Two Month Check-In

Unbelievably, I have been in Lanzarote for over two months! It simultaneously feels like I have been here forever and for no time at all. The adjustment to living here was so much smoother than I anticipated, and so far I haven’t experienced much homesickness (sorry mom, love you!!). Since I haven’t posted in a while, I’m going to take this opportunity to give a rundown of how my life is going, which is what travel blogs are for anyways.

Keeping the cool in school

After having the experience (nightmare?) of being a fulltime lead teacher in the United States, I barely feel like I’m teaching at all here. Sure, I go to the school building four times a week, but it’s really low-lift compared to what I was dealing with before. Sometimes, I even feel a little bored with what I’m doing in school, and I’m trying to figure out what level of responsibility I want to have in the classroom. On the one hand, I am quite confident that I am not meant to be a teacher, and nothing about this experience is challenging that belief. On the other hand, I feel happiest when my skills are being put to good use, and I don’t necessarily feel like that is happening here.

I know that among my motivations for doing the Fulbright grant, teaching kids wasn’t at the top of my list—I wanted to participate in a cultural exchange, improve my Spanish, experience life abroad, and challenge myself to get out of my comfort zone. However, that does not mean that my students don’t matter to me. My interactions with my students are an important part of the cultural exchange. We learn about and from each other every day, and I do genuinely enjoy spending time with children, I just know I don’t want to dedicate my life to it. While at first I was disappointed to only be placed with three-year-olds and first graders, now I’m grateful for the chance to form deeper relationships with my students since I get to see them almost every school day. Many auxiliars are placed with every grade, so they see their students once a week or less. I love seeing my kids make progress and become more comfortable using English with me. I even love the chorus of mispronounced “Claires” that greets me when I walk in the room. If you talk to me on the phone at any point I will do an impression of this whether you ask me to or not. Cler, Claaaaar, Clay, Claow, Clier. It’s hilarious.

F is for friends

Aside from making it happen at school, I have been having a lot of FUN with my FRIENDS, both American and Spanish.

In October, I had the absolute pleasure of hosting a friend that I had met during my Fulbright orientation way back in September. TJ is an English teaching assistant in Andorra, and since we are both a few years out of college we really clicked at orientation. Even though we had only been acquainted for four days (96 hours!) we decided it was just about the right time in our friendship to plan an extended weekend visit! Obviously this plan could have gone awry, but we were both pleasantly surprised to find that our instincts for finding cool people at orientation were sharp. We had an absolutely lovely weekend exploring the island and catching up on our respective Fulbright experiences.

My weekend with TJ also offered an opportunity to deepen my connections with some local friends I have met. One of TJ’s main goals for the weekend was to visit Timanfaya National Park, a famous park that encompasses a volcano and a lava field. The park isn’t accessible by public transportation, but fortunately I was able to #work my connections and my private English student/ emerging friend Veronica said she was able to take us. TJ and I were so excited to get out into nature and hit some trails, so of course we dressed in athletic gear. Veronica, along with her boyfriend and sister, picked us up from Arrecife and first made a stop at Veronica’s house in a town nearby. They took some time getting ready, and to our surprise they all emerged wearing jeans, nice shirts, and fashionable shoes. TJ and I didn’t think twice—we know Europeans are more stylish, and maybe they just don’t own any good ole-fashioned American activewear.

Next, we got in the car and said we hadn’t had time to buy snacks for the park, so Veronica kindly brought us to a gas station to get food. It struck us as odd that the three actual Spaniards didn’t have any food or water—maybe they were expecting us to pick something up for them too? Due to the confusion and the lack of options in the gas station, we ended up buying a big water bottle, an entire loaf of bread, three bananas, and a small can of Pringles. Perfect sustenance for a long hike!

When we entered the park, we drove up a long hill to a restaurant parking lot full of giant tour buses. “Okay!” Veronica said in Spanish, “this is where you get on the bus. We’re just going to wait in the restaurant.” TJ and I looked at each other… the bus? Maybe the bus would take us to the trails? And that’s why our three new Spanish friends hadn’t worn hiking clothes? We got on the bus, not sure what to expect, and found that Timanfaya actually consists of a guided tour on an air-conditioned bus. The most we walked in Timanfaya was from the car to the bus! We definitely looked and felt a little silly, but we had fun laughing at ourself over wine and tapas at a local winery afterwards.

Getting Around

Aside from hosting TJ, I also recently had the opportunity to visit the neighboring island of Fuerteventura. The program director of Fulbright had arranged for the Lanzarote and Fuerteventura English Teaching Assistants to meet with her in Corralejo, Fuerteventura to talk about our experiences. Getting to Fuerteventura without a car involves an hour-long bus ride, a 35-minute ferry ride, then another hour-long bus ride to get to the town where our Fulbright friends live. In order to make the trip worthwhile, my friend Kai and I decided to make it a long weekend and spend some more time with our Fuerteventura colleagues.

Fuerteventura’s dry, volcanic landscape is a lot like that of Lanzarote. However, the island itself is much bigger which meant that the beaches and mountains were bigger and more spread out. This made for some spectacular views, but definitely means that Fuerteventura is much harder to navigate without a car. Thanks to the spectacularly brave and talented Fulbright Friend © Maddy, the group rented a minivan for two days and were able to explore the farthest reaches of the island. Maddy absolutely crushed driving a large standard transmission van around barely-paved mountain roads all weekend, and we will all be forever indebted to her. If we had been limited to the less-developed bus system, I think our trip wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun.

As impressed as I was by the beaches and mountains of Fuerteventura, I was ready to get back to sweet, sweet Lanzarote by the end of the weekend. Getting off the island renewed my appreciation for the all-white architecture, the easy-to-use buses, the accessible beaches, the thoughtfully landscaped cactus gardens, and of course the wonderful people who continue to make my time here so special. In summary, I am quite in love with this random little island.