Wrap up and the future

Hello everyone! I am back home in Chicago for the holidays, and will be here for a couple of weeks. In case you were wondering, here is a little bit more about the end of my time in Spain.

The choir tour went really well. We ended up raising over 500 Euros for the children's hospital in Malaga over 5 performances. We also went to two radio stations and got to sing on the radio! I was really sad to leave Spain, but I know that I will have my own teaching job to look forward to in the future!

As for my future as well as the future of this blog, I plan on continuing this when I begin my next teaching job (whenever that may be) as well as announcing my next teaching job (whatever that may be) on here, so stay tuned!

Have great holidays!

-Emily

Flamenco, Catedral, Puente y Coro

Hola! This will probably be the last time I post, so I'll try to recap the week and what is coming up!

This past week was quite busy. On Friday we had a choir rehearsal all day (literally all day, with break time and lunch still added in) in order to prepare the choir for tour that happens tomorrow and Friday. It felt like a Christmas in Christ Chapel rehearsal to have it all day- but more fun, since I was leading it, and hopefully the kids had fun too. We changed our set list last week in order to make it easier for the students. After rehearsing all day we had a practice concert for the primary students who liked to dance all around to our Christmas songs, and I conducted all of them while Kerry worked with the sound. We are going to do Carol of the Bells, that is affirmative. I asked the students after our rehearsal on Friday how many of them didn't think we would be able to do that song. All of them raised their hands. Then I asked how many of them didn't think we could do the song now and no one raised their hands. Success. Kerry and his wife's baby was due yesterday, so she will deliver any day now. There's a good possibility that he might not be at school tomorrow or Friday, which would mean he wouldn't be on the tour with me. However, another staff member is planning on coming with no matter what, so I wouldn't be all alone with the students.

This past weekend was a long one because of two Spanish National holidays. They celebrated Immaculate Conception day as well as their constitution day. Since their constitution day fell on a Sunday, schools and businesses take off the holiday on Monday. On Saturday, Deb (our supervisor, different Deb than was here the first time) Laura, Chelsey and I took a day trip to Ronda, a mountain town about an hour north of where we are staying. The two main attractions there are the puente (bridge) and the plaza de toros (bull ring). The bridge had a truly magnificent view of the Spanish countryside into the valley below. The bull ring was also pretty cool to see and had a museum (in which we were not allowed to take pictures). At this point, I'm going to wait to post more pictures until I'm back in Minnesota because the internet here is so slow. Then we did some shopping along the streets, and headed back in the evening.

On Monday and Tuesday, we took an overnight trip as a whole group to Sevilla. It's actually the first time that our whole group has traveled together anywhere. Deb was able to use her travel budget to pay for the bus tickets and the hostel in Sevilla, so that was a nice treat. On Monday, we went on the tour of the Catedral (Cathedral) of Sevilla. It was absolutely amazing. The architecture is incredible, and it's hard to believe that the initial construction of it started in the 12th century. I took a lot of pictures, but I don't feel like the pictures really do it justice.

We then had the afternoon to ourself and did some shopping and then met as a group for dinner. We happened to be eating dinner at siesta time, so very few restaurants were open. Finally we found one though, that turned out to be pretty good.

Later on Monday night, we went to a free Flamenco show at La Carboneria. While it might not have been as flashy as the ones that you pay 30 Euros for, it was still a Flamenco show and we enjoyed it. To add to it, we ran into two Gusties, Brett and Lee, that worked with one of the other girls in our group. I didn't believe them at first until one of them pulled out their Gustavus student ID, and then I believed them. Small world!

Tuesday there was a parade for the holiday, which consisted of several marching bands, and we watched that for a bit. After we watched it, we wandered along the river, and checked out the outside of the plaza de toros, and then the Plaza de Espana. It's too bad that we looked at the Plaza de Espana last, because it is huge and there is so much intricate tile work that we could have spent at least another hour looking around.

We came back last night and now only have three days at school this week. I get back to Minneapolis at 11:35 pm on Sunday, after a two and a half hour layover in my FAVORITE airport ever (not really) O'Hare. I will be in Minnesota until Saturday, and then I am planning on driving back to Chicago Saturday morning. (The 19th)

Also, there has been something seriously wrong with my phone (no incoming calls are going through) so sorry if you have been trying to call it and not getting through. I just tried it now and it should be working though.

Have a great day everyone!

-Emily

The final countdown!

Hello everyone! Hard to believe that there is only one Monday left while we are here (and we won’t even be in school that day). This past week was pretty busy. This week is the last week of students’ arts rotation, so the M1-M3 students were working on finishing up their final performance projects, and they are putting them on this week. The M1 students created a song as a class, entitled “It’s us, only us.” They came up with all the lyrics and the melody. Kerry helped them come up with a chord progression for the instruments, but the song was entirely performed by them, and now they are working on recording it.

The M2 students are performing their polyphonic compositions today (Tuesday). As part of their research and preparation, they had to research different kinds of quartets- barbershop and string to give them a better idea of polyphonic performances. There are four groups that will be performing today, so we will see how they do!

The M3 students are performing their Stomp inspired pieces on Thursday. They are finishing a unit on rhythm, and studying Stomp and Blue Man Group and the kind of performances those groups put on. For their performance piece, they have worked in groups and created rhythms for each part, a context, and used different objects to perform them on, so hopefully their performances will all go well!

Other than that, we have been preparing the choir for our mini-tour next week. We are considering trying to have an all day rehearsal next Wednesday, because there is just not enough time to learn all the music otherwise. It is really hard to prepare an 8 song set when there are only 2 rehearsals a week for four weeks! I am leading rehearsals every day this week during lunch to do sectionals and really get Carol of the Bells down, but they still have many more songs to learn. I am confident that we can get it all ready in time though.

Aside from school work, I went to London this past weekend. Laura and I (another girl who is student teaching from Gustavus) went and stayed with my friend Kate, who goes to Queen Mary's University London. The only difficulty we had was in getting through passport control. The lady who worked there was rude to us and didn't like that we didn't have an address for our stay, and made me call Kate and get it from her. She also had us show her our boarding passes to prove that we were only staying in London for the weekend. Not a very happy welcome.

Aside from the lady at customs, the trip was great. Kate and her friends were very welcoming and hospitable and showed us around all day on Saturday. We started the day at Starbucks, went to a marketplace, then we saw the Globe, the London Eye, Big Ben, Westmister Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, London Bridge and I did get to see some of the West End on the bus ride to the train station. We left very early Sunday morning, so almost all of what we did happened on Saturday. We also went to this place called Hotel Chocolat, where I had the best hot chocolate of my life and I bought some to take home with me. I had a great time in London and I can't wait to go back soon!

Our college supervisor arrived yesterday and will be here for the duration of our stay. She is staying with us in our apartment, to save money, so we're more than likely going to Sevilla this weekend with her spending money from the college. I was going to try to go to Italy, but flight prices increased drastically in a matter of hours ($200 to $600 in seriously a matter of hours). However, a free trip to Sevilla sounds great to me!

That's all from me for now. Have a great day!