Linguistic Hurricanes

So now I'm in Denmark again. On Monday it snowed in Madrid, and only half the students came to school. Well, probably less than half, and although they all live in the town where the school is, most did not come. Yet, somehow, I made it all the way from Madrid to school on time. So my classes consisted of me playing hangman, and sitting in the teachers room huddled around the radiator. It snowed 1 inch that day.

I arrived in Denmark yesterday afternoon, and it was snowing here too. On my flight all the announcements were made in this order: first Spanish, then English, then Danish-Swedish hybrid. It was very interesting. Then I took public transportation to Gentofte (where I'm staying with my host family), and the metro was stopped in one station for 45 minutes. I don't know why because the announcement was in Danish and I was listening to music (not that that made any difference). I finally arrived to the Refstrups' house, and it felt like I was home. It's so great to see them, and Johan hasn't left my side. I actually just kicked him out of my room because he was going through my suitcase. Some things never change.

What has changed, however, is my knowledge of Danish. Although it's coming back to me relatively quickly, I definitely don't know it like I used to. I can understand some of it, and if I think really hard, I can speak a little. Overall, it ends up coming out in Spanish. I literally feel as if my brain was hit by a linguistic hurricane. English I'm still pretty good at; Spanish is my go-to foreign language; Danish I understand when people speak it to me, but when I try to respond, it comes out in Spanish. It's going to be great going to France in 10-ish days, and trying to communicate in that one. God help me.

Countries visited/will visit between Dec 5 and Jan 5:

--Spain, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland (for a couple hours), France

Languages spoken in that same time period (some more than others, obviously):

--Spanish, English, Danish, Swedish, French, Italian

Despite the linguistic hurricane, I gotta say, "Life is good."

PS I'm stealing this link from my friend's blog, but I just wanted to share it here.

Things I wish I knew when I was 22

"Wherever you go...

There's always someone jewish." That's how a song by Debbie Friedman goes, and I've found it to be oddly true.

This past weekend we had a puente (Spanish for "bridge" and "long weekend"), so my friend Molly and I decided to head off to Venice for 3 days. Well, first, on Saturday I took the LSAT, which was just loads of fun. We'll see how I did when I get my scores in January, but as a reward, I went to Venice the following morning. We slept in the airport to avoid taking a taxi, and there was a child there who insisted on screaming for almost 2 hours. So that was less than fun, but we arrived in the Milan airport in the morning. We then took a beautiful train ride through northern Italy to Venice. From my window I saw the alps and we passed through a bunch of vineyards and small towns. Then we finally arrived in Venice.

Venice is beautiful. We basically just walked around the city for 2 whole days. We went to a couple of museums, ate a ton of pizza and pasta, shopped for souvenirs, and got extremely lost. Since Venice is basically a bunch of islands very close together and there are no cars, the streets wind and it is almost impossible to find your way around. We saw almost the entire city by just walking, and although the weather was cold and rainy, I really enjoyed Venice.

Back to my original point. There are jewish people everywhere. In Venice, there is a part of the city called the "Ghetto Vecchio" which means the old ghetto. It is the Jewish part of the city with synagogues, a chabad, and many judaica shops. I wanted to buy a menorah, but I think the shop disappeared. It was extremely odd.

Then tonight in Madrid, I went to a menorah lighting near the royal palace. I didn't think there were jewish people here, but apparently there are. It was awesome. The mayor gave a speech, as did the head rabbi and a bunch of other important jews. I got a FREE t-shirt that says "Comunidad Judia de Madrid" on the back. It's like a team jersey.

Nothing else too exciting here. Just the usual. Speaking English to kids who draw pictures all class long. Anyway, that's all for now.

Confessions of an American Pop-Star

So I'm a celebrity, or at least I feel like one. Before I begin, I should warn you that this post may seem as if my ego has inflated quite a bit in the past couple months. It has. Well, only when I'm within the boundaries of the school. Otherwise I'm still normal Derek, and so let me begin again.

So I'm a celebrity, or at least I feel like one. Every day countless children between the ages of 7 and 16 yell my name across the school yard. On Mondays and Thursdays, I don't have classes until 11:10 am, so I don't arrive at school until approximately 11 am, which is the middle of recreo (recess). In order to get inside of the school, I have to walk about 100 yards through the school yard to get inside the building (aka into safety). As soon as I enter the gates, I hear children yelling, "Derik, Hello!" "Hola, Derik!" "Hello Derek, How are you?" Some run up from across the yard to ask me questions, "Derik, sabes español?" [Derek, do you know Spanish?] I would estimate that on each stroll through the school yard, I hear the word "Hello" (or a variant) between 20 and 50 times. Sometimes the students actually want to attempt talking with me (in English, they don't know that I know Spanish). It usually takes a group of 5 students to ask a single question. One ask the question in Spanish, and the other 4 attempt to translate into English. Then, they all construct it into English as a team.

