Sevilla, a love-hate relationship

I went to Sevilla over the puente (long weekend) at the end of October. Since my travel buddy has to work on Fridays we were going to hop a bus there late Friday. But then that would have meant we would get right to the hostel and probably go to sleep. Since we're both penny pinchers, we decided instead to get the first bus leaving Saturday morning. Perfect! So what shall we do Friday? Go to a rugby team's toga party, of course!! We knew we'd be tired Saturday, but that's what the 6-hour busride was for.

Needless to say, I was a bit tired the next morning. I had to take two metros to the bus station, and I waited at least 5 minutes for each metro, which I had not calculated in my travel time. I got to the bus station at 8:57 for the 9:00 bus and was so happy I had actually made it! But as I sat down in my seat, I was looking around for my travel buddy and realized she wasn't there. Rut roh. The bus driver shut the doors so I quickly went up and told him my friend was there, but was just getting off the metro. I called my buddy and asked where she was. "I'm in bed" was her response, and my look must have been a good enough for the bus driver because at that moment, he put the bus in gear and started driving. So I was off to Sevilla sans my travel buddy! Sad face!! Miraculously, though, she somehow got up, packed, and to the bus station to get the next bus. Yay!!

Now, as the title says, I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Sevilla. First we'll talk about the love. I knew even from my first glances from the bus windows that I had a thing for Sevilla.

I mean, who doesn't love palm trees?

We stayed at a hostel complete with their own bar and pub crawl, so we went out to play with our hostelmates on Saturday. Sidenote: hostels can be so so so awesome. You meet people from LITERALLY all over the world!!

On Sunday we walked a bit around Sevilla, but called it an early day due to the increasing severity of my travel buddy's sickness. I woke up Monday to hear that she had already booked a bus back to Madrid. Womp womp!! So what is one to do? Wander the streets of Sevilla on a beautiful, warm, sunny "fall" day, that's what!

Plaza de Toros

A pub literally older than the United States

My favorite!! La Plaza de España! I literally let out a little gasp when it first came into view.

The narrow streets of Santa Cruz, the Jewish neighborhood of Sevilla

Sunday happened to be Halloween so I was delighted to see a wee black cat sleeping in the park. Well it was sleeping until I meowed at it to see if it was real. (Yep, that happened.) Then it glared at me, and I giggled in glee because it was like a real Halloween prop, which seemed so weird amongst the palm trees.

That night I took full advantage of the Halloween pub crawl the hostel hosted. Sidenote: in Spain, they're kind of just catching on to the whole Halloween thing. It's alright, but there are still some kinks they need to work out. For example, they believe that all costumes must be scary. You can be a witch or a vampire or a mummy or a zombie, but it must be scary. No clever costumes. No pop culture references. I didn't pay attention to this at all and I wore the costume I had planned.

el mar y un escocés (por supuesto)

I'm the ocean. (duh.) So many Spaniards were like, "Aren't you supposed to be scary?" After a few times of trying to explain that you don't need to be scary on Halloween, I resorted to pointing out just how scary the ocean can be. "Hurricanes. Tsunamis. Sharks." became my response for the rest of the night. 

The next morning a wandered around a little more before catching my bus back to Madrid. So it sounds all great right?? I mean, it stunk that my travel buddy had to leave, but other than that, it went pretty well. 

Until.

A few days later I woke up with this:

Hmm. Small bug bites all in a line. Please God, no no no no. But alas, I could not kid myself for long. As I investigated more and more, I found lines of bites all over my poor little cuerpo. Bed bugs. Effing bed bugs, man! And over the next couple days, the bites turned into really attractive welts, such as these:

I hadn't stayed in a hostel in weeks, so I can only assume I picked up these little monsters while in Sevilla. Which pretty much makes me hate Sevilla. 

But I'm trying to be positive. Like, at least it's not a flesh-eating virus. (That would be much worse than blood-sucking parasites, right? Right?!?!?)

Alrighty. So that's that! My love and hate for Sevilla. Since we always like to sandwich the bad with two slices of good, I'll end with this guy: three things that make Sevilla awesome. A gorgeous cathedral, palm trees, and carriage rides. 

Perfect.

So what exactly are you doing?

I've been trying to come up with a way to explain exactly what I'm doing here, but honestly, I'm still not quite sure yet. In general, auxiliares are supposed "language and culture assistants" or "conversation assistants". But as I've said before, I'm teaching at two different institutos here, so I'm in classes ranging from 6th grade through 12th grade, and in total I teach with 10 different English teachers in 14 different English classes of varying levels. So there are 10 different sets of expectations, 300+ names of students that I don't know, and 7 levels of understanding. So things aren't always clear.

There was an English department meeting this past week at one school, and one of the teachers finally explained exactly what their expectations for us auxiliares. After she explained for a little bit, another auxiliar asked, "So basically you just want us to plan lessons about things that we're interested in?" Her answer: "Yes." So next week I'm going to teach a lesson about fall in Michigan! Yay! I wish I had some apple cider to share or piles of leaves for students to jump in, but alas, a verbal description and powerpoint slides will have to do.

Despite not always knowing what my role is, I must say that the most frustrating thing is the lack of discipline the students have. From studying to be a teacher, I've been taught may different strategies for maintaining classroom control, but they're pretty much all based on a consequence/reward system (e.g. detention, suspension, extra recess, treats, etc.). Schools here (at least at my two) don't have this. One teacher told me you can give a student formal punishment, but the town government gets a copy of these and the school doesn't want to look bad, so they don't want to write a lot of these. Super! Totally makes sense! In this same school, the students simply don't stop talking until they're yelled at by the teacher, who resorts to mild insults if necessary. When I first asked about the discipline code, and the teachers told me I shouldn't have any problems because I'm in the best classes. Oh sweet baby Jesus.

But at the end of the day, I thank my lucky stars that I'm so lucky to even be here in Spain. And goodness knows I will be hella thankful when I'm back teaching in a school where only one person is allowed to talk at once. Or else! (dun! dun! dun!)

(That was the dramatic sound effect of shock/horror.)