Exploring the City: Once again, Joni's connections with her actor students has paved the way to a unique experience for the both of us. Amalia, a student who has been with Joni since October, created a ruta de flamenco in Madrid that details the history of the art form in the city. It's normally a pretty pricey ticket at €80/person, but last Saturday Joni received an invitation to go on an abbreviated tour for free! The website Culture Trip filmed various stops on the route for a promotional article, and Amalia thought that it would be nice to have a small audience. This meant that the stops were a lot longer than they would have normally been, as we waited for various other accomplices along the way, but in total it was a great glimpse into the art form and accompanying history. Flamenco originated and was popularized in the south, but as a major urban center Madrid played a role in fostering some notable talent through the years. It made for a long afternoon, but we were happy to be of use to Amalia and the route she lovingly refers to as her baby.
In advance of singing at a wedding in Ávila, our choir had a concert partially in order to prepare the repertoire. It featured some familiar songs and other more challenging pieces, all of which we were tasked with singing from memory. We fared well overall, and were greeted warmly by the small crowd at Parroquia Santo Cristo del Olivar.
Our friend Cody Litwiller arrived this week, and on his first night we were already out and about. Neither of us had ever seen a live professional tennis match, and so we decided to make the short journey south to catch an evening session of the Madrid Open. I'm not exactly sure what I expected the tournament to be, but it was a lot of fun. The atmosphere was like a conference and party and sporting event all rolled into one. And there is something really engaging about being in a large stadium sitting in a silence so deep that the loudest sound at any given moment might be the soft scratch of a discarded water bottle gliding across the cement floor.
Memorable Meal: A long overdue TEFL reunion commenced this week when we met up with our friends Ian and Chris for lunch at a vegan restaurant in La Latina. It was a rare treat for Joni, as nearly everything on the menu appeared not only edible but downright appetizing. She ordered a veggie burger and I got a tapa sampler with dips made from various veggies. It was great catching up with these guys, talking teaching and films and reveling in our shared antisocial preference for staying in on the weekend, and it was nice not to feel uncomfortably full of carbs afterwards.
Who’s Coming to Dinner: Our friend Aithne (another TEFL holder) joined us this week for dinner! The menu was cilantro lime chicken burritos, Moroccan rice, and carrot cake cookies for dessert. Aithne and I have often languished over our decisions to leave office jobs for the uncertainty of freelance English teaching, and this dinner furnished us with a chance to catch up after she had started a new job working at a school. The future remains murky, but it was a good reminder that we're not alone in our uncertainty.
En la clase: Once again this week it was tine for Joni's 8-year-old wunderkind to earn a prize, and this time Joni decided to make him a homemade Nutter Butter. For perhaps the first time in her exhaustive cookie consuming experience, Joni actually deemed this creation to be "too sweet." The student wasn't able to finish the dessert, but that didn't stop him from singing its praises. After taking a bite he proclaimed "Oh. I want to visit New York or Inglaterra (Spanish for England) or the United States, or wherever you're from." Joni says they've had many discussions involving her US homeland, so this lapse in memory serves as further testimonies to the mind-altering powers of this too-sweet-to-exist cookie.
Final Notes: Looking to the week ahead we've got yet another holiday (said to be the last one before August), and we're taking advantage of it with a quick trip south to see the novelty of Gibraltar. That, plus additional adventures with Cody, are harbingers of a bountiful blog post for next week. See you then!
No comments:
Post a Comment