Korean Food!! - Cravings Finally Satisfied ^^

Remember that Korean restaurant I briefly mentioned in the previous post? Guess what? We went there for lunch today! ^__^ ...if you can't remember, it was the 'ironic' restaurant named "Korean Restaurante".

The food was...great :) to be honest, I thought the kimchi stew was better than any I have tried back in England and that is many! So basically, we had four dishes between the two of us...yes, four dishes! ^^' to be fair, the first dish was on the house which was very very kind of them! So you can probably guess that Esther and I are fairly big eaters for our size... we are undercover fatties! ^^' I can tell you now that not one drop of food was left on any of the plates xD

For those of you who don't know me well or at all, I am a big fan of Korean food and Korean culture in general. When I'm at University, I eat it regularly!!..if you like Korean food too and ever visit Birmingham, head over to Topokki in China town ^^...that's my regular and the food is delicious.

Credits to Esther for the photos :)

Thank you again to the staff at the restaurant for the free food and also for the good service. We certainly will be visiting again soon! ^__^ 

- Tiffany

Photo credit: TeenyTinyMui

http://teenytinymuigoestravelling.blogspot.com/p/home.html

Royal Palace of Madrid | SOL | La Tagliatella (again?!)

Sunday 6th September 2015

This post is a little late as I have been busy this week with work and have been very tired! - the hot weather does not help what so ever. But it's the weekend now! #TGIF ... time to relax and catch up on some sleep! 

So, last Sunday myself and Esther headed to central Madrid. Esther is my roommate from Portsmouth, UK and studies at Portsmouth University. If you have me on snapchat, you may be familiar with her face but if you don't, here she is! It's safe to say I have landed myself a great roommate... 

The two of us decided to go and visit the Royal Palace of Madrid because we didn't want to stay in doing nothing. To get to the Royal Palace, we had to take the bus into Moncloa and from the bus station we walked to the location. I'm happy with the amount of walking we've been doing here...as they say, walking is a great form of exercise (for the lazy people out there...*cough*). 

Of course we didn't just head straight to the Palace...a spot of shopping was involved in between!! (I feel for my bank account right now). It has turned into a norm to walk into Zara, Mango, Lefties whenever we are in Madrid...not good!! >_< It doesn't help that the Zara here is huge compared the any of the shops in England! We also stopped at Starbucks for a drink since the weather was so hot...it also was my first Starbucks out here ^^ - We also tried Portguese Tarts... they're definitely worth trying! Very similar to Chinese egg tarts

We shopped a little in SOL again ^__^ before heading to the Royal Palace. SOL is a really vibrant little area with tons of little and big shops. Plenty of restaurants and dessert shops for those with a sweet-tooth! I could think of some people who do =P  oh there's also a theatre there where you can watch the opera or ballet. I wouldn't mind watching something there one day! Here is a picture of me in the 'centre'(?) of SOL... you can see the metro station behind me towards the right hand side!

The Royal Palace...

After visiting the Royal Palace, we planned to take the metro to the station N.Minsterios to have dinner at a Korean restaurant, ironically called Korean Restaurante. We took the metro there and made our way to the restaurant. I forgot to check the opening times (Spanish people eat at ridiculous times!) but regardless, we walked to it. Upon arrival, we were greeted by a man standing outside the restaurant. We asked him if it was open and he said no...and told us that it doesn't open until 8:30pm!! >_<' we arrived at the restaurant at around 6pm if i remember correctly. We were way too hungry to wait around for it to open! So we walked back to the busier side of the town and found a restaurant to have dinner at. And where did we end up at?... La Tagliatella! AGAIN! xD myself, Esther and Samra (the missing third muskateer) first visited this restaurant last week in another town here in Madrid. I guess it's a popular chain restaurant! The restaurant is a nice and slightly posh so we were happy to eat there again...this is what we had for our early dinner ^__^ 

The food was delicious...I call them 'posh pizzas'! Again, if you are ever in Madrid, definitely try this restaurant out. They have a vast menu with lots of different dishes! I would recommend their spaghetti and their risotto :) 

I have a bad feeling that I'm going to be putting on quite a bit of weight whilst I'm out here... ^^' the food is too good! - thanks for reading :)

- Tiffany

Photo credit: TeenyTinyMui

http://teenytinymuigoestravelling.blogspot.com/p/home.html

Day 1 Of Being A "Teacher"

Today was a hectic day...