I walk out of the door to walk to lunch, and of course all of the students are lined up outside of the door I leave through to wait for lunch. As soon as one student yells to me, they all start yelling and some even screaming. I legitimately feel like a celebrity. I shield my face from the "paparazzi." Whenever I am with the teachers going to lunch they laugh at me and say, "You are a movie star."

Every day countless children comment on what I'm wearing (grammatical mistakes intended):

"Derik, why do you wear always jeans?"

"Derik, what do your trainers [British for sneakers] say on the... the... atrás [spanish for back]?"

"It is true that it have your name?"

"Derik, do you put blue clothing every day?"

At first, it seemed cute. These kids notice and appreciate what I'm wearing. However I may dress, the kids always think I look cool and tell me they like what I'm wearing. Some of my students asked me for the website, so that they too can get customized sneakers with their names on the back. I guess that's what people do with celebrities. They see what they wear; then, they imitate it to the best of their abilities because they think that it looks cool. Right now, to some of the students, I am the pinnacle of style. Little do they know that I only wore 1 pair of jeans, 3 pairs of underwear, 2 pairs of socks, and 3 shirts last week because I did not have time to do laundry. (Hey, don't judge me. I doubt Britney Spears wears clean clothes.)

I now have a greater understanding and insight into the lives of celebrities. Sometimes I feel like I need a break. Life in the spotlight is rough, but someone's gotta do it, and I secretly enjoy it. For this reason, it's going to be difficult going back home and being a "normal person." Also, sorry for the lack of pictures to accompany the posts; I can't find my camera chord. I'll need to buy a new one I suppose. I should also point out that because of my students' plentiful grammatical mishaps, certain grammatical mistakes now sound correct to me. The following no longer sound too bad to my tainted ears:

"I am have a bad day."

"You go to home now?"

"He has 12 years old."

"Yesterday, my mother and father was eating dinner, and I was cooking it."

"On Halloween, I was going trick-or-treat with my free-end (friends with a Spanish accent)."

And to leave you with, a quote from a dialogue from my 2nd grade class (all should be pronounced in an extremely british accent):

"May I borrow a rubber?"

"Yes, here you are."

"Thank you!"

It's super awkward when my young students ask me for a rubber because they learn that a pencil eraser is a rubber, not an eraser. That initially caused some awkwardness. Pues, hasta ahora!

Beach in Autumn??

So just like in the good ol' USA we had a long weekend for Columbus Day. However, here it is for Día de la Hispanidad and Fiesta de la Virgen de Pilar.

Interesting little digression, I asked my students why they didn't have school on Monday, and one responded, "Because it was 'Pilar's Party'." I naturally laughed because it sounded like some girl (Pilar) was having a party at her house (complete with keg and Solo cups), and we were all invited. I had to explain the difference between a holiday and a party. Entertaining though.

So, Día de la Hispanidad is basically celebrating Spain conquering the New World, in essence, Columbus Day. Over that long weekend, a couple of friends and I decided to go to Lisbon, Portugal. We took an over-night bus from Madrid to Lisbon, which arrived at 5:30 am. So we set out exploring the city as the sun rose. It was so beautiful. For those of you that have never had the pleasure of visiting Lisbon, the sidewalks are mosaics with white tiles which are unbelievably clean. I think that its mandatory that people mop the sidewalk in front of the buildings because the sidewalks literally reflected the sun. Since it was so early, the bakeries started baking their delicious portuguese breads. From 6am-6pm the entire city smells like freshly baked goods, and from 6pm-6am the city smells like cigarette smoke. It's an interesting transition.

After a good day of taking in the sights of Lisbon, we took a day trip to Sintra on Sunday. Sintra is a small town outside of Lisbon with a couple of castles and a moorish fortress from medieval times. It's quite an impressive sight because the town is at the base of this mountain that just shoots up, and you have to take a bus from the town up these winding mountain roads. The whole time I was praying that I wouldn't plummet to my death because it was a very steep fall. After seeing the sights, we ate dinner at an Italian/Indian Restaurant in the town, and took the train back.

Monday, we went to the beach! It was mid-high 80s, and not a cloud in the sky. Perfect beach weather. The beach is called Estoril, which is a little town about a half hour from Lisbon. It was a very nice beach, and there is a castle on the beach. Not a sand castle, but a castle... on the beach...

We came back from the beach, showered, and got on our overnight bus back to Madrid. Overall a productive, interesting weekend. Nothing really interesting happened last week, or this past weekend, but the tongue twister for last week was:

• A skunk sat on a stump and thunk the stump sunk, but the stump thunk the skunk stunk.

