Recycling Christmas at Luis Casado School, Corrales del Vino

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquantance be forgot,
And days of auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, m'dears,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,

For the sake of auld lang syne.

(Robert Burns)

Happy New Year to the children and staff of Luis Casado School, all my new friends in Zamora, volunteer teachers in Castile-y-Leon, friends and family everywhere.

Must be Santa

It´s almost the end of my stay in Zamora, and the man from the Junta was expected. Headmaster José Eladio said the Education Minister would visit village schools across the province, to see teacher volunteers. I was bracing myself; less formal than the greeting ceremony at the ‘monasterio’ in Valladolid, but I expected a speech.

In fact, José Ignacio Rodríguez Aguado (great names here), the ‘Jefe del Servicio de Innovación Educativa (great titles, too) arrived during my final session with the teachers. I’d been happy to swap a day at the school each week for a two hour oral English ´seminario´ with teachers in Zamora. I really enjoyed the sessions and it was a welcome change to teach adults with a good level of English.

Nice Victoria, the local 'Jefa´in charge of the Zamora programme, arrived too, with Jose Eladio. When the visitors came in we’d already sung a song :

‘Who’s got a beard that’s long and white?’
‘Santa’s got a beard that’s long and white.’
‘Who comes around on a special night?’
‘Santa comes around on a special night.’

Special night; beard that’s white …

Must be Santa, must be Santa,Must be Santa, Santa Claus.

José Ignacio didn’t have a beard, and it was me that made the speech, prompted by his question,’ How have you found the experience of teaching in one of Castile’s bi-lingual schools?’ To my surprise, I made some sensible comments and give a summary of the highlights. I expect keeping a blog helped - and the Cava.

Planned activities, comparing Christmas menus and playing Snakes and Ladders ‘- resources replenished courtesy of Roy – had to be shelved.

But we’d made a start on Cava and cake supplied by the teachers. The latter was a traditional Three Kings Cake with hidden treasures. If you chanced on one of two little mannequins it´s a year’s good luck, but if you get the ‘bean’ you’re supposed to pay for next year’s celebration. Poor Maria Jose was the unlucky one.

I won’t be there, but I think I’ll come back for the other ‘Santa’ time, - Semana Santa, at Easter.

Carrie's Visit to Zamora

Carrie´s Visit to Zamora







Altogether, there are sixteen of us volunteer retired teachers and we´ve been posted to ´bi-lingual´village schools all over the Northern province of Castile and Leon . The schools are near the historic cities of Spain´s largest province: Burgos: Valladolid, Avila, Soria, Segovia, Palencia, Leon, Salamanca and Zamora. I really enjoyed the weekend when Carrie stayed with me in Zamora. She´s a Canadian with a warm personality and an interesting background, staying in Salamanca, only an hour by bus from Zamora.

We were blessed with a fine Sunday morning for a walk by the River Duero. In the background, the ´romanico´Puente de la Piedra´

By yet another of the coincidences that have happened since I arrrived in Spain, Carrie´s 'host' English teacher , Belen, has a connection with me. We´d never met, but we´ve exchanged homes.

For some years Roy and I did home-swaps via an Internet company, and once went to stay in Salamanca for a week. By chance, she saw my name on an email I sent to Carrie and said ´I know that person´.

So she proposed coming to collect Carrie to drive her back on Sunday and I reserved a table for us at one of the restaurants that Olga recommended. It was ´Sancho 2´, is in a small park in Zamora. The food and company were excellent.

Concert For St Cecilia It`s too complicated for me to tell you where the conservatory is`, said music teacher Lidia. 'I will drive you there.' I was glad of this, as although I was keen to attend the students' concert, the temperature in Zamora had suddenly dropped. It was a foggy 1 degree in the morning and never rose above 5 that day.

Fortunately, Lidia´s flat is across the street from mine, which makes it convenient for her to drive me to Corrales three times a week. Her duties take her to other villages on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Lidia plays the violincello, as it´s called here. Last week she took the 'cello to the school. The children were still enthusiastic following the visit to a special concert in Vallalodid, so she wanted them to see the 'cello close up. She was feeling nervous about it, though. ´Did they damage it?´I asked her on the way home. No, she said, but she´d misjudged the width of a doorway and managed to break a string all by herself!

The music conservatory in Zamora is housed in what was once an orphanage, and I suppose the concert hall must have been the chapel. It was certainly well supplied with the gilded grotto-like structures called 'retablos'.

This concert had just the kind of informal atmosphere I enjoy, with a good turn-out of relatives, and all the pieces were short, so no strain on the attention. Naturally, guitars featured prominently, fifteen all at once for once piece. fMy favourite was the Villa Lobos solo, though, and I was moved to tears by the concentration of the fourteen year old performer.

Even though I was driven there and back I wore my red coat for the first time. It´s milder now, and I´m back to my padded vest, or flak jacket as Roy calls it. So my musical education continues.

Ready to Fly: Storks in Zamora

It´s not unusual to see storks in the centre of Zamora. I could hardly believe it, all the same, when I first saw one pass overhead. It was warm enough, then, to sit in the Plaza Mayor and drink gin-tonic, Spanish size.

Sweeping over distant rooftops with legs and necks outstretched they circle like low-flying aircraft, then suddenly appear overhead, casting a shadow. The separated black wing feathers are clearly visible.

Yesterday they were unusually numerous, seven or eight circling all at once. Even the locals stood with faces upturned as I made my way to the library at 6pm. The birds not on the wing were perched on nests around the Plaza Mayor , or standing on chimneys, looking as if they might launch themselves any minute.

When I left the library an hour later it was dark and there was heaviest rainfall I´ve ever seen here . When I mentioned the birds´ unusual behaviour to Olga this morning she suggested they were getting ready to fly South. Like me, they know it´s almost time to go, but they´re savouring their final days in Zamora.

Fruits of the Earth

‘Old people can make ink from those –what do you call them?’ Jose Eladio the headmaster pointed to some strange-looking fungus growing under a tree. In front of the school, one or two trees of the pine variety are confined to square patches of earth. Spindly toadstools with frilly black edges had sprung up beside them.

The growth and harvesting of plants is something I’d been aware of in China, where Í´d watched farmers on the hillside opposite my flat. This had been forgotten in London, near a market supplying exotic fruit and veg from across the world and a supermarket full of canned and frozen goods. I was reminded, now, that plants are also a source of dyes and inks.

‘This time of year they also gather the kind you can eat’, said Jose Eladio. He added that the local people went out to collect them when certain weather conditions prevailed, such as showers followed by sun, to sell later. ‘Twelve Euros a kilo. It’s money for free!’

Next day a notice outside an upmarket restaurant in the historic centre advertised a week of speciality mushroom-based menus.

On Friday I took part in a harvest myself, ‘Come, Sheila’, Jose Eladio announced at break time. ‘We’re going to take the olives from the school tree.’

Some days before I´d been given a tour of an area the size and shape of a city allotment, not at its best in early November. Three large cabbages grew in an otherwise bare middle part. Some rosemary and other hardy herbs and thin trees grew around the perimeter. Conditions here don’t encourage luxuriant growth.

Between the silver and light green leaves of the olive tree, though, shiny oval black berries were clearly visible. A single pupil-volunteer held a plastic bag and helped the teachers pick, whilst his classmates played football. Here’s a young horticulturist-in-the making, perhaps.

The tree wasn’t big, and Jose Eladio could reach the highest berries.

I love olives, so I tasted one I´d picked. I immediately hurriedly spat it out; it was horribly bitter. The science teacher explained they’d need several days of soaking and changes of water to make them edible.

They’re now on the draining board in the staffroom, a timely reminder for a Londoner that olives don´t just come from tins and jars.

School Dinners

Here in Corrales the children are full of beans –literally. Today's treat is a Paella starter, with fish to follow, but I bet we'll see some beans tomorrow.

Lunch has three courses: a vegetable starter, which may be soup, green beans cooked with ham pieces or white beans with bits of chorizo, then almost always baked fish and lettuce, occasionally chicken or veal and lettuce, and bread. To finish, there’s fruit or yogurt.

The staff who eat at school, including me, have the same food. The children staying for lunch, who remain at school for afternoon activities, eat in a dining room. I usually go with Olga or another teacher to collect the teachers share from the kitchen. It comes back to the staffroom on a trolley.

Lunch is the time when I get to practise speaking Spanish, when I can get a word in, but there are usually no more than four of us. I still can’t understand much of what’s being said, except in a very general way. Teachers take it in turns to stay on each day and supervise the afternoon sessions.

Enough fuss has been made about English school dinners. Here it's more as I remember it back in the old days - except with more beans.

Have you heard the Angels singing?

Have you heard the Angels singing?

Lydia the music teacher tipped me off when she drove me to the village school in Corrales: sung music by Vivaldi and Purcell at the cathedral - by a group from London! She couldn’t attend herself. ‘It’s free, so arrive early to get a good seat’, she said.

It was the first time I’d seen the cathedral at night. The impressive dome dominated the skyline, and the interior was a vision of gilded splendour. On a previous visit I’d just wandered round a series of ante rooms, gawping at tapestries of the Siege of Troy, a massive Semana Santa procession platform, elaborately decorated silverware and paintings.

I needn’t have worried about a central position. The sponsors, Caja España, had provided monitor screens so the singers and players could be viewed in close-up – especially when the camera dwelt on a lively blonde first violinist and a handsome countertenor.

The strangest thing, for me, was the bars between the audience and performers – not light, decorative wrought iron, but heavy-duty ones that obscured the view. Some VIPs were allowed on the orchestra side.

While I waited I looked at the programme, with its alluring question on the cover: 'Have you heard the Angels sing?'. Inside was summary in Spanish of the lives of Purcell and Vivaldi, and the words in Spanish and English to the five settings of psalms by Purcell and then a Latin text for the Vivaldi ‘Dixit ….’ There was a short ‘sonata de trompeta’ between Purcell psalms. It was a hollow-sounding instrument of a dull copper colour, like an over-sized Victorian child’s toy.

The line-up for the moving Purcell psalms was a soprano, two counter-tenors and a tall baritone, with the occasional accompaniment from other singers. If there was one fault with the programme it didn’t have photos identifying individual performers, although Peter Pickett the conductor and founder of The New London Consort group was obvious. The concert was the first of four in cathedrals in Zamora, Valladolid, Leon and Palencia.

They saved the best ‘til last, and the Vivaldi, with everyone singing and playing together, was uplifting. Amid the applause that echoed round the roof, did I feel a hint of national pride? Or was it the angels singing?

I can’t get no calefacción…

I’d been looking forward to Saturday 24th, the day the heating was to come on. Yesterday was a mild 14° but mornings are a bit chilly and one day last week it reached only 8°, even at mid-day.

The notice in the hallway was dated 2008, but José Eladio assured me it was because it was the same date every year.

I was surprised, then, when the radiators were hot on Friday 23rd, when I arrived home from school. Not for long and not all of them – the bedroom and hall ones remained cold and the knob to make them hotter was stuck. Best not force them, I thought, after my disaster with the ‘persiana’ last week: I tugged the cord too hard and the blind disappeared into the box over the window.

The heat must be on a trial run, in case adjustments were needed.

Then the same thing happened on the 24th. The radiators had been on for an hour when I left the flat at one and were cold when I got back at seven. Today they haven’t come on at all. There’s obviously someone at the remote control, working to a bonus.

José Eladio and Olga have been so kind to me I don’t want to raise a further problem. They went out of their way to help when I arrived – Olga offering a room in her lovely flat, with my own bathroom, at such short notice, and José Eladio ringing agencies trying to find a place within the Vaughantown budget. In the end he resorted to friends and relations. He even drove me round to view and it wasn’t his fault the first one was too big.

When I expressed my thanks he said, ‘It’s normal’.

Are all Spaniards so kind and helpful? I think maybe they are. ‘It’s the weather’, says Olga.

School Trip to a Sewage Works

‘Sheila, I have something to tell you. Friday a coach comes to the school and we all get on. Then we go for –what do you call that?

‘A school trip?’

Jose Eladro, as always, looks pleased to learn a new English expression.

It’s Wednesday, my first day at Collegio Luis Casado , and I’m to have Thursday off thanks to some exchange that hasn’t been organised. So it’s been a one-day week.

‘Oh, that’s good.Where are we going?’

‘We visit a place where residual water is made cleaner’

What a coincidence. Only last week we said farewell to our temporary lodger, Stan, water treatment engineer whose new job had been confirmed. He said one of the company’s works was in Castile-y-Leon.

It was a bit noisy on the coach. ‘Corrales is a ‘shouty’ village said Lydia, who’s been teaching four years.

‘It’s the weather!’ said Olga

The presentation is too technical for me, so I’m impressed by how attentive the children are.

The children shout with horror when we enter the indoor part of the plant, and come out again holding their noses. ‘It’s whiffy.’, laughs Olga. It’s another word I taught her when I heard the Spanish pronunciation of ‘Wifi’.

After, we go to a church in the town of Benavente, which is much more interesting – twelfth century, elaborate gilded set pieces inside. I tell Olga that they remind me of the Byzantium exhibition I saw in London, but she surprises me when she tells me she prefers plain churches. Where does she find them? Not in Zamora, that’s for sure.

A Place of my Own

Tonight, at last, I'll unpack my suitcase.

Yesterday Jose Eladro, who 's unlike any headmaster I've ever met, took me to look at two flats in Zamora. The first, above a parade of shops near the station, was big, dark and dusty. I could soon become very depressed there, so I turned it down. That was a pity, because Jose Eladro's brother-in-law was the owner.

