Day 8 - Maria

Monday 13, 2019

If you’re wondering why we haven’t been posting blogs it’s because we haven’t had any wifi in the AirB&B. But don’t worry, we are all safe in Madrid and having an excellent time. Today has been an amazing day! We woke up, ready to take on the day, had breakfast at the apartment, packed a delicious sandwich with jamón Serrano and the finest cheeses of Spain, and headed out to the Spanish school we would be visiting. 

We drove for 45 minutes and finally arrived at SEK Ciudalcampo International School. We were immidiately welcomed with open arms by the school’s vice principal, and we started the school tour. It was a very different experience from Post Oak as they have 1,413 students from 14 months going onto high school. Throughout the tour we were able to see many similar learning environments as in Post Oak, like the Tinqueria and the labs. Their younger classrooms had a lot of similarities to the Montessori system. However, the older grades were not Montessori based. Towards the end of the tour we where able to interact with a few students in Spanish, and ask and answer questions about our differing cultures. The Spanish students proposed important questions and brought up important topics like gun control, politics, as well as other general areas regarding growing up in the United States. At the end, we said our goodbyes and headed back to the city to prepare for our economics lecture.

The economics lecture was a complete success! We met with an economics professor Mario Barceló from a university here in Madrid who also works as a finance advisor for businesses. We were provided a delicious merienda before the lecture by Maria’s family which got us all energy fueled. During the lecture we discussed things like the different sectors of the economy of Spain, the economic crisis of 1973 and Spains merge into the European Union in 1986, the economic crisis of 2007 caused by the housing bubble and its effects on Spain, unemployment in Spain, and the economic aspect behind Cataluña’s independence conflict with Spain. It was an incredible experience to see world conflicts like the housing bubble of 2007 but from a completely different perspective.

To end this fabulous day, we headed on to a typical Tablao flamenco, which is the typical dance here in Spain which originated in the South, specifically in Sevilla in the 18th century. It was a beautiful end to our day, and the flamenco dancers transmitted all of their passion and emotion from their dancing and zapateo onto us. 

PS: The end of our night was actually a delicious slice of pizza (we know, not very Spanish) from a nearby restaurant.

 Here is the group in the Spanish school lab during our tour and outside the school with the vice principal who gave us the tour.

 Here are the students after our Spain economics conference with the economist.

 Here are the students on the roof of the Hyatt hotel where we had our economics conference. 

 Here is a picture of the Flamanco dancer on stage during her performance.