After a delicious and adventure filled weekend, we are back to classes on this, again cool and wet, Tuesday. Begoña does not hesitate to throw subjunctive mood at us bright and early. Most of us have to teach subjunctive, so many of us are engaged as she explains how to accurately use dependent and independent clauses. We all appreciate this theme on our own terms, and what I take away is her suggestion to incorporate cultural information while having students give an opinion about things like, for example, kissing each other on both cheeks every time you meet up with friends in Spain, or arriving late after agreeing on a time to meet. We also play a guessing game that sends a person out in the hallway who must come back and guess where s/he is based on our clues that include indicative and subjunctive sentences. It's fun because we are language geeks. Example: It's true that you hear music. It is sad that the music is too loud. You hope that they play your favorite song. Answer: You're at a concert.
Francisco probably had a lesson plan for today, but all I needed to do was ask one question, and the rest was, well, history. Kyle Jacobs (Kip's son who studies Spanish at Carleton College) asked me to find out what I could about a case called "el caso Garzon." It has to do with the very bold,
Spanish judge who went after the Chilean Dictator,
Augusto Pinochet. Opinions abound on this current topic, and the future promises more headlines that look back more than 70 years. The new Historic Memory Law called "la ley de memoria historica" is a touchy topic that attempts to sort out the pain and suffering of the twentieth century in Spain. Our trip to Guernica this afternoon will surely shed more light on this polemic.
Ana takes us out for pintxos in the casco viejo neighborhood (the old part of town). We overeat our way to happiness and stroll through the plaza nueva before we walk a kilometer or so to the train station for our 45 minute ride to Guernica. The key stops in Guernica include the Peace Museum, the Henry Moore sculpture, the Casa de Juntas and famous Guernica Oak Tree. Seeing and understanding the Casa de Juntas helps us realize that Guernica played an important politcal and symbolic role in the history of the Basque Country. This helps explain why Franco had
Hitler and Mussollini bomb this otherwise small and militarily insignificant town. Most believe it was to send a message, by hitting the Basque Country in one of its most popular trading and cultural centers. E
yewitnesses gave their accounts to journalists while Franco's journalists claimed the "Reds" were actually responsible. The Peace Museum makes a terrific effort NOT to glorify war, and instead focuses on the value of peace, and what it actually means to live in peace. This is very thought provoking museum that puts peace front an center in an effort to move us forward as a people so we can avoid the things that caused this tragedy in 1937.
The building on the right is the
Peace Museum in Guernica. It's worth a visit. Please read the Tools for peace below printed in four languages at the museum: English, French, Spanish and Euskera.
Tools for peace
Firm dialogue
Respect for human rights
Looking to the future
Honoring our fellow human beings
Putting ourselves in the other party's position
Listening to different opinions
Searching for common ground
Meditating to unite the wishes of both parties
Inventing and creating
Gearing the situation towards reconciliation
Admitting our mistakes
Thinking positively
Investigating and discovering other realities
Confronting postures in a positive fashion
Reviewing laws and regulations
Not stigmatizing persons and their problems
Standing up to injustice
Making our postures more flexible
It goes like this: "Upon awaking, the dinosaur was already there." My translation is probably as good as the next guy's, but it sounds a bit more clever and nuanced in Spanish, which is another reason to have students read the original. Today's topic in Francisco's class is how to select authentic literature in the L2 classroom. Allow me to mention just one: it should be at the students' level +1, enough to hook them while also challenging them. The examples, playful and thought-provoking, come from writers like Mario Benedetti and Gloria Fuentes. 
A very traditional Spanish game is called the hankerchief game. Someone holds the "pañuelo" between two evenly divided teams. The holder calls out a number and the numbered person on each side has to respond quickly, run and grab the "pañuelo" and run back to their side before being tagged. We saw this being played on the beach, and the teenagers were having a blast. There is an endless number of variations on this game, and Begoña uses it with relative clauses that call for subjunctive. Another game to use as a warm up is called "a mi derecha," where a student who has a vacant desk to his/her right uses a relative clause and subjunctive to see who stands up and sits in that empty chair. The new student who has an empty chair on the right does the same until everyone has gone. Example: I am looking for someone who has a birthday in June. This requires subjunctive in Spanish, and if it's your birthday month you get up and sit on the speaker's right. We can all adapt this game in some form. Begoña pushes forward in the book, and tomorrow we get to do more subjunctive. Yippee! 
Spaniards have a rich literary tradition growing out of newspapers, and therefore, the comics have perhaps played a bigger role than in American culture. Just like Peanuts was a comic before it debuted on t.v. so too have many Spanish comics evolved. He gives us some good tips on how to use them in class, and we learn that the bubbles that hold the speech are called "bocadillos." I asked what we called them in English, and "bubbles" seems right, but please comment if you know better. Maddy suggested we check out http://www.toondoo.com/ for more comic ideas. 
King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia
