School Girl

Hola.

It's interesting going to school in, shall we say, the prime of one's life. There were ups and downs when I was taking the TEFL class (Teaching English as a second language) in August, and here I am again taking an intensive class to learn Spanish. I will certainly be a better English teacher after learning even a small bit of Spanish.

Here's a typical day in the life of a Spanish immersion student in Seville--long days and short nights. Actually, I do get up early to review before eating breakfast with my house mother and another Spanish student from France. (She was smart enough to take about 100 hours of Spanish before coming here.) We walk our five minutes to school. My first class is grammar. We've just "finished" verbs in the present tense. I say finished because that's probably never the case. We're over halfway through our book after just 2 weeks. The first class goes from 9:15 to 11:00 with Charo. We have a short break and have a "conversation class" or "bla-bla-bla" according to our teacher, Victoria. Both teachers are excellent yet entirely different.

After class, I usually try to check my email, then head "home" to study a bit before lunch or do a little window shopping before the stores close at 2:00. Lunch is the big meal of the day. Our house mother prepares simple and more elaborate meals. We had boiled chicken the first few days so I got a little concerned, but since then we've had a good variety. Today we had oysters. After lunch, the house is very quiet, so I study. I've yet to take a siesta. The school usually has an afternoon activity or class, so I head back to school for that. Today I could have gone to a museum by opted to go to a pronunciation class. Every little bit helps.

The evening could be filled with shopping, going to get tapas, seeing flamenco dancing or maybe even studying! You can't believe how many shops there are in El Centro. There's good and bad with that.

I haven't seen that much of Sevilla but plan to do more this week and next. I need another weekend here! This weekend several women are going to Morocco so hope to hear from me next week. I'll be cautious. That's the word from here.

Life is good.
Hasta luego.