Day 21- Last Day(s)

For our last full day we wandered around Alpedrete for the last time, taking in the sights. We headed over to Villalba in the evening for dinner and once again another last look before heading home at about 10ish to finish packing (it was a late night).

Our last last morning was spent tidying and packing and panicking and packing again. About two minutes before we were meant to leave we finished double checking everything and waited for Ava. Ava very kindly brought us to the Villalba train station where we got the C10 direct to the Airport-Terminal 4. She even brought us to our platform (platform 1) and stayed with us to make sure it was the right one. From there it was about an hour and twenty minutes to the airport, where we went through terminal 4 and out to the taxi and bus ranks where we got a free shuttle bus to terminal 1 and began to check in.

Our last day started off a bit hectic but we had everything so well planned and organised that from the train onwards everything was smooth sailing or flying as it were.

We've truly had a great time these last twenty-one days, a large part of which was writing this blog. We'll miss it and each other. Adiós.

Day 20 - Finishing School and Reflection

Today was officially our last day teaching the students. It was really strange because it has been the quickest few weeks of our lives, it seems like only yesterday we met the students and now we're already finished.
We had Year Nines to start off with first thing, and for this class, we wanted to focus on theatre. With our project we wanted to focus on different aspects of Creative Writing, so we decided o focus on:

• Characters
• Writing a Story
• Adapting a Story

They all made their characters and wrote their stories using their characters (but for this exercise Year Nines would be using the story they made up yesterday as they got through work and exercises a lot faster than we anticipated). 

For this exercise, we firstly explained what they were going to do, and we told them to imagine that they were watching the story they wrote on stage; how could they imagine it looking? Where were their characters standing? What were they wearing? What did the stage look like?

We put a list on the board of what they should think about;

• Set
• Props
• Costumes
• Lighting
• Sound

We asked them to go through this list and to write what they would need or how they would imagine each of these items would look on stage.

The students all got really into it really fast, they discussed in their groups together and the seemed to find the exercise really interesting and they all put a good bit of effort into it. 

When they finished, they all read out their lists and explained it. 

After everyone had read out their list, Jass and I walked around the room and gave every student (and their teacher) a booklet we typed, printed, and stapled together, that had all the work they done over the past few weeks. In the booklet, there was all the characters they created, the prompts they used, and all the stories they wrote. Everyone was really happy to get this, they genuinely seemed to like it and they seemed excited to see their own stories written typed up inside of it.

Jass and I then thanked the students for being a great class, we said goodbye, and we headed off to Year Sevens. 

For Year Sevens, we done the same thing again, we asked them to think of how they would put their stories on stage, and how the points above would be.

Like Year Nines, they got straight into their work, discussing excitedly how they would imagine it looking.

Once they were done, we got them to read them out, and like before, once again, we gave out booklets with all their work inside if it. 

Again, the students really loved it, they opened them instantly to look for their own stories, and they were really excited about it (one student even came up to correct us on a spelling mistake in a characters name). 

Like before, we thanked them and said our final goodbyes before heading to our very last class as teachers.

Year Eights class ended up being different than the other two, since their classroom is connected to the stage, and since the theatre was empty, we decided to bring them in so they could use the stage to imagine their play. However, some students asked if they could perform their story on stage for the rest of the class to see, we didn't have any problems with that, so rehearsals officially began. They split into their groups and went around to separate parts of the hall to start practicing. From every corner, there was laughter and talking and shouting as they excitingly rehearsed. 

 Nearing the end of class, they all went up group by group to perform their story. Each one was entertaining and quite funny, and both Jass and I (and even their teacher) were amazed about how quickly they were able to come up with a performance for their story in such a short period of time, and how they managed to make them so entertaining and well done.

We all applauded as the last group finished, and as with the other groups, we gave out their booklet with the collection of their work inside. As like before, the students were all really happy to be getting a memento of all the work they've done over the past few weeks. 

Jass and I said our last goodbye to the students and the teachers and we left the school, officially finished our few weeks of being teachers. 