The second place, on the sixth floor near the river, overlooked a football pitch. There was only one bedroom, but a sofa bed in the living room should be OK for guests. It's not so near the historic centre, like Parador Olga, as I call the teacher's flat where I'm staying. But a stroll along the banks of the beautiful River Duermo will take me there in ten minutes. Alternatively, a walk down Santa Clara, the main street of the new town centre, leads to the old Plaza Mayor at the end.

The owner is an old colleague of Olga's. As Spaniards like to live near where they were born, there's an inevitable connection in small towns and cities.

I only realised this morning that I'd been so taken with the floor-to-ceiling window in the kitchen and the light, I hadn't even noticed whether there was a table in another room. The kitchen has only a breakfast bar, and I hope to do lots of writing in the flat, located in a street called Puerto Novo. 'A new door' said Olga, which sounds very auspicious

Our Reception at Vallalodid

The room for the official reception at Vallalodid reminded me of the Painted Dining Hall at Greenwich Naval College. It was smaller and older - the tenth-century building had played various roles, including serving as a monastry and, much later, a twentieth century psychiatric unit. On Tuesday the Minister for Education in Castile-Leon greeted us volunteers for the 'bilingual schools' project.

We were fourteen - more or less. One at least was still tracking down luggage left in Atlanta, and I'm not sure everybody caught the early train from Madrid. On my left in this photo(I'm in the middle smiling at the camera) is the only other volunteer from England -we'd travelled together by metro to Madrid railway station - although there's a Scottish lady in there somewhere. The others are retired teachers from America, Canada and Australia. We met for the first time at a tapas reception the previous night in Madrid.

At the same reception I'd met Richard Vaughan, the founder of Vaughantown systems, a company which brings native English speakers to Spain. It was under their aegis that I'd done a week's volunteering in Extramadura in September 2008.

What a contrast between the grandiose ceremonials and my actual workplace. We've been assigned to small towns and village all over the Castile-Leon region, and this is the playground of Luis Casado primary school -57 pupils and 8 teachers - in Corrales del Vino, (pop. 1,000) a few miles from the ancient capital, Zamora. Lucky for me, the teachers live in the city and drive out to the school.

Vaughan Town Volunteer

'What do you mean, you'd forgotten you'd applied?' said R. I'd just I told him I'd been accepted on a ten week  volunteer teaching programme in Spain., beginning in September

Sangria was a welcome refreshment at the Camino Bar, King's Cross when I went to share the news with J, my ex-colleague. I hadn't intended to go to the last Vaughan Town Meetup of 2009- most of the volunteer slots have been taken up for the rest of the year, so they don't need extra support from 'veterans' as Ian the organiser calls us.


Every month or so there's a Meetup and it's a chance to catch up with friends made on the programme - in my case a week in the Extramadura last September. It was too hot to venture out after 11am, unless to sit with my feet dangling in the swimming pool or in the air-conditioned hotel as I chatted to Spanish business people on an 'immersion' English language course. Over five days they had one-to-ones with all 14 of us 'Anglos' - Americans, Australians and British.

I learned quite a lot about local customs - for one thing that Spanish business people depend a lot on their families and and are reluctant to work abroad. They were all friendly and sociable.

I didn't get to speak much Spanish, except on the two short stays in Madrid before and after the course. Did I really do 80 hours? 'What can't speak can't lie', my late mother-in-law used to say, and it's there in black and white on the certificate. Maybe that includes the hilarious meal-times and the lovely long siestas, which I spent lying on my bed watching Spanish TV. It was one of the most enjoyable weeks I've ever had; no wonder people go back again and again.

For me, though, a week's too short. Vaughan Systems run a whole raft of English Language teaching activities in Spain.

'I'd have preferred a whole year, but my sense of wifely duty persuaded me to go for a shorter period'. R gave me a sceptical look and said, 'Wifely duty! That phrase doesn't exactly trip lightly off your tongue'. He did smile, though.

In March I'd applied for the Castile-Leon schools project, run jointly with the local Spanish education authorities to intoduce English speakers as classroom assistants into junior schools. Within a week I had an email to say the funding would only be settled much later. I promptly forgot about it. So it was a surprise when I received an email inviting me to join the programme on October 13th. I still can't quite believe it.

'It's not as if I'm off to climb Everest or paddle round the world in a canoe'. After a while he softened and began to enquire about the weather in Castile-Leon in October. I suppose it occcurred to him that besides basking in sympathy at the bridge club, there's always Easyjet for long weekends. As I said, it's not as far as China. And it's only for two months.

I wonder if it'll be warm enough for Sangria.

Vaughan Town: www.vaughantown.com/EnglishNew/programavolunteers.asp

Camino Bar: www.timeout.com/london/restaurants/reviews/10918.html