10 days to go...

Hello!

In 10 days I will be flying to Santander with my fellow teachers. From Santander we will travel to Leon, where we will live and work for a month.

I'd never heard of Leon until a couple of weeks ago, when I received the email saying I would be spending my Erasmus+ placement there. It's in the north of Spain and from what I've seen and read online, it looks beautiful. 

For the last couple of weeks, myself and the other teachers have been preparing for our placement via Zoom sessions with Emile, Fran and Caro. The training has been extremely helpful and I leave every session feeling positive. Hearing from former Erasmusers has been really interesting and they have helped to settle my nerves and ease my worries.

I'm looking forward to meeting the other teachers next week in Kent. Here, we will do our First Aid and Sports Leader training, plus learn some Spanish!

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What a week!

  My first week is complete and it has been a whirlwind! I have completely fallen in love with Leon, the school I’m teaching at is amazing , everyone is so friendly (students and teachers) and they all seem very excited that I am here which is lovely. The city itself is stunning - can’t complain about my walk to school which is past the incredible Cathedral de Leon!   And of course, the tapas and wine in the evenings is great too!  As the week has gone on I’ve become more and more involved with the lessons and I am genuinely loving every minute, it’s quite daunting standing in front of a full class of children relying on me for instructions (especially as they all have masks on so I can’t see what their expressions are!) but I think I’m getting the hang of it. I have classes of students from 6/7 years old up to 11/12 years old and I adore them all. I have been given lots of drawings and ‘presents’ from the students which actually have made me quite emotional- thinking I n...
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  As I sit in my favourite coffee in Cardiff, enjoying a flat white (what would the Spanish make of that?) rather than the café con leche, which I have become used to during the last month, I take a moment to think about the things I am missing most about Leon. Above all the Colegio Divina Pastora, the staff and its pupils, who with their oversized rucksacks, reminded me of baby turtles navigating their way through a sea of corridors (I never did manage to find my way to every class without help!). The school welcomed me like a long-lost relative and I will always be grateful for everyone’s warmth, support and humour. Certainly I miss the Leonites, that other surrogate family whose camaraderie, friendship and love of life enhanced the experience one hundredfold. Despite our different ages, interests and life experiences, I loved getting to know everyone in the group and genuinely miss every single one of them. Above all I miss the city, with its network of busy narrow alleyways...
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  We are now into the second half of our placement and I am conscious of how quickly the remaining time will pass. With Caro’s words, echoing in my head, I wanted to ensure to enjoy every minute. Whether it was singing Karaoke in a local bar with “the Leonites” until 4am on Saturday morning, joining the school choir under the direction of Carlos the Colombian countertenor or sampling local delicacies such as morcilla (unappetisingly translated as cow’s viscera), I have tried to immerse myself in the school community and Leonese culture. The rehearsals with the school choir were an uplifting end to the school day. They are held in a former side chapel within the school with excellent acoustics, enhancing the exquisite voices of Carlos and his small band of enthusiastic choristers. Together with other schools in the region they are planning a concert of world music in June, so rehearsals typically involved practising a range of pieces spanning the globe, from Japan to South Afri...
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