School and everyday life

School is going well for me. I am starting to get down a routine with my classes and get to know some of the students. It is hard because I have about 100 different students between the 5 teachers that I work with and I am only in each class once or twice a week. I am enjoying it though. My English class for professors started last week. That class was a lot of fun and I think I am going to really enjoy it. I am working with 9 teachers who want to improve their English. The class will mostly focus on conversational practice.

With Halloween coming up, I get to do a lot of presentations on Halloween and what it is like in the United States. Halloween has not been very popular here in the past but it is slowly becoming a thing. The other day during our break, one of the teachers was teaching how to make a vampire with origami. That was fun!

 Ben is keeping himself busy during the days with researching hydroponics, prepping for English classes, researching and planning trips and going to the Mercado. The food here doesn’t have the same kind of preservatives in it so we usually need to go grocery shopping for meat and produce about twice week.

Hydroponics is a way to grow plants without dirt. We are having a hard time finding seeds though. He wants to try growing a vegetable but all we can find are marijuana seeds. The plants are legal to grow here and you can smoke it too you just can’t sell it. We have some bean seeds that he is in the process of sprouting right now so hopefully that will work.

He is up to 7 English classes which he teaches between Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights. I have met one of the women he works with so sometimes I go to that class with him. A couple of the classes are with adults and they just want to focus on conversation. One class is with a 13 year old boy and another with an 8 year old girl. Ben had fun with the boy on their first class last week because the boy is really into sports and longboarding so they had a lot to talk about. The class with the little girl is a little more challenging because she doesn’t speak much English but they have fun working with flashcards and playing Monopoly.

We think we finally found a church we want to go to! It is a Spanish church but has a very international population. They have translation services for English and French. I really like the pastor and there seems to be good size group of people our age. Also the leader of our Bible study and his wife attend the church. Services are held in a night club because the church doesn’t own their own space big enough to hold a church service. The church is close enough that it only takes about 20 minutes to walk there or if we want, we can take the metro.

Bible study is also going really well. We are having fun getting to know everyone and fellowshipping with other believers. Last week we didn’t get home until midnight because we were having so much fun hanging out! Fortunately I have a short day of classes on Fridays. We usually do the Bible study part first and then everyone brings tapas to share and we have dinner afterwards. It is a great group of people from Spain, the States and the UK. Many of our conversations revolve around the cultural differences between these countries and they can be quite entertaining!

Overall, life is going well here. We are finally starting to adjust to life in a different culture. Although I still wish I had a dryer and I would love to have a conversation with the city planner about putting VISIBLE street signs on every corner so you don’t have to crane your neck to look around trees or walk four blocks just to figure out which street you are on. And I would really like to find some candy corn too. That is basically the only thing I love about Halloween and I was really bummed that the Halloween party at the U.S Embassy didn’t have any. I might have stayed longer if they had some. Someone from Bible study told us about an American store here in Madrid so I am going to check it out next time Ben has his English classes and hopefully I will get my candy corn fix.