As we walked home from the school, we reflected on the past few weeks teaching in the school. It has honestly been a once in a lifetime opportunity, we've gotten so much great experience from teaching the kids, and learning from the kids also. As well as gaining new writing ideas and experience from them.  All of the teachers told us that the work we've done was really great and that all the students have been really enthusiastic about the project as it went along. While there were so many positives from this experience, there were also many challenges. One of the biggest challenges we have faced has definitely been the language barrier. While the students all spoke really good English, at times it was still hard to understand them, and sometimes they didn't know how to word things correctly. Although we weren't the only ones with some difficulty understand, the students sometimes didn't understand what we were saying, we had to get into the habit of speaking slower and pronouncing our words more clearly. These are all challenges we overcame throughout the few weeks (well, apart from the last day as I lost my voice and once again, I was hard to understand, whoops.) Teaching in the school was probably the best opportunity either of us has ever gotten, we are so grateful that we got to experience something so wonderful and that we got to be apart of these students creative journey. It has made both me and Jass think if teaching is something we would actually want to pursue in our futures. 

We both came over expecting to learn a little bit of Spanish, a few phrases here and there, but that proved to be wrong. Neither of us learned any new phrases, we learned a handful of words (the word for credit card, and perhaps) the only Spanish words or phrases we do know are the ones we learned previous to coming over. However, we did become very good at interpreting what people were saying when we didn' understand them, this happened especially when we were ordering food and whatnot. 

Being over here has been a real culture shock. We had to get used to the way of life over here, which is much different than in Ireland. One thing we never really did get used to is the Siesta, having shops close from three to five daily was strange, I can't count how many time we tried to go buy something just to find all the shops closed. A good cultural difference that we came to enjoy is Tapas, whenever you order a drink over here, you're giving a little plate of food (although we didn't really order much drink apart from the first three days). While not really a cultural difference, we both were shocked by the way roads worked over here, in Alpedrete, there was not one traffic light anywhere, and zebra crossings don't seem to work the same way as in Ireland, and when we did find traffic lights in Madrid, there were no buttons to press on them, weird. 

Through all these language barriers and cultural differences, we've learned a lot about this country and ourselves. We were given this great opportunity to teach and explore and whilst we done all of that we also learned a lot about ourselves and each other. We both feel that getting to take part in Erasmus and getting to come over here to Spain, has been the best experience of our lives. We are so grateful that we were chosen and trusted to do the work and make sure that we did a good project for the students. 

We are both going to miss being over here, we've gotten very accustomed to our way of life, and we really are going to miss the amazing times and the amazing experiences we had. 

We are now looking forward to enjoying our last day in Alpedrete before we say goodbye. 

Day 19- Back To School (Year 8's stories included)

Thursday we were back into the school again ready to continue on with our projects. We had Year 9's first, a class that has so far excelled at every task we've given them and completed them quicker than we could come up with new ones. Our original plan was to use their stories from the prompts (posted in Day 17) for our last class using them to show the kids how to adapt it to a stage setting, but we still had a class to fill until then. Having used all of our previous plans and then some already we simply placed them into groups again and got them to completely invent their own story, no prompts from us or characters made in another class. This worked quite well, and with it being Year 9's it was all finished within the hour so we had something to work with the following day.

We had to give up our Year 7 Class as they had drama so instead we spent the hour printing off the completed works (which in hindsight we did not realise quite how much work and time was involved in printing alone).

Afterwards we had Year 8's who finished their stories within the hour that we later went home to type up.



Year 8 Stories done in Groups, typed up word-for-word:

The Story of Jardel Roosvelt and his Magic Book

Jardel lives in a poor house with his mom and is very lonely. Jardel was a little boy and he didn't have any mouth, he also had white eyes but he could see perfectly. Jardel couldn't talk but he could write.

