Halloween

10.31.10 - Robledo de Chavela, Spain - We celebrated Halloween at CEIP Nuestra Señora de La Navahonda today and had a great time playing pin the legs on Frankenstein's monster, making candy spiders and mummies. I don't think the children descended to far into witchcraft. And yes, I did scare a few of them.

-Will

Mateo the Mummy.
Eloisa instructing the first graders on the pumpkin dance.
Jose eating.
Pin the head on Frankenstein's monster.

Fifth graders doing a mash-up of Thriller and the Monster Mash with zombie make-up. A classic.

Segovia

10.28.10 - Segovia, Spain - The fourth week of school I got to go with the fifth and sixth graders to Segovia. I know, my job is awesome. Stop.

I hadn't been, so it was a cool visit, though we didn't spend much time wandering the streets. I especially liked the aqueduct and the old Jewish quarter. We also made a stop at the Esteban Vicente Contemporary Art Museum (free entrance), which is worth a visit.

-Will

The kids posing in front of the aqueduct.
You can make out the cathedral and a photographer in the sunglasses. It was a great day.
Javi giving his best tour guide impression in front of the cathedral to open-mouthed fifth graders.
As I mentioned I found the Jewish quarter particularily interesting and plan to go back to try the sefardic food. This was a monument in the area.
We took a drawing lesson at the art museum. It was cool, but knowing the limits of my artistic abilities, I stuck to making photographs of kids drawing. So sue me.

Food Fair

10.20.10 - Madrid, Spain - My first week of school I got to go on a field trip. We went to the "5 al Dia" (five fruits and veggies a day) fruit festival at the Madrid Food Fair. The kids had good time and met the stars of Lazytown and got to make fruit and vegetable kebabs.

Exciting,

Will

Sara
Joel and Antonio make kebabs.
Unai skeptically tries a kebab.
I think Luna (middle) was tired of all the fruit. Or perhaps overwhelmed.
Kevin.

Update: The Missing Photographer

01.30.11 - San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Spain - I feel a need to post something here because I've been MIA these past few months. I actually didn't realize September was my last post, so it's worse than I expected. Apologizes. My computer went on the fritz in late November and I've been waiting on a CD to fix it. So this blog, my photo career and more and more my sanity is dependent on the Spanish postal service to deliver that CD and if you know anything about the post here, you'll know that's not a good thing.

Alas, to quell your baited breath for new posts, I'll direct you to a new publication of my TECS photos from last summer (most you probably haven't seen) online at: www.brightsparkspanish.com. TECS is starting a learn Spanish in Spain program and I provided promo shots of El Puerto and TECS for the web.

Until the benevolent mailman from above delivers to me so I can fix my evils,

Will

La Virgen de la Romería en San Lorenzo de El Escorial

09.12.10 - San Lorenzo de El Escorial - In the action-packed weekend that was, Sunday was a fiesta in our town. Something called a Romería, which I still haven't pinned down a proper definition for yet, but seems to be when every gets dressed in traditional costumes, builds parade floats and walks down to the nearest park to barbecue in the morning and comes back late at night. Missed the barbecue part unfortunately, but we did see them coming back. Seemed like a good time.

-Will

Drummer boy.
Dancing queen.
Romero.
Guarding their trophy carefully.

A bit of motor oil and a bit of homemade tinto de verano are something to always keep on the back of the parade float. It's just a good idea.

Summer Camp Vol 4-8

09.02.10 - El Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain - As you may or may not have noticed, my plan to post weekly photos of TECS Summer Camp on my blog failed in spectacular fashion somewhere between weeks three and four. It was probably a bit ambitious anyway. At any given moment I was juggling requests in all types of media, from downloading music for performance night, shooting daily photos, updating the website and trying desparately to keep everything organized.

Suffice to say, being a camp IT Specialist is not an easy job and doesn't lend itself well to updating personal blogs. Anyway, below is my Photoshelter gallery of the summer. I tried to keep a tight edit of 20 photos and give a little idea of the chronology (using "story" there would be a bit ambitious for what I accomplished). Flip through it when the inspiration strikes you.

-Will