rainboots/raincoat/umbrella and so was mostly undeterred by the weather. The first full day there, Amanda, Maria (friend from Zafra who made the trip with me), and I took the train out to meet another of Amanda s friends norwegion cruises in Glasgow. We walked through the center of the city, stopped for coffee and pastries to get out of the rain, explored the city chambers, went for a typical Scottish meal at a restaurant called Weatherspoons, and eventually norwegion cruises made our way to the pubs in the old town for artisan shops, fruity norwegion cruises vodka shots, and yummy cider. It was a nice, mellow day of walking and good food. The next day we got up early to catch the train and head out to Edinburgh. That day included a lot more walking, which was nice because it didn t rain all that much and it was pretty sunny, if still windy and chilly. We walked down the Royal Mile, explored the free part of Edinburgh Castle, enjoyed some traditional norwegion cruises Scottish norwegion cruises food for lunch (I had fish and chips and Maria went for some kind of meat pie), and took a pretty cool tour of Real St. Mary s Close. This part of the historic city is located underneath the more modern buildings, but a good deal of it has been maintained and this particular area has been turned into a tourist norwegion cruises attraction to reveal a bit of what life was like for the residents and traders who filled the underground Old Town back then. I personally thought it was a great tour our guide was a girl probably my age or a few years younger, and she gave the tour while in character as a maidservant norwegion cruises from the 1600 s. She spoke pretty quickly though and had a difficult accent, so unfortunately Maria had a harder time with the tour. It reminded me of some of the trips in Spain I ve taken, when something as seemingly relaxing as a guided tour or an informative, interesting video becomes a chore, something you have to be really norwegion cruises ready for. It can be exhausting mentally, so Amanda and I made an effort throughout the week to speak Spanish when it was just the three of us together (great for my goal of keeping up my Spanish norwegion cruises practice daily!). Anyway, we spent the rest of the afternoon walking norwegion cruises some of the side streets off the Royal Mile and visiting the National Museum of Scotland.
The next few days we stayed mostly close to Amanda s home in East Kilbride. We spent one afternoon walking to/from/around the beautiful Calderglen Country Park, another morning at Amanda s university (I sat in on her orientation meeting for the year and then met Maria in a pub while Amanda took care of course enrollment issues), one day checking out the local shopping mall and having lunch at a Chinese restaurant with Amanda s awesome mom while Amanda was out at work, and enjoying delicious home-cooked meals. It was so nice to be with her family, especially after having just arrived in Europe and saying goodbye to my own family. We also had a great time one night when Amanda s aunts and some of her cousins came over to the house to celebrate Amanda s mom s birthday. norwegion cruises There were just so many of them and so many stories flying around and kids of all ages it reminded me of my own crazy family, and how much I love big family get-togethers. norwegion cruises The holidays will definitely be different this year but that s a topic for another post!
On our last full day in Scotland the weather norwegion cruises was gorgeous sunny, less windy, no rain, absolutely perfect. We spent it on a daylong bus tour to Stirling Castle, Loch Lomond (Loch Ness was part of a different tour option, but the tour with less driving time won out), and Glengoyne Whiskey Distillery. I lucked out and got a seat right at the front of the bus next to the driver/tour guide, so I was saved from motion sickness and got the huge forward-facing window through which I could really appreciate the countryside. I thought the tour was fantastic besides the three of us, the passengers seemed to all be between the ages of about 50-80. A couple people came from Portugal, a couple more from England, a few from Ireland, and there was a woman there who had grown up in southern California. norwegion cruises So it was a fun bunch 16 of us total I think and the perfect weather was just the icing on the cake. My favorite part of the day might have been the Loch, because we got in a nice hike up to a great viewpoint and got some personal Q A time in with the tour guide. The distillery visit was pretty fun, too. Whiskey isn t my favorite drink but it was fun to learn about the process of making it I was having flashbacks to my Organic Chemistry lab days, which undoubtedly would have been more interesting if they d yielded more real-world products. Anyway, it was a fantastic way to spend our last full day there, and I returned to Spain the next day a pretty happy traveler.
