Bill Cosby could completely renew his career if he would come to Spain and try to teach English for a year. However, I'm gonna figure out a way to capitalize on it instead.
This past week has had its many ups and downs. School has treated me pretty well, but my private English classes have been brutal. I tutor the two brattiest Spanish children on the face of the planet...and their younger sister is a Little Miss Me Too, so whenever her big sister is doing something stupid, she loves to join in. Sometimes the kids are inadvertantly rude, which I can deal with. For instance Julia, the 3rd grader, was rubbing my back and touched my undershirt. She grabbed it and, very concerned, asked "What's this?!" I said "um...it's my undershirt. No big deal...see?" and I showed her the straps. She also saw my bra straps and gasped. She yelled and gasped "YOU WEAR A BRA?!" I said um...yes, everyone wears a bra. "Nuh uh, I don't wear a bra." I told her someday she would. Which udderly disgusted her. I thought the topic was dropped when finally she broke the silence by asking "so...do you have kids?" By the way, all my kids think I'm 38, at best, but usually assume I'm over 4o. I'm normally appalled and offended but I try to remind myself how I used to think at that age. So anyways I said, slightly annoyed, "Noooo......" to which she snapped "well then why are your boobs so big??"
...whatever. Sometimes I think they shouldn't teach kids anatomy so young in Spain. I didn't know how to respond to that but eventually I got in a little tiff with her and ended up lowering myself to her level and verbally arguing for 5 minutes about it. This time, though, she was just ornery and curious. Not mean.
That innocent train came to a halt Wednesday, when Julia got mad at me while we were playing a game online. It's a board game that practices vocabulary and is set up Jeopardy style. This game is marvelous except for the small problem that Marina, the little one, is just in first grade and cannot yet read...in Spanish, let alone English. To get around this little issue, I read the questions and answers out loud to her. Julia, mad that she was losing, got mad at me for "cheating" and threw a euro at me. I think a euro is probably in between the size of a quarter and a nickel, but twice as thick. And it was thrown full-force at my face. It hit me in between the eyes. I was DONE. SO DONE. I started rambling in English, Marina heard "finished" and ran out quickly, not waiting for the chance for me to recant, and Julia sat there frozen, wondering how much trouble she was in...but she didn't feel bad at all.
On the other hand, school has been entertaining, at best. My kids are inadvertantly hilarious. My favorite sources of laughter have come from the simple game of "I Spy". Each week Eva, the pregnant teacher, tells me something to do and usually suggests a game to practice vocabulary to make life easy on me. Soooo in her husband's class (the hot teacher), we had the most fun. I would pick something in the room and if they guessed it, the class got a point and that student would come up and play on my team. One girl, Liuva, came up and said "Ee spee wit my leetle eyes someting dat ees jellow". 10 guesses later (that's the limit), we got the point. She was so excited she ran to her seat after I gave her a high five and everyone is asking "what is it!? what is it?!" She says, so matter of factly, "Ees Chelsea!" I was wearing a periwinkle blue shirt and jeans...I was so confused.
Everyone (including me) goes, "..........what?!"
"Ees Chelsea...hair!!"
...and all the kids go "oooooooooooh." Meanwhile I am mildly offended because I consider my hair to be a subtle, tactful blonde. Yellow. Psh. It was really funny though. Of course it doesn't end there. Eventually another little kid, named Nacho by the way, comes up and is the Hitler of I Spy. Not only did he pick the most random, smallest, unnoticeable object in the room, but whenever anybody guessed incorrectly he would roll his eyes, shout "um...NO!!", and give this look that screamed "are you serious?! How dare you even waste my time with that pathetic moronic guess". Since he was playing on my team, I was thrilled. I went again after him, because he of course won, and I picked the cross above the chalkboard that is brown. So I say "I spy with my little eyes something that is.......BROWN!!" All the kids shoot up their hands and are all screaming "yo yo yo yo yo!!" (Yo means me in Spanish by the way.) I was trying to be fair and let everyone guess...so I was excited when one of the little boys in class who never says anything finally raised his hand. This is how that went:
Me: you! yes? It's brown
Him: me?
