Valencia - Week One

It all began in Chester where thirty strangers met and over five days of teacher training became somewhat of a large and bizarre teaching family. One that was soon to be split as half of the group flew to A Coruna and the other to Valencia. After a long day of travelling, parting with half of our group and spending the night in an airport hotel we arrived at Gatwick, only to be told that we would not be flying as anticipated. Our flight complications meant that we arrived a day late to Valencia, however because we had to change our travel plans we got a glimpse into the city of Alicante. The silver lining in that we had been delayed for several hours was that we got to spend more time together as a group before we were dropped off at our new and quite separate homes.

Our apartment is lovely – it’s so conveniently located, right on a residential street lined with fruit trees. Although the décor is slightly dated and of eclectic taste, I’ve now grown to like its gaudy style and overbearing miss-match of knick-knacks. I must admit that I was not impressed, when we had discovered that there were three bedrooms and four of us, meaning that two of us would have to share a room. However, I’ve quite enjoyed having a roommate and as someone who is certainly not a morning person, it’s been nice to have alarm clock support.

The First day of school was so nerve-wracking and not made any easier by how big the school was and that we’d managed to get lost on our way in! When we had finally found our way, we were greeted by the school staff with open arms and kisses on the cheek before being taken on a tour of the school. The rest of the day seemed like a chaotic blur of meeting, greeting and introducing myself to 30+ Spanish children at a time.

Throughout the rest of the week there were more introductions all of which had massively different level of interest and enthusiasm from the students. I’m teaching children aged 12 – 18 and the younger classes seemed to view me as a new and shiny toy, fighting over who could ask me the next question whilst the older students could not have been less interested. This was also the case when trying to settle and organise class tasks and activities. However, I’ve heard that stickers are quite the classroom motivators, so I’m off to buy as many as I can...