Fun in the Sun Wind

Buenos tardes,

As you can tell I’ve mastered the Spanish language (or at least managed to fumble my way through a converstation with a cashier), so I’m essentially an A Corunian local. 

There are perks to having a school on top of a hill

 In all seriousness the people here are really friendly, living up to the town motto of “No-one’s a foreigner” and this welcoming attitude extends all the way up the hill to our school, where the teachers have been very open and generous even with the pretty large language barrier. It’s been really interesting to see veteran teachers keep young classes engrossed even after an 8 hour school day, and it really puts the pressure on for me! This isn’t to say that there haven’t been a few teething problems with some timetable changes and teachers having the impression that we are here as teaching assistants – fortunately these were quickly resolved so we’re back on track for good times.

The children themselves are amazingly well-behaved, possibly just because I’m enough of a novelty to stun them into silence, but if that can last a month then I’m happy. There’s definitely a change between the youngest (3 y/o) and oldest (12 y/o) kids that I have taught in that there’s a massive increase in autonomy as the pupils get older; though luckily so far the classes all share the trait of being really enthusiatic to learn literally anything. I feel like this may change tomorrow as I will be teaching secondary school students for the first time, but fingers crossed I can find a way to motivate them, even if I have to resort to chocolate-based bribery.

Nectar of the Gods

Honestly I haven’t seen much of the city itself as everything is quite spread out here, so I can give directions to the local Toys ‘R’ Us but not the beach – though that might just be a reflection on me. Still, I had a pretty great strawberry daquiri (the manliest of drinks) and tapas yesterday in town so the location isn’t completely wasted on me. We’re also going to have an official tour on one of the upcoming weekends so I can do all the touristy stuff then.

Spanish timings for food are definitely proving to be a challenge for me, essentially everything has been shifted about 2 hours later than normal. This doesn’t seem like it would be a massive problem but it turns out that lasting until 9 PM without food is quite difficult. Other than that I feel pretty settled and generally alright, I just have to get used to the daily maid service (it’s a hard life).

Big up to the Valencia crew, I hope your weather gets worse so I feel better about myself! Seriously, I hope you're all having a good time down there and you're making the most of the beaches.

Anyway that’s all for now; hopefully the next blog post will look a bit nicer, the entire website is currently in Spanish so I have no clue how to do anything.

Hasta luego,

Cameron