HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

So I have so many things to tell you all about that I don’t even know where to begin. I guess I will start by saying that our Thanksgiving meal was a SMASHING SUCCESS! It was a very long and labor intensive week but it was well worth it.
The week started with me making 100 copies of this Turkey project for some of my classes.

By the end of the week, I think I had printed 225 copies of this page. Needless to say, I don’t ever want to see this project again – I was asked by so many students “can we color it with colored pencils?, can we color it with markers? Can we use crayons? Do I cut this part or just this part? How do I put it together?” Ugh, it got old by the end of the week though the kids all enjoyed making them. Here is a picture of some of the students with their turkeys.

I did have some extra free time on my hands this week before the craziness of our Thanksgiving feast started (what’s new) and so one afternoon I sat and colored all of these pictures to replace the Halloween ones on the fridge.

Didn't I just say earlier that after helping with 225 turkeys that I didn't want to see another one?! Well, that didn't hold true. Michael Lynn, Tad and I spent part of the day coloring, cutting out, and assembling a turkey as a party favor for each of our guests.
Here is our work station where all of the turkeys were created


Here are Tad and Michael Lynn diligently cutting while I was assembling


Our mess of scraps


My favorite turkeys - Texas A&M, Michigan, and Texas - it's Thanksgiving, what better themes for turkeys than college football?!


Here are all the turkeys displayed behind the buffet of food


Besides hunting down a turkey, here is my pride and joy of the Thanksgiving meal
APPLE PIE before being cooked (It was delicious but I still can't think about how much butter I had to melt to make the sauce.....Ms. Nutritious.


and after


Here is all of the bread sitting out to get stale


Here is the finished product - Stuffing!


I thought our table all set was so cute!


My first helping - I don't know if I actually tasted it or just inhaled it :-)


Michael Lynn and I actually relaxing a bit and enjoying ourselves after a very hectic couple of days!


Tad worked very hard and made a video of our Thanksgiving adventure and I will share it all with you here. He did all of the video-taping and the pictures are from my camera and a few from his. Enjoy!


We had an amazing Thanksgiving with our Spanish friends! We have much to be thankful for and glad that we were able to celebrate it with friends and great food!

Big Girl Panties

Well, I had to put on my big girl panties on Saturday. Unfortunately, I think I put them on backwards. To explain further, Tad and I were invited this weekend to go to a pueblo for a lunch with our landlady (Michael Lynn was invited too but opted to go to Malaga for a couple of days with one of her teachers). Our landlady informed us that she was going to make paella for us (a typical Spanish dish).
Here is the table all set with the paella

Now, the most popular paella is made with seafood (here is where I insert the fact that I am absolutely repulsed by even the thought of seafood and it's quite unfortunate that I live in a coastal town in Southern Spain because obviously seafood is a staple of the diet here). At one point I went into the kitchen to see if I could help with anything and immediately regretted that decision because right at that moment, Marian was putting the octopus into the paella! AHHHHHHHHH yuck! She told me she didn't need help and so I quickly turned around and went and sat myself directly in front of the bowls of chips that she had set out as an appetizer and began to dig in! I sat there nervously munching on chips and mentally preparing myself for the food that was about to be put in front of me. I was happy to see that there was a salad in the kitchen only to be surprised again when it was set on the table and covered in Tuna! It just wasn't my day. As we all sat down at the table, people could tell by my reaction that I didn't like seafood and Marian felt bad but I was quickly relieved when she told me that she left most of the seafood that she planned on putting in the paella at home. So instead of having to eat clams, mussels, prawns, octopus and calamari............
(I don't like that they have eyes and are staring at me...)

- I luck out with only having to face the challenge of calamari this little creature.....

I had eaten dried octopus when I was in Granada with my host family but these were actually whole little baby-like octopus. After much harrassment about how there are so many foods that I don't like and how picky I am (yeah, like that's a conversation I've never had before...), it was time to dig in. I was happy to know that the rice didn't taste too fishy. This is why I think that I put my big girl panties on backwards - I brought myself to eat the calamari but avoided the octopus! I chickened out!!! I was disappointed in myself but I will settle with baby steps.
After our meal and some coffe and Spanish cake, we went for a walk around the town (called Itroba). It was cute and here are a few pictures I snapped.
The views were gorgeous.



