Plaza Mayor

Plaza Mayor is a big plaza in Madrid - a short walk from my casa. 

Surrounding the plaza are tons of little shops and restaurants.

 

 You can find anything in the plaza from...

Artists painting landscapes or caricatures

People in creepy animal costumes

To people dresses as babies in strollers.

Croquetas. mmm.

Croquetas are a common tapa in Spain and are served at many a restaurant. They usually have meat or seafood in them so sadly I hadn't been able to eat any. 

That is - until I found an amazing restaraunt near mi casa that has 32 different kinds of croquetas. 32 kinds! This means they have vegetarian options!

I've only been there once and I had tomato cheese and cheese with nuts (I think they were walnuts). Both were delicious and I'm excited to go back and try more. This is the only place I've seen dessert croquetas (various fruits, dulce de leche, cafe, mmmmm).

El Escorial

Over the weekend I went on a day trip to El Escorial. It took an hour to get there via train.

Once we got there (I went with another assistant from my school and some of her mates) we visited the monastery. We spent most of the day there - it's huge! - and afterwards stopped at a cafe for drinks and a snack before heading back to Madrid.

Outside of the monastery

Mountains!

 

 

 

 

 

Outside - in the gardens

Tombs. There were a few rooms like this and a larger, much fancier, tomb area with past kings and queens. There is also a tomb made to look like a cake that holds the children that passed away.

A painted ceiling.

Map of the monastery.

Happy Halloween!

The haunted house at my school was a success!

Again - our goal was not to make children cry. This was a joke goal.

However...if it had been a real goal it would have been reached with flying colours. I lost track of how many kids cried.... :-\ This wasn't even limited to the first and second graders, oh no. We made at least one kid in every grade cry - first through sixth. Apparently it was too scary....

Here's a video in the light of how the haunted house went. I wasn't as awkward when we went through it with the kids. I wasn't laughing, I didn't drop my broom and I didn't run into Lauren (every time...). Kids screamed at each station  - they screamed when Dr. Death (Jonathan) chopped the body loudly with his knife, they screamed when the dead bride (Rachel) jumped at them and they even screamed when awkward witch (Jessika!) ran at them with her broom and threw "a potion" (confetti) at them.

I work with first and second graders and in these grades only about 5 kids our of 100 didn't dress up. All of the teacher dressed up. It was pretty impressive.

We went out for beer (because in Spain you can drink at lunch time before returning to school) and lunch with all of the teachers and they bought our food as a thanks for the haunted house. They all loved it. We even made some teachers scream and jump when we walked them through it.

Jessika and the other language assistants. Dead Bride Rachel is from Ireland, Dr. Death Jonathan is from Arkansas and Vampire Lauren is from California.

Me at my cauldron.

Haunted House!

We finished the Haunted House at my school and I'm excited to dress up as a witch and lead the students through it tomorrow.

We had jokingly said that our goal of the Haunted House was to make at least one kid cry. Well...we've already achieved that "goal". Today the preschool kids walked through it. We didn't have costumes on and we were cheerful and just walked them through but two kids cried. One kid had to be taken out of the Haunted House he was so scared. Oops.

We'll see how the kids handle it tomorrow when we're dressed up. :-\

Here are two awkwardly narrated video tours of the Haunted House we made.

This one is in the dark - so you can't see very well. You also can't hear me very well because I was trying to be stealthy and not make it obvious to the others in the room that I was taking a video and narrating it.

This one is with the lights on and I basically say the same stuff. This video also starts out with me calling a bat a ghost....way to go Jessika.

Halloween decorating

Halloween decorating. My school is hard core. 

My school is dedicating 5 full days for me and the other 3 people in the same program to decorate for Halloween. Five days! 

Our tasks: decorate each floor, decorate three bulletin boards that go in front of the building, get tables ready for pumpkins/other foods that kids carve...and create a haunted house.

We've finished all of the decorating around the school and are working on the haunted house. Friday the 28th is the big Halloween party where all the students and teachers dress up and we walk the students through out Haunted House. I'm excited to see my little students all dressed up. :-)

Decorations!

We hung skulls, bats and ghosts from the ceiling on two floors. There are no adult scissors at the school so it was "awesome" cutting out a million things with tiny kid scissors...

The kids can carve pumpkins or other foods (apparently last year some kids carved...pineapples?) to display. This is the first one that was brought in. I was impressed by the wings, ears and tail. I might have to remember this for my pumpkin next year...

They had us cover the windows in the hallway with black garbage bags to make it...spookier?

 

The door to our Haunted House

Our Haunted House...obviously we still have a lot of work to do.

I made a coffin and tombstone!

Pretending to be dead...

We raided the science supplies for some body parts.

Rain? Finally!

On Sunday and Monday it rained for the first time since I got to Madrid. I was starting to think it would never rain.

Sunday the skies were dark all day but it only sprinkled (if I'd even call it that...) for 5 minutes. It wasn't even worthy of an umbrella.

Monday it actually rained but sadly I didn't bring my umbrella out on my errands since I figured by "rain" they meant the same 5 minute sprinkle as the day before.

It wasn't too bad without my umbrella but this rain actually left some puddles.

A puddle. Because apparently I felt the need to take a picture of it... :-\

It lasted about 1/2 the day and the rest of the day was marvelously dreary. Perfect for the minty hot cocoa that Nathan sent me. Mmmm.