Week 1...done!

June 21, 2019

Hola from Oviedo!

It is hard to believe that we've just barely been here a week - the students have so many great stories to tell about their host families, they have found little adventures during their free time, and I know that our classes have gotten off to a great start. I'm leaving a LOT of photos below, although I can't promise that they are all in order. As I was organizing for this blog a few things got jumbled up...so maybe there are a couple repetitions or jumps back and forth, but enjoy nonetheless! Here are some words about the last few days:

We had three full days of class and afternoon activities this week as well as a local excursion today. In my class, yesterday we discussed the most famous chapter from Don Quijote and talked about a number of ideas (What was Don Quijote thinking when he attacked those windmills?!? How is Sancho Panza different from Don Quijote? And what does Cervantes want us to take away from this relationship?) I know that the linguistics class has made some headway on the differences between semantic meaning and pragmatic meaning, in grammar class they've nailed down some of the specifics of how to communicate well with the present perfect tense, and the culture class got into some Asturian history.

Each day after lunch we have been dedicating our time to two things, primarily: the farewell show that we'll put on for our Spanish host families, but also an Oviedo magazine that the students are going to put together. Most of the work on the magazine will come later, but we started brainstorming about what to include. For the farewell show, we've collectively come up with a play that takes some characters from local mythology as a starting point (I'll try to give a brief synopsis in a week or so once it is a little better developed...), and some small groups are also coming up with songs and dances to intersperse throughout the play. It has been fun!

Most of the photos below are from our first excursion, a trip within Oviedo to Santa María del Naranco. This was a pretty relaxed excursion since we're still rather new here, our next trips will take us out of town to get to know some regional sites. I won't go on and on about the structures we saw today, because I imagine that the photos of the students will be most interesting to everyone back in Indiana, but here is a Asturias tourism site (in English) that has a pretty good short description of the place we visited today, if you want to check it out.

The students are now with their host families for the weekend and I'm sure they'll be getting into some exciting things. Last thing: we are having such a great time! Thanks so much for allowing us to get to know your students and make these wonderful memories with them. More to come!

Working on a writing response to a fragment of chapter 8 from El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de La Mancha

Snack time

Discussing whether or not books can make you go crazy (it's part of the story!)

We had to wait for the bus to Naranco this morning, so some students went for a coffee and snack

Off the bus, walking towards Naranco

Our tour guide

Resting after a lot of walking

Playing with the kids toys in the visitors center (?)

We came back to the school for lunch after this morning's excursion...as the 4 instructors were finishing our coffee, the students went to wait in our main classroom. When we entered they were all asleep! I think we tired them out! We can consider it a cultural activity, una siesta :)