A beach mural for the four year olds

The four year olds are learning about the beach. Words like splash, shell, pail, umbrella and sun are part of this unit. For whatever reason, Ana thought it would be wise for them to color (her favorite activity!) pictures of seashells that came with the ridiculous sticker-happy book we use. They then had to cut the shells out and glue them to a huge piece of brown paper. It took two class periods for the kids to do all of this (even after 1.5 hours some still weren't done).

Most of them were able to do this by themselves (even the cutting and gluing). One child, whom Ana and Erin (who went to this class from October to February) had nicknamed Juan Antonio "wild animal" because he is constantly disrupting the class, had finished coloring before today's class. He's really active so I had him help me put the other student's work into their cubbies (Ana though I could do this myself....I don't have any idea which kid's stuff goes where - I've only been to three classes). Then, she wanted me to help him cut his shells. I swear the kid was so excited about cutting that he almost took my fingers off with safety scissors.

She also made me supervise the gluing process which turned out to be hell because the kids don't understand anything about personal space. To get to a place around the poster kids were trampling others and flat-out stomping on the poster. One girl almost cried because a boy put glue on the H at the end of "The Beach" which she was supposed to be coloring pink. I told her to color around it and not to worry, but still, tears formed. At this point, Ana was out in the hallway chatting with the other preschool teachers.

The lesson was a large waste of time, especially because Ana had made me print out other pictures for the kids to color (these were tossed aside on the desk). I'm also pretty sure that I didn't speak English the entire time I was in the classroom. I'm not sure why I even went.

Passover with 3rd grade=failure

Ana decided that I could only have 15 minutes to teach the third grade about Passover. This wasn't nearly enough time because 5 minutes was wasted on telling them that the language on the board was Hebrew (they were convinced it was Chinese). The kids weren't that interested in the material because it was 1:48 and school ends at 2. They just wanted to get out of there and had already sat through 48 minutes of Ana and I telling them a story about a butterfly who goes from the USA to go south in September because of migratory patterns. By November, Mora the Monarch is in Mexico. She's happy because she has butterfly friends there. I'm not sure if they learned anything, but I'm pretty sure they're going to bring it up with their religion teacher tomorrow....I wonder if I'll get any feedback from her...

Want to see a bunch of 4th graders get so frustrated they fall off their chairs?

Today in 4th-grade English I wrote Passover (Pesach) on the board in Hebrew. This caused a lot of distress among the students who couldn't figure out which English letters I was using.

Ana told them I wasn't writing in English, so they started to guess what language I was using. No, it wasn't Arabic (that was a really good guess though). It wasn't French either (duh! - the girl who said that never pays attention to anything in class).

They listened attentively as I explained Judaism, the Hebrew language and the meaning behind Passover (a very basic version). They had seen a movie (in religion class I think) version of the story so they were pretty familiar with the ideas in Spanish. We looked at picture representations of the plagues and a drawing of a seder plate. I tried to explain matzah, which, in this bread-obsessed country, caused a lot of gagging noises and horrified faces.

The lesson was pretty successful: I maintained their attention and was able to teach them something they would not have otherwise learned. Tomorrow, I'm going to repeat it with the third grade and do another version with the sixth grade.

Butano....

We heat our water and cook on our stove with gas (butane) delivered to our apartment by the "butano man" (okay, this is really just a guy who works for Repsol, the Spanish gas company). Our hot water heater runs out every three to four weeks. Our stove gas had been going strong since we moved into the apartment in October. We were worried that we might run out during our cooking extravaganza on Thanksgiving, but it kept going....until this week.

It ran out Friday afternoon while Erin was trying to make soup. We called to have the tank replaced, but they don't do deliveries Friday afternoons. We had plenty in our hot water tank, so I decided to try to switch the two. It's a really easy mechanism to get the hose off the tank, but when I tried to get the semi-full hot water tank to attach to the kitchen hose, I couldn't.

Cecilia and I spent at least 20 minutes trying to attach it (this is after I had already spent 30 minutes trying it myself...and googling possible solutions).

Christine came over to use our internet and popped the thing on in two seconds. She did the same thing Cecilia and I had been doing; she just seemed to have the right finesse or something. We were pretty pissed that we couldn't get this to work, but she did it instantly. (We were also really happy to have our stove back.)

