I arrived back from Morocco October the 28th really late at night, it was 1am in the morning That week I was exhausted and took a lot of time to rest and process my time in Morocco. Morocco was life changing and it was a very packed weekend. My Morocco blog will be out soon.
That week the school was preparing fun activities for the students on Halloween. There are differences to how people in Spain celebrate Halloween. The students dress up but there’s not a wide variety of costumes. The kids don’t go out to people’s doors for trick or treating. Instead, on All Saints Day (Nov 1st), there’s face painting and fun activities for families to do in the city center.
Some spend time with their families on November 1st which is All Saints Day (Todos Los Santos). For most families this is an important holiday when people all over the country return to their town or village to lay flowers on the graves of their deceased relatives. They will eat some sweet pastries and castañas which is a type of walnut. There’s many local restaurants and cafe places closed so they can be with their family.
There is a party side in Barcelona that people dress up and go out to night clubs for Halloween. There’s a good amount of American people living in Barcelona, so this helps them celebrate Halloween.
At the school, we had the 4 and 5 year olds stomp on some grapes in a bucket. We let them pretend they were making “cava” which is wine.
The teachers took the 4 and 5 year olds to go get some castañas right by the school. The students made a gift for the people selling the castañas. It was sweet watching them give it to them. The students were very fascinated by watching how they cook castañas.
I led a fun activity with 1st and 2nd graders for Halloween. There were 4 groups of different kind of fun activities for the students on Halloween. I had them try to keep the Castañas from dropping from between their forehead while walking. We had a very fun time and learned more Spanish words on the spot to try to communicate to them.
The afternoon on Halloween, some of the teachers dressed up. Each classroom did there own kind of celebration. The teachers made some creative Halloween snacks and tried to make them as healthy as possible for the students.
Halloween night I had friends going out but I decided to stay in and relax. I read some of my book, Kisses from Katie and wrote in my journal. I fell asleep pretty early at night listening to music.
On November 1st, on All Saints Day, I met up with Abigal, and her roommate Sherisha to walk around in the city center in Barcelona. There were people going out to eat and saw people with their families. We walked around and had some churros with chocolate and had some tapas together too.
On November 2nd, Abigal, Shelisha and I went to Sitges, Spain. Sitges is a another city by Barcelona. We took a train for an hour to get there. We had great conversations while looking at the beautiful beach, and drinking some sangrias.
On November 3rd, I traveled to go see the Montserrat. While I was traveling there I met a lady from Switzerland. I enjoyed talking with her and getting to know her while we made our way to the Montserrat. Montserrat is a place on top of a mountain and it was so beautiful!
On November 4th, I traveled to go see Tarragona and I enjoyed walking this city. Tarragona is another city that’s close to travel to see by a train a ride. It was a super fun day traveling by myself. I enjoyed seeing a beautiful cathedral and exploring the city. That evening at had dinner with 3 girls from Spain that I met at international church of Barcelona. We decided to go eat at an Indonesian place. We all ate with our hands and shared our meal with each other. I enjoyed getting to know them.
This week November 4th through the 7th, I felt like I started to step into what I am supposed to be doing at the school. Tuesday November 5th, I was put on the spot to lead an activity with 6 students in 1st grade. I decided to grab books that had pictures of animals and I informed the students what the English word are of the animals. Then I had them draw a picture of multiple animals they liked. Then I wrote the English name by each drawing of the animal. I had each student practice writing the name of the animals they drew in English. This was a lot of fun and challenging because of the language barrier. I used as many words I knew in Spanish to communicate and learned some words on the spot by using google translator. Google translator is my best friend here.
Then I looked up how to say in Spanish, “make a new design.” Next I said, “hacer un nuevo diseño.”
He listened to me, and started understanding what he was supposed to do. It was beautiful to see the ending design with shadows and light that he came up with.
The afternoon on November 4th, I got together with Tanya one last time before she left to go back to New York. We had a wonderful time together.
Wedensday I had lost most of my voice. I caught something traveling. Wedensday was rough trying to talk at the school. I immediately went to get medicine for it. From Wednesday and over the weekend I was slowly getting my voice back in Greece.
Morocco and Greece blog is coming soon. I am still working on Morocco’s blog post.
Traveling Adventure's 