All The Going-ons

Omgosh peoples! it's been such a long time since i'v written an update for you! i feel like so much has happened and yet i can barely remember it all! i'm writing to you all here on a cold Spanish night with my heater on and a homemade cup of Spanish style hot chocolate! so let's get this underway! i want to head right back to the holidays again! i know i wrote all about my week in Bilbao but guess what! there were actually 2 weeks of holidays so i shall now tell you about my adventures in the second week! :D Well firstly i caught up with a friend of mine from school! the geology teacher and her boyfriend and we walked around Murcia central and went to some tea shop which was really cool! (and no i didn't have tea hahaha) we saw lots of stalls of people selling random things! kind of like a mini market! i'd been along the place before but the stalls weren't open! really cool to see everything! a shoppers paradise! good thing i don't care too much for shopping XD

Ok so then something very interesting about the spanish/catholic regime is that they celebrate 'los tres magos' or in English the three wise men! and they come every year on the 6th of Jan! so as far as tradition goes the kids get their presents not on Christmas but on the 6th of January when the 3 wise men come! personally this makes more sense to me that you get gifts from the 3 wise men rather than from some Santa Claus person! XD buuuuu this is only theoritical! In fact there are many kids who get presents on Christmas and with the three wise men! Also from what i gather the 3 wise men is for younger children! So i witnessed my first real parade here in Murcia on the 5th! the 3 wise men parade! was very exciting! soooooooo many people and children turned out! i was lucky to find a spot where i did to see everything! basically it's just a whole lot of floats that come by and they throw lollies out to the children in ridiculous quantities! in fact the kids in front of me brought along plastic bags which they managed to fill up with lollies and treats! Right at the end come the 3 wise men! and supposedly they all had names because the kids would scream and shout at them as they came by! which seemed weird to me that they had names! anyways was def a cool experience! i asked my kids at school when they got back whether they had gone but it would seem they are far too cool to assist such a childish parade! XD

 Aaaaaaah! Bomberos! :D

 Buble making machine/car

 Yup! the Spongebob Crew were there too! :D

 Tangled! I so thought of you Shari when i saw this! XD

 This was on Gran Via, one of the main streets in Murcia

One of the 3 wise men! Check out this video of him below! Aaaaaaand there were Camels! it was sooooo cool! :D

Here is another interesting video for you! just for the sake of it! a marching band

Then on the saturday, my last weekend before school i got invited to go to a town called Cartagena with a fellow English teacher from school! Cartagena is a town about 30 mins drive out of Murcia! it is really beautiful there and we had a really nice time! first we went and saw a friend of my friend who is from there who could show us around! he was very talkative and seemed to know something about everything! which i guess isn't a bad thing! lol while we were there we went to a Roman Theatre (an ampitheatre kinda thing) that had been burried for like 2 centuries! they only just discouvered it in the last 20 years and it's so beautiful! hard to believe something like that existed below so many houses! seems like no matter where they dig underground there they uncover something new! hahah XD after that we went to the marina because it's a port city! and we saw one of the world's oldest submarines and then to some underwater museum to see lots of interesting things! after that we went back to sit by the town hall at a hot chocolate cafe! where literally they had a big book of all the different kind of hot chocolates you can order :D oooooh and we had churros! yum!

 Roman Theatre

 Hard to believe this was all underground 20 years ago!

 proof i was there! hahaha

 My fellow English teacher and friend on the left: Rosalia!

