Cola Cao
A little gift from the roomie today reminded me that I’ve been wanting to blog about the phenomenon of ‘Cola Coa’ for a while now. Cola Cao is the Spanish version of hot chocolate mix. But instead of drinking it during a cold day or at night, most people drink it for breakfast or in the afternoon when they take their coffee break…every day. I fell in love with it after being introduced in January, and now I always have a jar of ‘Cola Cao turbo’ in my cupboard (turbo only means it dissolves faster). There’s no caffeine in it because it was originally designed for children, but you can find people of all ages drinking it in the cafeterias. I’ll be sure to bring a jar back to the states in June.
School fun!
This year in IES de Llanera, we’ve been having fun with projects and keeping up with the traditional American holidays:
First the students made collages of their personality, friends, family, etc.; and then they presented them to the class. Some students really got into it!
Then we celebrated Halloween with face painting and a costume contest
And then we made some turkeys for Thanskgiving
And finally, we made a super awesome advent calendar!
Now I just need to think of a big idea for Christmas…
Year Number Dos
What a different year it has begun to be compared to the last. For one thing, when I arrived, I was picked up in a car (instead of taking a 5 hour bus) and driven to Igor’s (my bf) place where his parents spoiled me to pieces (like Tracy last year) with a comfortable bed, delicious food, and all the comforts of home. Last year I had zero intention of getting into a relationship with a Spanish boy. We all know how well that turned out. Secondly, going to my school was much easier. I only had a handful of new teachers and two classes of new faces. When walking into the rest of my classes, I was met with familiar smiles and hugs and dos besos from everyone. And finally, I arrived with 9 months of authentic Spanish under my belt, so when I told my students that they were doing a project right away, and one responded under his breath ‘no me jodas‘ I was able to respond, “no I’m not kidding. It’s due next week.” But no worries, I’m not a harsh teacher, it was fun: a collage of their friends, family, likes, dislikes, all in pictures.
Now because I have not updated my blog in moths, I’ll give a brief rundown of my first three months back in Oviedo:
- I moved into a three bedroom apartment with my Cape Cod friend from last year, Beth.
- We didn’t have internet for over a month
- When we finally got it, the fan of my computer died and I brought it to the biggest department store in Spain, Corte Ingles, to be fixed
- There was noone in Oviedo, or the northern half of Spain available to fix my computer so it was sent to Madrid for a month and a half
- The government wasn’t able to pay us for almost two months (luckily I had my private lessons from last year and my wonderful parents to hold me over for a little while)
- I have traveled to Pais Vasco, La Rioja, Barcelona, and London and enjoyed every second of those trips! (more details in future posts)
- I am spending my free time preparing classes, catching up on things back home with casttv.com and facebook, and drinking delicious, cheap wine with friends
As Christmas is fast approaching, I’ll give you a little taste of how Oviedo decorates. They put up big lights across the main streets and speakers on the light posts to play Christmas music while people are strolling through the center.
Thanks for reading! Missing you all
