This week, I’ve learnt three things: Ryanair are officially useless (although you could argue I knew this already); bank holiday weekends aren’t just rainy in the UK; and ‘Guy Fawkes’ is a near impossible phrase for Spaniards to pronounce.
Last Friday, I arrived at the 4* hotel that Hugh had booked for us in Madrid at around 11.00pm. Expecting to receive a text from him any minute then, saying that he’d just landed and was making his way to the Metro to come and join me, I settled down on the king-size bed to watch a bit of Spanish news on the plush flat-screen TV. Sounds blissful, doesn’t it? Well it was, until it got to about midnight – still no word from him, and the TV was beginning to get boring. By 12.30, my eyes were getting heavy and I wondered what could be taking him so long. By 1am, I was just plain worried: the flight information had disappeared from Ryanair’s website, suggesting it had landed ages ago, but there was still no word from Hugh.
While my overactive and overwrought imagination began thinking up all sorts of terrible scenarios involving aeroplanes sinking to the bottom of the sea, you’ll be pleased to know he finally rocked up at the door of the hotel room... at 2am. The battery on his phone had died, he explained, and thus he hadn’t been able to text me to let me know that his flight had been delayed by over two hours, or indeed that he was alive at all. My huge relief to see him was somewhat clouded by my desire to throw him straight back out of the hotel room (or preferably, out of the window – we were on the top floor, after all, so I could’ve inflicted some suitable damage), but in the end we settled for sleep; something we both greatly needed by this point.
Despite the turbulent (gosh, I’m witty) start to the weekend, I’m happy to report we had a lovely time. Even the grey skies and showers which plagued us for most of the weekend didn’t put us off exploring the city. On Saturday, we wandered round the shops (until Hugh got fed up – next time, I’m going with a girl!). In the evening, we had a cocktail in a bar which had no prices on the menu, which made us suspect it was going to be extortionate. We held our breath as we waited for our suited and booted waiter (I kid you not, he was even wearing a waistcoat and tie!) to bring us the bill, and were not surprised when we didn’t get much change from 20 euros for two cocktails. That’ll teach us!
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| Hugh posing proudly with his double quantity of Sake - note the bloodshot eyes! |
Afterwards, we ate at a Japanese restaurant, Dai-kichi, as recommended by one of my private students, Jesús. The Menú Japones was a feast of miso soup, sushi, sashimi, tempura and green tea flavoured ice cream for dessert, and reminded me of all the kinds of food I’d been missing out on in Cuenca. At the end of the meal, we decided to try the traditional Japanese wine, Sake, which is served hot and is very strong. However, my adventurous side was soon suppressed when my stomach lurched after taking one sip, so I decided it would be wise to stop. Hugh, however, after having consumed half a bottle of wine with dinner, was determined not to waste it, and proceeded to drink the whole amount – intended for two people – to himself. We left the restaurant and staggered to a bar (well, he staggered – I still had some dignity in my semi-sobriety at this point), where we had two more drinks each.
Getting up the next day was an unpleasant but necessary task, as we had to check out at midday. When we’d pulled ourselves together, we decided the best possible way to soak up the alcohol was with a big Indian meal. I was very excited at the prospect of a curry, as I hadn’t had one since well before I left England – people just don’t eat Indian food in Cuenca, so there are neither restaurants nor supermarkets where you can get your hands on any. Hugh put his Googling skills into action and found us a highly-esteemed restaurant called Tandoori Station, about which many customers had raved and said it was the best Indian food they’d ever tasted. Well, what can I say? It was amazing. I’d even go as far as to jump on the bandwagon and say it’s the best I’ve ever tasted too. We got a 3-course tasting menu, and it was heaven. Seriously, if you ever go to Madrid, I wholeheartedly recommend this place!
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| A glimpse of the mighty El Prado from the outside... |
Afterwards, it was time to get cultural. We headed for El Prado, Madrid’s palatial and world-famous art gallery. I was very glad I’d booked tickets in advance, as the queues snaked around the whole of one side of the building. It was very satisfying to waltz past them and straight into a different entrance! Inside, we didn’t know where to begin. As neither of us are exactly what you’d call art buffs, we just settled on wandering about aimlessly from room to room (the place is so big that I think we only saw about a tenth of what was on display; you’d need about a week to cover the whole thing!). The experience overall was undeniably lovely – not excluding seeing the building which is a work of art in itself – but as I know nothing about art and was suffering from an Indian food coma by this point, we didn’t last very long. There are only so many pictures of religious scenes and monarchs (why did everyone in those days paint the same things? Where was their imagination?!) one can look at before one’s eyes begin to glaze over and one’s feet begin to ache. Having said that, we were both rather taken aback when we stumbled across a painting (don’t ask me who it was by or what it was called) of a statue of the Virgin Mary in a church, with a priest kneeling at her feet. Sounds fairly standard... until I tell you that coming from the Virgin’s nipple was a neat, projectile stream of breast milk, making its way directly into the priest’s open mouth. Well, it made a change from the run-of-the-mill Mary and baby Jesus scenes, I suppose!
After recharging our batteries in El Prado’s surprisingly good value cafeteria, we headed to Parque del Oueste, where Madrid’s very own teleférico (cable car) leaves from. It takes you on an 11 minute journey about 40 metres above ground level, and affords magnificent views of the palace, river and city in general. As we did it at night time, the twinkling lights made it all the more aesthetically pleasing, and a perfect way to round off our weekend.