Me: yes you...what is it?
Him: me!
Me: YES!! Yoooooouuuuu....what do you think it is?
Him: ees me!!!
Then I realized he's black. He meant him, as in HE is brown. HILARIOUS. I laughed so hard I cried. Literally. I had to regroup. Eventually they did guess the cross but it was soooo funny. In this class there is a boy who is "special" as they say, and always a bit of a distraction. I think he loves me and always loves our games we play, even though he doesn't know much English. Eva always gives him extra help, though, and tries to help him participate as much as possible. He's just a bit slow. Anyways, after class, she told me he had gone up to her and asked in Spanish, "Eva, how do you say face in English?!" and she said "what? why do you need to say face? Is that what you mean?" and he says "Yes! Face. It's brown...like Juan's face!" Eva & I's ongoing inside joke now is "ees brown?"
That was just 3rd grade's fun. 1st grade held so much more in store. 1st graders are just now learning how to write...so each night for homework they have to write 25 copies of sentences. The teacher had written on the board the sentence for them to study followed by "Copy 10 lines". She showed me one of the student's notebooks and for his homework he had literally drawn 10 different lines across the page. Not one copied sentence. I thought it was funny but the teachers were less than thrilled. This has happened A LOT this past few weeks since Christmas. For example, in Science, the kids had a test about wild animals. For "spotted cat that lives in the jungle", one of the students wasn't paying attention and wrote "leotard" instead of "leopard". That one was so funny. A different time, the kids were told to write in their notebooks the four seaons. In Spanish, the word for "season" and the word for "station" is the same. So instead of understanding the context of weather, he wrote "Cuatro Caminos, Iglesia, Rios Rosas, Bilbao", which are the metro stops (or stations) he takes to get to school. Another kid, Martin, in one of my classes kept asking if he could go to the bathroom. Spanish teachers are really strict on behavior & policies, so they hardly ever let kids go to the bathroom. Isabel asked him "can you wait? Til after we listen to this song?" and he said yes and sat down. Five minutes later we look back to the back of the classroom and Martin is convulsing back and forth holding his crotch and looking extremely pained. Isabel said "Martin!! If you HAVE to go then go!" So finally he went.
All. over. the. floor.
So, needless to say, my two weeks back have been eventful. I haven't adjusted yet but luckily neither have the students. I'll have to update later on my older kids. As a P.S. before I go, you should all be happy to know that the 7 year old that usually molests me is now seeing a psychologist, so we're hoping he'll stop touching me inappropriately. He still stares awkwardly, and I have to monitor my hugs to him, but I'd say that's pretty awesome progress. I'll take it!
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Long time, no see!
Before I start, I'd like to note that Spanish television is absolutely incredible. As I write this, I'm watching Alf. Earlier today I had 2 projects due so I procrastinated until the last minute and eventually cranked them out watching Growing Pains and Hey Arnold! I've missed my Spanish T.V...ever since everything started snowballing before break, the apartment has been crammed (not in a good way) and I spent most of my time in my room or trying to nap whenever possible.
That being said, that's why I haven't written anything in over a month. Things got suuuuuuuuuuuper busy and then I was able to come home over break, and then I got dragged back here unwillingly and I'm stuck here for awhile, haha. I love it here, don't get me wrong...but it's been a rough transition.