Term started today for all students at SEK El Castillo. Students began to arrive between 09:15-09:30am in which they were all assigned a seat in the classroom at the desks by Mako. In case I haven't clarified this in the previous posts, Mako is my tutor and the teacher I assist. So, after all 20 students were seated and settled, it was reading time. My first job was to distribute a book to each student for them to start reading and once they had finished, they were to raise their hand so that I could see they were ready to move onto the next story book. As this is an private international school, I have been told to not expect too much from the students as English is their second language and on top of that, the students are just 5-6 years old. I felt as though most of the students were just looking at the illustrations and not actually reading but there was the odd few who I could hear reading aloud. I decided to randomly select children to read one sentence or a couple of words to me just to test their reading skills - it was better than I expected however some students lacked confidence in speaking English to me. 

After the morning reading session, the students were taken on a small tour around the school. The tour included a viewing of the male/female bathrooms (toilets), the dining hall, sports hall and the playground. The children always walked in a line when walking to each area - this was quite interesting to witness as they were being co-operative with Mako and being good. Most students would run off or mess around. By giving the students a tour of the school, it enhanced their vocabulary as they now understood the names of the different areas and understood what their purposes were, in English. A drawing and colouring activity was then given to keep the students active and engaged. This involved a outline drawing of their hands in which myself and Mako helped them with. It made me chuckle when the children started to giggle as I was drawing around their hands because it tickled! They were given time to decorate their 'paper' hands and were strongly encouraged to be as creative as possible. 

Break time! The kids' favourite part of the day...30 minutes to run around, play football and play tig with their friends from other classes. As teachers, we are assigned playground duties to observe the children and make sure everyone is OK. It's great to see children smiling and having fun... reminded me of the past when I was in primary school! ^___^

Following break time was reading and writing time. The class were split up into groups of reading and writing so that they could practice their comprehension skills. Mako worked with the writing groups and I worked with the reading group. The vocabulary that they were practising/learning were the school objects and things in a school... for example, pencil, pen, ruler, rubber, desk and so on. With the reading, we used the SmartBoard to read sentences from an online book. This was my first task that involved full on interaction with the students and I have to admit that I was a little nervous. I was worried that the children would not listen to me or that they would not understand what I am saying. Luckily enough, the students listened well and read near-perfect sentences back to me. I was very impressed...however, I realised that the children could read but did not genuinely understand what they were reading - does this make sense? I would ask them to read a sentence or a word and would ask the following question of "what is this? can you describe it to me?" and there would be no response or a shrug of the shoulder. After realising that the children lacked knowledge on the objects within the sentences from the online story book, I decided to use the flashcards that I prepared a few days ago during training week. I asked the students to read the flashcard and also asked them to tell me what it was/where it was within the classroom or school. I felt that this activity/game produced better responses from the students as they could identify the different objects inside the classroom and were able to point outside to the playground. When asked "where are the teachers" they pointed at myself and Mako... When asked "how many teachers are there in this classroom?" they answered 2. Being given this reading time, it allowed me to identify the stronger readers and the less confident ones. Some students took no longer than 10 seconds to read the sentences and flashcards whereas some could not read the word at all. I hope I can work with the less confident readers to improve their reading and pronunciation skills. I can definitely see huge potential in the students...

