Working with 1st graders

I suppose one entry a month is enough right? My true blog fans I’m sure are dying for another posting of my adventures, I’m sure...
I’ve now been in Spain for little less then a month and I’m beginning to get a small idea of what is going on around me. For example when someone says in Spanish, referring to me, “I would never have come to a country without studying the language first.” I actually got the general idea of what they said where as before, they could have called me a moron to my face and I would probably have said “si.”
I don’t want to suggest I didn’t study the language, but first they talk at regular conversation pace here (oddly enough?) which when I first arrived was way above my head. I have enjoyed drowning in Spanish it’s been a trip. I figure if I’d spent another 6 months studied to come here I probably would never have got on the plane. Sure it made finding an apartment difficult, you never know who you’re going to run into and how you’re going to be challenged, but that’s half of the experience.
I started school at the beginning of January and so far it’s been trying at points though in general it’s a whole lot of fun. I’m helping teach 1st grade, which means I spend my workdays teaching and supervising 6 yr olds. I use the term “workday” rather loosely because I only really work full time two days a week. The other two days are half days unless my lead English instructor is out. I can’t really complain about the job, my kids, or the teacher I’m assisting.
For this first month I’ve gotten a long with all of them. The kids need the occasional reigning in to keep them from entirely bouncing off the walls, but in general they learn pretty quick and are a great group. I do have gym a couple times a week, which unfortunately since I’m there, means they have to do it in English. Memories of boring square dancing units and other things in gym class come to mind when I’m with them doing some of these activities. They push through it though and seem to really enjoy doing the activities. The gym teacher I help does a pretty good job of keeping them engaged. I just wish the funniest games, like for example kickball, involved using English directly. The students have Spanish speaking gym too, so I hope they get to just organizationally goof off there, which is what I remember the best gym classes being when I was that age.
Other then gym I help prep lessons and help sing some of the songs we teach the first graders. They sing a lot of songs and do they love them. The teacher I’m helping has even worked up a lot of motions for the songs we sing and the kids love it. If we don’t sing this one song at the beginning of each English lesson they’ll let you know. My only complaint is that after doing a couple lessons in the course of a day my head is ringing with them and I find myself humming them under my breath. For example here are two like: “I want shoes” or “Hello Mr Yellow” both which I guarantee will be top 40 hits.
Besides going to work 4 times a week, I’ve been trying to work on my Spanish and generally attempting to acclimate to Madrid. It’s taking some time, since the language continues to be slow in getting into my brain and the culture though very similar to the states can be pretty trying. The thing that I’ve run into way more then once is the propensity to have absolutely everything closed on Sundays. Don’t get me wrong day of Sabbath is great…but most people don’t go to church at all. The kicker for me is that you’re liable to starve if you don’t plan to do your shopping before hand. I’d like to say my learning curve has been fast on that one…lets just say I’m not going to entirely disclose it.
That’s my life in Madrid in a nutshell as of now, hopefully in another month or earlier I will have happenings to report.