what luck!

Today is a very special day, as the internet works at school.

The elementary school I work at (Benito Perez Galdos in Fuenlabrada, Madrid--check out the super savvy website at http://www.educa.madrid.org/web/cp.perezgaldos.fuenlabrada/) has a whole lab full of computers, but it is rare that the internet is in functioning order. I shall now dedicate this posting to my school, which I hold very dear to my heart, despite the fact that it rarely ever has its shit together.

It has been a month since I began working in this ´colegio´(not to be confused with college..), and every day I find something new to love about it. I work with the first and third grades, basically just hanging around the classroom and helping the profesores with their lessons. Most of my time is spent with the first graders, singing songs and jumping around like a monkey to communicate with them. They rarely ever understand me.

I think I need to explain... Six years ago, the Spanish government decided to begin converting the schools here to¨bilingual¨ schools, upon realizing how far behind they are than the rest of Europe in this aspect. That is to say--they decided that certain classes were to be taught in English, and these classes would eventually be Science, Art, and Physical Education. The problem was that very few teachers spoke English well enough, so the idea was to bring over a native speaking assistant to bridge the gap. So here I am.

The elementary schools here begin with preschool, but Benito Perez Galdos offers the bilingual program starting in the first grade. This means that my job is very difficult, as this is the first year my students have been exposed to the language. They are not supposed to know that I speak any Spanish, but children´s minds are easy to trick. They speak to me in Spanish, and although I understand what they say, it does not occur to them that I know the language. Mua ha ha ha.

Virginia is the profesor of English, Art and Science in the first grade. I love her for many reasons, the main one being that she says ¨plastify¨ in place of ¨laminate¨. I´ve been thinking about correcting her, but I sort of like plastify better, and have been using this new word quite a bit myself. Who knows, maybe it´s the British english?

This is not a sufficient post, but more to come later. I´d better be off...it´s almost time for my 5 course family style lunch :)