Urte berri on! That’s Basque for ‘Happy New Year!’ (As I go acquiring more euskera language skills I started upgrading from my typical Spanglish to Euskespanglish, lol).
So, as you can see I’ve been pretty absent from the blogosphere for the last few months. I’m going to refer to this time as the “lost months”… It’s as if I’ve blinked my eyes and three months of my life have gone whooshing by in an instant. That’s because things have been crazy (and as long as we’re being honest, I’ve been a bit crazy too); LOTS of work, getting used to a new city and new job, meeting people, going out. Being irresponsible. Burning the candle at both ends en toda regla. Like I said, “lost months.”
It’s been the best of times and the worst of times. The highlights of the lost months include but are [definitely] not limited to:
- Being interviewed on the radio for my Ministry of Education job. The woman who heads up the program here in Euskadi (who is much nicer and more involved than her counter part in CyL, did I mention that?) asked my French-Canadian friend, Nicolas (the one I did the presentation with - it went really well by the way!) if we would be so kind as to 'appear' on Cadena SER to talk about teaching foreign language in the Basque Country. I was nervous about speaking on the radio but the girl who interviewed us was so cool that after a few
minutes I completely forgot about the huge headphones they put on me and the microphone in front of my face. I also enjoyed our 4-way conversation on comparative education policy, a topic I've understandably become pretty interested in over the last year. - Makeshift Thanksgiving. We American ex-pats treated our British friends to a true Thanksgiving meal. It was my first Thanksgiving without my family (since Leah, Aly and Erik were here last year) but we managed to make it a wonderful day. Also, I made stuffing! And it was edible!
- Welcoming a new baby. Of all the unexpected things to happen this year, befriending a pregnant woman and having a baby in my apartment are high on the list.
- Traveling to Bordeaux. I met Leah over in France during my vacation ("puente") for the Día de la Constitución. I stayed in a fancy hotel with my sister, drank red wine, ate chocolate and macarons... needless to say it was great
- Taking my students on a field trip to Bilbao. I took my
tourism students to Bilbao to see a play in English and then we went on a boat tour along the estuary... good practice for their future jobs I hope! I had a good time but still haven't properly seen the city. I'm looking forward to it when my parents coming in March! - 12 Pubs of Christmas. There are really no words for this. My friends organized a pub crawl before Christmas break. 12 pubs, 15+ foreigners in x-mas garb... hilarity ensued.
- All the while working like a slave at Dini. This last facet
of my crazy life in Vitoria has changed upon my arrival from winter break. I no longer work on Saturday mornings! Yipee!
Now, let me break things down in to three areas (I feel like Madden here with “highlights” and “break it down”…)
WORK
As I said before, I'm working at a high school again this year, but this time teaching English to juniors, seniors and some tech school type courses (tourism and early childhood ed; I go to a different school for that class on Fridays). I do actually have one class of precocious sophomores as well, 19 of 20 of whom are foreigners, children of African and Latin American immigrants. It makes for quite the classroom environment; I think I'm learning as much from them as they are from me. That high school is in a strange situation because it's the only public school in Vitoria where they still teach in Spanish, not Basque (as required by law). So what happens is that immigrants seek out the school resulting in a pretty unique mix: 80% foregin students, 20% Basque/Spanish. It's kind of weird and definitely tense at times (you can tell which teachers take pity and which are not amused at all by this predicament-- you normally don't get to choose the school where you teach) but I enjoy the multicultural setting. The center where I teach on Fridays is completely different, totally Basque. My students bring Euskera-English dictionaries to class, not Spanish-English. It's really cool because I'm seeing so many sides of Spanish/Basque society vis-a-vis my job with the Ministry.
Things at Dini have calmed down quite a bit as well. I started off with 27 teaching hours (yeah, that's having to prepare for and teach 21 classes of 11 different levels). Needless to say it was crazy. It was also really crazy of me to think I could handle a full time teaching job on top of my internship. Truth be told, however, I had no idea just how much work it was going to involve (I was a bit mislead on that front). But when I told my boss that I bit off more than I could chew she went about reassigning some class until now, finally, I have 10 hours less. I'm definitely more content.
TRAVEL
Apart from the aforementioned trips to Bordeaux and Bilbao (which barely counts) I’ve been keeping the travel to a minimum this year, mainly because of time, of which I have had none. I was lucky enough to go home for Christmas (because my parents love me). It was so so so good for me to get to see my family and friends and be around people who really know me. Now that I’m back and will thankfully have my holy Saturdays once again, I can start thinking of some potential trips for this semester. I will most definitely be making a stop in England and some point and this year I have two weeks for semana santa so I’m thinking of another Eurorail trip. There’s still so much of Europe that I want to see while I’m over here. Hay que aprovechar! High on my list of priority cities are Berlin (well, basically any and all of Germany), Bern, Vienna, Prague and Budapest. Lots of ‘B’ names this year…?
VITORIA-GASTEIZ
What can I say? I love it here. I love living in such a European city (recently voted Europe's Green Capital; I like to think my impromptu news interview had something to do with that haha). And I’ve been really lucky to meet some very cool people and good friends through the program, not to mention my lovely roommates.
Hasta pronto! (This time for real. I've got my life back!)
Love,
Katie
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