July 11, First Day of Classes

Seventeen of us sit in a seminar style U shape of desks facing our professors at the front of the room.  We come from Canada and the US, from places like Milwaukee, Seattle, San Francisco, California, New York, Virginia , New Jersey, Alaska, Florida, Texas, Virginia and Alberta.  Some of us teach elementary school, middle school, high school and college.  Our three classes include Spanish Language with Professor Begonia Miguel Perez, Didactic Classroom Resources with Francisco Soguero and Multicultural Spain with Ana Ruiz Bazan.  Click on this video to get a sense of what the University of Deusto is like.  It's history covers hundreds of years.  Read more.
 On this first day of classes, we meet the teachers, introduce ourselves and tour the campus.  In the afternoon we do a walking tour of some key areas in downtown Bilbao.  This town is very pedestrian friendly and offers metro, light rail, busses, bike lanes, riverwalks, and boating in the calm saltwater / brackish river that rises and falls with the tides.  We visit the "casco viejo," the old part of town, which is full of shoppers, tourists, venders and locals, young and old alike.  No one seems to be in a hurry on this sunny and breezy Monday.  We walk up the 200 steps to the Basilica  to get a bird's eye view of the city and then find a place to rent bicycles.  Our homework from the Didactic Resources class is to read an article about using newspapers in the teaching of language.  Each class includes a separate spiral bound book, which is nicely organized and promises to keep us engaged on many levels.

the basilica