For starters, the adventure back sucked even worse than the first time. The Asian guy at the Washington airport was rude & unhelpful and I swear he was HAPPY I was supposed to be stuck overnight in Dulles (properly named, by the way)...like one of those people who watches Maury to feel better about their lives. I missed my connecting flight taking me from Washington D. to Madrid, so I finally convinced him to let me go to London, then to Madrid. On the 7 hour flight to London, I tried to sleep and the guy in front of me insisted on stretching his legs a lot, which usually meant I would fall asleep and wake up to him standing over me, "stretching his legs", which really meant watching me snooze. He was so damned creepy. I caught him standing over me, staring, 4 different times. His hair was really greasy too, which I think is an obvious sign of a mass murderer. Then, after landing in London and discovering the angry Asian man told me he booked me with the wrong company, I finally get on the plane and am excited to just get into Spain. On that 2 hour flight, I sat next to a very rotund man who looked a lot like Santa Claus and was the most annoying passenger that has ever breathed air on this planet. To begin, this flight was delayed because one of the engines was not starting. If you ask me, that's a pretty severe issue that should be corrected by switching planes. Instead the pilot non-chalantly got on the intercom and said (and I quote) "Hey guys, uh, sorry we haven't been in contact with you for awhile, one of our engines appears as though it isn't starting. We've been below with the crews trying to get it started but we're pretty sure if we just restart the system it'll be just fine and we can take off shortly." UH, PRETTY SURE!?!? It's the damned engine!!! It's what makes the magic in airplanes and makes them fly!! That's like saying "uh, I'm pretty sure this car can run with only 4 wheels". Yeah, it'll run, dumbass, just not very well...
I know that's a bit overdramatic but after all of the flying I ended up doing, I found myself having panic attacks and pondering the credibility and saftely of airplanes....think about it, how do 2 engines make a thousand bajillion pounds FLY?! I decided it's against physics. Especially when the tactic to lift off is to simply go faster. It's not like cars do that. When I accelerate faster, I don't fly. I'd probably just get a ticket.
That's not the point. Let's get back to Santa. So we're waiting...2 hours pass for this engine issue to resolve itself (the entire flight I was waiting to fall out of the sky and plummet to my death). While I was waiting for this, though, Santa created many unwanted distractions. The first was him passing out, 5 minutes after boarding, with his head thrown back, mouth gaping open, and snoring like a damned foghorn. No joke. The ENTIRE plane, including the attendants, were staring and judging. Every once in awhile he would snore so hard he would choke a little bit, and wake up...but he would blink twice, lay his head back in his broken-neck position, and immediately fall back asleep. Sometimes he would suck air in so hard it would rattle the uvula in the back of his throat...you could hear it so clearly you could count the amount of times it hit the walls of his throat hole. This was not the worst. I prepared myself for the worst, which was 4 hours of this melodious bullshit. Because we were preparing for take off (for 2 hours) we were not allowed to use electronic devices...i.e. my iPod. So I start reading my 2 Cosmos I brought along and prayed that just maybe God would kill us after all. 120 excruciating minutes later, we take off and are shortly able to use our electronic devices. I throw in my iPod and thank the baby Jesus. I fell asleep for a little bit but woke up half way through and noticed that everybody was staring at me again. I figured it was snoring Santa again, choking on something new. He was awake, though, reading a magazine. I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on so I take off my headphones and discovered what the big deal was. Santa, in all of his annoying glory, had forgotten his headphones (or maybe he is just so annoying he chose not to use them), and was blasting music from his iPhone. Yes, as soon as I remove my music, I am slapped in the face with an acoustic rendition of Alanis Morrisette's Ironic. Blasting from the seat separating me and his obese body. The worst part was that he was totally oblivious to all 12 annoyed passengers surrounding us. So we listened to two more songs from Alanis and eventually he ended the trip with a couple classics from Jewel. Bad things come in three so he of course had to end the trip with a bang. When we were advised to turn off devices, again, because of landing, I look over and see that Santa is blatantly disregarding this rule and instead doing just the opposite...he is texting somebody. WHILE WE WERE LANDING. As soon as he got signal he started texting away and even checking his e-mail. It is truly a miracle that I am able to even type this right now.
Anyways....I made it. I got my luggage. I pissed off some gypsy who put my luggage into the taxi that I didn't tip because I thought he was just being nice and helping and didn't realize he was a gypsy. Usually gypsies have talents. I didn't think his was a very good one...feigning kindness. That was the first slap in the face from Spain. I also had to unpack my bags, sadly realizing I packed WAY TOO MUCH clothes. :( July will have some sad surprises for me.
