Week One- First Impressions

I have been in Barcelona for 3 days, and wow! The city is beautiful, the food is delicious, and the school is amazing.

St. Paul’s

The school is huge, it has several buildings and teaches grades Preschool through -12. There is a giant area with multiple soccer fields and a grassy area for the students to go to after they eat lunch. The buildings and outdoors have gorgeous artwork everywhere and the students are very creative. The staff are predominately from England, and everything is taught in English, except Physical Education, Spanish, and Catalan, another popular language in Spain. The students speak a minimum of three languages and many are fluent in many other languages as well (which blows my mind). I cannot imagine learning core content areas in a language that is not my first language, it just shows how intelligent these students really are. The fifth-grade students are so sweet and eager to learn about me and America. They ask me questions any chance they get. I have learned some Spanish too, although that is a work in progress.

View of Barcelona from St. Paul's

The City of Barcelona

After school, we go to different tourist areas in Barcelona and explore the town. The architecture is so unique for each building and I am obsessed with all the mosaics everywhere. The city is so beautiful!!! We also had a field trip and I got to go with them to the Olympic Stadium from the 2007 Olympics. We went on a tour of the museum and walked around the actual stadium (thank goodness my students can translate for me).

The first day here was a holiday called St. Jordi, which they say is like our Valentine’s Day. The men buy the women roses and the women buy the men a book. Downtown there were booths and stands set up down all the streets selling books and roses. It was so neat to see how big this holiday was, and I loved the simplicity of it all. We have also visited the Placa de Catalunya, which is the city center. There were elegant statues, pretty water fountains, and cool restaurants. We also toured the University of Barcelona, which was so extravagant and beautiful. Yesterday we went to the magic fountain which left me speechless.

Olympic Stadium field trip!

Adjustments

The time change has been difficult, I didn’t sleep at all the night of the plane ride and have not been able to catch up on sleep. The dinner time being so late is a bit of a challenge, but we have been eating around 8:30-9 and eat plenty of snacks in between too.

Overall, I have had the most amazing experience with international student teaching so far. I can’t wait for what is to come the next few weeks!!