Happy Halloween! Or is it Samhain?

This week has been insane! I'll try to cover one thing at a time...

At school, I made a presentation for the kids about Halloween on Monday, and then baked them cupcakes to decorate on Tuesday and Wednesday. I don't know if I have explained this before, but I actually have five different classes of children that I work with. So, I have to memorize close to a hundred names, and I am just now finally getting down the different grade levels. Because the school is a little larger, and they wanted to keep class sizes down, the fourth and sixth grade classes are divided into two separate sections. I teach 4A, 4B, 5, 6A, and 6B, one hour a week with each English class, and one hour of "plásticas" or arts and crafts with each level. I wanted to do the Halloween activity with all of them, and trying to keep track of the schedule was crazy. Qué Rollo!!! (Basically means "What hell!!")

I also started dance classes this week (which I'll cover more in depth later), so my evenings were full, and I was baking cupcakes until two in the morning on Monday and Tuesday. All for the children, though, right? It ended up being incredibly worth it to see their excitement the second they sensed sugar in the classroom.

Sunday I put together a quick Powerpoint with a song from Disney's Halloween so they could learn and practice vocabulary in a fun way, and then made a fill-in-the blank worksheet with the vocab they learned. The kids loved it, and it was great because I was able to learn more about their fall celebrations here as well. They celebrate Samhain in Galicia (not all of Spain), which is actually the holiday from which Halloween evolved. Samhain was the ancient Celtic pagan holiday in celebration of the winter solstice, a day in which it was believed that the barriers between the human and spirit world thinned, and the magical otherworld beings came out to stir up mischief. The Catholics later adopted it as the Catholic All Souls Day, as tends to happen, and which means that we get a day off of school on Monday. In the States, the holiday became absorbed as Halloween, and in Galicia and I imagine Ireland as well, it is still Samhain.

On Tuesday and Wednesday we decorated the cupcakes, which they have no translation for here. In recent years, "magdalenas," which are little pre-packaged muffins, have become somewhat popular across Spain, but the idea of a cupcake is almost completely foreign. The kids loved them. Granted, it was my first time backing cupcakes from scratch ever, and the consistency of the butter here is really different, so they were kind of more muffin-like anyway, but they went over well regardless.

I also made orange frosting to go on top, which they were all really confused about, because they don't use food coloring here for anything really (all the better I suppose), but once they tasted it, they piled it on.
Here are some photos of the kids. These are two of the five classes I have:










So that was on Tuesday. On Wednesday they dressed up!


Here are one of the older classes with Macamen, the "real" English teacher.


...and here I am! Look! I'm a teacher too!!


This is Ramón. He's in the 6th Level, and is a born Theater Major. He gave me this Jack-O-Lantern after class, and it's now sitting on our table. It has a real cigarette in the mouth, attached with a toothpick. Brilliant.

And here's the classroom:
I finally feel like I'm teaching! It has been so stressful to get adjusted here, and I haven't felt very contributive, since I haven't planned any activities or had much of an idea of the curriculum. Finally, I had the opportunity to organize, plan, and execute a lesson with the kids that allowed them to have fun, and HOPEFULLY they will retain some of the vocabulary/ cultural exchange!

Got to go, will fill in on other stories later. I'm off to A Coruña for the long weekend, so I should have some photos coming soon!