I’m sitting on a bus full of barca basketball players we are heading to Barcelona for the day for an excursion. What I have been told is we are going to tour the barca futbol museum, a special backstage type of thing because these are future players we will also get to go ice skating at a rink(atleast that’s what I translated) and also play a small futbol match for awhile. I am the only American who got to go on this adventure because I work with the camp and I think this alone will be worth the 100 euros less I am getting paid! Definitely a once in a lifetime experience. I was however running wicked late because I did not know I was going until 930 when they left at 10 so hopefully I have everything I need. This week so far has been good I got to spend some time in the pool and taught rock climbing which were both fun. I have had the challenge of translating Spanish into English for a group of Swedish players who speak no spanish (I have an idea how they feel) hopefully I can understand things today and they speak castianello and not catalan cuz otherwise it will be a long day lol
June 2011
13 posts
and no time to tell them
Brief of life:
Kids are cute! They speak Catalan and try to teach it to me, I will show you a pic soon.
Camp is crazy! We hike down cliffs and ride full size boats in the pools, its fun
I will be working for a week with the Barca basketball camp, supposedly it is the most fun job you can have at this camp and I will meet “famous” basketball players from Spain…I should probably learn something about Spanish basketball
I got trapped at a trance drug party in the middle of nowhere til 6am…this was not as fun as it sounded, it took 2 hours to get back to camp and I was sober…the party we were supposed to go to didnt even start til 6 am…it is crazy here
I got to work out for the first time today…it was amazing
I am learning spanish, but most kids still laugh at me alot when i try to speak…sad
ok thats all I have for now! Miss everyone at home lots! I put up an album on the facebook for pics of the camp…check it!
I stole this picture from Drue Morris(girl next to me in the photo) these are my camp buddies! We have awesome tshirt that are really hot and smelly! Loves it
- I wrangled an emu
- I petted a boar
- I held a rabbit
- I talked to a horse
- I am living on a farm…and its actually pretty fun!
We got to learn all about the farm and the activities the camp has to offer! We got to swing on tire swings and run over rope bridges and got our new camp t-shirts…which are used hot and sweaty and red but that’s okay. Basically we are getting settled and ready for real life (aka camp life) and the food is amazing and the staff is so friendly and I can understand a lot of Spanish, although i NEED to learn to SPEAK!
I have made it to camp and today was exhausting, the metro to the bus to the train, to another correct train, to a car ride! Wooo and once we got here we got a quick orientation. We met Ricardo the horse trainer, because part of camp here is helping with the childrens wellness through…equestrien stuff? we were also pretty much told for the next two weeks we will be watching people, and after that we will havea group of kids, around 15 who we are expected to be their counslers, mothers, teachers, and psycologists…should be interesting but we are supposed to be inspiring children so they believe they can do anything! that seems like a cool idea.
Housing here is definitely interesting, we have 2 rooms for 8 of us, and we have a mini kitchen/bathroom! yes that means we have to poop in our kitchen…its about to get wierd! The monitors(spanish counslers) show up in the next few days and we will get paired up with them…oh and noone here speaks English, in fact many of them dont speak Spanish, they speak Catalan. I will be picking up languages quickly but i may have no idea what language that might be! I have realized I do actually understand Spanish really well which is cool, now I just need to work on speaking it! Oh plus we have all healthy food, natural ingredients and all that good stuff. Plus there are rock walls, pools, some kinda “indiana jones” park in the woods, its like a Kathleen playground which I will be watching children have fun on…I donno about that!
Ok since I am hogging the only computer I will get off now, but I am safely in the woods/farm (it looks similar to vermont) Updates to come as we get more info!
I have not been updating, or taking photos :( fail! But I am done the theory part of my TEFL course and today i head to Barcelona(actually a small town outside it) to get started teaching! Woot! Now only 10 ish hours of travel and I will be where I am for most of the rest of summer! Cant wait although I am very sad to be leaving my new friends!
Cheers!
Hey ya’ll! Sorry I haven’t been able to update this much, the internet in the hostel is pretty bad but today half my group has class and I got up early to write a paper so for once it is doing pretty good!
So much as happened in a little over a week, I arrived on Wednesday May 25th around 3 pm, had some slight delays on my Paris layover, which I wish had been longer because seeing the Eiffle Tower by airplane just doesn’t do it justice. I took a shuttle to the hostel with no problems and got to see a little of Madrid. My taxi/shuttle driver was the silent type and did not say a word to me the whole way, plus on both my flights there was noone in my rows, it had been almost a full day since I talked to anyone by the time I arrived at the hostel!!! I met some girlies there and they showed me around the city a little, we walked down to la puerta del sol which is where the huge protests are happening. It was really interesting to see, the protests are really peaceful and the kids(about my age-hundreds of them) have set up a little community where they all help out eachother, its a small city within a city. We then walked down and saw the Royal Palace which we plan on taking a tour of one of these days.
That night I met the rest of the group and went to a tapas bar called El Tigre, for around 6 euros, which by no means is cheap, we get tons of plates of food for free! We had some fun there and ended up exploring more of the Madrid nightlife, which is ridiculous!
Another day we visited the Museo del Prado which is a huge, beautiful art museum and if you go after 6 pm you get in for free! We saw art from famous artists such as Goya and Velázquez and it was crazy to think how old the pieces were and how many people had looked at them over the years.
Everything here is so old and beautiful though, the buildings are gorgeous and its very clean. We walk through the calles everyday and see some new shop or place we want to visit.
In the Retiro Park there were so many fun things, a small modern art museum that had an artist who combined album covers together, like the Nirvana cover with Finding Nemo, it was very cool. There was a lake that you could rent boats on with old statues surrounding it. Its hard to describe but it was just all amazing.
Since Monday though the activities have changed, we started the TEFL program and have been in class ALL day! We start at 9 am with Children’s teaching, and go until 6pm with Teaching theory for English as a foreign language. It is a long day plus we have homework. I should be writing a research paper right now ugh.
So I had added a bunch of pics to this and then the internet went out :( I will post them separately…
