Location: San Millán de la Cogolla & Berceo, La Rioja, España
Soul Site: Los Monasterios de Suso y Yuso
Alimentos: Chuches and bocadillos (candy and snack sandwiches)
Highlight: The walk from San Millán to Berceo
What better way to cap off a full week of running an all-school Easter egg hunt outside in the schoolyard than going on a field trip to a UNESCO World Heritage Site?
The English Teaching Assistants at my school have traditionally been tasked with putting on an egg hunt for each class in our primary school, as well as planning another fun activity or two for after the one-egg-per-student cap is reached (which happens, as you can imagine, quite quickly). My fellow American TA, Andi, and I decided on a jumbo poster/photo backdrop that said "HOPPY EASTER, JESUITAS!" (that's the nickname for my school) in outlined block letters. But that's not an activity, you might be thinking. Well, get this. Instead of spending hours designing the letters ourselves, we would have each of the 18 classes spend a few minutes after their egg hunt decorating its assigned letter. They'd design the poster for us. That is ingenuity.
By Wednesday afternoon, we'd filled and hidden individual eggs all around the sunny schoolyard + distributed and re-collected homemade superglued photo props 18 times. The simple poster had been transformed into a beautifully chaotic technicolored graffiti-esque depiction of each class's personality. Wielding markers, they added their signatures, stars, hearts, cartoon bunny ears, abstract carrots, colored slime patterns, shoutouts to their friends, you name it, you can now find it on this poster. I was very proud. So were the kids. They also really liked being handed chocolate in the middle of the school day.
Anyway, approaching a "normal" day Thursday, I needed to confirm that I would be teaching in my regularly scheduled classes. Between texts and two-second conversations with a few teachers, I pieced together that all of my third and fourth grade classes were in fact headed on excursions (said here in place of "field trip") to a monastery in the pueblo of Nájera and the Monasteries of Suso and Yuso in another pueblo called San Millán de la Cogolla, respectively. After the individual tours they would meet up at the Monastery grounds for a scenic walk to a nearby campground in Berceo, a pueblo of approximately 150 people, and there enjoy a few hours of carefree time outside.
A siren went off in my brain upon hearing this news: I had vague plans to travel solo to San Millán on Easter Monday for the next addition to this project. But the idea of making the trip with my fourth grade buddies and favorite teachers, plus spending an afternoon in a gorgeous remote village, sounded 1000% more fun...and I wouldn't have to do any of the planning (I had already attempted to contact a few of the monks, but had received no response. They are probably quite busy). So, I did a bit of begging (really just sent a long and earnest text to my bilingual coordinator, who very kindly forwarded my request to all of the necessary people), received permission from said necessary people, and packed up a daypack. And on Thursday morning, off we went—gym uniforms, plastic sunglasses, foil-wrapped bocadillos, Pringles tins, travel-sized board games, coach buses, coin pouches, sunscreen, and all.
This was pretty much the Best Day Ever, and that is saying a lot after the Egg Hunt week I described to you above.
Driving through the windy hills with fourth graders' voices carrying waves chattering songs from the back of the bus, rays of sun flashing by tall, slim trees and watching the bus sweep its shadow over obnoxiously green hills slathered in rows of vineyards...it was something from a children's chapter book dream. La Rioja is in full bloom.
Arriving and enjoying a brief tour of the Yuso (from archaic Castilian, meaning "lower" or "below") Monastery, the larger monastery below Suso (meaning "upper"). It was there, in Suso, that the first words of Castilian Spanish were written as notes scribbled in a margin.
Mentally recording the sage commentary of the shrewdest of my students (i.e. "Todos calvos, aquí," whispered at me with wide eyes from underneath a collection of oil-on-canvas paintings in the sacristy exhibiting bald biblical subjects as a hairless monk in his black cassock, likely one of the small group of Augustinian monks actively living here today, strode slowly through a corridor in our line of sight. I nodded; I couldn't argue.)
According to UNESCO World Heritage Convention, "The Codex Aemilianensis 60 was written in the Suso scriptorium during the 9th and 10th centuries by one of the monks, who added marginal notes in Castilian and Basque, along with a prayer in Castilian, to clarify passages in the Latin text; this is the first known example of written Spanish. It was in this monastery, during the 13th century, that Gonzalo de Berceo wrote his first poems in Castilian in one of the church’s porticoes." (Much more information at the full article here).
Gawking at a few of the preserved pages exemplifying these very old words, sitting for a quiet moment in the chapel of San Millán, and stepping through the central cloister and church, where the morning light flooded through a round skylight to illuminate the altar area. We climbed up and down the Noble Staircase leading to the upper cloister, craning our necks upwards to inspect its mosaicked dome (I was surprised no one fell over. It was very, very tall). Afterwards, our tour guide released our impressively attentive group to the monastery's grounds, where we unwrapped our bocadillos and essentially had recreo time for an hour or two as we waited for third grade to finish up and meet us.