Anyway, bright and early Saturday morning (we're talking 8:15 a.m.), the butano man came to our rescue and brought us another tank to attach to our hot water heater so our apartment could go back to normal. At least we're getting better at guessing when that one is going to run out (unlike that time Cecilia was partway through a shower....). Needless to say, all butane tanks are staying attached. Although, next time we run out on the hot water heater, I'm going to try again....I'll just leave the functioning tank alone.

Now it's your turn, mom!

Hey mom, this one is for you.

When I was home, my mother told me she wanted Chinese food because they had a "Chinese cooking demo" on the Today Show. What they did was take leftover rice, veggies, an egg and soy sauce and turn that into fried rice. Tonight, I decided to give it a try. I had made brown rice last night with steamed carrots and sauteed onions with garlic and ginger. I took the onions and some raw asparagus and put it in the sauté pan. I quick steamed/stir fried the asparagus (not letting it cook all the way) with the onion mixture. Next, I added the egg and stirred that around. Then I added the carrots and rice and kept stirring. Finally, I added a splash of soy sauce.

It came out really yummy. Okay mom, now it's your turn!

Jaen

Friday afternoon Maricarmen (Cecilia's coworker) drove me to Jaen where a friend, Jolinda, lives. We met at orientation; she works at an elementary school there (same job as me).

I got to Jaen at 6pm Friday and we went out for a walk around the "city." Jaen has a population of around 100,000, which makes it a small city, but four times as large as Priego. To me, this was a much larger place than where I live, so I thought of Jaen as huge. They have a train station (with service to Madrid, Cordoba and Sevilla), a Corte Ingles and museums/theater events/CULTURE!

We went to Corte Ingles where I bought chocolate soy milk (juice box sized for travel) and corn tortillas. We also went to Jaen's library so Jolinda could return, and take out new, CDs. Their library was small, but made Priego's look doll-sized. Saturday we went to a farmer's market and made soup during the afternoon. Then we walked around Jaen and tried to go to the hilltop castle. We never made it because it got too late (the sun was going down) and our Lonely Planet directions were pretty terrible. We spent that evening watching Mad Men.


While walking, we stumbled upon this group of people practicing for Semana Santa. During Holy Week, brotherhoods get together and parade through the streets with floats/statues on platforms supported by the people's necks and heads.

Sunday I went to a few museums and restored arab baths. The baths were cool, but looked like similar ones I had seen in the Alahambra (in Granada). The Museo de Arte Naif (Museum of Naive Art) was interesting because it had a small collection of paintings from the 1960s-1980s which were colorful, some even had purple mountains with pink trees. They looked like something a child would do. Additionally, there were framed cross stitch and needle work pictures on display, which I had never seen before in a museum. Another thing that struck me was that most of the art was donated to the museum by the artists rather than by donors or art collectors.

The other museum I went to housed a special exhibit of Eugenio Chicano's paintings. He takes traditional still life paintings and adds computer icons to them. In doing that, he mixes art history and modern technology. I really enjoyed the exhibit and asked the guards if there were any brochures with more information on the artist. They only had the exhibition catalogue (a decent sized-book), which they gave me for free! I was really surprised and excited about this.


One of Eugenio Chicano's paintings.

That afternoon, Jolinda and I went for a walk to a new park. Everything was really colorful: the track was red, blue and orange. Purple fences separated different play areas. It was very architecturally modern, but not so well-built. As we walked, we noticed the track was inclined slightly (literally we went downhill on onside and had to come uphill on the other). There were also exercise machines on either sides of the fountain (in the middle of the track). Next to the fountain was a big balance machine. It was almost like a bridge where people stood on one cable and held onto another. The entire contraption swayed depending on how the people organized themselves. Basically, adults and children were on either side of this contraption and could have fallen at any moment because people kept getting on and off shifting the balance. (This would never fly in the US.)


We stumbled upon a place serving "cerveza sin gluten" (gluten-free beer), which was odd for such a small city.

All-in-all it was a good weekend. I wound up eating healthier than I normally do because Jolinda is basically on a raw foods diet. She prefers to eat raw fruits and veggies, as well as sunflower seeds, only. She doesn't eat anything with preservatives because she doesn't like what they do to her body. I ate well, but had a big bowl of cereal for breakfast when I got home this morning!!


I finally tasted chirimoya, which was a pain to eat because of all the seeds (think watermelon seeds on steroids).