 Old submarine

Ayuntamiento - Town Hall

Well moving along! recently i have meet some1 else from NZ! Rosalia, who i went to Cartagena with on the same day took me to see her sister and brother in law who had recently married and he was from NZ! his name was Dan and he reminds me a lot of Daniel Graig! hahaha pure coincidence! anyways he's from the south island of NZ and teachers PE at a high school there! so anyways the story goes that we invited him to come into school into my older class to teach us the Haka! seeing as we have been looking at Maori culture and one of the students had asked if we could learn it! i had no idea how to perform the haka ever mind leading and teaching it so it was super cool that Dan could come in and teach it to us! the kids enjoyed it heaps! Shame we didn't record it! maybe we'll have to practice and get a video sussed! After class that day we went for coffee close to school and was cool talking to another NZ about Spanish culture and schooling and how it is different from NZ! Anyways Rosalia invited me to Dan's farewell get together thingy and has now gone back to NZ! aaaah talking in groups is still so hard! =(

Well a few weeks ago i made a trip to Nueva Condomina! the mall to buy some new clothes! i really hate clothes shopping! i can't think of anything else i dislike more! hahaha anyways bought myself some new clothes and tried on some very tight jeans! had to laugh actually i struggled alot to get in and out of them and wondered how on earth any1 else would have a hope of fitting them! needless to say they weren't for me! after that i went and bought myself some books (to make the trip worth while) i think i spent more money on books than i did clothes ahahhaa! aaaand then i went to the cinemas to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie! was quite good and i imagine it would be even better in English! they have a terrible habbit of dubbing everything here into Spanish! it's a shame really because it takes so much away from the movie, it loses it's originality! they say they have a fantastic dubbing system here and what i think they mean by that is it's efficient but to me watching dubbed tv and movies in Spanish is soooooo ugly! XD today i went to Thader with my flatmate and we ate at some really nice place! was thinking how much i'd like to go their with friends and family! Ooooooh well! and we spied out the graphic tablets! which i've come to conclude that laptops and graphics tablets are very cheap in Spain!

Last week after church a couple of us went to a bar to play billar! or pool! it was lots of fun and i really enjoyed that! Then sometime in the last week something that amazed me was that a parade passed right by outside our house! and it was like 10pm at night! there was a marching band and everything! i was spazzing out at how cool it was that a parade came by our flat! we could literally look down on it from our balcony! and yet all my flatmates were like meh it's nothing exciting! honestly! XD check out these pics and vid!

Singing!!!!!!!!!! :D

My gosh would you look at how long this blog post is already! XD i'll finish off by talking about what's been happening at school lately!^^ classes have been really cool lately! we've been talking about the up coming olympics in London this year and for one of my classes we did our own mini olympics! basically we split the class into 3 and had the teams compete in a series of fun English games! they took to it so well! they still don't know the results but i'll tell you all here now! lol team 1 and 2 tied with 21 points and team 3 got 17! then you already know that we learnt the Haka in my older class! Also as of late we have been studying the Merchant of Venice! a Shakespearean comedy/tragedy! has any1 seen it? well we all got on a bus this last Wednesday and headed to a theatre to watch a performance of it! was really cool! half was in Spanish and the other half in English! pretty much when ever the Jews spoke amongst themselves they spoke in Spanish! my kids really enjoyed it! i think about 6 classes went! we were 3 bus loads all in all and then there were other schools that turned up too!

 I have to be the most un-photogenic person alive >.<

You will be surprised to know (not really) that we had yet another day off school! on Friday it was the day of  Santo Thomas! whom i think is patron saint of highschools or something like that! so naturally being the Spanish way we had the day off! aaaand then on thursday to celebrate the day off on Friday the kids had a day of activities instead of classes! so i think there was a mass service for them and a interyear soccer competition and also a create a mural competition where each class was assigned a country for the olympics! i went to the prize giving and was so proud of my students who won their soccer games and then my 4A class who took out the poster competition with their New Zealand poster! aaaaaaah it was so guay! so cool! :D then after that a group of teachers and I we went to a local bar to have a drink after school!

 Santo Thomas posters

 Prize giving

 The winning New Zealand Mural! :D

Some other posters!

Well that is all! if you have made it through everything up until now i congratulate you! Holy heck this entry has taken aaaaaaaaaaaaages to write! not to mention the headaches these videos give me uploading >.<

Oh now before i forget, if anyone is interested i have i started a new blog for my artwork! Just sketches and things like that! check it out here => http://chrisdog203.blogspot.com/