first week back at school and a most excellent weekend..... (this post has been in draft form for over a week!!!)

after more or less getting over jet lag i had my first day back with my little darlings about a week ago now. they were only mild to medium badly-behaved. last week i started working with them on questions and answers such as what is your name, how old are you, where are you from, and what is your favorite color, food etc. copying and studying these things was not terribly interesting for them, so i said that they better study because a special person was coming to interveiw them and was only going ask in english. after a while i realized that i HAD no special person, other than myself. so, i told them that my "twin sister", a famous interviewer in the united states, with her own television program (that can only be viewed in the US, haha). i fabricated a story about having to go to the airport to pick up said twin sister and after recess noelia brought them to a different room where i had changed my clothes and tried to make myself look as much like a glamorous famous interviewer as possible. at first they were veeeery skeptical, but after a while of trying to ask me questions in spanish, they bought it! well some of them did, the others are clever enough to tell that i am a horrible liar and could see that my not being able to keep a straight face meant that was indeed not my famous twin. wether they fell for my rouse or not, the goal was definitly accomplished, they asked and answered the questions we learned in english. hoooray.
link to my Orripo album where you can see all of my little darlings:
http://picasaweb.google.com/mclauerman/Orripo



This weekend we went down to El Puerto to visit our dear freind Hayley and to celebrate her birthday! We arrived Friday and went over to her freind fernando´s house ( amgio essspecial.... weeeee! jeje me mates? bueno, no importa!) who has a an oven to bake her a proper american birthday cake. the two of them attempted this the night before but the foam-like discs that resulted had a taste very reminicent of glue. evidently they were in desperate need of a clever and domestically inclinded (HAHA) woman such as myself. anyway after a while of eyeballing and making meteric conversions in our heads, the second time around the cake turned out to be lovely.

much to lydia´s schegrin, (Germans do NOT celebrate birthdays, or even say happy birthday on days OTHER than the actual birthday. none of this stretching it out for 3 weeks business, no. so strict, the germans) we started celebrating on saturday (her bithday was on sunday) first with a lovely breakfast at a cafe right on the beach. maggie said she wanted to take my picture and send it to all of her freinds because i was wearing a tank top, on the beach, in january. (she is from wisconsin, its evidently like 20 below there or something.) we continued the revelry with a tradional spanish lunch wih food typical of the region -- all manners of fried fish. so good! there were 10 of us, a feat to sit a one table, and we had not only good food and cerveza but also good company. and later of course we had the tradtional american birthday party at hayley's apartment. (by tradtional i only mean that there was a cake with candles and the american happy birthday song accompanying the booze.) we did the spanish proud and danced the night away in el puerto well into the light of the next day. we returned to sevilla tired and happy :)