This has been a relatively short week (only 4 days) because Monday there was no school (the town gets to chose three days a year to have off and one of those was Monday).
Tuesday, I saw the three-year-olds. Ana and I tried (somewhat unsuccessfully) to teach them the words “boy” and “girl.” They’re really good at saying hello and goodbye, and they can count to three. That’s about it though. Their activity book is really stupid – it has the kids matching stickers with shapes. The problem is that each kid gets a book and an entire pack of stickers. Their task was to take the sticker of boy 1’s face and put it in the box below the drawing of his face (aka the one that matched the sticker) and then trace a line between the drawing and the sticker. They took out more stickers than necessary, which isn’t their fault. They are given an envelope with tons of stickers inside it. Half of them figured out that the square sticker goes in the square box (although most of them rotated it). The rest put the stickers on top of the drawn faces or on a different page all together. Then, instead of drawing lines, they take their crayons and draw everything possible. Some of them covered every inch of white space on the page. Ana freaked out that the kids weren’t tracing the lines, but were coloring everywhere. What any of this has to do with English is way beyond me.
After that, I had science with second grade. They are learning about food and the food pyramid. My job was to review food vocabulary with them. I wrote “vegetable,” “fruit,” “meat,” “fish,” “dairy,” and “grains” on the board and had them tell me a food and where to put it. They got so into the activity that they started asking me about foods they did not already know. These included pomegranate (it’s a common fruit here), lentils, and leche merengada (which apparently translates to meringue milk). They were somewhat angry when I told them that leche merengada not only didn’t translate, but also didn’t exist in the US. Apparently it’s milk with cinnamon and other spices. They also wanted to know what category sandwich went under, I had to explain that only simple foods could go in the list and a sandwich combined several food groups. The kids were so poorly behaved. They didn’t listen at all and spent most of the class shouting out names of foods. The science teacher was pretty pissed at them and she told the homeroom teacher who made them write all of the foods in their notebooks several times.
Wednesday I had English with the second graders who were better behaved. I had them play a game that practiced “in” and “on.” Two children would come to the front and I would say, “put the pencil case on the table” (these are their vocab words). Some of them were pretty good, but others would hear this and put the scissors in the bag.
On Wednesday, David had to go to Córdoba for a meeting with all of the bilingual teachers. This meant I was on my own with 5A and 5B. (A teacher was present in the room to control them, but I was in charge of the lesson.) Amazingly enough, 5B were angels. Three students were absent which certainly helped. They did the activities and sung the song I had to teach them. They didn’t seem that interested in the work, but then again, they never do. Later in 5A, they did not behave as well as 5B and I told them that. This made them shut up and start behaving much better. When 5B is frequently referred to as the “worst class in the school,” you do not want to be the class that behaves worse. Both classes are working on countries and weather. They have a list of eight countries which includes both the USA and the UK (written as such). The students are convinced that, in English, we say these as the oo-sa and the uke (like puke without the p). I told them that I never want them to say the oo-sa ever again.
After all their activities, I gave them a worksheet for homework. Homework almost never gets done. Like always, there are some students that do everything they are given and come in with their stuff together. However, the majority of the kids don’t bring the right books and rarely do anything (inside or outside the classroom). There really aren’t penalties for not doing homework; the teacher just tells them they should have done it. Part of the homework was the favorite activity of the Spanish school system: coloring. Yes, that’s right, even the 5th graders are still coloring. I can’t believe it. It makes some sense to have first graders color (occasionally), but having fifth graders color for homework they’re not even going to do?? Seriously? I’m getting sick of all the coloring activities. Coloring reflects laziness on both the teacher’s and the student’s part. Teachers don’t have to put that much effort into classes if their students spend 20 of every 60 minutes coloring. Students don’t have to think as much if they are coloring instead of doing vocabulary practice or speaking activities.