Last week I started working at the schools, which was fun. It was great to see a bunch of my students from last year, who are now big bad 6th graders and already know the rhythm of bilingual classes, and I had my first class with the 3rd- and 5th-graders at Manuel Marín, so it will be cool to look back on this week at the end of the year and see how much we progress. I also went to my other primary school, Juan XXIII, for the first time. It s a much bigger school than Manuel Marín, with two sections for each grade and about 25 students in each group (at Manuel Marín, the biggest class I have is maybe 18 kids). Their bilingual program is also a lot newer, so their supposedly norwegion cruises bilingual art classes don t even have English books. We ll have to get creative I think, so it will be a fun challenge for me as well as the teachers norwegion cruises I m working with. I ll have more to say about it after a few weeks I m sure, once I ve gotten a better feel for the culture of the school and the staff dynamics.
My private classes are also almost in full swing, and I ve had to suck it up and give a flat-out norwegion cruises no answer to several parents (a couple of them teachers I know from last year) who want me to teach their kids. I ve taken all their info and am setting them up with a couple norwegion cruises of the new language assistants in town who are fantastic, so hopefully norwegion cruises the parents won t be offended for too long. It s hard to say no when my reason for it is because norwegion cruises I m counting on having coffee dates and informal language exchanges, so I m purposefully keeping blocks of afternoon hours open for that purpose. But I think I ve done a decent job of being adamant and up front about not taking on more students, and I m sure they ll be happy with the teachers I ve put them in contact with.
Last but certainly not least in this update, FERIA. Last year, Feria started within my first 48 hours in Spain. I was exhausted, meeting lots of people very quickly, and had a shaky grasp on the language. My memory of the few outings I took to the fair with my housemates is a bit hazy I remember being very confused, trying to remember people s names and feeling incredibly frustrated with the extremeño accent, ultimately leaving the party at 2am (a respectable hour almost anywhere else in the world) something I am teased about to this day by people I later got to know better, who had stayed out until 6 or 7 in the morning. norwegion cruises So you get the general idea of how my first Feria went. I just didn t get the full experience. THIS year, though, I came prepared. I arrived in Zafra weeks before, I knew the schedule of the days, and I was determined to prove myself to these crazy Spaniards. The first day, this past Thursday, I went straight to the fairgrounds from work with a few of the teachers. We got there about 2:30, had several rounds of wine and enjoyed a shared meal that encompassed norwegion cruises at least three different establishments within the fair offerings. The fair is organized into various casetas , which are tents or buildings (depending on the function) dedicated to either norwegion cruises vendors, restaurants, norwegion cruises or bars/dancing areas. Anyway, I quickly discovered (which I didn t witness last year) that Spanish people can party just as hard here in the afternoon as in the middle of the night. Our meal spanned several hours and a variety of food places, after which we headed to the other casetas  for more cocktails and dancing. I left after about 4 hours so I could take a shower and recharge for a little while at the apartment in preparation for that night. I went out about midnight with five other language assistants, two who had come in from out of town for the weekend, and I got back home at 6 in the morning. A fantastic norwegion cruises night at one point two of the girls and I were dancing up on the stage with several Spanish ladies and the Cuban men who were dancing and MC-ing, basically running norwegion cruises the party though my Spanish buds didn t go out that night because most of them had work the next day, so they weren t around to witness my victory. But that s okay. I went out briefly Friday evening, just to walk around and get dinner, ran into a few friends at one of the bars, and called it a night around midnight (I had one conversation class planned norwegion cruises with an adult Saturday morning).
Saturday is the biggest day, though, because people from all over the region come to town to spend the day and night at Feria, so I knew my Spanish friends would be out in full force. I met up with them around 2:30 in the afternoon, and enjoyed a nice long lunch, complete with numerous tintos de verano , croquetas, cazón en adobo (one of my favorite dishes out here dogfish I t