Adonde fueres haz lo que vieres: Too Many Topics for a Cohesive Title

This week has flown by, once again. I was slammed the first few days of the week with work, prepping the presentations for Halloween and planning lessons for school as well as the private lessons. This week I am supposed to begin with Ana's kids, Ana is the teacher who drives me to school in the mornings, and I am setting up a time with another family for the following week. I am really excited to have the opportunity to give more private lessons, and it is really convenient for now because my program has yet to pay me. Urgency is a word that does not seem to exist the Spanish language. But I do just fine with my weekly lessons, my salary is for traveling.

Monday Isabel took me to the top of the "mountain" to see Santiago from above, and the view was breathtaking. The road up was a death trap, a common design in this region I am finding, but with my fingers tightly crossed we made it to the top without incident. The trip was unplanned so I was armed only with my iPhone to take pictures of the whole city, but we were there at sunset and the clouds were like nothing I've seen before. Sadly these photos do them no justice.

Amazing.

Mountain trees aka wannabe-pines-but-in-the-wrong-climate

The students were all s antsy this week because it was a three day school week, Wednesday was Halloween/Samhain and Thursday was All Saints Day, then Friday was a school holiday. I gave presentations on Halloween and How to Carve a Pumpkin, we watched The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown and read Halloween stories. The students were so into learning about Halloween in the USA and loved seeing the costumes and the Haunted Maze/World/Houses that we have in Idaho (though after I explained the chainsaw men and traps they seemed less keen on going). I had a 'moment', for lack of a better way to explain it, with the fifth grade class on Tuesday while reading the Halloween story. It was a story about a kid that goes to his grandmother's house alone, where all the servants are typical Halloween monsters. The story was full of difficult vocabulary and hard to follow for their level, but there were parts that repeated, and they repeated with me (including the actions and silly voices I made for these parts). I was so proud of them. All of the students are learning so much, I am always impressed by the students. To celebrate Samhain, the holiday from which Halloween originated, the students decorate pumpkins, and bring them to school, these are my favorite ones.

Native American, in Spain.

Skater by a student in fifth grade (though I have my assumptions that there was a touch of parental supervision...)

And the winner is...this fridge. The cutest pumpkin I've ever seen

Wednesday night we had a small party for Halloween and went out. It was really fun to celebrate Halloween in Spain because costumes are not seen as an excuse to slut up, but rather an excuse to go all out and be as realistic an interpretation of your character as possible. Just like kids in the USA. Andrea did our make-up and we had homemade goodies to much on while we waited until an ungodly hour to leave the flat.

Zombie Angel, with a paper mache wound on his neck

Not sure what I was, but it was a costume that rolled over to the next day, when I woke up looking like a hungover prostitute. It was a massive amount of eyeliner that refused to come off in the many attempts before bed, and held strong for the next couple of days at that matter..

Happy Halloween!

Thursday and Friday were lazy days where I fought an annoying cold that came back in full force, bringing headaches as reinforcements. Then there was today, one of those "the-grass-is-probably-maybe-greener-on-the-other-side-of-the-globe" days. Then I found out Toxo had fleas and I realized that the grass is definitely greener on the other side of the globe. Andrea and I combed, bathed and collared the little fella. Then we fumigated the flat. My inner hippie didn't even fight it, fleas or carcinogenic chemicals, we all know which of these is the worse of two evils. I emptied that spray can.

Flea free and oh so very happy

Following the motherly advice given to me by the world's number one mom, I went for a walk to shake my stinky attitude this afternoon. Shockingly enough, my mom was right and the walk did me wonders. ;) Fall is in full swing here and the Parque de la Alameda is absolutely gorgeous.

Spoiler alert, there are a lot of trees in this park

The branches blow my mind, someday I'll find out what kind of trees these are (I'm sure I could ask anyone in the park since the Spanish are all somehow experts in flora)