Today (Thursday), I saw the first graders for science and then for English. This is the smallest class in the entire school: there are only ten students. HOWEVER, they are awful. For science class they were learning about sports and exercise (fitness as a means of a healthy life). I made them a sheet where they had to connect the word (in English) to the picture for various sports. After they accomplished this, they were allowed to color the sheet (I’m guilty of the coloring crutch too). One girl, Rosalía, doesn’t do anything during class. She just sits there. Nothing motivates her. Instead of coloring her sheet, she took her crayon and colored Elisea’s arm, getting red crayon on a pink shirt. I had honestly never seen crayon write on clothing like this. Elisea, who is probably the smartest kid in the class, started to cry because, in first grade, when someone colors on you, you cry. Their teacher was busy trying to break up a fight between two other students who were hitting each other for no good reason. These kids are always hitting each other and they never stay in their seats.
Later, in English class, I read them a “story” from their stupid English books. This book series is absolutely ridiculous. The “story” had four illustrated box. The words were (1) “Look! Look! Come in and see!” (2) “My school….” (3) “My friends….” (4) “….and me!” The pictures showed Danny the blue and red dinosaur on the playground. The only activity to go along with the “story” was to take the four boxes (mixed up on the next page) and put them in order. Oh, and then to color the white spaces in the second set of boxes. I had the kids play a game instead. I took them all to the back of the room and made them sit in a circle. When I said “girl,” I made the girls stand (and “boy” for the boys). Then I gave them blue and red pens and made them raise them when I said the color. I alternated blue, red, boy and girl. Some of them liked the game, but most of them started to get too out of hand and were throwing themselves on the floor. I had to make sure to put them in the circle in a special order keeping some of them apart which was somewhat challenging. After class, they were walking back to their homeroom and one girl’s skirt fell down…all the way to her ankles. She has thick tights on so you couldn’t see anything. It was hilarious. She’s Andrea, the one who is always dressed in a fashionable way. Apparently her mother is really young and somewhat trashy (according to David) and you can see this in the way the girl is dressed. She clearly needs a belt or a smaller skirt (it was too big for her). She could also stand to wear longer skirts because the ones she wears are super short.
Friday, November 07, 2008
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Mallorca
Friday afternoon we left Priego, which had been converted from a beautiful town to a flooded, smelly sewage mess because of the weeklong rainstorm, and headed to the island of Mallorca, home of Rafael Nadal. The problem with the rain in Priego is that no street is flat (not a single one) and the sewer system sucks, meaning most streets become rivers and the sidewalks are slip-and-slides. The smell happens because the sewage system cannot actually handle all the rain and standing water accumulates. I’m very lucky because my nose cannot detect the smell all the time. The first time it happened, I didn’t actually notice the smell at all. Cecilia and Erin came home and told me about it.
So, Ana drove us to Lucena (about 45 minutes away) because it was on her way home to Córdoba (she goes home almost every weekend). From there, we hung out at the bus station for a few hours before catching a 1.5 hour bus to Málaga, where we took a city bus to the airport. The Málaga airport was overrun with Brits and Germans. We ate dinner and boarded our plane (the flight was a little over an hour). Upon arrival in Palma, we noted the warmer temperatures (!!) and lack of rain (!!!!!!). Friday night, we dumped our stuff at the hostel and wandered around downtown Palma. We were staying right near the Cathedral and the water. We walked along the Mediterranean where we were hit by the spray as the waves crashed against the rocks. Some seaweed actually landed on Erin’s mouth and in Cecilia’s hair. After living on the Cape for the summer, I welcomed all sea-related nastiness (like seaweed) with open arms. Priego has made me appreciate the water even more, and realize how much I miss it.
The next morning we woke up early and had some pastries for breakfast. We tried ensiamades which are the island’s signature pastry. Light and fluffy, they were tasty but not really worth the calories. Our better choice was a palmita covered in dark chocolate. We’d had these before, but this one was the size of my head. After our high-calorie lunch, we walked through a flower market to a produce market where I got some clementines grown on the island. We walked around a lot and went inside the Cathedral, which was really nice. The stained glass was extremely bright and an ornate light fixture shined above the altar. One side chapel was a somewhat art piece with the windows nearly covered and the walls were done to almost look like an underwater scene.
