Week 2

Wow - I can't believe I've been in Seville for two weeks already! How quickly the time is melting! This past week at school was pretty crazy - planning for two lessons (which involves analyzing language for meaning, form, and pronunciation - never as easy as it seems it might be!), lots of lectures, and a paper. Two girls in my house (Carmen and Akiko) didn't even sleep Tuesday night! Needless to say, we were quite grateful when the weekend got here. Unfortunately, I think next week will be even busier . . .

Overall, I've been SO happy with the course. It's been really challenging learning so much about language, which I love. We have two fantastic tutors - they are so knowledgeable. On Monday, I'll be teaching a new group - "elementary" students. They are basically beginning English speakers. I've been working with intermediate students for the past two weeks and they were so much fun. However, I'm really looking forward to the beginner group - I think it will remind me a lot of my prior teaching. I have to continue working on speaking slower and enunciating more carefully - apparently students have a much harder time understanding Americans because they're more used to British accents!

We invited the rest of our teaching group over last night for drinks on our rooftop. 17 of the 20 were there, which made for a really fun night. It was so great to talk to everyone outside of school. I'm constantly amazed by how many cool experiences people have had, usually at a young age, too. I feel really lucky to be surrounded by such great people.

I think we'll just be hanging out in Seville today. There was talk of heading down to Cadiz - a town on the coast, but we decided against it. (Making plans after quite a few glasses of wine never seems to work out too well!) Hopefully we'll make it there next weekend - I really want to start seeing some more of this country. (Trying to save money and having lots of work to do definitely slows down those plans a bit!) It's SO hot here today and sounds like it will be in the 100s all week, so I'm sure we'll be taking advantage of all the air conditioning we can.

I'm working on updating my CV (resume) and hoping to apply for some jobs in the next few weeks. It's a bit stressful to think about, so I try not to spend too much time doing so! If only Spain was more accepting of American teachers without work visas . . . Keep your fingers crossed for me, please!

Hope everyone is doing well!