One day Jardel finds out that on the beach of his village there was a rock in the water that was like 30 metres away from the sand, so he decided to go swimming. Jardel was going to the gigantic rock and when he was about 10 meters away he found that the rock had a cave that went under the water. When he got to the cave he saw a gigantic hole that went down under water so he decided to go down when he got to the part that was on the ending he found a person dead that had a book and a pencil with a rubber. Jardel got the book and the pencil with the rubber to see what was that. On the front part of the book put "The Book of the Wishes". Jardel opened the book and saw that the book was blank so there he noticed that "the book of the wishes" meant that what you write on the book became real. Jardel tried writing these words "I wish to have a mouth and two beautiful and bright blue eyes". So, magically, Jardel now had a mouth and two beautiful eyes. So he decided to go back to his house and show it to his mom.

The next day…

Jardel wakes up and shows the book to his mom. Jardel's mom noticed that he had now a mouth and blue eyes and was very happy. But she didn't know how so Jardel showed the book to his mom and she was fascinated. Jardel's mom had the idea of writing that they had a beautiful and enormous house to told Jardel to write it and the magically they were in an enormous house with lots of food and lots of expensive things. His mom was now very happy. Jardel already used two wishes but what he didn't know is that each wish would take away ten years of his life.

Jardel made another three wishes that were:

1. One billion dollars
2. An expensive car
3. Expensive clothes

These three wishes made Jardel die so his mom got very sad.

After a week his mom was still very sad so she committed suicide and their family buried her next to her son.

18th October 1973

Today, I saw that man again. He was there, looking at the door of the arrivals in the airport. Him, as always, with his pink shirt, blue trousers, pink socks and his black loafers. This time he came earlier, at six am. I saw him because I was organising the next flight to israel. I am going to pass the next two weeks there, if when I come I see him again, I will need to talk with him.

I went to Israel, and when I came back that man was still there. I asked him who was he waiting for. He said he was waiting for Rick Williams. The man looked serious. I told him I'm Rick Williams. He told me that he needs to speak to me, he knows something about my past.

I thought it was all a joke, so I told him to go home and never come back. He insisted. "Who are you?" I asked.

"You have to come with me".

"I'm not going with you"

"But you have to," he insisted.

"Let's go," I accepted.

20th October 1973

That man took me to my house, the house where my parents were murdered.

"Why are we here?"

"This is where you were born"

"I know, but how do you know? Who are you?

"Rick, I am…"

"Who? Tell me!"

"I am...your father."

Once, I woke up on a Tuesday morning, I looked out the window and it seemed like I was the only person on the Earth. As I walked down down town road in California. I saw lots of dead bodies on the floor. I was scared since I was all alone. So, then I thought to myself, “What should I do now?” After couple minutes of crying, I ran back to my house, grabbed the phone and called the police. Nobody responded. Suddenly, I knew I was getting very nervous. So, I didn't know what to do. I was like if I didn't learn nothing, or as if I was blocked.

The time was going really, really slow.

    A month later, it came the day for me to turn 17 years old, I didn't know how to celebrate it, seeing as nobody was in McDonald's, I decided to go there on my own, and eat a Big Mac on my own. Ten minutes after eating I started to cry, thinking that all my friends could have celebrated it with me on this special occasion.

    I was alone, and also was really scared because lots and lots of spiders, and not only that, also lots of different animals. I could only see some as monkeys, elephants, snakes, mouse, horse, makako, baboon and turtles.

Maricarmen finds herself in a bookshop searching a book for a class project. Suddenly, a book caught her eye, a strange attracted her to it. As she reached to grab it, she noticed a soft leather material decorated it, and yet it gave an impression of an ancient book, dust covered it. A tiny voice whispered “Buy it, buy it.” Without thinking it twice, she grabbed the book, took out her purse, and bought it.

Once she arrived home, she was determined to open it and start the project. When, surprisingly, she was shocked to find all the pages blank, except one. The first page was marked in black ink, 'Maricarmen, whatever you write in this book will become true.' and written underneath were the initials 'J.P'. She immediately threw the book, as she felt the frustration running through her veins. What kind of a prank was that? Hate invaded her, as she thought about it even more. As soon as she read the message she immediately knew it was a prank.  She decided she would take advantage and give it use by using it as her diary, since she had recently finished her last one.

