dios mio

Man, CRAAAAZY week.  Four runs down and I haven't even rambled on about any of them...something must be up.  Sorry for the lack of updates.  Madrid is slightly different from Granada in that everything seems to move a mile a minute; the super-chill "no pasa nada" approach doesn't always work here.  Anyway, so as not to bore you fine folk, I thought I'd start with an outline so you could pick and choose to your heart's delight:


1. Arrival/Orientation/Crazy Spanish hazing rituals

2. Fulbright's swanky send-off affair, complete with caviar and famous people

3. All the crap we had to get done and the hilarities/stresses that ensued, including but not limited to: bank acct, housing, metro pass, id card...etc
-awkward initial housing fun
-new amazing housing fun
-super fun scuffle outside of the bank when some dude wanted money

4. Visiting the Instituto Educativo Juan Gris, my workplace until July
-uber long cercanias ride
-everyone really excited to see us
-first day: introductions, wild kids, bull testicles

5. Withdrawal symptoms associated with not running for nearly a week...and a plan to feed the addiction
-description of runs
-casa de campo: aka HEAVEN
-possible running club, excitement for 10k next weekend
-reflections on running and how much better i feel when i do it

I promise I'll get to all this eventually!  Here goes, without further ado:

1. After an impressively cramped flight across the pond (thanks American, didn't know 767s could fit that many people that uncomfortably!), I shuffled off the plane in a daze, looking forward to jet lag and trying to understand Spanish again.  Luckily, I didn't feel too bad, and the weather was a far cry from Oklahoma summer heat.  My big challenge that day was navigating the metro to the Colegio Mayor (basically, a Spanish frathouse) where we were set to have our orientation.  This proved to be manageable, even with a white-knuckled death grip on my suitcases and my head on a swivel to deter would-be thieves.

Orientation itself passed like a blur, since we were thrown right in to countless lectures with themes ranging from history of the Fulbright program to how to open a bank account.  The most useful information we learned for sure was during the Q&A session with Fulbrighters from last year, who helped assuage our fears of never finding housing, living in a cardboard box, hitchhiking 4 hours to work, etc.  The thing I didn't like about orientation was the lack of opportunity to really get to know my fellow grantees.  In a nutshell it was 3 days of lectures, then see ya later!  It was great to meet everybody but I really wish there had been 1 or 2 more days of just hanging out, or even an orientation retreat or something.  Oh well, as a whole it was very informative, and the Director, Maria Jesus, is the funniest lady you'll ever meet.  Plus Paula, one of the coordinators, is the most helpful person on the face of the earth.  Thanks everyone!

Before moving on to the send-off soiree, I should mention 2 things: colegio hazing and the google MyMaps project.  The Colegio Mayor Mendel, like any American frathouse, had some sort of pledge program in which the new kids were subject to...well, basically whatever devious bidding their elders had in mind.  This resulted in some weird and sometimes downright hilarious tasks, such as forcing hapless freshmen to stand up in the cafeteria and recite grace in English, perform guard duty at night in the Colegio by walking around on watch with a toy halloweent battleaxe, or suggestively ask girls on our program for "english lessons" in a very sketchy manner.  It got really annoying after awhile, but that may be due to my die-hard GDI nature.

As for the google mymaps project, we heard a presentation from a post-doc fulbrighter, Barren Orr, about his research on the intersection between language and place.  In addition to being extremely interesting, it also seemed quite applicable to our work as teaching assistants.  Basically, he advocated having virtual cultural exchange by means of tours, specifically tours of one's home university and/or town.  You can do this by using the MyMaps feature of google maps, which lets you create custom routes around your town, university, favorite landmark, whatever.  Where this fits in with language learning is with the descriptions.  In MyMaps, you can add pins that function as landmarks on your "tour."  Each pin has space for descriptions, which of course Professor Orr suggested students write in the target language.  In an example, American university students mapped their university with descriptions in Japanese, which they then shared with virtual pen-pals at the University of Tokyo, who corrected any grammar/vocab problems and then offerred their own tour, in English, of some of Tokyo's sites.  Essentially, Professor Orr argued that these mapping projects could become whole essays, while at the same time offering real opportunities for cultural exchange, experience, and reflection.  I was very excited by the prospects of this technique, and my co-TA and I immediately began brainstorming ideas to use at our school, IES Juan Gris in Mostoles.  Since my mom teaches 7th grade, roughly the grade/age of my students, I thought there could be some pretty exciting possibilities for virtual exchange.  Predictably though, the idea I became most excited about involved mapping my running routes throughout Europe.  This way, I could turn my blogging/journaling about running into a full-blown map tour of running in Europe!  Assuming I would have enough foresight to bring a camera, I could document interesting sights along the way.  I'm sure this sounds like the ultimate indulgence of a running nerd, but I thought it could be a pretty cool side project during my work experience abroad.  And, since I've found a running club here that meets 3 times a week, I should be able to expand at least a cool map of Madrid routes!  So far Casa de Campo has been heaven on earth...more on that later.  For now, I should conclude this mammoth post.  Hope all is well wherever you are!  I promise once I get reliable internet I'll update this more regularly.  Until then, happy trails!