*I've had this song stuck in my head all week, you definitely hear it sometimes here. Appropriate for the start of rainy season, no?
Words of the Day- Basketball Edition
tirar- shoot
perder un tiro- miss a shot
el tablero- backboard
In the last two weeks, I have taught 50% of the classes I am regularly scheduled to teach. If we exclude my Saturday classes, which aren't cancelled as regularly, I've only taught a third of my weekday classes. Frustrating beyond belief. I'm trying not to let the under-whelmingness of this week get to me, but it's hard.
On Monday, I taught my only weekday classes in San Miguel, a class on -Wh questions to 8th grade and a continuation of a class about family members to 7th grade. For lunch, I ate lengua con salsa, cow tongue with sauce, because my host mom made it for me after I mentioned I had never eaten it. I wasn't expecting to like it, but it was ok actually, really tender. Then I did my laundry.
In the afternoon, I taught a lively class to the English club, about informal phrases in English. I accidentally used a vulgar phrase to explain the phrase "I'm doing great". My host brother had taught it to me, and I thought it was just very informal street language, but I didn't realize that it would be perceived as vulgar, especially by 8th graders, although I definitely should have. So now the kids think that the phrase "I'm great" is hilarious, and they bust up laughing every time they say it. Then the kids started asking me about curse words in English. When I told them not to say bad words in class, they pointed out that I already had. I did however take the time to explain the difference between "beach" and "bitch" because we had just had a class on pronunciation...the difference between the /i/ and /I/ sounds in English are really hard for English language learners who have Spanish as a first language. Then one of the boys in my class asked me what the phrase "Give me your number" means, because he had heard someone use it to call out to me in the street while I was chatting with him. Dangerous language, who knows what trouble these kids will get into now that they know the phrases "How's it going?" "Take it easy" and "Give me your number."
On Tuesday, school was cancelled for a pre-Labor Day march. I finished Part I of Julio Cortazar's Rayuela (book reviews forthcoming),fell into the giant, beautiful abyss that is the internet and helped my sitemate Christina move. We figured this would be easy, because there are lots of taxis that pass by her house, and we assumed we could flag one down. Nope. After over an hour of waiting and after calling several taxi drivers, Chris (this is what the Nicas call her, pronounced KRees) finally got a former student to stop for her, but we couldn't fit all her stuff. We ended up having to make three trips carrying heavy boxes and bags in the hot sun. Everyone stared at us, as we literally dripped with sweat. None of the men gawking at us tried to help. I guess machismo doesn't equally chivalry. But whatever, we did it ourselves, so clearly we didn't need help. Welcome to the gun show, San Miguelito.
On Wednesday, I didn't do much because we had off from school for International Worker's Day (the International version of Labor Day), and town was dead. I shot hoops and swopped English vocabulary with my counterpart Jonathan, cleaned my room super throughly after I found an infestation of weird little paper eating bugs (DON'T YOU DARE GO NEAR MY SCHOOL MATERIALS!!!!), and watched soap operas and 12 Corazones, which was terrible for my brain, but probably not so bad for the Spanish. In the evening, I tried to do real things and made a calendar/syllabus for the 8th grade class. I also made a list of various projects I would like to do, and it ran onto 2 pages. This was just for English related projects. Ay Diosito lindo.
Supposedly, rainy season always starts every year on May 1st. It did not rain.
On Thursday, it became unbearably hot and horrible little bugs called chayules came up on a southern wind, invading personal space- mouths, eyes, ears. EW. I planned with the Saturday teachers in the morning and had my "English Class for Teachers and Other People Who Speak A Lot of English" except only 2 people showed up. It's sort of frustrating when stuff like that happens, but I need to get better at dealing with disappointment.
On Friday, I went to Las Palomas to help my counterpart with materials for a TESOL Certificate workshop he was going to go to in Costa Rica. In the afternoon, I had my English Club class, but only 3 kids showed up, which was disappointing. I drowned my frustrations about all of this by venting to Christina over batidos and eating lots of cheesy bread.
Rainy season began at promptly 8 pm. A beautiful, steady downpour washed the ambient heat out of the sky, punctuated by violet and white streaks of lightning that lit up the sky. Thunder roared rhythmically. Violent, yet oddly peaceful and wonderful.
On Saturday, I finally had school again (why is Saturday school never cancelled?) which was pretty fun with the grades that like English, and pretty awful with the kids who are less into it. One of my eighth grade classes is obsessed with the song I taught them last week (which happens to be from the TV show Barney, blast from the past!!) "I like to eat apples and bananas." So they all go around singing the song all the time, which helps them master "like to + infinitive". Good times. The other thing that made my day was that one of my students who hasn't been interested in class pretty much all semester came to school well rested and was excited about participating. In a week like this, it really is the little things that keep you going...
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