Adventures in the land of Molly

New videos! I know, how exiciting! Over a month with no updates and now i´m going update crazy for you all :). Follow this link to check out the new videos I´ve posted on youtube. One is about bread baking and a lot of other ones about the food here (strange, good and home made :) ). And a video about the christmas dinner of Rotary that I went to on friday night, it was in complete formal wear so there is also a video of me and my host parents all dressed up :). The kids at the dinner are the Interact (Rotary for kids sort of ) club of Puerto de la Cruz (a city near S/C) and it was a bit weird because they all go to a british international school which is taught in english, so they spoke english really fluently, ironically I learned a ton of spanish from them because they coudl instantly translate whenever I missed something :). Go check out my videos!
And follow the link for No Knead Bread (itz on the video, I would add links..But I´m lazy), it is amazingly easy and SOOOO GOOD.

My host mom got very inspired by my video using, I´m going to help her set up a youtube account now,
Peace,
Molly

Everything can´t be perfect all the time...Even in Spain

In school my class is know as the bad class, the kids who talk a lot, etc. It´s true, in clases where teachers don´t know classroom managment the class is out of the control, and the teachers have no idea how to get it back. In addition, now they have the expectation that everything will go badly, so naturally it does. I´m pretty sure that the solution is Non Violent communication, and today I tried to explain the concept to the class and our advisor durring advisory (everyone was completley ready to listen ... The class before in Chemistry went so badly that I walked out...Which defintely caused a scene, Being strong and refusing to be treated extremely badly is not the norm here, being calm (ish) and whining about whatever behind the persons back seems to be the cultural norm). Yes I know, walking out of class is not a good idea, but I just couldn´t take it, being yelled at (not me personally, but the whole class) and having so much negative energy thrown at me (all in a FOREIGN LANGUAGE) was more than I could take. And the way the teacher was behaving today was NOT a rare occurance (sadly :( ). Before durring class I tried to talk to the teacher about other forms of communication, I know that you should wait until someone requests help because they will be more open to it, but in this situation MY need of respect is consistently not being met. The teacher blantently ignored me. For some reason the idea of relating to others in a positive peaceful form seems extremely radical. I´m pretty sure that respect for others is not a cultural thing (although how you show it is) so I don´t understand how being peaceful and respectful towards your students is so radical.
Really I think they should try to understand the concept and apply it, really whats the worst that could happen? The class is already completely beyond their control!

If anyone has any ideas on bettering the situation please please tell me!


On a happier note, the picture on the previous post is of me presenting the West Olympia Rotary flag to the Santa Cruz Rotary. I´ll try to remind them a lot of times so that by the end of the year I have a Santa Cruz Rotary club flag for the West Oly club :). It isn´t the norm in Spain (far from it really lol) but I´ve been enjoying going to the rotary club meetings at least every other week. Here the meetings are at 8pm so I don´t have to miss any school, and the tapas (small dinner like things, finger foods) are very tasty :).
This week we had a presentation from someone working on reforming the prison on the Island to be more helpful for the inmates. It was really interesting to think about what the purpose is of prison (whether to simply temporarily remove a risk from the community or try to better the person and their life when they get out, and how you decide when they are ready to get out, etc). Also, the concept that the people in prison are part of the community, and therefore what happens in the commnity effects those in the prison and what happesn in the prison effects those in the community (this one she didn´t really sell me on..but you know, new ideas :) ).

I hope everything is well at home,
Molly

P.S. Those who are learning spanish I highly suggest you watch some of Amar en tiempos revueltos I´m pretty sure if you google it the website for TVE (television española) where you can watch it will come up.

Finally an Update :)

Sorry everyone for stopping posting to my blog! The laptop at my home here stopped working and for some reason the computers at the library allow access to everything BUT my blog. Also, I´ve had a zillion and one tests and been super busy studying for them. Excuses excuses :).

There is good news though, as of right now I´m going to pass ALL of my courses! Most of the kids fluent in spanish don´t even hope for that. In my opinion its proof that studying works no matter what langauge you do it in :). Speaking of langauges I´ve progressed by leaps and bounds. Now (whenever i´m not exhausted...) I can understand whats being said to me and respond without having to think, and at about the same speed as a conversation in english.

Also, when I go out with friends now I understand enough to participate in the verabl games and messing around, even at the rediculously fast speed groups of teenagers talk (I never knew what the adults were talking about, now I defintiely do, I swear teenagers must talk about twice as fast as the normal adult!). Wow this is defintiely strange, for a long time I thougt tehre weren´t tourists here. About a minute ago a whole SWARM of them entered the library and started taking pictures, some of which were of all of us on the computers. I really wish I had a photo of that! One second I look over and there were five or six cameras pointed at me, Paparazi! Ok now everything is back to normal :).

For January 10th (or someday like that, i´m not sure exactly) I have to give a presentation in spanish about my life in the US. If anyone has any cool pics of oly, or something US or Oly like PLEASE send them to me! Also, parents, please look though our photos and find some good ones of all of us :). I´m not sure what else to post right now, and I have to go eat lunch and study (chemistry exam on friday, and technical drawing exam on tangents on monday!),

Take care everyone,Molly