Catch up

I wrote this sitting in the Madrid airport as my computer was about to die, but I'll go ahead and post it anyway. I'm in Athens, Greece right now, and am running the 10 km portion of the Athens Classic Marathon in the morning! Anyway, here it is!

Things at the school I was working at were going great. I’ll get to why I’m talking in the past tense later… Anyway, I was finally getting settled in, getting to know the teachers and the students a little better. Like this for example – one of the English teachers is allergic to chalk – most ironic job-related allergy I’ve ever heard. I was starting a couple of video projects for them – one to send to their sister school in Togo and another with all of the footage from Halloween.

Oh my gosh. Halloween was insane. Every single person at the school went all out with their costumes -- mummies, witches, devils – the whole nine yards. I actually felt like a bad American because I went the lazy route and dressed up as a “thief”. Basically I wore all black and had gloves and a hat. I forgot that people here wear all black all the time, though, so I just looked a little more European for the day. But I had fun with it. People kept asking me what I was, so I just made up something new every time. I think throughout the day, in addition to being a thief, I was a karate master, a backup dancer, an angry ski bunny and a mime (it works because of the whole pale skin thing haha).

The gym/mad scientist’s laboratory was the best part of the whole day, though. It would never fly in the states. The gym teacher had the whole room decorated, creepy music playing in the background, and a group of the 6th graders to help him put on a show for all the different classes. Each class would walk in and the 6th graders would “rise from the dead” to welcome them into the laboratory. Then the teacher would get up and invite them to have some finger tapas (tapas are like appetizers) or drink some blood (tomato juice). Then he would blindfold volunteers and have them put their hands in intestines (wet noodles) or eyeballs (peeled grapes). It’s the same kind of thing people do in America, but it was more intense than anything I’d ever seen. Honestly, some of the younger kids started crying. That was when the other American girl and I came in. We’d already been informed by the 5-year-olds that our costumes weren’t any good because we weren’t scary, so we were pretty good at calming kids down.

So now for why I’m no longer at that school - the Junta de Andalucia decided that they need someone to work at the high school in the same pueblo, and I get to be that lucky someone. It should be interesting. The bus I used to take home from the elementary school takes me past the school I’ll be at starting next week, and the students there all look like they’re about ready to beat someone up. I think I’ve spent enough time in Houston and Waco, though, to hold my own haha.

I'm about to run out of battery life, but here are a few things to come:
- Pictures from Halloween
- Accidently attending Spanish poetry readings
- Getting hit by a moped (I'm fine by the way...)
- Obama election madness
- Dealing with the Junta and other residency card shenanigans