The City of Culture

Last weekend I visited the "Cidade da cultura" with one of my fellow auxilars. City of culture is not, I think, the best translation, though I´m not sure what else to call this... thing. A cultural center perhaps, but I'm not really convinced. Maybe someone else can give me a name for this place after I describe it a little bit.

The complex is located on top of Gaiás hill just outside the city and consists of half a dozen or so buildings/structures that house a museum, a library (that didn't seem to have that many books), some art exhibits, a concert hall, a café-bar, and a bunch of other odds and ends that I don't know what they are. 

Back in the 1990's, the city of Santiago held a competition to design a facility to house the museum etcetera that I mentioned above. The winner was, by far and away, the most interesting, exciting, and extravagant of the entries. The winner, American Peter Eisenmann, managed to incorporate many of the prominent features of Galicia into his design. Rolling hills, seashells, the plan of the old town of Santiago, and tartans to harken back to the mythical days of the celts (we're pretty sure those days existed). 

This grand design resulted in 10+ years of construction, and many, many reevaluations of the budget. A lot of Galicians are upset over the waste of money (let's not forget about la crisis, folks) on a space that no one really uses because they're not really sure what it's for.

When I went, the facility was surreally empty and although it was pretty, there was a tumble-down, shoddy feel to it. Construction was officially stopped this year, but there are still some big holes here and there that may never get filled in.

It looks pretty from afar at least

Can you spot the hole in the facade?

The shelves of the library are designed to look like a model of the city. They're mostly empty

rust stains from the tartan stripes. Note the construction stuff in the background

One of the denizens of the place. There was also: one employee each in the museum and cafe, some German tourists, and a snail. 

It may not be a City of Culture, but I hope that something is made out of this place some day. It has potential.

What am I even doing here?

I've just started my second year in Spain as and Auxiliar de Conversacion, (or, as all my coworkers call it 'lectora.' Don't know why) and I figure it's about time I explain on here what exactly it is that I do.

One of the funny things about the program is the wide range of responsibilities and expectations the different schools place on their auxiliars. At some schools you're pretty much expected to be a real teacher--planning and executing all your own lessons by yourself, while the regular teacher takes the opportunity to get caught up on their own work. In other places, you're not much more than a reading machine/dictionary, where you are only expected to be an example of correct pronunciation. 

Fortunately, my experience has fallen between these extremes, though much more towards the full-blown teacher end. At both the schools I've worked at, I have had two kinds of classes--straight up English classes, and "bilingual sections" aka content classes taught in a foreign language (obviously English in this case). 

For the English classes, I am expected to prepare my own lessons, usually based on either the current grammar or vocab theme the students are learning about, or a seasonal/holiday/cultural lesson. For the bilingual section classes, I often end up reading from a textbook or other source, or doing a vocabulary lesson or game.

A standard lesson plan looks something like this:

Recipes lesson

3rd of ESO (8th grade)

• Go over command form in English
• brainstorm dish ideas
• pair and write recipes
• share recipes
• early finishers share with other early finishers
• whole group
• extra time? 
• 2-3 min--tongue twister
• 4-10 min--taboo/other game w/ food vocab

And that's it. There's other stuff involved, like stern looks and crowd control, and not laughing when students say snarky/cheeky things, but that's all secondary.

And the obligatory picture:

I went for a walk the other day in Belvis park, one of the many parks in Santiago. For a Spanish city, Santiago is very green. It may have something to do with weather predictions like this one:

Family Vacation

Finally, vacation time is over, and the school year has begun. Since I've been lazy and haven't done much blog-writing I'll talk a little now about some of the adventures I've been on since the last post.

These people came to visit

I was a little busy with private lessons and starting my new job at Lamas de Abade, so I wasn't able to join in on some of the little trips Celeste and Johnny went on, but I did manage to rearrange my schedule enough to make time for a nice little trip to one of my favorite places--Portugal.

I'd already been to Porto, but last time I went it dumped rain the entire time and I missed out on a lot of the things I wanted to see. 

Johnny had gone off on a solo adventure to Barcelona and Marseilles, so for the first couple days it was just Celeste and I to poke around the city of wine and tiles. We got up before dawn to catch the 6am train and watched the sunrise through the smoke of the forest fires that have been ravaging the peninsula. Then, thanks to the magic of time travel changing time zones, we arrived at the hostel at 10am five hours later.

From there on, it was the typical tourist things--go on a tour of the city, meet other tourists and spend money on unnecessary things. 

It's a melon boat with ham sails

After some trial and error, Johnny made his way to the hostel and Celeste set out for this place:

It's Morocco

Johnny and I poked around Porto some more, and saw some pretty awesome stuff, such as:

This little church

A Francesinha

some nice plazas

From there we went to Braga, the little city that Spanish adolescents find absolutely hilarious. (Braga is Spanish for "panties")

If you haven't been to Braga, and you're in the area of northwestern Iberia, it is worth the trip. Once upon a time it was the capital of the Galician kingdom, and before then, one of the outposts of the Roman empire. These days, it's a quiet mid-size town and one of the prettiest places I've been. 

There were roughly 10,000 churches in the city of 100,000, and enough flowers to build another 10,000, if flowers were a viable construction material. And like in Porto, most of the streets and sidewalks were paved with black and white stones, making painting street lines and arrows a thing of the past.

Just a flower garden next to a castle.

The next day we took the bus out of town to the church on the mountain, Bom Jesus. 

The church itself was not that impressive on the inside, but the 600 stairs leading up to it were, and the gardens surrounding it make the trek (or the funicular ride) worth the effort. Each landing on the stairs had a different pattern of black and white tiles, and a fountain of some kind.

Fountains

Gardens

After a long walk back down the 600 stairs, Johnny and I grabbed a quick coffee in the city center, and caught the one and only bus back to Spain by the skin of our teeth. This involved a lot of frantic running around, missing passports (not ours, thank God) and melting icecream. We did make it back to Santiago however, just in time to grab a tapa at the bar down the street.

It wasn't too long after that that Johnny set off for Seattle via Madrid, and Celeste returned from the north of Africa with tan lines and a bag full of dirty clothes. The two of us hung out in Santiago for a few days, with another little trip to Lugo to eat pulpo and watch fireworks at San Froilan. The quantity of octopus eaten at the festival is incredible. I find it amazing that the fishermen are capable of finding and catching so many tons of octopus each year and shipping it to this random inland city. 

Ecological ramifications aside, it was a fun experience, and nice to catch up with some old and new Lucences.

After one final night out on the town in Santiago, Celeste jetted off once again for sunnier climes leaving Meghan behind in the comforting drizzle of the northwest.