Saturday afternoon was spent shopping. I actually bought clothing – a pair of pants and a shirt. Erin bought several pieces and Cecilia an outfit. It was fun, but really tiring. We also went to the supermarket at El Corte Inglés, which is one of my favorite places. They have a huge imported section and tons of weird foods. They also have a decent natural food section. The problem is that we don’t have one in Priego and can never buy much. This time we only bought fruit and pretzels for Sunday. Saturday night we went out for tapas. The restaurant across the street from our hostel had pinxos, a smaller version of a tapa, generally a piece of bread with something on it. They are held together by a toothpick. You pick which ones you want to eat and collect your toothpicks and then pay for the amount of toothpicks you have. I had one that was just grilled vegetables (eggplant, pepper, onion, and a mushroom). My other ones all had fish, mostly cod with something else (roasted pepper or parsley). At the next place, an Irish pub, we just had drinks. The next place we went to had more pinxos and tapas. You took a plate from the tray and prices varied based on plate color. I had some tortilla (omelet) with mushrooms. Cecilia and I tried some zucchini stuffed with tomatoes and some fried cheese, which had a delicious fruit sauce on it. Erin got potatas bravas, steak fries with a spicy sauce on them.
Sunday we woke up early again and took a wooden train to Sóller. It stopped along the way so we could take pictures of Sóller from above. The mountains and the scenery on the island were really pretty and we were happy to get out of Palma for the day. There wasn’t much to do in Sóller, so we walked the 2-4 km to Port de Sóller, a “town” on the water. I dunked my fingers into the somewhat chilly water and we walked around the town. For lunch I had a giant fish empanada from a bakery. It rained on and off, but the sky stayed blue most of the day, which was a pleasant change from the weather in Priego. We climbed up to a lookout point and took pictures of the water, which was a brilliant sapphire color. After walking to and around Port de Sóller, we were tired, so we took the tram back up to Sóller, where we stopped into a few shops and checked out a Joan Miró exhibit at the train station. We were dead tired, so we went back to Palma, got dinner and went to bed early.
Monday began even earlier than the other two days. We took a city bus to the airport, where we had to wait 1.5 hours before our flight, which only took an hour. We arrived in Sevilla, took another city bus to the center, ate lunch and walked around for an hour. Then we took a bus to Cabra (3 hours), where we had to wait 30 minutes before a 45-minute bus ride back to Priego. We showered, made dinner and went to bed.
Mallorca was well worth the trip. Even though it took us 8 hours to get there and almost 12 to get back, it was nice to see the sunshine and have slightly warmer temperatures. It was also great to see a completely different side of Spain, even though we heard more German and English spoken than Spanish. The other thing that was different was that most of the signs were in Catalan, which is the first language of many of the islanders. Having never seen nor heard Catalan, I was able to understand most of it (because it’s similar to Spanish and French). I could go back to Mallorca; there are so many places to go hiking and there’s so much more to the island than just beaches.
So, Ana drove us to Lucena (about 45 minutes away) because it was on her way home to Córdoba (she goes home almost every weekend). From there, we hung out at the bus station for a few hours before catching a 1.5 hour bus to Málaga, where we took a city bus to the airport. The Málaga airport was overrun with Brits and Germans. We ate dinner and boarded our plane (the flight was a little over an hour). Upon arrival in Palma, we noted the warmer temperatures (!!) and lack of rain (!!!!!!). Friday night, we dumped our stuff at the hostel and wandered around downtown Palma. We were staying right near the Cathedral and the water. We walked along the Mediterranean where we were hit by the spray as the waves crashed against the rocks. Some seaweed actually landed on Erin’s mouth and in Cecilia’s hair. After living on the Cape for the summer, I welcomed all sea-related nastiness (like seaweed) with open arms. Priego has made me appreciate the water even more, and realize how much I miss it.
