el primer día

Yesterday was my first day of work. I had already been to visit the school on Friday, thanks to Monica, the awesome auxiliar who worked in my school two years ago. Basically she has saved my life here so far, shout out to Monica if you are reading this. On Friday, Ismael, the bilingual coordinator, showed me around the school and introduced me to most of the staff. I went around giving dos besos (the typical Spanish way of greeting people) to everyone I met. I forgot almost everyone’s name but it was still nice to meet people, and it made my first day easier.

My school is in a town called Pilas, a suburb of Sevilla. Suburbs here are a little different than they are in the states, at least different than the NYC suburbs. When I say Pilas is a suburb, I mean its really more like a small pueblo. There is a main street and some houses, at least that’s all it looks like to me. And miles of olive and orange trees surround the town. I found out from Ismael that Pilas came about because it was a stopping place for people between the two surrounding towns. It was a place for horses to get some rest and water, before continuing on their way, hence the name pilas, which roughly translates to ‘watering hole’ in English.

On my first day I went to three different bilingual classes and spent about an hour in each. In one classroom there were 5 year olds learning science. Which means they were learning how to say different body parts in English. I watched them point to their arms, and legs, and sometimes their nose when they were asked to point to their ear. But hey, learning another language is hard at age 5. In another class, we discussed the difference between team and individual sports in English, which was a difficult concept for students to grasp, even though the word individual is exactly the same word in Spanish! In the third classroom it was time for math, which is not a bilingual subject, but I did my best to be helpful anyway.

It is interesting how loud children can be when they are speaking their native language, but the minute you ask them to say something in English, it’s like they don’t have tongues. Or if they do open their mouths to speak its so quiet that its impossible to hear what they are saying. So that was an interesting challenge for me yesterday. All in all it was a pretty good first day. The staff all seem really nice and welcoming. It will definitely take some getting used to for me to feel completely comfortable there, and actually remember everyone's name, but I think this is going to be a good experience for me.

I'm excited to see what tomorrow will bring!