Well, it's been just about a year since my last post! I'm on the road again, this time in Spain! I just spent 18 days traveling around Spain with my friend Shawna, and am now participating in another "Conversation Corp" through GeoVisions again. I hope to be blogging regularly again about my experiences as an English tutor to this family of five.
I arrived at my host family’s home yesterday and have been
getting settled in. Jose, the father,
walked me down the main street of the Guadalajara, showing me where everything
is that I might want to make use of: the library, the museum, the tourist information
center, etc. He pointed out how to get
to the mall in the other direction by crossing a pedestrian bridge over the
main freeway between Madrid and Barcelona. (I went there this morning.)
Sagrario (the mom) and Jose both showed me around the house and
showed me how everything works. We
discussed the schedule for teaching and basically got me organized. This experience will be quite different from
my families in Turkey in a couple of ways.
First, I am the 6th tutor that they have had come
and stay with them! The last one was
only here for one week before she became homesick and returned home. But the others all seem to have been here for
3 months. One was from Manchester,
England and the rest were from the U.S. So,
they are accustomed to having someone in their home and have a good sense of
life in the U.S.
Secondly, I have a very set schedule to work with each
member of the family. Jaime, the 11-year-old
boy, will have an hour lesson each day.
Sofia and Irene, the 15 year old twin girls, will have one hour each,
three times per week. Sagrario will also
have 3 hours per week, while Jose will have just one hour.
Third, the parents were able to identify exactly what they
wanted me to work on with each of the kids and with themselves. I will definitely need prep time each week to
prepare lessons. I am looking forward to
preparing these lessons and seeing the growth in all of them.
And now, a bit about the family: Jose is a chemical engineer
and works for a pharmaceutical company.
He worked for an American company for 18 years, so he has used English
in his work and although he has a very strong accent, he communicates very well
in English. He is also a runner and ran two marathons this year. He reminds me a lot of Kyle! Sagrario is an IT manager and works in Madrid,
making the 40-minute drive daily. She
hasn’t used English much at work, but needs to more and more but is
apprehensive about speaking it. She also
has a hard time understanding all the different accents of her co-workers from
other European countries when they speak English.
I had my first “lesson” today with Jaime. We started with my showing him some pictures
from Alaska and I immediately discovered he loves animals and knew quite a bit
about the animals from Alaska. We were
able to understand each other as we talked about the animals here and there,
but we certainly were not communicating in complete sentences! He is quite bright and I think he will be a
lot of fun.
Sofia and Irene attend high school and are in the same
classes together this year for the first time.
Until now, they have had different classes to allow them to develop
individually, but now they are together.
They had a math exam today and apparently spent most of the long weekend
they just had preparing for it. I can
tell already they are at different levels for their English and I am hoping it
will be fun to work with each of them individually. They both play basketball
and have practice a few times a week.
This Saturday will be a big match that they are anxious about.
During the day, Sagrario’s sister comes over to help out
since the parents are gone all day, but the kids get out of school at 1 and at
2. She speaks less English than all of
them, but we had a great conversation sharing with each other about our
families: she in her broken English and me in my broken Spanish – so we both
got to practice!
My room is very nice with an attached private bathroom. This is the first time in all my homestays
that I have had my own bathroom! Kind of
nice! The house is a single-family house
and is quite large. On the main floor are
the eat-in kitchen, laundry room, living room/dining room, my bedroom and a
half bath. Downstairs is a huge two-car
garage, a spare room that is the dog’s room (no kidding), and a very nice den
with fireplace, large dining table, sofas and TV. Sagrario said they don’t use this room much:
usually just when they have a number of people over. On the second floor are
the family bedrooms and two bathrooms. And then, there is one more floor! Half of this top floor is basically a rec
room with board games, exercise equipment, and stuff left over from when the
kids were younger. There are two more
rooms up there: one is set up as an office but I got the impression that it is
not used much, and the last room is just an empty room! On this street it looks like all of the homes
are detached houses, however I there is an apartment building just one block
over and I saw a number of others around town as well. Jose explained last night that they like
living here as houses are much less expensive than in Madrid and the kids all
go to school very close by – Jaime’s school is just around the corner.
So, that’s it for now about the family. I must go and figure out syllabuses for each
of my students!
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