The Witch's Dead!!!!!

Yesterday was my first day of student teaching!!  The kiddos were great the all the faculty are very welcoming.  Unfortunately I did not meet my teacher because she was out with the stomach bug, so it was subs all day!  Interesting tid bits I've seen... teachers don't eat with kids or in the lunch room and after lunch kids have recess and teachers don't go with them.  The teachers get like an hour for lunch.  They can go off base and eat or whatever they prefer.  That's competely different from the states.  Also, in the bathrooms, there is a button on the side of the wall that flushes the toilet. Very strange!! What else... oh.. you don't throw food or drink into the trash cans.  They have seperate bins for that all over the school and in the cafetereia.  It's called wet trash (go figure).  That's taken some getting used to.  

So today my teacher came and she is AWESOME!!  She's been teaching for 41 years.. holy cow that's a lonnng time!  Her first priority is the kids no matter what!  She's such an interesting lady and I think I'm going to learn a lot from her.  She already wants me to start teaching this week... which I guess is cool.  Might as well dive on in... After kiddos comes me.  She wants me to have the best experience so she's trying her best to make that happen.  Ms. Welke knows all of her students personally and this morning she took time to speak to each child about something that's going on in their life that she knew about.  TRUE DEDICATION!!

Now.. I know y'all are wondering what's up with the witch thing!  Well today is an Italian holiday; they are celebrating the three kings or something.  Well the night before this holiday all the little towns have HUGE bonfires!!  I mean like really really big ones..  And they have like a celebration of the burning of the Salem witch trials!  So, I went to the bonfire and it was crazy just how big it was.  I'm standing there, admiring the fire and all of the sudden I see a huge cross at the top of the bonfire in flames!!  OMG.. it was crazy.. the cross had a head on it and that symbolizes the witches.  We're out in the middle of this field with a humongous fire and they have a dj who's playing music.. a big screen that's showing a video of how they got the bonfire so big... serving food.  Oh the food was awesome.. It was like pieces of grilled goat cheese (just slices of cheese no bread or anything), grilled salami(looked like sausage), oh and everything is cooked medium rare so, Julie if you come here watch out!!  And there were these like cornmeal cakes that were grilled.  they were awesome as well!!  But it was awesome just hangin out with the locals and the local traditions.  Oh, and everything was free too! They gave out door prizes and they were poinsettias... how strange!!  Then I had to tell everyone where the poinsettias came from of course!! :) So, that's what's been going on so far this week.  I'm off to grade papers and eat dinner!  Ciao!