Lunch time! The second favourite part of their day... it was a busy busy cafeteria. The students had to be seated and looked after. Children are taught to not waste their food so they must try their best to eat everything on the plate. When they wish to move onto the next plate, they raise their hand to ask for permission. Here, I was monitoring the students and helping them with their drinks. They get an option of water or chocolate milk. Of course the jugs are too big and heavy for them to pour so the teachers assist whenever a child has sat down to eat. The cafeteria was extremely busy and loud that I couldn't hear myself thing. We were able to have our own lunch upstairs in the teacher's area after our class had gone outside to play for the remaining of their lunch. 

As expected, the children's attention spans decrease incredibly after lunch. I noticed that more "shh" were enforced after they'd come back from lunch time. At this point, the children were told to tidy up their desks from before and to organise the classroom. The aim is to teach the students about organisation inside and outside the classroom. Like well behaved students, they listened to the instructions well and tidied up the classroom quite nicely. The school hours here at SEK are much longer than British schools... the school day doesn't end until 5:30pm so therefore another break time is allowed for the students in which they are given a snack. Today was an apple or a sandwich. And once again, we were on playground duty, ensuring children weren't mis-behaving! Shortly after was a sort of wind down time and time to get ready to aboard their buses. The children are assigned to different routes and they must give the correct route number/name or else they will be stuck at school or get on the wrong bus home. This was very stressful for Mako as some of the students did not know where they were going - some seemed pretty clueless. I can't blame them though...they are just kids! But anywho, the students were divided into bus groups and those who were being picked up by their parents. It was rather difficult for the students to follow the teacher to the correct pick up place as there were so many students finishing then and they are only little...even I got a little lost at one point with one student following me. After all students had been taken to their buses, myself and Marko were able to call it a day - hoorah!! I felt so relieved!! 

It was an interesting first day, getting to know the students how the school works on a regular day. I look forward to learning many more things about the school and how their education differs to England. And what I'm most looking forward to is supporting the students to improve their English in speaking, reading and writing. I want to be able to help them as much as I can in the next 9 months and hopefully I will be able to see some sort of progress when I finish in June. 

So there we have it - my first day of being a 'teacher'. (They call me a second teacher here, not a teaching assistant!) 

- Tiffany

SEK Educación Primaria

OK, for any of you wondering where I am working at, here are some pictures of the classroom I will be assisting in! The class I have specifically been assigned to is P1 (Primary 1/first grade) this is for roughly 6 year old children. Many teachers have told me that this class is difficult to maintain as children tend to not listen and their concentration levels can get low - especially after lunch. But I have decided to take an optimistic approach towards this new challenge! ^^ 

So, here are some pictures of the first grade classroom (English side) ...yes, in each grade there are two classrooms. One for the lessons being taught in Spanish and one for the lessons being taught in English! 

The classrooms are spacious with lots to offer for the children. As you can see in the pictures, the school encourages lots of reading, writing, investigating. Here they believe that children should experiment new things for themselves and help each other learn in order to create collective ideas. 

The classroom is organised into four different sections: 1. Reading 2. Writing 3. Art 4. Investigating. This is so that the children are given the opportunity to learn English through different activities. Children tend to get bored easily at school so everything must be made fun for them! Just like British schools, there is a 'reading corner' which I especially like. There are plenty of books for the children to choose from and I look forward to having them read to me. I've been informed that the children's English is very minimal and so, I'm really excited to try and improve their English speaking and writing skills. SEK is a very technological school...don't underestimate private schools over here. ALL students and I am talking about infants to high school students have access to iPads to play on or to use for research. In my opinion, I find this very strange but that's how they do things here... 

Parents Evening

So on 03.09.2015, it was parents evening for Primary students. This allowed me to briefly meet majority of the class' parents and the children too. In total, there are 20 students in our class and oh, are they cute! I said to my tutor, "the children are so cute!" and her response was "they're cute now but they won't be cute next week when they start school" xD this made me laugh! I can imagine how rebellious these kids can be! Some parents could speak English so it was easy to converse with them when Mako introduced me to them. It was rewarding to talk to the parents who were already thanking me for being an English assistant to their children... I haven't started yet but they are already saying thank you. It made me feel warm inside and that I genuinely can't wait to assist these children and help them as much as I can during the 10 months I am here for. 

