Cultural Week

The week before Easter vacation was Cultural Week at our school.  This is basically a week to learn about Mallorca and go on field trips related to subjects that the students have studied over the year.  I definitely took advantage of this week and it was awesome.

On Monday, April 2^nd, we made crespells with second graders.  These are a typical Easter cookie, similar to a sugar cookie, but are made with lard and lemon instead. They're not as sweet as a sugar cookie from the US.  It was really fun making the dough with the kids because nothing was premade so they got a chance to measure the ingredients and learn the process of baking.  Ingredients here are measured in grams instead of cups and we used a kitchen scale (measuring up to 2 kilograms) to find the correct amounts of what we needed.  I’d never used anything but measuring cups before so it was a new experience for me too. Below are two second graders, Sergio and Nuria, kneading the crespell dough.

All day Tuesday I accompanied 3^rd and 4^th graders to a nature reserve called Puig de Galatzó in the city of Puigpunyent.  We took a charter bus to get to the reserve, about an hour outside of Palma.  This wouldn’t have been terrible but the roads here are very narrow.  Comfortable, in my opinion, for a Smart Car to travel if it’s the only vehicle on the road but we were in a humongous bus and it was a two-lane “highway”.  Oh, and the roads were curved and didn’t have shoulders.  Perfect.  During our ride through the mountains I kept it together until we got to a hairpin curve that scraped the bottom of our bus and we ground to a stop, did a 12-point turn and continued.  There were a couple more incidents when I feared for my life, but, thankfully, we made it to The Puig alive, albeit I was extremely sweaty and nervous.  Low point, we were going back the same way.

Once there, we walked through the reserve accompanied by a guide that spoke Spanish rather than Catalan so I was able to understand!  I learned a lot, especially since Xisca and Paquita were there explaining things to me too.  We saw typical plants of Mallorca and quite a few animals, even peacocks!  The kids were pretty well behaved but Xisca still had a problem with one of her students.  I really like this boy, Miguel, but many of the teachers have issues with him.  He actually reminds me a lot of Jerod when he was younger; very strong-willed and has a mind of his own.  I told Xisca that Miguel reminds me of my own brother and she just laughed. 

On Wednesday, I traveled (NOT through mountains, thank god) with Xisca and Ana’s classes (4^th and 3^rd graders) to a small town called Sa Pobla to learn about the meteorology of Mallorca.  It was really quite interesting.  I learned the eight winds of Mallorca in Catalan.  There’s also a mnemonic song but I haven’t figured that out yet.

Once I got home Wednesday I needed to pack like it was nobody’s business as we were leaving for Greece Thursday and I’d done nothing.  I was really excited to go on vacation, especially to a country that I hadn’t been to before!