Vacation and the Pool

So I have to admit that the amount of time I put into my internship is absolutely pitiful. For the first month of work I started at 5 and ended at 6:30, only 1.5 hours of work and I got all Fridays off. I actually spent as much time taking the metro ride to the school as I did working. It was pathetic. Then after working for 3 weeks, I got a vacation. I thought it was ironic that out of all of my friends with all of their long hours, I am the one with the vacation, but no complaints here. Plus I had something to look forward to after my vacation-double the hours at work, that's right a whole 3 hours working!

It just so turns out that there was a student from GV that was in Madrid for 4 days while I was on my vacation. My spanish professor told me about her and said that she had a son and was wondering if I could show her around Madrid and help her out with her son while she was here. She would be leaving to go to Bilbao in the North by the end of the week to study there for a month. She was only in Madrid for orientation with a bunch of other GV students. I had never met her before, but she was really nice and her 4 year old Jordan was a sweetie. I played tour guide for the first day that she was here and on the second day I helped her get acquainted with Spanish life.

By the third day she had an orientation meeting with the other GV students and she asked if I could watch Jordan for the day. I took him to a park and the funniest thing happened there. We were playing on a play set and there was another boy there with his grandmother. Jordan looked over at the grandma and said in english, "there is a spider on your face." The grandma didn't speak english so she didn't understand at all and I was just about to translate what Jordan said when I looked over at the woman and saw the biggest hairiest mole on her face I have ever seen in my life. It really did look like a spider! I tried so hard to not laugh, but failed miserably at it and was just sooo grateful that the woman didn't speak english. Needless to say it made for a very funny day.

The rest of my vacation was nice, but I was excited to start working again. There are public pools that are open in the summer and so the Valderperales Association doesn't meet at schools in the summer, but rather at one of the public pools. We do activities with the kids for the first hour and then after that they go swimming for 2 hours. Basically it is day care for the day, but it still gives me the opportunity to work with the kids so I like it.

I am working with a different group of kids at the pool and I am kinda sad about it. On the first day there, my 2nd and 3rd graders ran over to me and asked if I would still be their teacher. I cant even describe how happy it made me to know that they still wanted me to be their teacher. Sadly though, Bea told me that I was working with a new group. I am now working with another girl, Arrancha, with the 3, 4, and 5 year olds. It is a whole new ball game now. The amount of patience you need to work with this age range is ridiculous and some days are really hard for me. Plus finding activities for them to do for the first hour is difficult. We are working at picnic tables outside and have no supplies other than what the kids bring. Needless to say, we do a lot of coloring and duck, duck, goose, simon says, and red light green light.

I have come to find out that kids at this age also cry, a lot. Today we had 3 criers within the first 15 minutes of working, it was nuts. They are really cute though and they love to snuggle and hold your hand, so although I come much closer to loosing my patience with them than I do with the older kids, they still have somehow wrapped me around their little fingers.

About half of them play in the kiddie pool and I am in charge of monitoring them there. Inevitably someone will get cold and climb into my lap soaking wet. We snuggle for awhile and after tickling them they normal go back to play after 15 minutes. However, every day I am left with a wet lap and it makes it look like I peed my pants every time! I guess it is worth it though, because they are really cute.

Plus as an added bonus-my 2nd and 3rd graders want me to play with them as much as I can. When they see me in the morning, they always say, "hello katie" in english with these big smiles and I gush over them calling them my little english students and saying that when they talk to me in english it is like I am back in the United States. It's cute and I'm just glad to have made an impression on the kids. They are so adorable!

So morale of the story-I still love my internship even if I am not working with my favorite age range of kids. I am just thankful to get to work with kids at all-english or spanish.