A story from today and something I forgot.

Today the kids were learning about space, planets, and the like. When told that stars that we can see are suns just like ours one of the older boys asked, (this was translated to me) "If all the stars are suns then why do they not put off more light like our sun?"
The only way I could think to explain it to him was to turn off the lights and put a lit flashlight about two inches from his face. "This is our sun." Then I took the flashlight across the room and pointed it at him again, "And this is the closest star." He seemed to get it after that.


I have one more story from last weekend in Sagunto. On Monday before we were going to leave with the bus, I found Brittany and Terah cooking in the kitchen attached to the girls dorm. I walked in and closed the door. We talked for a little bit and then they decided that it was time to get ready to go and tried to leave. No luck. The door was locked from both sides. Don't ask me how that passes fire code but it happened. The only window in the room had a grate blocking the outside. Isn't that just great... ha. Well after flipping the circuit breaker for the dorm a few times and no one coming Tarah started working on the bolts holding the grate onto the window and I tried unsuccessfully to pick the door lock. Tarah had more luck, using the handle end of a corn butterer she managed to pull out one of the two remaining bolts holding the grate in place. I knocked the grate off, we jumped out, replaced the grate, and booked it out of there.

Fun times!

Viva La Fiesta!

For the 17th through the 20th I went to Valencia for their yearly fiesta Fallas. I stayed in the dorm in Sagunto so I got to hang out with other Americans and in general have a good time. I was supposed to go by train and arrive fairly early Friday afternoon, but I accidentally took the wrong bus and didn't end up at the train station on time. Instead I ended up on the wrong side of town at the end of the bus line. They kicked everyone (me...) off the bus and drove away leaving me with my bags and a long walk to the next stop. I ended up walking an hour home with my rather bulky bags...
But all was well, Anabel and Ruth (the lady I'm living with and the 4 and 5 year old teacher) made a last minute decision to go to Valencia as well so I got a free ride down.
Saturday I got up and met with the family I had visited earlier this year. The father used to live in Walla Walla and both of them speak English. We had lunch and I played with their little daughters and their dogs. Good times. Saturday night I met up with some friends and we all went out to see the town. We ended up staying out super late and got back to the dorm early the next morning. We got to see lots of statues and shops and people, but I forgot to take my camera. Sunday night I got ride to town to see the fireworks show from a Portuguese cop with three girls I know Brittany, Chelsea, and Tarah. There was a huge firework show that night that we got to see. The whole thing was better than any grand finale I have ever seen in the states and it lasted almost an hour. Monday night we went out again this time with the school bus and got to see a bunch of the statues burned. The crowds are so thick that you can barely move and then there are a series of explosions and suddenly the whole giant statue in front of you is burning. It didn't take long before we were pushing back into the crowd to try and escape the heat. It was really interesting to see the things burn though.

It was interesting spending so much time with English speakers. Although I am in no way fluent in Spanish I have begun to think in it a little bit. I've been speaking and hearing it for so long that my brain process has started to adapt to my vocal process. So I think in a mixture of Spanish and broken English, at least until I catch myself doing it and switch to real English in my head. Talking with people for long amounts of time brought this to my mind even more. I was stuttering over conjugations and having a hard time finding words quite often. It got better as the weekend went on, but it was very interesting to me. 

A Long Weekend by the Beach.

This last weekend I got to go with Loida, the first and second grade teacher, to stay with her family at their summer home in Peniscola. Peniscola is a beautiful little town along the Mediterranean coast north of Valencia. On the way we stopped in a town called Morella. It had a really old castle at the top of a mountain in it. We climbed all the way to the top and got to look around. A lot of it has eroded but it still fairly intact and it was awesome to see how defensible it was and where the rooms used to be. After we had a good look around we got back in the car and headed off to Peniscola.
Peniscola has a beautiful beach and a really cool old castle that was more put together then the castle in Morella. We spent a day seeing the castle and the town. I was happy to be able to explore two castles in so short a period of time.
On Monday we went to a zoo for Exotic birds and Kangaroo's. It was really cool, there were lots of parrots and other cool birds. I got to have five or six birds land on me at once. I enjoyed it a lot.
Over all it was a great weekend and it was amazing to see a different part of Spain and get away for a couple of days.