My first full week at St. Paul´s School

Today concludes my first full week here in Barcelona at St. Paul´s School.  I am enjoying every minute of my time here.  My teacher´s name is Sarah and had been an instructor at this school for 16 years.  She had taught me many new activities and strategies that will be useful for my future classroom. This week I taguth my first lesson about Bowling Green, KY and Nashville, TN, the two places that I am from. The students enjoy hearing country music for the first time and I also showed them a funny video of Big Red, WKU´s mascot, dacning. They loved it! The students here are so bright and willing to learn new things.  They are learning three languages at this school: English, Catalan, and Spanish. Most of the students speak Catalan in their household.  They also have the option to learn Chinese after school a few days of the week.  Many of the students choose to do this.  I wish America pushed another language on our students.  I think by not teaching Spanish to our students, we are hurting their chances of succeeding in the future.
The sudents here go to school from 9am-4:45pm.  The days were long at first, but now I feel used to the new schedule and I think it is a lot better on the teachers and the students during the school day.  There are many breaks for the students to go outside and the teachers to help other colleagues or to plan out their lessons.  The school environment is much more relaxed and not so rushed.  There is time.  In America, the teacher is lucky to get maybe 30 minutes of free/break time.  Here, a teacher might have 1 hour at 1 time to plan and get things together for the following week or to help out other teachers in the school.  This is a great atmosphere to be among.  I am considering teaching internatioanlly for a career. I planned this trip as a trial run, to see how well I would be able to adapt to a new enviornment and how the school systems opereated.  So far, I have loved the change of pace, the new daily routine, etc. I feel like I can stop and catch my breath, things are not rush, and everyone seems generally happy and relaxed at the school.  This is an environment that I can see myself being involved with for a long time.  This trip has been more than I could have imagined. I love it here and will be sad to say goodbye to this wonderful city. I look forward to spending the rest of my time here learning, living, and enjoying every minute with the people I have met.
This weekend I will be staying in Barcelona. Tonight I plan to go out to Placa Cataluyna.  Tomorrow I will travel around and see the city during the day, go to the beach, etc. Then tomorrow night I will be attending the Barcelona Futbol game with Xavi and my host Grandpa. I can not wait!! It has been wish of mine to go to a professional Futbol game! Then on Sunday, Xavi, Anna, and I are going to take a run up Tibidabo Mountain where we will be able to see the entire city of Barcelona and then have brunch on the beach near the water.  Then after brunch they will take me around and show me some new places. I plan to post pictures of the weekend....until then :)