I caught the last coach back to Cuenca on Sunday evening, leaving Hugh to kill time in the airport until his 6.30am flight (from which he alighted and went straight into work without having had any sleep, the madman).
Monday was a typical dull, rainy bank holiday, just like being back in the good old Blighty! Still, I managed to catch up on sleep and do a bit of planning for that week’s lessons. The topic of choice was Bonfire Night, but I wasn’t very well prepared and didn’t have enough activities to keep the classes going. I’m finding it very challenging to think of engaging, educational activities and/or games to keep my classes occupied and make sure they’re all learning something. The teachers don’t seem to think I’m doing a bad job, or at least they’ve never said they do – instead, they tend to just leave me to my own devices while they sit at the back of the class and watch. I’m not sure if this is because they’re confident I can handle it all on my own, or just because it’s a good opportunity for them to have a break. I feel under pressure to come up with wonderful lesson plans, and although I know the teachers are there to help me out if I get stuck, I see it as a personal challenge to be able to cope on my own.
The lack of guidance in terms of what kind of lessons I’m expected to deliver is still an issue for me, and sometimes gets me really worked up and stressed. It’s not that I can’t handle the freedom, but a bit of structure would go a long way and would help me to feel more confident and organised in class. I suppose my main concern is that I don’t tend to get much feedback from my teachers about how I’m doing, so for all I know, I could be screwing this up majorly. As it is, though, my new strategy is going to be to ask the teachers in advance what we’ll be doing next week, and then try to think up an activity based around that.
Thankfully, the most dreaded class of my week – about which I wrote in my last blog – were less awful this week. The teacher told me I didn’t have to come this week if I didn’t feel like it (she obviously still felt guilty from the week before), but I decided the best way to deal with it would be to tackle it head on, rather than stick my head in the sand. I found a simplified text about Bonfire Night on the internet, printed it out and photocopied enough for each student. The idea was to read through it so they could follow the words while I was reading. I hoped this would work better than just talking to them, as their English is clearly too poor to be able to follow what I’m saying. After I’d read the text, I gave them five minutes to re-read it to themselves, trying to absorb the meaning and underlining any words they didn’t know the meaning of. Then, I asked them to tell me the words they didn’t understand, and I explained what each one meant, writing the Spanish translations on the board as I went along.
It was a painstaking process as they didn’t understand most of the text, but it paid off. Finally, they were participating, and even – shock horror – contributing their own information about similar Spanish festivities without being pushed much at all. I felt a sense of triumph at the end of the lesson, and the rest of the week’s lessons followed suit. I found other ways to make the lesson interactive, such as doing an online crossword with Bonfire Night-related vocabulary. I projected the image of the crossword onto the classroom wall and read out the clues so they could guess them and fill in the crossword as a group.
For my more advanced classes, I showed them a clip on YouTube from a BBC documentary about the Gunpowder Plot, and then asked them questions about it to see if they’d understood.
By Thursday, I was exhausted as usual (especially as I’d had 6 private classes that week) and glad that the weekend had landed. On Wednesday, I had my first class with the two daughters of a teacher at San José. When I arrived at their apartment, I was surprised to see the girls were only 11 and 12. I was apprehensive, as most of my private students are adults (apart from one 16-year-old), so I’m used to being able to make conversation with them as I would with my friends. Within about five minutes of talking to these two and watching their expectant faces stare back at me, however, I was stumped. Thinking on my feet, I looked up ESL games online, and found a game of hangman with different categories such as body parts, fruit and vegetables and adjectives. They loved it!
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| Víllora's old-fashioned 'lavadero' was just too tempting for Tristan, the dog of one of Marta and Rafael's friends! |
On Thursday evening, during my hour with Marta the English teacher and her husband Rafael, I mentioned to them that I wanted to practise my Spanish as much as possible, so they invited me to go walking in the countryside with them and their friends on Saturday. I took them up on the offer and had a fantastic day; we drove about 50 minutes outside of Cuenca, to a beautiful spot with rolling mountains, an idyllic river and nothing for miles except beautiful scenery. After our walk, we drove to a nearby ‘town’, Víllora. I use town in the loosest sense of the word, as it was basically a few houses, a pub, a bank, a casa rural (where we had our delicious 3-course lunch to re-fuel after the day’s exertions) and a lavadero, a delightful old building with a trough full of water where people used to go to wash their clothes! The grand total of inhabitants is just 80 – and I thought Cuenca was small...
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| Me admiring the magnificent view of the Puente de lo Imposible and surrounding countryside... |
After lunch, we scrambled up a mountainside to get breathtaking views of the Puente de lo Imposible (the Impossible Bridge), which is a railway bridge that towers dramatically over a canyon with the gushing river at the bottom. Castilla-La Mancha may not have much in the way of cities, but this only makes for even more stunning rural terrain to explore. And best of all, I got to practise my Spanish on Marta and Rafael’s friends, too!
Next weekend, all 6 of us girls are going to Toledo for two nights. We’ve booked ourselves into a very cheap (and possibly rather seedy) hotel, and I really can’t wait.
For now, though, I’ve written more than enough – congratulations if you’ve actually reached the end without falling asleep or giving up to go and make a cup of tea!
¡Hasta luego!
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