The next morning we woke up early and had some pastries for breakfast. We tried ensiamades which are the island’s signature pastry. Light and fluffy, they were tasty but not really worth the calories. Our better choice was a palmita covered in dark chocolate. We’d had these before, but this one was the size of my head. After our high-calorie lunch, we walked through a flower market to a produce market where I got some clementines grown on the island. We walked around a lot and went inside the Cathedral, which was really nice. The stained glass was extremely bright and an ornate light fixture shined above the altar. One side chapel was a somewhat art piece with the windows nearly covered and the walls were done to almost look like an underwater scene.
Saturday afternoon was spent shopping. I actually bought clothing – a pair of pants and a shirt. Erin bought several pieces and Cecilia an outfit. It was fun, but really tiring. We also went to the supermarket at El Corte Inglés, which is one of my favorite places. They have a huge imported section and tons of weird foods. They also have a decent natural food section. The problem is that we don’t have one in Priego and can never buy much. This time we only bought fruit and pretzels for Sunday. Saturday night we went out for tapas. The restaurant across the street from our hostel had pinxos, a smaller version of a tapa, generally a piece of bread with something on it. They are held together by a toothpick. You pick which ones you want to eat and collect your toothpicks and then pay for the amount of toothpicks you have. I had one that was just grilled vegetables (eggplant, pepper, onion, and a mushroom). My other ones all had fish, mostly cod with something else (roasted pepper or parsley). At the next place, an Irish pub, we just had drinks. The next place we went to had more pinxos and tapas. You took a plate from the tray and prices varied based on plate color. I had some tortilla (omelet) with mushrooms. Cecilia and I tried some zucchini stuffed with tomatoes and some fried cheese, which had a delicious fruit sauce on it. Erin got potatas bravas, steak fries with a spicy sauce on them.
Sunday we woke up early again and took a wooden train to Sóller. It stopped along the way so we could take pictures of Sóller from above. The mountains and the scenery on the island were really pretty and we were happy to get out of Palma for the day. There wasn’t much to do in Sóller, so we walked the 2-4 km to Port de Sóller, a “town” on the water. I dunked my fingers into the somewhat chilly water and we walked around the town. For lunch I had a giant fish empanada from a bakery. It rained on and off, but the sky stayed blue most of the day, which was a pleasant change from the weather in Priego. We climbed up to a lookout point and took pictures of the water, which was a brilliant sapphire color. After walking to and around Port de Sóller, we were tired, so we took the tram back up to Sóller, where we stopped into a few shops and checked out a Joan Miró exhibit at the train station. We were dead tired, so we went back to Palma, got dinner and went to bed early.
Monday began even earlier than the other two days. We took a city bus to the airport, where we had to wait 1.5 hours before our flight, which only took an hour. We arrived in Sevilla, took another city bus to the center, ate lunch and walked around for an hour. Then we took a bus to Cabra (3 hours), where we had to wait 30 minutes before a 45-minute bus ride back to Priego. We showered, made dinner and went to bed.
Mallorca was well worth the trip. Even though it took us 8 hours to get there and almost 12 to get back, it was nice to see the sunshine and have slightly warmer temperatures. It was also great to see a completely different side of Spain, even though we heard more German and English spoken than Spanish. The other thing that was different was that most of the signs were in Catalan, which is the first language of many of the islanders. Having never seen nor heard Catalan, I was able to understand most of it (because it’s similar to Spanish and French). I could go back to Mallorca; there are so many places to go hiking and there’s so much more to the island than just beaches.
Halloween!
Friday was Halloween. Wait I should clarify that – at Virgen de la Cabeza the entire week was Halloween (this week might still be Halloween, too). We’d been doing Halloween activities and celebrating for a while.