There was a meeting with the teachers, children and parents in which I was introduced to everyone. I am the only assistant in P1 so I am the only native English speaker there to help support the children. A lot of parents expressed their feelings towards me to my tutor. They mentioned that it is great to have a native speaker helping her and they look forward to seeing their children's English progress this year. Throughout the second meeting, I was able to observe the different types of children that would be attending our class. There were a group of loud children who didn't stop talking to each other and there were children who seemed quite reserved and stuck by their parents. Now I understand why my teacher said what she said. I can imagine that these children will be very hard to keep quiet when needed! 

- Tiffany

New Accommodation!

We have officially moved to the female residences of UCJC (Universidad Camilo José Cela) where we are still sharing two to a room but our bathroom is different. But the rooms in this building are slightly different compared to the male residences. My room is no. 107 and it is connected to room no. 108 via the bathroom. Unlike the male residence where you share a communal bathroom with every student in the corridor, we have one bathroom between four people. Each of us have an individual shower&sink and three toilets in total. It is very American-like! ^^

The size of the room is smaller than the male residence room but it has a much more cosy feeling which I like.

This is the shared bathroom between the four of us and you can see next door's room!

And this is our room...looking a lot more girlier, haha

We also each get a laundry bag which I haven't received yet but when I do I'll show you! 

Today's working day only lasted 09:30am - 1:00pm so it has been a relaxing one. We met our individual tutors today and I am assisting in P1 in primary school (first grade). This is the class that the students move into straight after infants and is therefore quite challenging, but I'm ready to take on these cute little Spanish children! My tutor is a very kind Japanese lady who has studied in America and England in the past so her English is very fluent with a strong American accent. We have parents evening on 03.09.15 where we'll meet the students and their parents. I'm really looking forward to officially starting work! 

- Tiffany

Hola, M a d r i d!

Yesterday, Esther (my roommate), Samra and I headed into the city to together in the 35 degree heat... yes, you read correctly, 35 degrees! But don't worry, we were prepared for the sun! I'm not sure about the others but I applied a lot of suncream on. To enter Madrid city centre, we're required to take the bus which surprisingly only takes 15 minutes at a cost of 3 euro 60 (each way).

Selfie at the bus stop, why not?!

As we arrived into Madrid, we decided to walk into central Madrid from the bus station which took around 20-25 minutes...in fact, we walked everywhere yesterday - excellent way to keep fit! ...not so great for the feet though ^^'. Upon arrival into central Madrid, we found a Spanish restaurant to have lunch in. By this time, we were all pretty hungry...so food and drink was exactly what we needed. It was a small, compact restaurant named Tapas 44. The food was mediocre...I'm pretty sure we saw pictures of paella on the outside however when we sat down and viewed the menu...there was not one dish of paella! EPIC FAIL! Nevertheless, the food filled our hungry tummies and I was grateful to have my first 'Spanish' meal with Esther and Samra. I apologise that I cannot remember the names of the two dishes below!

 

After lunch, we walked around having a look at the different shops in the area. Little did we know, we had walked into Sol. Sol is supposedly "the best known and busiest places in Madrid". There were several little clothing shops and dessert parlours - some would describe this as heaven! 

Not that busy for a Saturday, right?

Our main aim of the day was to visit Parque de Retiro - one of the most famous parks around the world and now I understand why that is. It took us a while to figure out where we were and where our destination was on this map. 