That night, as always, she started to write every one of her wishes on the first page, as she had done in most of her diaries. The next morning, the sun shined brighter, she awoke with the smile of her mother and father back from foreign countries. This was extremely unusual, since her father only visited them once a year at Christmas.

Once she arrived at school and found, surprisingly, Miguel waiting for her in the entrance, he greeted her. The next few months she became very popular, but she became more distant with Pablo, her best friend. Everything seemed perfect. But, it all seemed false. The laughs, the cries, all seemed to be false. She preferred her other life, she had to get rid of the cursed book that had changed her entire life.

She was determined to discover the truth as she walked into the same book shop she entered a few months ago. She asked how to get rid of the cursed life that the book gave her. The last attending her didn't understand a clue. But, out of nowhere,an old, experienced woman said “Write what you wish for now and throw it out of a window.” She ran home and did everything that the woman had said. The next morning, Pablo was waiting at school for her. Happiness filled her.

This was her life.

Day 18 - Museum and "Markets"

We were finally able to proceed with the plans that we had planned for Monday. We were able to book our tickets for the 'Museo Nacional Thyssen - Bornemisza' and we headed off into Madrid to see some art.
We got into the museum and walked around looking at all the amazing artwork. Some paintings took our breath away with how spectacular how were.
Since coming to Madrid we've noticed many differences between Ireland and Spain, e.g Siestas, rules of the road, how people talk (not just talking about language), etc, but, there are also similarities, for example, in both Irish and Spanish museums, the vast majority of people there are tourists, while walking around, we heard more English speaking people than any other language, it was quite surreal and comforting, as for the past three weeks, we've heard very little English apart from in the school, and while we didn't get into conversation with any English speaking people in the museum, it was nice to just hear it as we walked around.

By far though, the best part of the museum and the part we enjoyed the most was, of course, the Vincent Van Gogh paintings. Van Gogh is my favourite painter ever, and Jass really enjoys his artwork too. There were three of his paintings on display and we were both awestruck by the sheer magnificence and beauty of them.

I was overjoyed to be able to see these paintings in person. It officially makes it five of Van Gogh's paintings that I have seen in my life. This is another reason why I am so grateful that I got the opportunity to do Erasmus and go to Madrid, getting to teach Creative Writing to students in another country is just incredible, being able to see their talent and helping them write their own stories and create their own characters is incredible, and something I'm so grateful to do, but, as well as that, I'm so grateful to come to another country and see all these amazing things, from castles, to zoos, to museums, getting to see them all is just indescribable, and I am so grateful I have gotten to see them.

After wandering around the museum for longer, and admiring more paintings (We even got great story ideas from some of the paintings!) we decided to finish up in the museum and head off to the market by Retiro Park. We were at the market on one of our first days in Madrid, we didn't pick much up though. We wanted to go back today to get presents and whatnot for our families. Markets are a huge cultural thing in Madrid, there are always loads on throughout the year, when Googling what things we should do in Marid, half of what came in was in regards to Markets.
 However, when we got to Retiro Park,  we found that the only part of the market that was open was the book market. Last time, there had been many stalls selling clothes, and jewellery and assorted items. We were disappointed but just went on to look around the shops in Madrid instead.

Day 17- A Day for Work (Story Prompts, Year 8 characters and Year 9 stories included)

Tuesday was a busy day for us, but not in the usual we-did-a-lot-of-exploring sense but in a more productive and school related sense. We spent the start of our morning catching up on blogs that had been neglected before going into the school at 3:45 for an extra class with Year 8's. Within this class we got the class to do some writing games and exercises as all our previous classes had been rather lecture heavy, with us mostly giving a presentation on a topic and then getting them to write. This meant we hadn't really gotten to interact with the kids as much as we might've like but we made up for that today.
We performed exercises such as:
•Three Word Story
•Find a random page, random sentence and continue on with your own story.
•Build your own country
•Imagine a character's daily life in this new country

These worked really well with the kids and is something we plan on doing with Year 7 as well, we'd already used quite a few of them for Year 9 classes as they often finish their work quicker than we could anticipate.

