The weekend has come and gone, and with it has come and gone my freedom to sleep when I want, run errands when I want, and generally have my unemployed freedom... Kind of.
The weekend included a wonderful mix of spending time with my host family, moving to my new apartment, going to a German festival in a German-speaking church here in the city, and making a delicious dinner with friends for a lazy Saturday night. Sunday was full of visiting the school where I will be working to make sure I knew how to get there and then meeting up with old professors who are on sabbatical here this fall and old friends who have been working here a while. I went to bed on Sunday night full of nerves for what was coming Monday morning... the first day of work!
The schools have been in session for a few weeks now, but they have their auxiliares come a bit later so they will be more settled into the routine by the time we arrive. My co-auxiliar and I met at 7:15am to catch the 7:20 bus out to the town this morning. We took the walking route from the bus station to school, 20 minutes, and introduced ourselves to the woman at the front desk. She had us sit and we waited about 45 minutes for the principal to arrive and meet with us. Very nice, he introduced us to other vice principals and heads-of-department before we met the English department in their office. All very very nice and so excited to have Americans (many of them have worked with British-English-speakers and are happy to have another accent and language to work on). The one with a free period at this time, Jaime, gave us a tour of the school and introduced us to some other important people before he and another English teacher decided it would be best for them to take down our information and call us when they're ready for us... as in tomorrow and Wednesday the teachers are striking, Thursday the students are striking, and Friday the English teachers will meet to start talking about the best schedule for us this year... and they will call us next Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday... meaning I have all this week off and probably some of next week... Certainly not what I was expecting, but we're always ready for an adventure over here!
Here are some pictures of my town, up in the mountains, about 10 degrees colder than in the city, and really quite pretty!
This means that this afternoon is full of adventures for me! Ikea, library, and whatever else I can come up with! Tomorrow I will probably go out to see my friend at her nanny-family's house to bake a cake or something. Any other ideas are certainly welcome! I will definitely spend some time in a park, go for some runs, maybe go the Prado museum when it's free in the afternoon... so many options! I hope you all had beautiful weekends! I know Maine was brutally rainy, so I'm sorry about that! You must be getting all the rain that Madrid never gets. Here's the precipitation amounts I found on Wikipedia:
Average yearly precipitation - 17.17"
Average precipitation days - 63
Dad tells me Maine got 17" this summer or something? This is the perfect place for me! I am NOT a rain person.
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