School Anecdotes, Week 15: Never! You are a Woman!

Word of the Week:
tomar la ruta once-hoof it, walk: "take the 11 bus", so named because you have 2 legs

Rough week. It was hot. Despite this, I got a bad cold. It rained a ton, so I have no clean clothing. And the power/water situation was dicey for a couple days. But hey, full week of school, so no real complaints.

Grossest: I nearly ruined a chart about human rights by accidentally dousing it with sweat droplets.

Dumbest: I got completely soaked in an intense rainy season downpour. I was trying to get back to San Miguel to plan classes and I thought I heard a bus coming. Since transport is notoriously scarce on Mondays at this time, I hurried out into the street to find it, thinking the rain wouldn't be that bad. It was. Pretty much instantly, I was soaked to the skin. Also, there was not actually a bus passing. I ducked into a random construction site, and 15 cold minutes later, I saw a real life bus coming up the road. I ran out, waving my arms like a crazy person. Did the bus stop? Of course it did not. Damp and dejected, I stood around for a while, finally managing to find transport. When I finally rolled up, 15 minutes late, my counterpart, upon seeing me, joked "Did you go swimming?" I think I have gone swimming and gotten less wet. I have since learned my lesson and bought the largest, most expensive, and heavy duty umbrella I could find, with a mystifying print combining Dalmatian spots and roses. Gonna be a cool cat now. Watch me shine.
 
Best Original Student Produced Language of the Week: While the 11th grade was learning about human rights in El Tule, we had the students create and perform mini skits. To demonstrate the "right to work", some of the students presented the following:

Female Student: Give me a job please.
Interviewer: Never, you are a woman!
Male Student: Give me a job please.
Interviewer: Ok, please sit down.

Clearly we need to work on teaching politeness strategies, but I thought it was pretty effective at showing discrimination in 30 seconds or less. Not to mention that "Never! You are a woman!" is a highly amusing phrase when delievered by beginning English speakers.

Don't scare the children: While I was teaching about personalities and emotions to 10th grade in El Tule, I did some very over the top acting to demonstrate the word excited, jumping up and down and yelling enthusiastically. In response, the kids made terrified faces at me. One of the students asked if the word  I was trying to act out was "crazy." I find it amusing that my teacher personality is pretty much the opposite of my real life introverted personality: I am confident, goofy, cracking jokes, working the crowd, bringing energy...all this acting probably explains why I am so drained at the end of the day.

This will probably be my legacy: My counterpart told me a story about how he sings the "Very Good Friend" song to his puppy. (You are, you are, a wonderful friend!) Apparently his nephew, who is my student, overheard him and asked him why he was singing it, since it's "Emily's song." If that isn't a nerdtastical thing to be known for, I don't know what is.

7th and 8th Grade Class- Straggling attendance as per usual. Luckily, we're ending in a few weeks anyway, so I'm not beating myself up over it. Learning curve: don't disregard the advice of people who've gone before you....This week, we did a class on wild animals. I made the kids organize the new vocab by mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds. They made a ton of mistakes. Then, I realized that I couldn't remember what the technical scientific distinctions are between reptiles, amphibians and birds...feathers? types of skin? live birth and eggs? cold-blooded/warm-blooded? (but what do those really mean and how do I explain them in Spanish?) I took a cop out: I just re-sorted everything correctly and left it at that. This was the sort of moment where a smart phone would have been useful, because clearly I'm too dumb to remember basic science. Categorizations are all social constructions anyway, right?

Teachers and Other People Who Know Lots of English Class- This week we mixed things up quite a bit, to bid farewell to our German member of the group, a volunteer named Verena who's been living in San Miguelito teaching English at the private primary school here. We planned to meet for a goodbye party at a bar overlooking the lake at 6 pm. The Gergringa pack rolled in a bit late, around 6:15. Apparently, the Nicaraguans were all punctual and left, because they thought it wasn't happening. We ended up waiting around for a while, watching the sunset, the volcanoes and then a wonderful lightning storm rolling in across the lake.

Luckily, everybody else decided to check back again, rolling in around 7:30. Apparently, no one wanted to bother me, so they didn't call me. I explained that this is a perfect instance in which calling me would not be a nuisance, but this is an excellent example of the culture of indirectness that exists here. Eventually, we had a quite a nice evening. Verena will be sorely missed; she is a really sweet, thoughtful person who brought a really interesting perspective to the conversation group and late afternoon muelle chats.