"Be Careful!" at Carrefour

In my fourth-grade English class, I was teaching the phrases "Look Out!" and "Be Careful!" When the students saw the word "careful" they screamed out, "Carrefour, Carrefour!" They were delighted because they thought they knew the word on the paper. I told them (in Spanish), "No, Carrefour is a French word which means intersection. This word, careful, is an English word and means 'ten cuidado.'" They looked shocked and horrified as they challenged me, "Carrefour is a store." I told them, yes, Carrefour is a French-owned grocery/department store, but it's name means intersection and, no, careful and Carrefour are not the same thing.

semana santa

So, Spain is a Catholic country, which means we get "Holy Week" off. This is the week before Easter, except my school has interpreted "week" as Friday (the one before Good Friday) to Monday (the one after Easter Sunday), meaning I have 10 days that 11 days to do whatever I want.

While I was home I did a little research and figured out that I could use this time to go to the Balkans. I booked a flight to Barcelona (for Thursday night), then a Friday morning flight to Dubrovnik, Croatia and a return flight from Sofia, Bulgaria to Madrid for the 11th.

I'm planning on spending a few day in Croatia, then going to Mostar and Sarajevo, Bosnia and Belgrade, Serbia before getting to Sofia (where I'm sure I'll do a side trip outside the city).

And, the craziest/best news of all.............my mother is coming! I'm so excited because she's never been to countries where mosques are prevalent. She's only been to Western Europe before, and we're going to be in Eastern Europe!

I've been dying to get back to the Balkans since I went to Kosovo and Macedonia in 2005. It was an eye-opening experience for me and now I want her to have a similar experience. We're going to take trains and buses with locals and (from what I've seen in pictures) we're going to see a lot of beautiful things. So expect tons of pictures!

My mom is coming back to Europe!!!! Twice in one year....I must be a pretty cool kid to merit that.

First day back

I went to school today and gave everyone the gifts I had brought them. For Maria Jose and Jose Maria (principal and director of studies, a married couple), I brought a book of nursery rhymes with an accompanying CD. Maria Jose was so excited about it that she made me listen to some of the songs with her. Apparently "There is Thumpkin" has a Spanish equivalent.

I brought David a Japanese comic book about vampires. He had seen some in Spanish before, but this was his first comic in English and he's really excited about it. He can practice and read about vampires all at the same time! (He draws his own comics also). Ana really enjoyed the book of nursery rhymes and childhood songs that she will use to teach English.

For Lourdes I brought back a Disney CD I had (I knew she liked the songs), another CD of 100 songs for kids (she can use this in her music classes), and Playdoh. I had tried to explain Playdoh to her and David, but couldn't because it's not clay, which they have in Spain....it's in a whole other category. She and David loved it. Jose Maria, who came into the office later, said he's seen it in Spain...at Toy's R Us.

Everyone also really liked the books, seasonal activity book and vocabulary puzzle game that I brought with me. I'm glad I was able to pick out meaningful gifts that will come in handy and help the kids learn English.

The rest of my time at home

So, the doctor didn't see much irritation in my intestines. This means that I probably don't have celiac (this result correlates with the blood test), but I have to wait a few more days for the definitive results from the biopsy.

I was really loopy after the endoscopy and spent the day on the couch. I couldn't remember how I got my shirt back on or how I got home. Somehow I vaguely remembered asking the doctor why she was in Granada, Spain....we had been talking about Spain when I fell asleep in the endoscopy room.

By Friday Melanie had been doing worse. She was collapsing a lot more, including three times while trying to go to the bathroom. She also had an eye infection. Mom, dad and I took her to the vet and had her put to sleep. It was really sad, but she had been suffering too much, and too long. We stayed in the room while the procedure was done. It was somewhat comforting to see her so peaceful because she hadn't been that way in weeks (definitely not since before I came home).

Saturday we went to Ikea (I love that place!) to get a new chair cushion and then we picked up Joe from the airport. We had sushi for dinner, which should have been easy for me. Because I can't eat soy sauce or imitation crab, I was limited in my roll choice. That meant I basically had to pick some random pieces of fish to accompany the one roll I was able to eat. It was pretty frustrating, but the suchi was so delicious that it didn't matter too much. I also brought my own soy sauce, which was a smart move. Even though the sauce was crappy (I've yet to try the wheat-free tamari, but I've heard good things), it went really well with the sushi and I was glad to have it there. It was also nice to be out to dinner with my family.

Sunday was my last day at home. The four of us, along with my grandma, went for hotdogs in Westchester. I packed my lunch and ate while they were waiting for their food. Even though I can't eat anything there, I wanted to go for nostalgia. So many weekends of my childhood were spent at Walter's Hot Dogs.