They had a rough time with that one. That's all for now. Until next time, Adios.

Bienvenidos a Madrid!

Hey everyone!

This is my first post from Spain. Yes, I have been here 3 weeks now, yet I haven't done any updates. The reason is that I haven't really done anything until recently. From now on I'm going to try to update more often. So here have been my first 3 weeks (prepare yourselves for a long-ish post):

I arrived on Thursday, September 17th completely jet lagged and tired. I barely slept on my red-eye, and I had 2 enormous suitcases and 2 carry-ons with me, AND I had to navigate the metro to my apartment. So I turned on my cell phone, which apparently did not have any battery. I promptly realized I needed to find an electrical outlet, yet for some reason the Madrid airport seems completely void of outlets. Believe it or not, "outlet" is not a word that you learn in Spanish class. Eventually I found one (and I still do not know how to say "outlet" in Spanish). I got to my apartment and unpacked and was still extremely jet-lagged.

The next exciting thing was the first Saturday I was here was "Noche en Blanco" which is a night when all the museums are open really really really late (like 1 or 2am) and the entire city of madrid comes out to party. I went out with my housemate Julia who is from NC and her friends. We went to the Thyssen Museum and then stood on the street corner making friends for a couple hours, then we went to a Sangria bar at 3:30 am and then I got home at 4:30 am, which apparently is an early night in Madrid. So that night was extremely fun and I met a lot of interesting people. For the next week or so I just sat in my room watching TV shows online, and I explored Madrid a little bit. But nothing too exciting transpired.

Eventually my friends from school arrived and then I had people to hang out with. But enough of that. On to School!!

So I first went to school last Wednesday to meet the teachers and the headmistress etc. The head of the English dept., Clara, drove me from a place near my house to school, which is extremely nice/convenient. She drives me on Wednesdays and Fridays because those are the days when I have class first period. The teachers at the school are so nice. They all were so excited to have me there because now they can practice english (although only a couple know any english at all). One teacher, Maria Jose, always yells to me in the morning "GOOD MORNING DEREK! HOW ARE YOU!?" in a thick Spanish accent. That is the only thing she knows in English. The English teachers that I am working with are very nice. A couple of them barely speak English at all, akin to the level of Spanish that my Cromwell Middle School Spanish teachers knew. However, a couple of them speak incredibly well. Marizell, who is one of my favorite teachers to work with, speaks perfectly and has taught Spanish in the USA before. She teaches the older students (equivalent to 7-9th grades). She is very organized and is very helpful to me when I am planning my classes. Other teachers just kind of say, "OK it's your hour, go for it and do whatever you like." That does not help me too much.

I spend 1 hour per week with each of the English classes from 2nd grade in the primary school to 3rd year in the secondary school (~9th grade). The young kids don't really know any english at all, so it is hard for me to plan activities for them, but they are adorable and LOVE speaking English, it's ok. The older kids know a decent amount of English, but they are afraid to speak, or don't know how to put the words together well. This week with most of my classes we listened to "Waiting on the World to Change" by John Mayer and talked about what it means, what words they don't know, and different activities for the different ages. One thing that I've been doing with most of my classes is a tongue twister. I think that they are good to help with pronunciation in English. These were this week's tongue twisters (see if you can say them):

1. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
2. She sells sea shells by the sea shore.
3. Sure, sir, the ship sure is ship-shape, sir.
4. A big black bug bit a big black bear; it made the big black bear bleed blood.

I've gotten really good at saying them fast. One kid thought I was just the teacher's friend from Spain and I was not really American, so I had to say them really fast in order for them to believe me. This brings me to my next point. Only the 2nd graders know that I speak Spanish. The 3rd-9th graders think that I do not understand a single word of Spanish. It's actually really difficult to pretend to not understand because they will ask me a question in Spanish, and without thinking, I will respond to the question in English. It's also very tempting to speak to them in Spanish if they don't understand something, but I know that it's better to speak in English to them. After showing them English tongue twisters, they showed me spanish ones (which I already knew and can say very well). When it was my time to say them for the class, I put on my best American accent and butchered the tongue twisters more than you can imagine. Marizell and I decided that in mid-April, I'm going to walk into class and say: "A ver, ¿Qué vamos a hacer hoy? Pienso que vamos a hablar en castellano para que yo pueda practicar... etc." The kids will be so thrown off and confused. I do get to practice Spanish in the teachers' room because otherwise I would not get to chat with the teachers at all.

In addition, I'm like a celebrity at school. I can't walk through the halls or schoolyard without at least 10 kids yelling "HELLO DERIK!!!" (which is how they pronounce my name, hence the title of the blog). They also love my NikeiD shoes because they say my name on the backs. Okay, I'm tired of typing now, but I will try to write again soon. Hasta luego!