Going home after this we continued on with typing up more of the classes finished stories as there had been no point in doing it beforehand as many were only half finished. It was a rather busy day for us, a small insight into the workload of a teacher which was honestly more than what we were expecting. But we're learning more and more each day with the kids, even just how to phrase things better for them to understand and how to help them with their writing which is something neither of us have ever really had to do outside of our college year group. It's been a learning process but we're getting there. And our project is going well so far, all characters have been created for each year, plus Year 7 and 9's have their stories finished whilst Year 8's have been harder to motivate into writing.



Below are the prompts we gave each year group for their stories:

• Your character meets a ghost/monster

• You wish upon what looks like a star but is actually a satellite, your wish has been recorded and an agent has now been assigned the task of granting your wish

• You're scrolling through the pictures on your phone, you notice a new one, it is of you sleeping

• Your character wakes up in bed drenched in salty ocean water

• Your character is the last person on Earth, celebrating their own birthday

• Your character faces their own deepest fear

• Your character is granted one wish, but you have to use the wish for someone else

• Your character works at an airport and notices the same person waiting in arrivals every week, each time they leave alone, one day you finally ask them who they're waiting for

• A phone is found by your character inside a sealed Egyptian tomb

• Your character finds a blank book and whatever they write in it comes true

And here is also Year 9's work with said prompts, some are written as individuals and some in groups, these are word for word their own stories:

La Jenny Year 9:

One day La Jenny was tidying up her room, when she found a book that wasn't hers. It was a matte black colour hardback. La Jenny, curious to see what was inside, opened it. On the first page there were some instructions, it said; write whatever you want in this book and it will come true. La Jenny didn't believe it but she decided to try it out to see if it was true. She wrote, "I want my room to be pink". As she closed the book the room turned pink.

La Jenny Airport Juan

La Jenny was a very lazy and unstudious girl who finally got her job as security in Geneva International Airport. She finally arrived there with a lot of money won by internet work. She rented a small apartment in the airport surroundings. Throughout a term everything was normal. All this ended when she saw a dark person who always, every Friday he waited in the airport. Always in the terminal coming from California (USA). After almost another month La Jenny suspected and stopped the guy, the guy called Charlie was a businessman who came to Geneva regularly.

He always came to meetings with the Spanish multibillionare construction manager Juan Antonio. Juan Antonio actually came to search for Charlie to explain to everything, it turned out to be legal so Charlie left the airport in Juan Antonio's Range Rover. The business trip was good finance the building of a luxury state neighborhood by the Laban (?) Lake and a new tower in LA. This indeed made both even more multibillionares.

Next week, Charlie returned to the airport and talked with La Jenny before returning to GSA. Juan Antonio became now the richest business man in the world. Later on, La Jenny became his cleaner and servant with a high salary. For the rest of her life, La Jenny cleaned his luxury cars, caravan, mansion and hangar. In addition she was Juan Antonio's professional chef. She lived with a payment of 9000 EHF. In some years, she retired happily

She got an extra payment, cleaning the house for the visit of the "Jeke" from UAE for another houser project.

Bruno

Your character meets a ghost/monster:

It was 1:30am and I woke up to get a glass of water when suddenly I heard someone shouting "ohhhh!", but no one was there. Then I asked, "Who are you?" but I got no answer. I thought I was going crazy, so I got back into bed but on my way back I heard a glass break. In that moment I knew there was a ghost, so I went to see if there really was a ghost. I asked him his name, he answered "Iagooo," so I tried to call the Ghostbusters so they could help me. In five minutes they were here and they helped me to catch the ghost and the theme song started to play.

The End

Violeta

You're scrolling through the pictures on your phone, you notice a new one, it is of you sleeping.

