Now you've all stopped laughing at my hilarious blog title, here's what's been crack-a-lacking down in Bera town.
For those of you who may be a bit confused as to what the Basque Country is, I shall explain. The Basque Country is a region situated in the north of Spain, which spans the border between Spain and France (I actually could have paddled to France today, no lie. paddled!). It has it's own language which is completely unique and doesnt derive from Latin like most european languages, to me it sounds like a mix of japanese and spanish (they refer to it as euskera). The Basque Country collects its own taxes and has its own education system but as far as human rights go, thats upto the spanish government. Basque nationalism has caused much politcal tension in the last century. You may have heard of ETA, a basque nationalist and seperatist group who recently declared their "ceasefire". In the last 50 years they have killed over 800 people and kidnapped and injured thousands. Many political parties in the Basque Country have been banned due to their affiliation with ETA and sharing the same political goals. But enough about politics!
All the people I've met over the past few weeks be it in San Sebastián, Bera or Pamplona fully indentify themselves as basque. Not spanish. Basque. They don't call em tapas up here, they call em pinchos ('pintxos'). Everything I learnt about the cultural norms and values of Spain has now gone out of the window.
So my school is in Bera, which is a very rural area. Bera is actually in the region of Navarra, but it is so far north that it would identify itself as being in the Basque Country. The weather was beautiful today, around 26 degrees, so I was grateful for the fire drill during the afternoon. Bera is a really beautiful place flanked by two huge mountains, I'll hopefully get some pictures up tomorrow. All the pupils come from a small area in Navarra called Bortziriak (which means 5 towns). As I mentioned in the last post, the kids all communicate with each other in basque, as do the staff. This can be a bit tricky for me as I don't speak basque but theyre more than happy to speak spanish with me.
So the kids have been really good, it's amazing how good they are with english compared to kids in England. Seen as they don't know me, they've been preparing questions to ask me so they can get to know a bit about me. Simple questions like...how old are you? are you married? do you like sports? are you a virgin? do you smoke weed? The usual really. They all seemed interested in my tattoos. As they are from such rural areas, they have never seen someone who is heavily tattooed like myself so its a bit weird for them. However, the staff (especially the head mistress) don't have a problem with them at all. They teach the kids to respect people for who they are and not how they look. Maybe schools in the UK should take a leaf out of their book and stop being so backward about the issue of tattoos in a school environment.
Some of them are a bit hyper and cheeky at times, but after working at Malet Lambert in Hull for a year where I was threatened to be stabbed and called a "fucking silly cunt" and being told that I have a "right nice arse" by a 12 year old, this job is a piece of piss!
Today, I had my own class of 10. The school is tiny compared to UK standards where some schools have around 1500 pupils. The kids were 11 and 12 and trying to tell them what to do in english can be a bit of an issue so I had to explain some things in spanish. I got them to make me a presentation on the computer about english culture i.e types of food, famous buildings, famous/important people. They did really well and I was extremely proud of one girl who managed to remember what constitutes a full english breakfast. She'll go far. I could do with a full english though myself....
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