There were tons of cats around and they were all sitting on this wall and so I had to snap a picture!

It's time to face another week - on the agenda...plan a great Thanksgiving feast for all of our Spanish friends :-)

I am a celebrity!

Who is this? Hannah Montana. What is she? A celebrity. My students in Spain absolutely love her. But that is beside the point. After only a month-and-a-half of working, I now feel like a celebrity at Antonio Garvayo Dinelli. I get bombarded with hugs and students are always saying hello in the hallways. A lot of them ask their teachers why I only come in once a week to their respective classes. Pretty soon, you'll be able to Google my name and images like this will appear as quickly as a million of images of "Hannah Montana" appeared
Celebrity Emily

But really, that's a joke. In all honesty, I wanted to write a post to tell you all how much I am enjoying my job. When I didn't have internet in my piso (which was a long time, as I am sure you are all well-aware), I was not really making any lesson plans and simply felt like a glorified babysitter. Well, these past couple of weeks, I have been making lessons and have been much more active in the classroom and have really been enjoying myself.

Each week, I go for two hours on Wednesdays to the "infantil" side of the school to teach 5 yr-olds songs and games. These past two weeks, I have been teaching them to sing "5 Little Ducks"
Refer to this video for an example if you missed out on this hit of a song as a child!

Anyways, it has been interesting and fun. The teacher made a poster with 5 little ducks and a mommy duck and also they have real plastic ducks. Well, this week, I brought in my own special surprise!

Yes, I have my own collection of ducks. Yes, I brought them all the way from the US. Yes, I know I am a dork, but I deal with it :-) Well, they LOVED these ducks and I even caused some tears when certain students didn't get the duck they wanted. At the end of each class, I ended up setting a different duck on each table and letting them pass them around. Needless to say, I washed all of them before I brought them home as I saw children picking their noses and then putting their hands all over my ducks! ewwwwwwww

In my 5th grade classes, the students are learning about plants. I had them fill out this worksheet with the parts of the plants and they explained it very well in English!

Then, I had them label all the parts they could on this picture.

For me, it was something simple to come up with and they all enjoyed it. It was a good review and it's amazing how creative some of the kids get when coloring pictures.
I am working on a Thanksgiving lesson plan for tomorrow and part of next week!! Even though they don't celebrate Thanksgiving here, they want us to teach our students about it because we obviously love this holiday (who doesn't love stuffing their face with thousands of unnecessary calories worth of delicious food once a year?)

Because I like to be random

I can't say that I have too many interesting things to tell all of you but I will do my best to come up with some semi-interesting reading material for the blog world out there!

One very funny story from school that I have to share with you - I don't have a picture of it because I didn't want to embarrass the student but it was pretty cute/funny. The fifth grade classes had been working on classifying animals (amphibians, reptiles, birds, etc..) and one particular class made wall-size posters with all of the different types of animals and it was each child's responsibility to bring in a few pictures that they had colored of animals to post under each category. Well, one student brought in a picture that resembled something like this....

Ok - I hope this is going to make sense to you all. So this is a Chameleon. However, if read in a Spanish accent, it almost appears as if it says "cama" and "leon." Those two words translate into English as "bed" and "lion." So this particular child brought in a picture of a chameleon with the title being "Bed Lion." Hahaha I about died laughing once I understood what had happened (it took the teacher and I a couple of minutes to put it all together). I had that same class today and there is a label taped over the old one that says, "chameleon." :-)

And I must have spoken too soon with the whole "I don't have anything interesting to say thing" because after I wrote the story above, I went to go blow dry my hair because I had just recently showered and well, something happened. I must start off by saying that I did not bring my big blow dryer all the way from home. My plan was to buy one here like I did when I was in Spain two years ago. Lucky for me, while I was staying for a week with my host family, my host mom offered to give me a small blow dryer that she never uses so that I didn't have to buy one. I graciously accepted it and figured I could buy a new one later on, if needed. Well, let me tell you - it is one devil of a little machine.

