Bilingüismo rocks my socks off!

A study comissioned by the Ministry of Education and the British Council shows that students of Spain's bilingual public schools have better Spanish language skills than their monolingual peers. Yeah! Especially in schools like mine with a high percentage of working class and immigrant kids. Take that all you coffee break cynics who insist it's just too hard for them!

Read the El País article (in Spanish) here.

Careful what you wish for...

About a month ago, halfway through my second academic year here, I found myself wishing I had made a more romantic choice of living arrangements. The place I had was nice enough. Strategically placed in between work and the places I go for fun. Seemingly nice roommates. Una terraza de puta madre. Yet still when I walked down the street, pretty much all I saw were block after block of boring mid-twentieth century apartment buildings largely filled with disgruntled old rich people. The president of my building's association, for example, was a man who had proudly worked the way to the tops of Franco's air force, and hated our appartment (the only one filled with twenty-something subletters) with a passion. After he abruptly forced us to cancel my birthday party last year, I can't say I was a big fan either. So from time to time I found myself daydreaming about living in Malasaña, La Latina, or Lavapies, one of those neighborhoods filled with young, poor but hopeful people.

Well, I got my wish.... but the road that's taken me to Malasaña has been a little bumpier than I would have liked. After dwelling on the negative for more than a week I'm trying to focus on the good things. Suffice it to say one of the old roomies hiked up the rest of our shares of the rent, a move that hurt me more emotionally than it would have hurt my finances. At any rate I decided to leave, and by great luck in my friend Syreeta's appartment there was a room available that was very fitting for my bohemian fantasies. Maybe too fitting. It's small, about big enough for a dress and a twin bed, which is fine. The killer is there's no window, but it's only for three months, and I will be able to save for the next phase of my life. The current game plan is to leave Madrid in June and backpack around until fall if possible, maybe with some camp-counseling or wwoofing worked in there.

And the location is perfect in all the most impractical ways. The morning commute will be slightly longer but the neighborhood features several of my favorite things: the best pizza in town, the best vegetarian restaurant in town,  a store with second-hand books in English, and just that dirty but vibrant charm I love. (Check the neighborhood newspaper which features not one but two articles about graffiti. )

New Year's Eve Inventions and Discoveries

In roughly chronological order:

-New Tradition: From 11 pm to 12 am on night of New Year's Eve we abandoned use of certain words in order to reflect and remember sufferings of past year. Forbidden words are: "a," "an," "the" and "article". Last word is included because game is too easy if you can easily explain rules. Fun is in challenge.


- New Appetizer combos: Chicken fingers in salsa con queso. Good. Potatoe chip, ranch dip and cherry tomato canape. Better. Champagne with candy cane. Horrible. Just horrible.

- New Bonding Exercise: Land of 1,000 secrets. Step one, each participant builds a separate fort out of blankets and pillows. Step two, serve yourself a drink. Step three, enter your fort with drink and begin confessing. Ali you are a genius.

A Teenybopper Christmas!

I never knew the true meaning of holiday stress until I became an elementary school teacher. Man, the turkey was nothing in comparison with the Christmas mix CD. Last year my private lesson students and their slightly overbearing mothers showered me with gifts for Christmas, and I hadn't thought to so much as bring some candy to our last class. So this year I wanted to think of some cool but cheap gift for the six tweenage girls I teach when it hit me: The. Jonas. Brothers. What does a twelve year old girl want more than Kevin, Joe and Nick crooning, "All I want for Christmas is the girl of my dreams"?  Easy, right? And I would feel no guilt downloading their songs off the internet, because these kids (or their exploitive parents) make ten cents every time one of their adoring fans buy a pocket folder.

But from there, in the true spirit of any holiday project it spiraled quickly out of control. Of course I wanted to maximize the educational value too, so I would need to give them the lyrics. And if I was going to give them the lyrics I would need to make sure they correspond exactly to the version I was giving them and were grammatically correct. No one was "gonna" do anything in my libretto. (Eek! Teaching has also changed me from a descriptivist linguist into a prescreptivist schoolmarm.) And if I'm going to go through all the effort to get the words just right, of course I have to present them in a cute little book. And if I'm going to make a cute little book, I'm going to need craft supplies. And before I knew it quick, easy and cheap, became slow, painstaking and not as cheap. And then there's the fact I don't want to hear another Christmas carol for a year. One of the best parts of Christmas ruined.

Thanksgiving Proselytizing

I think Thanksgiving is pretty much my favorite holiday, and after more or less ignoring it last year this year I went crazy...

Me and my co-auxiliar Darío prepared a fun yet edifying Thanksgiving lesson. After a youtube video of the history of the feast, we had each of the kids write what they were thankful for on the back of a coloring sheet of a piece of fruit. Then each of them came up to the front of the class, shared their thoughts and hung it on a giant construction paper cornucopia. It was fun and really kind of touching. And you know I'm a big sap, but even my tough and serious co-worker Eva was moved. Of course the other teacher I work with was quick to point out the ensuing genocide part, which I had to agree with. But even if the First Thanksgiving is a little legendary, and totally misrepresents greater trend I like the symbolism. So I proudly taught the legend and its values of thankfulness, generosity and tolerance, even knowing that it all went to hell once those pilgrims got the information they needed out of Squanto. After school and three hours of private classes (not only did I have to work I had to work a long day), I crashed Syreeta's program's Thanksgiving potluck empty-handed, called my family, and passed out.