I was the only teacher to dress up. For my black cat costume, I wore all black and made myself ears (using a black headband) and a tail. When I walked into the classroom the kids screamed and laughed with delight. Seeing an adult dressed up, with eyeliner whiskers drawn on my face, was a strange sight for them and they weren’t really sure how to react. Some of them had on orange shirts, but none wore costumes to school.
My only classes were 5A and B. Instead of holding class, they got to watch Tim Burton’s The Corpse Bride in Spanish (because they would not understand the English version). These are two of the worst behaved classes (5B is the worst), yet they still go to watch a movie instead of going to class like normal. The students were hilarious: one of them told David that they shouldn’t watch the movie in Spanish because most of them had already seen it and I wouldn’t be able to understand the movie in Spanish (I could).
During lunch, Erin and I went class-to-class distributing lollypop ghosts. We took lollypops and covered them with tissues, tied a string around them and gave them a face. Some of the kids really liked the ghosts, and the others just liked that we were giving them candy. I took pictures of my kids. All-in-all Halloween was successful. We made sure to do meaningful activities that taught the kids the vocabulary and customs related to Halloween. Almost every kid in the school made some kind of mask and many of them colored Halloween pictures or made clothes pin bats. I was pleased how our first American holiday turned out.
I was the only teacher to dress up. For my black cat costume, I wore all black and made myself ears (using a black headband) and a tail. When I walked into the classroom the kids screamed and laughed with delight. Seeing an adult dressed up, with eyeliner whiskers drawn on my face, was a strange sight for them and they weren’t really sure how to react. Some of them had on orange shirts, but none wore costumes to school.
My only classes were 5A and B. Instead of holding class, they got to watch Tim Burton’s The Corpse Bride in Spanish (because they would not understand the English version). These are two of the worst behaved classes (5B is the worst), yet they still go to watch a movie instead of going to class like normal. The students were hilarious: one of them told David that they shouldn’t watch the movie in Spanish because most of them had already seen it and I wouldn’t be able to understand the movie in Spanish (I could).
During lunch, Erin and I went class-to-class distributing lollypop ghosts. We took lollypops and covered them with tissues, tied a string around them and gave them a face. Some of the kids really liked the ghosts, and the others just liked that we were giving them candy. I took pictures of my kids. All-in-all Halloween was successful. We made sure to do meaningful activities that taught the kids the vocabulary and customs related to Halloween. Almost every kid in the school made some kind of mask and many of them colored Halloween pictures or made clothes pin bats. I was pleased how our first American holiday turned out.
Contemporary Dance
So, in my searching for a good yoga class, I came across a free contemporary dance class. Erin was supposed to come with me, but she didn’t feel well. I figured I might as well try the class anyway. When I got there, the only other people were a mom and her ten-year-old daughter. A man showed up for a few minutes, but he couldn’t stay.
The instructor started by having us work on some techniques, the first of which was rolling around on the floor. We lay down on our back and practiced rolling onto our stomach by dragging our hand across our body and reaching for infinity (until we naturally rolled). Then we practiced walking. We tried a whole variety of walking: fast, like a model, skipping, bumping into each other, walking quickly toward the wall and stopping just in front of it, etc. After that we continued walking around the room and added hand motions. Then the man left and only three of us continued dancing until we had to dance solo for the others to give feedback/criticism. This continued for a good 20 minutes or so (with a song/tempo change).
The class was pretty pathetic and I will not be continuing with it. I’m also not that into contemporary dance. The teacher was another spiritual wack who thought that music was unnecessary because it should come from within.
The instructor started by having us work on some techniques, the first of which was rolling around on the floor. We lay down on our back and practiced rolling onto our stomach by dragging our hand across our body and reaching for infinity (until we naturally rolled). Then we practiced walking. We tried a whole variety of walking: fast, like a model, skipping, bumping into each other, walking quickly toward the wall and stopping just in front of it, etc. After that we continued walking around the room and added hand motions. Then the man left and only three of us continued dancing until we had to dance solo for the others to give feedback/criticism. This continued for a good 20 minutes or so (with a song/tempo change).
