Placement

This week I got my placement for teaching next year as a part of my masters program. I have been placed at Real Colegio Alfonso XII in San Lorenzo de el Escorial. Having been to the town during study abroad, I of course googled the address, and something seemed a little strange about the supposed location. So I went to the school's website, and sure enough... my future school takes up about a quarter of Spain's largest building, a massive monastery and summer palace that was built in the mid 1500s, though my school itself wasn't founded until 1875.

So that's exciting! The town itself is quite small (around 20.000), and tucked up in the hills north of Madrid. I'm going to have a hell of a commute to class twice a week, around two hours each way on commuter rail and metro... but at least I know when I'll get my homework done I guess! It will be nice to be in a smaller town since I'm going to be so busy between teaching 24 lessons a week and doing my degree. To downtown Madrid only takes about 50 minutes and trains and buses leave every twenty minutes or so and run overnight.

It's funny, because before this week I have to admit that I wasn't particularly excited about heading to Spain... it was just all too vague. Now, though, I'm excited. Just for fun, I've included some photos I took of the palace during my visit there almost five years ago. If you could have told 19-year-old Lauren that one day she was going to be a) a teacher and b) teaching in that massive, gorgeous, impressive building, I'm sure she would have laughed you into silence. 19-year-old Lauren was something of a jerk, though.

It's real. I'm moving to Spain.