Then Friday and Saturday I scrambled around like a maniac getting ready to roast my first turkey! Friday I found the bird itself an 8 pound little pavita from the Corte Inglés, where I breifly had a panic attack until Molly talked me down. Luckily, Molly had my back on the bird. She had offered to bring stuffing ingredients and help with the prep. Then Saturday I realized I would need a meat thermometer, and ran around looking for that. Serendipitously, I stumbled across a bunch of fresh thyme at a frutería on the way back from buying the thermometer. It was good Molly was helping with prep because my roomies were blissfully unaware of the cultural significance of roasting your first bird and it seemed like they were almost willfully getting in the way. In a kitchen that's barely big enough for two people to work, if they are working together. One roomie was assembling a fish tank and the other making frozen pizza as Molly and I wrestled both physically and emotionally with the raw bird. There was blood and feathers and it was all a bit too much for me. It was quite a comic scene really. We took to referring to the bird as she, and somehow that helped me deal with it. Anyway it turned out great. Just the right number of guests showed up with just the right amount of food and drink and cheer. We feasted and then we zoned out and it was good. One of the Spanish guests was hit with such a Turkey-coma that he was convinced that I had drugged the bird. Eating a Thanksgiving dinner on a Spanish schedule is the perfect recipe for calling it an early night, which we did pretty shortly after the meal.

Finde de Cine

I have been working too much lately. I found this gig doing 10 (!) hours of conversation classes on occasional Saturdays, which seemed nicer than being overloaded all week long with private lessons, but in the end I don't know. Working 10 hours on Saturday, as I have the past two weekends, pretty much eats up the weekend. And on top of it I was preparing my school's Halloween pageant. But, por fin, I have a whole weekend to myself.

And what a weekend it will be! I'm making up for lost time here. Last night I went to the grand premiere party of a short film Jodienda Warrick, a sort of James Bond parody where drag-queen-spies are competing to either kill or save Madonna, that would have been more funny if I could have understood more of the actors highly stylized accent. You can see other people's pictures of the party if you follow the link.

Me and roomie Alberto waited in line next to nationally famous actor Paco León. Neither me or Al were brave/shameless enough to talk to him, but he was cool. One of his friends was like "Ojalá que no me hagan tacto rectal" that is "I hope they don't give me a prostate exam." To which Paco responded, "Pero qué dices, hombre" or "What are you talking about, man."

It was kind of a symbolic moment for me. Last year the breaking point when I decided to move to the centro, was when I missed the LesGaiCine festival because I lived so far outside the center. This year through Al's connections I not only made it to see part of this festival I made it into the after-party. Symbolism aside though, in the end it makes me realize, even if you make it into the party I'm still the one who has to reach out and connect. I ended up with Al and three of his friends. The four of them had each paired off, and were shouting in each other's ears for ten minutes that seemed like an hour, while I sat there like a bump on a log. It was fine, the night was an over-all success, but it was just a reminder that in the end how many friendships I form here in Madrid, is a function of how much I put myself out there more than anything else.

So this afternoon I am going to put myself out there, and try out for a Voces de Ida y Vuelta, a sort of world music choir with members form all over the world. The idea is that everyone teaches each other songs from their country building up a repertoire of traditional music from all over the world. Sounds awesome and I sorely miss singing with people, I'm not sure if I can make the cut though. Either way it will be low key, apparently my audition is taking place over a couple of beers after their rehearsal, so no worries.

Then tomorrow night I hope to go to the Filmoteca, a sort of government subsidized arthouse cinema to see Tudo isto é fado. I don't know much about it, but it was recommended by a friend and I assume has something to do with fado, that gut-wrenching style of Lisboeta folk music that makes the blues sound like Zippity-doo-dah.

Supposedly I'm also going for a hike in the mountains outside Madrid, and one supposes doing my laundry and grocery shopping. All this will be much more fun but potentially just as much work as ten hours of conversation classes.

Clementine Season!

If there is one food emblematic of Spain it is jamón ibérico, a kind of cured ham. Spaniards are seriously proud of this stuff, and would take great offense at what I'm about to say: it's o.k. After months of hanging in a musty barn the stuff is imbued with subtle hints of... musty barn. And unless it's the good stuff carefully carved into thin slices by a pro it can be just tough and stringy. When I leave Spain I will miss olives, tortilla, gazpacho, red wine, bread, all of which seem more delicious here. But on a rainy, October day like today, I was in the mood for a more under the radar Spanish classic: puré de verduras, vegetable puree (uy, translation does it no justice). So I went to the Corte Inglés in search of acelgas, white chard I think, and a crucial ingredient in the soup. Now you may balk at the idea of vegetable puree, but let me just say puré is the one form of green vegetable my carnivorous roommate Alberto will eat. It is that good. I polished off two bowls of soup and some crusty bread, followed by my first clementines of the year. Thank god these droplets of Valencian sunshine come into season just as the rains hit. Yum!