That was just my first day back. My delays also caused me to miss my two final projects for both of my master's classes, which are also the only grades in the classes. Life reeeeeeeeally hated me that day. That all worked out alright, though. Having returned on the wrong foot, however, has been rough. First of all, I'd like to revisit my complaints about public transportation. I'm pretty sure it's going to kill me. Literally. First of all, the buses are quickly moving death traps. I was riding to my private lessons Monday when I noticed the emergency exits. Do you know what those are? The windows. And as if that's not bad enough, the hammers were stolen from every. single. holster. Who steals an emergency hammer!? So if the bus spontaneously combusts, I'm screwed. Also, the drivers cut corners. Which....whatever. They also text while driving. I wouldn't care but apparently there is no penalty for destructive contact. My bus was flying around a corner to catch a light and we literally hit the curb, bounced back, and busted into the stop light on the corner. We bent the thing down to a 45 degree angle. I was mortified and as my brother says, my toes were hurting. I'm looking frantically at the post we were quickly speeding away from, the pedestrians we came 2 inches from hitting, and the bus driver and passengers that were all witness to the accident as well. NOBODY WAS PHASED. AT ALL. It reminds me of the time before when my host mom hit two pedestrians when she was backing up in Valencia. Her response was "oops, I didn't see them!"...and then she *quickly* threw the car in drive and sped off. I literally waited the entire ride for the bus driver to turn around and go back, or to get pulled over by the S.W.A.T. team, but that didn't happen. Because in Spain, it doesn't matter. No pasa nada.
This adjustment is harder than I ever imagined...but day by day, I'm getting used to it all again. Which is the scary part...
That being said, that's why I haven't written anything in over a month. Things got suuuuuuuuuuuper busy and then I was able to come home over break, and then I got dragged back here unwillingly and I'm stuck here for awhile, haha. I love it here, don't get me wrong...but it's been a rough transition.
For starters, the adventure back sucked even worse than the first time. The Asian guy at the Washington airport was rude & unhelpful and I swear he was HAPPY I was supposed to be stuck overnight in Dulles (properly named, by the way)...like one of those people who watches Maury to feel better about their lives. I missed my connecting flight taking me from Washington D. to Madrid, so I finally convinced him to let me go to London, then to Madrid. On the 7 hour flight to London, I tried to sleep and the guy in front of me insisted on stretching his legs a lot, which usually meant I would fall asleep and wake up to him standing over me, "stretching his legs", which really meant watching me snooze. He was so damned creepy. I caught him standing over me, staring, 4 different times. His hair was really greasy too, which I think is an obvious sign of a mass murderer. Then, after landing in London and discovering the angry Asian man told me he booked me with the wrong company, I finally get on the plane and am excited to just get into Spain. On that 2 hour flight, I sat next to a very rotund man who looked a lot like Santa Claus and was the most annoying passenger that has ever breathed air on this planet. To begin, this flight was delayed because one of the engines was not starting. If you ask me, that's a pretty severe issue that should be corrected by switching planes. Instead the pilot non-chalantly got on the intercom and said (and I quote) "Hey guys, uh, sorry we haven't been in contact with you for awhile, one of our engines appears as though it isn't starting. We've been below with the crews trying to get it started but we're pretty sure if we just restart the system it'll be just fine and we can take off shortly." UH, PRETTY SURE!?!? It's the damned engine!!! It's what makes the magic in airplanes and makes them fly!! That's like saying "uh, I'm pretty sure this car can run with only 4 wheels". Yeah, it'll run, dumbass, just not very well...
I know that's a bit overdramatic but after all of the flying I ended up doing, I found myself having panic attacks and pondering the credibility and saftely of airplanes....think about it, how do 2 engines make a thousand bajillion pounds FLY?! I decided it's against physics. Especially when the tactic to lift off is to simply go faster. It's not like cars do that. When I accelerate faster, I don't fly. I'd probably just get a ticket.