The fan part on the opposite side that blows out air, sucks in air and I had flipped my head over to dry my hair and this is the result when I flipped my head back up......
Yes, that is the blow dryer stuck in my hair.

I had to ask my roommate Tad to come in and help me get it out. After laughing at my misfortune and requesting to take a picutre, he saw no other way of remedying the problem than to use.....SCISSORS!!!! ahhhhhhh in all of my 24 years of living, I don't think I have ever had to cut anything out of my hair! I now have a nice little short piece of hair as a prize (luckliy it's one of the bottom layers!)
I also have this as a reminder of how deadly this little blow dryer can be.


More random things....I went out for tapas with some teachers after a meeting we had last week and this is one that my teacher ordered.
It's called "Chorizo al infierno" or chorizo of hell.

So what happens is the waiter brings over a small dish of alcohol and lights it on fire and it is your responsibility to roast your own piece of chorizo (just like a marshmallow!) I was obviously highly entertained by this and requested my picture to be taken with the tapa (even though I do not like chorizo!)


Two more interesting things and then I am done being random - I was in Granada for a couple of days this past weekend and was excited to see the leaves are changing on the trees!


And at the same time, there's tons of snow on the Sierra Nevada's!


Love to all from Motril!!

Welcome to Antonio Garavayo Dinelli

Since I gave a wonderful tour of my workout facilities in Spain, I thought I would continue and show you all what my school looks like. Enjoy the photo tour!

Welcome to Antonio Garavyo Dinelli


Here is the front entry-way looking out and looking in- yes there is a fence around the entire school and a locked gate. Do I have keys? No. Someone has to buzz me in every day. And why the fence? I was told by my co-worker today that a child once escaped and now to combat that issue, there is a huge, prison-like fence.




Here is where you go to see the secretary - it also looks like she is imprisoned!


What I refer to as a big waste of space right as you enter the school


Here is looking down the main hallway (this is the 1st floor here in Spain but they start from 0 and to us it would be the second floor).



A Spanish classroom



The smart board (the board that I wrote about in a previous post and was so excited that each room has these - they are so useful)



Here is one of my favorite pictures - this is the "teacher's lounge" and everyday at 11:30, the children have recreo (recess) for 1/2 hour. What do the teachers do? They all gather here and have coffee, cookies, cakes, toast, pate....you name it, they eat it at this hour. It's so entertaining!


And lastly, here is the gaggle of parents waiting to pick their children up at 2pm!



Well, I hope you all enjoyed the tour - and I think as you all can tell - I have entirely too much free time on my hands! Anyone out there know of anyone who needs some work done around Motril, Spain?!?! :-)

Emily's Gym

Have you ever wanted to join a gym with great amenities and a personalized workout plan? Welcome to the wonderful world of “Emily’s Gym!” It’s my latest endeavor in Spain and please feel free to take a look at “The Essence of Emily” – the inaugural edition of the monthly newsletter for Emily’s Gym.
What are you looking for in a gym? Whatever your desire, I’m sure we have just what you need.
• Terrains of all types for a diverse workout experience - uphill, downhill, gravel, pavement





• Areas for doing sit-ups, lunges, and stretching




• Climbing equipment



• Breathtaking views from each piece of equipment



• Personalized work out plans



If Emily’s Gym interests you, please contact Emily for more information. Membership numbers are hovering right around one right now but we are always looking to increase. As an incentive, if you join before December 1st, your name will be included in a drawing for a free flight to Spain! Don’t miss out on this awesome opportunity!
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Ok so obviously this is a joke (and you would need that flight to Spain to be able to work out with me) but I wanted you all to get an idea of a little bit of the landscape of Motril and also how I am combating the issue of gaining weight in Spain - if you need a refresher, just refer back to the "culinary adventures" blog post. I have been enjoying my runs but hope to join a real gym here soon. Though, I joined one in Granada and it didn’t stop this from happening!


In other great news, I am writing this blog post from the comfort of my own bed in my piso because WE FINALLY HAVE THE INTERNET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!