I don't know what time it is, when I dream time seems to pass so fast and I'm so tired, yesterday's training was exhausting. I try to go back to sleep and I think it worked…

It smells good, something like cocoa and sugar. The room is hot and although I have my eyes closed I notice that there is some kind of light on, maybe it's morning already but when I open my eyes my surprise can't be greater, it's still midnight but I can see a shadow on the wall. It's a curvy silhouette with delicate features, she's too small to be Chris (my ex), probably another admirer. I decide to go and surprise her so dressed only in my underwear I walk next to her. Suddenly I'm confused, she's got my phone in her hands and she's scrolling through my gallery, only to see me sleeping.

"You're such a creep," I say.

She turns, her eyes are big and red and in her big smile you can see her sharp thin teeth. I'm amused and I have to say, I'm a bit scared but I won't let her know. I start to lose my breath, am I nervous? No, that's impossible. I feel choked up and dizzy. She's glaring at me, her devil eyes transpassing my soul and all of a sudden I'm alone in my bed, only to see the same pictures she was looking at on my phone.

Sharlie Matt group-Airport prompt

Sharlie works in the info secorr of the Adolf-Suaréz Madrid Barajas. Every week he sees a suspicious man. One day he sees his bag. Bogdan Rudeños, a famous wanted terrorist that has changed his face too look like a normal civilian. Sharlie tries to warn the police but they don't believe him. Sharlie decides to chase him with his electric wheelchair, he drifts and blocks him when the terrorist tries to detonate his bomb. Sharlie shoots his water gun and hits the controls making it fall. The police soon came and identified the man as Abdoll Bogdan Rudeños III.

Elisa year 9

Your character is the last person on earth, celebrating their own Birthday.

I wake up at 8:30am. I almost forgot today is my 34th birthday. My mother is probably down in the kitchen as she has been for every birthday since I bought my first home. I get out of bed and go down to the kitchen expecting to see my mother. I enter the kitchen and to my surprise no one is there. How strange, my mother has never missed my birthday morning. I get my phone and call her. No one answers. I call my parents home, there is still no answer. Maybe they are sleeping, I think.

It is Sunday, so I get dressed to go to run some errands. I get in the car and start driving. Usually there is traffic on Sundays, but today were no cars in the street. It's like it was deserted. I got to the supermarket, and parked in the street. Still no cars and no one walking on the street. I go in and no one is there, I started freaking out. I haven't seen anyone today. Where has everyone gone?

Also so far all the completed work we have for Year 8's are their characters which can be seen here:

Name: Maricommen Olivier Ruiz Pérez del Molinar Age: 16 Gender: Female Physical Description: •Long black hair •Short •Blue Eyes • Dark (?) skin with    freckles Personality: She's a billionaire.  Kind, intelligent (but gets bad grades as she doesn't want to study). She's from Cuba. Relationships: •She has a friend called Pedro •She has 3 brothers •Her best friend is called Pablo •She has a gay friend called Miguel. •She has a complicated love life.

Name: Rick Age: 32 Gender: Male Physical Description: •Black hair •Green eyes •Toned • 1.80cm in height Strengths/Flaws: •Serious •Strong and Brave • Claustrophobic

Name: Salvador Age: 16 Gender: Male Physical Description: •Black hair •Greenish eyes •Prominent jaw line •Oval face Strengths/Flaws: •Generous but mean •Smart but bad grades •Innovative •Active (sporty)

Name: Jourael Rossevelt Wallace II Age: 10 Gender: Male Physical Description: •large hair •Short •Stupid •Mariposon (?) •Deformed •White eyes •Pig Nose •No mouth or eyebrows •Thin Strengths/Flaws: •Good at football, bad at basketball •Good at talking to girls but bad at talking to girls •Posh.