The class was pretty pathetic and I will not be continuing with it. I’m also not that into contemporary dance. The teacher was another spiritual wack who thought that music was unnecessary because it should come from within.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Dinner Party
Later on Wednesday we had some teachers over for homemade pizza and candy apples. Two teachers, Ana and David, came from my school and three from Cecilia’s school. We made four different kinds of pizza: Hawaiian (ham and cheese), veggie, fresh tomato and pepperoni. They seemed to be a big hit. Erin and Cecilia also made candy apples, which were interesting. We bought Worther’s soft caramels and which they melted down and put on the apples with some M&M-like candies. This seemed to work except the candy and the caramel ran to the bottom of the apples and didn’t really stick to the top part. The teachers were all appreciative of the hard work because they got to try an “authentic Halloween snack.”
It was nice to see the teachers outside of school and to meet some new ones (from Cecilia’s school). We talked about our lives and the differences between the US and Spain. They told us more about Spanish customs. We also talked about the different schools and the kids at school.
We’ll probably have people over again, but I’m not sure that we’ll make more pizza. It was good, but we bought the wrong cheese, which didn’t melt and the crust was kind of dry.
It was nice to see the teachers outside of school and to meet some new ones (from Cecilia’s school). We talked about our lives and the differences between the US and Spain. They told us more about Spanish customs. We also talked about the different schools and the kids at school.
We’ll probably have people over again, but I’m not sure that we’ll make more pizza. It was good, but we bought the wrong cheese, which didn’t melt and the crust was kind of dry.
Yoga: Third time is not the charm
So, I went to a third yoga class Wednesday night. I swear they just keep getting weirder and weirder. This one was a free trial class at the place which offers yoga and dance classes in the evenings. The center was just redone and looks really nice: the room for yoga had pillows and candles and the ceiling was a tent-like with tons of fabric hung from the perimeter gathering in the center of the room.
Because the class was a free trial, none of the other four women had done yoga before. Yoga is new to Priego, so this has been the theme in all of my classes. Before the teacher arrived I was sitting on my mat with my legs crossed. Not crossed in yoga position, rather crossed like we used to sit in gym class. The other women saw this as an amazing accomplishment and were shocked. I took that as a bad sign. When the teacher arrived, they told her about my amazing abilities and she immediately began to think of me as a yoga expert (which I am NOT).
She started the class (10 minutes late) by talking about her life and yoga as a way of life. We had to hear about her family and how yoga was not a religion, but a way of life and how yoga could change your eating habits and make you healthier. Some of her points were valid, except when she talked about cleansing her body by forced vomiting.
After listening to her ramble for almost 30 minutes, we tried to find our energy. We sat with our hands ½ an inch apart and attempting to feel something connecting our fingers. Then we tried it in pairs. I’m not really sure what I felt. I thought I felt something, but not quite enough to satisfy the instructor.
Next, we tried to see one woman’s aura. The teacher blew out most of the candles and turned off the lamps in the room so we could stare at this woman in the semi-darkness. I’m not sure if my eyes blurred so much from staring or I actually saw a glow forming around her head…The teacher wanted us to see her aura because “she’s been told she has a large aura.” I could not see anything around her. She tried pulling energy out of her, by bringing her hands near to her head, to see if we could see it connecting her hands and her head.
After all of this, she realized we only had ten more minutes in the class (no surprise there; she never shut up). So we worked on some breathing and relaxation. I was able to relax, which was nice, but I really don’t think the class was that worth it. Unfortunately, there are no more trial times and I would have to pay to continue.