That's not the point. Let's get back to Santa. So we're waiting...2 hours pass for this engine issue to resolve itself (the entire flight I was waiting to fall out of the sky and plummet to my death). While I was waiting for this, though, Santa created many unwanted distractions. The first was him passing out, 5 minutes after boarding, with his head thrown back, mouth gaping open, and snoring like a damned foghorn. No joke. The ENTIRE plane, including the attendants, were staring and judging. Every once in awhile he would snore so hard he would choke a little bit, and wake up...but he would blink twice, lay his head back in his broken-neck position, and immediately fall back asleep. Sometimes he would suck air in so hard it would rattle the uvula in the back of his throat...you could hear it so clearly you could count the amount of times it hit the walls of his throat hole. This was not the worst. I prepared myself for the worst, which was 4 hours of this melodious bullshit. Because we were preparing for take off (for 2 hours) we were not allowed to use electronic devices...i.e. my iPod. So I start reading my 2 Cosmos I brought along and prayed that just maybe God would kill us after all. 120 excruciating minutes later, we take off and are shortly able to use our electronic devices. I throw in my iPod and thank the baby Jesus. I fell asleep for a little bit but woke up half way through and noticed that everybody was staring at me again. I figured it was snoring Santa again, choking on something new. He was awake, though, reading a magazine. I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on so I take off my headphones and discovered what the big deal was. Santa, in all of his annoying glory, had forgotten his headphones (or maybe he is just so annoying he chose not to use them), and was blasting music from his iPhone. Yes, as soon as I remove my music, I am slapped in the face with an acoustic rendition of Alanis Morrisette's Ironic. Blasting from the seat separating me and his obese body. The worst part was that he was totally oblivious to all 12 annoyed passengers surrounding us. So we listened to two more songs from Alanis and eventually he ended the trip with a couple classics from Jewel. Bad things come in three so he of course had to end the trip with a bang. When we were advised to turn off devices, again, because of landing, I look over and see that Santa is blatantly disregarding this rule and instead doing just the opposite...he is texting somebody. WHILE WE WERE LANDING. As soon as he got signal he started texting away and even checking his e-mail. It is truly a miracle that I am able to even type this right now.
Anyways....I made it. I got my luggage. I pissed off some gypsy who put my luggage into the taxi that I didn't tip because I thought he was just being nice and helping and didn't realize he was a gypsy. Usually gypsies have talents. I didn't think his was a very good one...feigning kindness. That was the first slap in the face from Spain. I also had to unpack my bags, sadly realizing I packed WAY TOO MUCH clothes. :( July will have some sad surprises for me.
That was just my first day back. My delays also caused me to miss my two final projects for both of my master's classes, which are also the only grades in the classes. Life reeeeeeeeally hated me that day. That all worked out alright, though. Having returned on the wrong foot, however, has been rough. First of all, I'd like to revisit my complaints about public transportation. I'm pretty sure it's going to kill me. Literally. First of all, the buses are quickly moving death traps. I was riding to my private lessons Monday when I noticed the emergency exits. Do you know what those are? The windows. And as if that's not bad enough, the hammers were stolen from every. single. holster. Who steals an emergency hammer!? So if the bus spontaneously combusts, I'm screwed. Also, the drivers cut corners. Which....whatever. They also text while driving. I wouldn't care but apparently there is no penalty for destructive contact. My bus was flying around a corner to catch a light and we literally hit the curb, bounced back, and busted into the stop light on the corner. We bent the thing down to a 45 degree angle. I was mortified and as my brother says, my toes were hurting. I'm looking frantically at the post we were quickly speeding away from, the pedestrians we came 2 inches from hitting, and the bus driver and passengers that were all witness to the accident as well. NOBODY WAS PHASED. AT ALL. It reminds me of the time before when my host mom hit two pedestrians when she was backing up in Valencia. Her response was "oops, I didn't see them!"...and then she *quickly* threw the car in drive and sped off. I literally waited the entire ride for the bus driver to turn around and go back, or to get pulled over by the S.W.A.T. team, but that didn't happen. Because in Spain, it doesn't matter. No pasa nada.
This adjustment is harder than I ever imagined...but day by day, I'm getting used to it all again. Which is the scary part...
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