Day 16 - Change of Plans (Year 7 + Year Nine characters, and Year 7 Stories)

What we originally had planned for today, unfortunately, did not pan out. We had planned to go to Madrid to go to a museum and then to a market by Retiro Park, however, there were no tickets available online for the museum, so we decided to leave it for another day.
We decided instead to use our day to read and type up work for the students. We weren't able to put up much of their work yet as many of them had not yet finished their stories or were only getting started on them.
Both Jass and I were impressed with the work that the students were producing, we started with the Year Sevens work and while they're only young, the stories they wrote were all quite impressive, and mature especially for their age. It was surprising to find out just how advanced mentally, and how mature the Year Sevens were, Jass and I thought we'd have to go in to each year group and teach them in a different way because they would be at different levels and different learning abilities, however, we found that the Year Sevens understood what we were talking about just as well as the Year Nines did. It made us have to rethink what we were going to do with them altogether, because as all the students were more advanced than we originally thought, it meant they got through the work faster than we anticipated, so we had to come up with more work and activities to do with them.
It was a huge new learning moment for us, as neither of us had never done any work like this before, it was a learning curve on what it is like to be a teacher (albeit only a small part of being a teacher).

These are the characters that Year Sevens and Year Nines came up with (Year Eights still needed to be typed up)

Year 7 Characters

Sammirah Age: 16 Gender: Female Physical Description: Blonde Blue Eyes Thin Medium height Strengths/Flaws: Intelligent but she's afraid of spiders, she's selfish and stuck up Relationships: No friends

Alex Drake Age: 21 Gender: Both male and female Physical Description: Their face is half man and half woman Long hair on one side, short hair on the other side Strengths/Flaws: Relationships:

Peter Holes Age: 47 Gender: Male Physical Description: Spaghetti shaped body Very large head Strengths/Flaws: He is very social and friendly, but he is not clever at all Relationships: He didn't have good relationships in school, his parents thought him to be who he is now

Robin Age: 14 Gender: Male Physical Description: Red hair Green eyes 1.68 height Thin Strengths/Flaws: He is strong, but he is afraid of lines (lions?) Relationships: He is easy going

Year Nine Characters

Sharlie Matt Age: 93 Gender: Male Physical Description: Soft, caramel skin Growing disability which makes him look like a baby Strengths/Flaws: Very intelligent and observant, however, he does not know how to walk, no one takes him seriously because he looks like a baby Relationships: He goes to a group for people with disabilities and he has a girlfriend who is very tall

La Jenny Age: 16 Gender: Female Physical Description: Red hair Green eyes 1.60 height Thin Size 36 feet Strong Strengths/Flaws: She is intelligent and brave, but she is clumsy and has no self initiative Relationships: She is very nice to people, very sociable, has a lot of friends.

Lionel: Age: 34 Gender: Male Physical Description: 1.76 height White Green eyes Messy, dark hair Muscular Strengths/Flaws: He is very honest, but, he is arrogant and close-minded Relationships: He is friendly

These are the stories that were written by the Year Sevens using the characters seen above:
(Some students wrote stories individually, some wrote as part of a group.) (Stories are written word for word what they wrote).

Alex Drake

Alex Drake is walking through the forest. It is 10:00 pm, and he is going to his house. Alex suddenly falls and he finds a blank diary. There's nothing written in it. Two minutes after Alex arrives to his house and decides to go to bed. The next morning Alex starts writing in his diary. Alex has always wished for a pet so he wrote it in his diary. Two hours later somebody knocks on his door, so he decides to go and look. He opens the door and he sees a box moving, he takes the box into his house and opens it, and a little puppy jumps out of the box. Alex exclaims “Wow a dog!!”

Alex found out that what he had written in his diary had come true, so he decided to write all of his wishes: an iPhone XS Max, a girlfriend, a bigger house, and that his dead grandparents would be resurrected.

So, after this, Alex decides to go for a walk to the forest with his puppy. While on the walk, something hit him in the back of his head, he looks at it and sees that it's an iPhone XS Max. He is so happy that he starts to dance. On his way back home, he hears a voice calling him from behind, he turns to see his grandparents. He goes home to find that there is an even bigger house there. He goes in and sees that there is a beautiful lady in his bed, waiting for him.

Suddenly, he wakes up and he realises that all that happened was a dream.

Peter Holes

“It's my birthday!” said Peter with a very excited attitude.