Because the class was a free trial, none of the other four women had done yoga before. Yoga is new to Priego, so this has been the theme in all of my classes. Before the teacher arrived I was sitting on my mat with my legs crossed. Not crossed in yoga position, rather crossed like we used to sit in gym class. The other women saw this as an amazing accomplishment and were shocked. I took that as a bad sign. When the teacher arrived, they told her about my amazing abilities and she immediately began to think of me as a yoga expert (which I am NOT).
She started the class (10 minutes late) by talking about her life and yoga as a way of life. We had to hear about her family and how yoga was not a religion, but a way of life and how yoga could change your eating habits and make you healthier. Some of her points were valid, except when she talked about cleansing her body by forced vomiting.
After listening to her ramble for almost 30 minutes, we tried to find our energy. We sat with our hands ½ an inch apart and attempting to feel something connecting our fingers. Then we tried it in pairs. I’m not really sure what I felt. I thought I felt something, but not quite enough to satisfy the instructor.
Next, we tried to see one woman’s aura. The teacher blew out most of the candles and turned off the lamps in the room so we could stare at this woman in the semi-darkness. I’m not sure if my eyes blurred so much from staring or I actually saw a glow forming around her head…The teacher wanted us to see her aura because “she’s been told she has a large aura.” I could not see anything around her. She tried pulling energy out of her, by bringing her hands near to her head, to see if we could see it connecting her hands and her head.
After all of this, she realized we only had ten more minutes in the class (no surprise there; she never shut up). So we worked on some breathing and relaxation. I was able to relax, which was nice, but I really don’t think the class was that worth it. Unfortunately, there are no more trial times and I would have to pay to continue.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Another Yoga Class
Last night I went to a yoga class at the really nice gym my roommates and I went to on Friday. This was probably the weirdest yoga class I've ever been to.
First of all, it was beyond packed. There were at least 20 people in the same room we we in for pilates. The pilates class had 7 and we were comfortable. The room can accommodate 10. Most of the people in the class were older and had never done yoga before. I was the only person to bring a mat with me.
Second, the class involved folding chairs. At one point we were in pairs and one person was against the fall with his/her legs spread wide and hands resting on the folding chair. The other person had his/her hands on the folding chair and was standing bent at the waist. Another "posture" involved one person on each side of the folding chair with a leg bent (foot on the chair) and one leg normal. The object was to twist so the entire chest was against the wall. It was a pretty good twist, but the posture probably should have been done on the floor.
We barely did 4 of these "postures." The instructor also showed us the most basic and supporter version of shoulder stand that I've ever seen. We were not able to do the posture for fear that we might hurt ourselves. I can do the entire shoulder stand series without support.
There was another American in the class. He has been living in Spain with his Spanish wife for the past 15 years. He was somewhat vague about why he was in Priego (her family lives here I think). He had done yoga before and was weirded out by the class also. Most of what we did was stuff that we would have normally done on the floor. I don't think I'll be going back to the class.
First of all, it was beyond packed. There were at least 20 people in the same room we we in for pilates. The pilates class had 7 and we were comfortable. The room can accommodate 10. Most of the people in the class were older and had never done yoga before. I was the only person to bring a mat with me.
Second, the class involved folding chairs. At one point we were in pairs and one person was against the fall with his/her legs spread wide and hands resting on the folding chair. The other person had his/her hands on the folding chair and was standing bent at the waist. Another "posture" involved one person on each side of the folding chair with a leg bent (foot on the chair) and one leg normal. The object was to twist so the entire chest was against the wall. It was a pretty good twist, but the posture probably should have been done on the floor.
We barely did 4 of these "postures." The instructor also showed us the most basic and supporter version of shoulder stand that I've ever seen. We were not able to do the posture for fear that we might hurt ourselves. I can do the entire shoulder stand series without support.
There was another American in the class. He has been living in Spain with his Spanish wife for the past 15 years. He was somewhat vague about why he was in Priego (her family lives here I think). He had done yoga before and was weirded out by the class also. Most of what we did was stuff that we would have normally done on the floor. I don't think I'll be going back to the class.
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