At some point during this period, the students had the opportunity to take their coin pouches to the mini souvenir shop on site. Some purchased postcards and small trinkets, but most were a little disappointed that the promised gift shop had only religious momentos and no chuches at this point on the excursion. Thankfully, this was fourth grade, so there were no tears. I will return to the subject of chuches very shortly, so stay tuned.
After downing three mini bocadillos of ham, tuna, and a mysterious mayonese-forward mixture while strolling around, I was convinced to play a bit of hide and seek tag and UNO with the students (diligently still believing that I speak little to no Spanish, they very considerately shouted "UNO!!!" as "One!!!") on the grounds before third grade stampeded through the monastery's gates to join us, indicating that it was time to corral everyone together and trek to our lunch spot. Rubik's cubes, stray Pringles, aluminum foil floaters, and discarded snapback hats were gathered up in a frenzy and we were on our way in a magically quick amount of time.
Something about shuffling along that path, overlooking the gorgeous landscape beneath us, chanting call-and-response songs, stopping to squeeze along the walls of crumbling old buildings and wave as the occasional car rolled by us...the teachers and I were a bit like shepherds guiding 150 hungry and giggling sheep. Something about getting outside the walls of my classrooms for the first time right as springtime was really stretching its wings with these lovely (and sassy and headstrong) kids. Something about blinking in reverence at this beautiful place that I get to call my home this year...so many exhales of pure and simple joy in just one day.
We arrived at Camping Berceo (named for the poet) and let the little sheep loose for a few hours while the teachers enjoyed a nice three-course lunch from a table with a panoramic vantage point of the entire area (which was gated on all sides, one teacher assured me). They plopped down in the grassy meadow to eat the rest of their packed lunches, staring at our plates of croquetas and Secreto Ibérico with a slight bit of envy. I told them not to worry because I was jealous of their Nutella sandwiches and jamón bocatos. I witnessed a few intense futbolín games (foosball), checked in with the rulers of the playground tower (they agreed to let some third graders rule the tower later on), the burial of a dead bird, lots of cartwheels and backflips from the gymnasts in the group, and had one sweet fourth grader who decided to follow me and copy everything I did for an hour (we somehow still had a very nice conversation about the approaching Easter holiday in between her somewhat robotic replicas of my every step). There was a lot to take in.
When the teachers and I had finished our meal, we finally let the students start a queue to enter the makeshift snack shop inside the on-site restaurant (somehow, the student teacher who'd come along and his supervising teacher were both roped into playing cashiers for this fast-moving trading floor, which looked hilariously stressful from my point of safety at the table). Practically hyperventilating with anticipation, the little hawks melted in line in the afternoon sun for what must have been an hour to enter through the beaded door curtain and use up the last few of their monedas to buy coveted sugar baby bottles, pixie sticks, mini ice cream cones, generic onion-flavored chips, and popsicles. You would think these kids were waiting to ride Space Mountain at Disney World. I don't think this was the learning outcome intended from a daytrip to our region's most famous monasteries, but surely no one could argue that seeing the kids' triumphant faces when they came out of the shop to show off their purchases was the most adorable thing you might ever see. (But in truth, I am sure they learned quite a lot from our tours).
I would say I had no idea chuches could be so fundamental to a field trip experience, but that would not be truthful. It might actually be the most ubiquitous "food" point I have discovered thus far this year.
I remember a field trip to Independence Hall and the Constitution Center when I went to elementary school in Philadelphia. Do I remember details of the multimedia history show, or what my teachers emphasized to help us with our supplemental worksheet packets assigned for homework review that night? No. I remember a general feeling of pride to learn about the history of my home, and running around Franklin Square (or was it Washington Square) with jumbo pixie sticks acquired at the Center's gift shop. I remember the green peanut M&M that took one of my molars down with it during lunch break at the Museum of Art a couple of years earlier. I remember our eighth grade class trip to Chicago, our matching t-shirts and the liberating feeling of being set free to explore Navy Pier for an hour without our chaperones. Think back to your favorite elementary school field trip. What do you remember?
This year it has become exceedingly clear to me that so much of the success of education comes in letting kids be kids—in letting them have fun, be silly, experiment, and explore freely together in an educational environment. So much of the success of my own experience learning about Spain through these months—as a student of the country and its culture, you could say—has come from unexpected hours of exploring, unplanned moments when I have said "why not?" to experiences just like starting a recess reading club, like the impromptu collaborative photo wall for Easter, like this field trip. And it's crucial that this exploring happens together, in community, as much as possible. We learn the most from each other. A few extra grams of sugar and a major extra dose of vitamin D? Well, they just add to the equation's probability of success.
Here's to a gastronomic exploration of the region's most typical chuches, more field trips, and more sunshine very soon.
With lots of love from deep in the heart of La Rioja,
Ellie
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