That afternoon, mom and I went for a walk in town. We went to the grammar school where I took tons of pictures to show to people in Priego. Then we made dinner and went to the airport.

The flight was uneventful....probably because I took two Tylenol PM before push-back and was asleep before we got to a cruising altitude. This was a good thing because the women around me were traveling together and chattered about in their Mobile, Alabama twang. They were a group of sisters, a cousin and one woman's daughter going to Marbella for a week in the sun. The daughter (probably in her 30s) had never left the country before and had only flown once to Vegas. Her mom, seated next to me, thought she was going to throw-up after eating a banana for breakfast. She went running to the bathroom, but was fine.

When I got to Malaga, I was so excited by the warm weather. I began my journey back to Priego, only taking three buses because I returned through Granada (the more expensive and longer route). To go to Priego through Lucena (how I got to the airport to go home) I would have had to have waited three hours for the first bus and then I didn't know when the connecting bus was scheduled to leave (aka I could have been stuck in Lucena for a few hours too).

Endoscopy

So the allergist decided that I'm allergic enough to wheat, oats and rye (based on the blood results) to not require the skin testing. He also decided that, yes, an endoscopy would be worth it. The endoscopy/biopsy is necessary to diagnose celiac - I had the blood test which was negative. It's rare, but people have negative blood tests and still have celiac. Because my ANA was high (auto-immune indicator) it makes sense to have the endoscopy....if I have celiac, the ANA could become a problem later. So, we'll see.

Rachel-safe s'mores

Start with gluten-free pretzels on a plate.

Put marshmallows on top (1/2 a marshmallow on one pretzel works best).

Microwave

Spread dairy/wheat/nut free chocolate frosting (most frosting is nut and wheat free) on another pretzel.

Put the chocolate pretzel on top of the marshmallow pretzel.

Squish together and enjoy.

(I ate way too many of these....)

MORE answers.......

The rheumatologist called today. I tested negative for everything he looked at. This means that the elevated ANA (antinuclear antibody) level, which was eight times the normal level, is just a false positive.

ANSWERS?!?!?!

I just spoke to the allergist's office. He had ordered some allergy/intolerance blood tests.

I tested positive (allergic/intolerant) to wheat, rye and oats. I tested negative to barley and yeast. (Note: the gluten allergy (celiac) would mean cutting wheat, rye and barley - this is NOT what I have.)

I'm going on Monday to have the skin tests done. That is when the allergist puts a drop of serum on my arm and pricks it so the serum enters my body. He then monitors my arm to see if I develop a rash. These tests are used to confirm the blood work.

So, I'm a step closer to having an answer.

Snowed In....

I went to Boston this weekend to see friends and interview.

On the way, my dad and I went to New Haven and had a scrumptious lunch at Claire Corner Copia Cafe. It's a veggie place with gluten-free options. Joseph was not pleased. Apparently his salad would have been MUCH better with chicken. Puh-lease, you don't need to eat chicken for lunch. His egg/carrot salad on top looked pretty good. He just likes to whine.

Then, we went to the Yale University Art Gallery to see the Picasso exhibit. It's a really nice museum and I'm sad I haven't gone until now.

Saturday night I met Jess as we were getting off the T. I think I scared some people by screaming....hey! I was excited!

It snowed a little overnight, so Sunday was FREEZING and snowy. I'm not used to the cold or that white stuff anymore. I complained most of the day. After a yummy dinner at Zaftig's (our favorite Brookline eatery), I went out to Steve's in Somerville. We found out early that my interview was canceled for Monday because of the potential snowstorm. Monday morning we also found out that Steve had no school (Tufts was closed). I managed to get part of the interview scheduled for Monday afternoon and the rest for Tuesday morning. Monday for lunch, I met up with Jess H. which was a ton of fun because I hadn't seen her in forever. Then, I went to the interview.

Monday, I met with the principal and the head of the team I would be working with (called the MATCH Corps). The job is a year long program where I would tutor five students throughout the school day. It's a charter school which takes kids from Dorchester or Roxbury or other lower-income areas. The students enter with lower-than-average math and English scores and those that graduate from MATCH go on to four-year colleges. MATCH makes them take AP classes and BU classes, but supports them through the tutoring program and a small-school environment.

Tuesday I had to go back and tutor two kids. One was in math....where I had to relearn Algebra 2 in two minutes. The other was in English. I also observed a class and talked to current Corps members.

Even though I wasn't thrilled about having to stay an extra day because of the snow, by staying I got to see Tina! The interview went well, but I was completely exhausted by the time I got home.