We had the option of taking the metro to the park but we chose to be healthy, young people and walked a further 20 minutes to it. I must admit, this was walk was a little challenging...it's actually quite difficult to walk in 35 degree weather with the sun literally beaming down on you constantly! =.= a bottle of water or two is a must in this sort of heat!! We stumbled across some really cool buildings along the way too :) 

But nothing could compare to the views we had of Parque de Retiro... the park is full of beautiful vibrant green gardens and lots of water fountains. In the middle is a large lake for people to go on little boats with friends and you can also go on the boat tour(?) not the best boat ride I guess... It was mandatory for us to have a go on the little boats and try and row us across the lake! It was a really fun experience as I've never rowed any form of boat before and it was also very tiring especially in this heat - a great way to work those biceps though =P 

Having spent a good few hours relaxing and enjoying this beautiful park, we decided to walk back into Sol to find a nice restaurant to have dinner in. Another 20 minutes walk later, we stumbled across a restaurant named "Café & Tapas". This time we had a ganders at the menu before we sat down...making sure that there definitely was paella!! 

I didn't take photos of our entire dinner but we ordered, seafood paella, calamari, garlic prawns, Spanish tortilla (omlette). Oh, along with our smoothies! All three look the same flavour but they were all different...ever so refreshing ^^. This was the best meal I have had in Madrid so far... my family and friends know that I am a big eater so you can imagine how excited I am to try the different Spanish food! 

Our first day trip to Madrid was successful. Unfortunately, we did not get to spend the day with the other TA's that also went into the city that day. However we all had a great time regardless and next time we can head out together and enjoy our time here all together! I'm not going to want to leave here if every trip out to the city is as good as yesterday's ^___^

- Tiffany

The Big Move

Many of my friends and family told me that I am very brave for making the decision to move to Spain to teach for 10 months.. I also agree. Throughout my time studying at college and University, I have always thought of working abroad for that extra life-making experience and thankfully, Aston University gave me that chance.

For those of you know do not know me, my name is Tiff - just an average BBC from Leicester, UK. I'm currently undertaking placement year at Aston University and I study English Language. For those who are given the opportunity to do a placement year with your course, do it. I know for sure that I would have regretted the decision to not come because the next 10 months is going to be life-changing! From developing new personal skills to travelling cities in and around Spain. I really look forward to what placement has to offer for me as I am 75% sure I would like to go into teaching after I graduate - I just need some reassurance. 

Oh...and in case I haven't made it clear, I am doing my placement in Madrid for 10 months being a teaching assistant in Primary.

The journey from BHM International to Madrid Airport felt much longer than just 2h 25m! But the free onboard Wifi made every moment that much better (first world problems!) Who knew planes had Wifi?! The image on the right was taken as we were flying into Madrid :) 

The school I am working at is SEK International/SEK El Castillo. We're pretty much in the outskirts of Madrid; around 30 minutes away from the city by car. The surroundings are nice, lots of greenery! Not only is there a private nursery, primary and high school here but also a private University called UCJC (where I am living).

This is the UCJC University accommodation I am living in along with 14 other teaching assistants on the same placement as me. We are allocated to two females per room with showers and toilets down the hall. I have never lived with someone in the same room before but it isn't too bad...at least I will always have company! (before she leaves me in February)
A picture of my actual room will be posted a bit later on when it has been tidied.

My first impressions of Spain/Madrid are positive. Firstly, the weather is great... fancy leaving 16 degree weather back in England for 32 degree sunny Spain?! El Castillo is a secluded area with lots of posh houses and greenland. The school itself is large with plenty of space of the students to run around and play... some students are actually here for summer school and University starts again next week so there'll be a lot more faces around. We have breakfast, lunch and dinner in a cafeteria and it's just like being back at high school! The Spanish food is okay and the staff are really nice! (not that I can understand much of what they say) 

Today we had training for when school officially starts next week. It's very interesting to see how different international schools plan to teach the kids compared to schools back at home. Learning a new education system and being involved with a huge school like SEK is fascinating and I am enjoying every moment of it. 

I'll have a lot more to talk about when work officially starts so stay tuned for my next post! 

- Tiffany