Barcelona!

After Madrid, we flew on Vueling airlines to Barcelona. Again, ran into some rain - but enjoyed the 20+ temperatures! We spent pretty much all of our time walking. Here, there and everywhere, especially through the old gothic quarter.

Arc de Triomf

Roman columns from the Temple of Augustus

Palm tree at the Catedral de Barcelona

Some of the amazing architecture in Barcelona, this being the Palau de la Musica

Our favourite market - Mercat Boqueria

Inside the market. On the left you can see some fruit, many of these stalls also had freshly squeezed fruit juice. It was delicious, Cara would buy two at a time, since they were only €1 a piece!

Casa Batllo

Cara heading up to Park Guell

View over Barcelona

Cara doing a handstand :)

Cara and I in Park Guell

Mercat Santa Caterina

The cathedral at night

We took the cable car up to Montjuic

Warm but wet on Montjuic

Can you tell where the sky ends and sea starts?

The olympic stadium

We had a great time, even if a little wet, in Madrid and Barcelona! So lucky that finally the sun did come out in Barcelona :)

2 rainy days in Madrid

My first stop this Autumn holiday was in Madrid. Cara and I flew in last Sunday morning. We arrived at the hostel by noon, and were straight back out the door to explore the city!

Here were some of the sites we visited:

The market hall with delicious looking food!

View in the market hall

Palacio de Cristal in Retiro Park

Cibele Palace - City Hall

View of the gorgeous autumn colours

We visited the royal palace museum

Sunset looking through an arch way at the royal palace

Catedral de la Almudena

Plaza Mayor

One evening we had dinner outside near the Plaza Mayor. It was a great dinner, but what I most remember was watching the police "chase" illegal street vendors. I put the chase in quotation marks, as the police clearly weren't trying very hard. The street vendors would have their items on large pieces of cloth, and every so often someone would give a warning. At this, all the street vendors would grab their items in the cloth and run off. Then the police would come sauntering down the street! We found it very amusing to watch.

Hard at work policemen

Then, after such a short time in Madrid we were off to Barcelona!

3D Star

I love Pinterest. I spend way too much time looking at the pictures on there and pinning ones I like. So far I have tried some of the recipes that I have found, but never any of the craft ideas. There are so many, so I constantly am finding ones that I could easily try. I just never have the time. My plans this afternoon got moved until Friday, so I spend over 3 hours and made this:

Finally made it to the Autumn holiday!!!

Next Sunday I am going to Spain with Cara for a week. Before I go I am hoping to get updated on here!! With being so busy at school, and coming home pretty exhausted most nights, I apologize for the lack of posting.

Last week was the final week before our 2 week holiday (yippy!). On Wednesday all the grade 1 and reception classes went apple picking. We collected apples off the ground and then went back to the farm to watch them be made into apple juice. It was so delicious I came home with 2 litres of it :) The kids also loved the trip and getting to collect apples from the field.

Thursday was our sports day. We spent the morning doing sports day stations, and then the afternoon in a grade 1 football (soccer) tournament. Also a great day. The only tricky part was keeping the kids entertained while waiting in between football games. Well, myself too - at one point I ended up doing cartwheels with a bunch of my girls. They were pretty easy to keep occupied. At one point we just ran a lap all the way around the track and they loved it!

Friday we had a pro-d day. We were all at the city campus, and afterwards I just stayed in the city. We went out for a drink to celebrate, then hung around with Claire and her boyfriend before going for dinner together. I stayed at Claire's house that night, and went to brunch with them the next day. Claire and I then met up with Marcus (and later another teacher and her husband) to go to the book fair.

So I spent all afternoon Saturday and then again Sunday morning at the Frankfurt book fair. This is the largest book fair in the world and is absolutely amazing!! It started last Monday, and opens up to the public on the weekend. On Saturday we went around a bunch of the halls having a look at all the different things that are there. The real purpose though was to scout out deals and free books for Sunday. Being the last day of the fair, a lot of the publishers sell or give away their books on Sunday. We hit the jackpot with Scholastic! They were just putting their books out on tables for anyone to take. When they found out we were teachers they kept bringing us resources or good books. It was so nice of them, and we got so lucky!

The Scholastic booth in the international publishers hall

Today at school we unpacked all the books we got and sorted them. We took some for our classrooms and then the rest will go into the library. We also counted up the retail price of all the books - almost €3000! And that didn't include the books we bought or got free for ourselves. Definitely going to this fair next year!! 

Claire and I with our free books :)

On Sunday I had to leave the book fair earlier than the others to go over to my year end softball barbecue. We did some cleaning of the containers and dugouts, then had a barbecue. Unfortunately just as we started to eat it started to pour. So we stood around in the rain or inside the container enjoying the afternoon. It was nice to see some of the people and just chat - definitely looking forward to winter training and having that outside of school again. 

Today, being my first day of holiday, I did the obvious thing: went into school. I am starting teaching phonics after the break, so needed to go in and get some new displays up. Plus exciting things like rearranging my classroom and getting ahead on some other work. Claire and Marcus were also there, so it was still an enjoyable day. We went out for dinner at the end of the day too. 

Overall view of the room. I moved the tables around and made two new displays: Sounds We Know and Owl art Work

Back of the room with my new carpet area

I bought one of those carpets with roads on it for the kids to play cars on. I will also use it for a guided reading space. I need to change the displays on the bulletin boards when I get back, but that will wait a little while until we've started our new topics. We are going to start learning to read so the Reading Corner one will become some sort of reading display. Need to get creative! Or just talk to my English colleagues - displays seem to be pretty important in England. 

The front corner

The Sounds We Know display will have the jolly phonics cards on it. The birthday calendar will be moved and redone, to be replaced soon by a word wall (complete with owl letter cards). One of my students was in the holiday camps, and came in as I was putting all the numbers in the 100s chart. It was so cute, because he got so excited about it! He went up to my TA and kept going on about the 100s chart :)

Tomorrow I promise I am not going to school again. Hopefully going to meet Kathrin's new baby :) Then on Wednesday meeting with Cara to plan our trip to Spain!

Bierbikes and Dirndl

October 3rd is a national holiday in Germany, Tag der Deutschen Einheit (German unity). This also happens to be the end of Oktoberfest time. To celebrate, we had a staff get together on Tuesday, the night before our day off work. We went on the Bierbike with an Oktoberfest theme, and then went out to a Korean karaoke place. It was a blast! I bought a Dirndl specially for the occasion. Spent quite a lot of money on it, but absolutely love it! Don't have any of the pictures from the Bierbike yet, but do have a picture from school. On Friday we decided it was Dirndl and Lederhosen day. 4 of the teachers showed up in costume... The kids found it really amusing. One of my students said I was getting married, another just said "no good" a few times pointing at me.

Paul, me, Marcus and Will all dressed up

Happy Thanksgiving!

To celebrate Thanksgiving, I spent the day baking today. I made 2 apple pies to take to school tomorrow. I have a can of pumpkin, but am saving that for next weekend. That one I won't share :)

My two apple pies. One looking a little funny because I only have one pan, so it had to be taken out onto a plate. 

I am missing being home and having a full thanksgiving dinner with family. No possibility of cooking a turkey in my kitchen! 

Happy Thanksgiving :)