When he goes out, he sees that no one is there, he thinks that all the people must be hiding so they can have his birthday surprise. If you don't know, he is very social and is friendly with all the people of the city, the happy city.

Sometime after, he sees that no one is there, so, as he is very dumb, he goes to see a film in the Planetocio. (The film is 'Avengers: Endgame') and so, he starts his birthday without humans in the world.

Robin Perjual

Robin was going from school to home. To get home, he needed to pass through a side street. A creepy man was following Robin, so he hid behind a green bin. Then the creepy man went running until he got him. He put Robin in a black bag. The creepy man took Robin out of the bag. At night, Robin started planning how to get out of the house. At 3:00am, Robin started to escape, but the only way of getting out of house was passing through a corridor with a lot, a lot, a lot of squares and lines. I didn't mention, that Robin is scared of lines. He started walking without stepping on the lines, but suddenly, he heard the man getting out of bed. He started running, and stepped on a line and he went crazy. When the man was going to take him, he hit him because he was crazy and so he hit the man and the man fainted. So, he started running to the street. One friend of his mother found him and took him to the hospital and Robin got better, but the room in the hospital was full of lines so he closed his eyes and when he opened his eyes he was in his room, so he calmed down.

Sammirah

Sammirah was walking through the street. It was very windy out. Suddenly, a book fell, carried by the wind, on her head. Sammirah opened the book; it was blank. Then, Sammirah had an idea. She went home and wrote a book about how she broke the record of likes in a YouTube video. Before she went to bed, she went to check how many likes she did have. It was amazing, she had 8.38 million likes. She searched on Google what the record of likes was. She was paralysed, her video had the record of likes in the whole world. Then, Sammirah remembered the blank book, “So...that book is...” she said.

. . .

She finds the book in a dirty bin in the garden, she opens it and sees that it is blank inside. “I don't like it, it is brown and dirty, well I see.” then she remembered when she saw 3 50E on the ground, but somebody else got to it first, so she got the book and started to write “I wanted those 50E”, when suddenly, in her pocket, there was 50E, but, some minutes later, the room starts filling up with snakes.

. . .

Hi, my name is Sammirah, I am 16, and I have blonde hair and blue eyes.

I have a problem, I don't have friends. My relationship is not everything good but they are so nice and that is believable. The other day, I found a book, the pages were white, no one had written in it yet. So, I found out that it was a bit magic. The other day, I found one hundred euros, but a man got there first, I wrote it in the diary, and I found a hundred euro in my pocket.

Day 15-Bullseye

For our Sunday we had a lot planned. Firstly we were going to watch the Bull Run at 11am in Alpedrete then head into Madrid where we would a) Go to the El Rastro Market b) Go boat riding in Retirio Park c) Eat Sunday Dinner in an Irish pub and lastly D) Go to the little market on the other side of Retirio park before going home.

Sadly not all of it went to plan. We arrived at the bull racing barriers for eleven and stayed there until 11:53 but still nothing had happened, people had begun to leave so we left to as we had to make the El Rastro market before it closed. We were quite disappointed we didn't get to see the bulls but we had such a busy day planned that we just couldn't afford to wait to see if they'd show up.

We got the 681 into Moncloa then the Metro to Callao where we switched over to line 5 and got off at Latina to go to El Rastro Market. El Rastro market was amazing, we barely got the whole area covered before it closed. Both of us bought so many presents for our families and some momento's for ourselves.

After this seeing as it was after 4 by the time we made it to Retirio Park we decided to have our Sunday Dinners as we were both quite hungry at this point

                                                                                             Having mashed potatoes was genuinely a religious experience for us both, we had been craving them for over a week at this point. We also got a desert of Sticky Toffee Pudding to share before heading over to do the boat ride the park which was gorgeous, we spent €8 for 45mins and honestly it was one of the coolest things we've done we had so much fun learning to row and taking pictures (as seen below) shortly after this we headed home as it was after 8 and it would take a long enough time to get back to Alpedrete as it was.