Ok. So. I've only been half bad about keeping up to date on my blogging and since nobody is holding me accountable I blame you all. :) Just kidding. It's my fault but like I said I have a lot of other New Years resolutions I've been working on and this one has fallen behind. In related news my "drink more water" resolution has been going swimmingly...literally. Do you know how difficult it is to drink 64 oz. of water (8 8 oz. glasses) in a day?! I literally spend most of my time peeing. I'm sure you all needed to know that but that's important information right now in my life.
Another reason I've been blogging less is just basically sheer exhaustion. It's been like this all year. My social lie has been more active (thankfully) and that means going out more...which also means recovering more from going out. On top of that school has been a shit show since the first day...you wanna know why? PRESCHOOL. I FREAKING HATE PRESCHOOL.
There I said it. Actually I say that every day. Every damned day. My teachers ask "how's it going?" and all I have to answer is "preschool" and they know I'm pissed.
Why? Let me break it down. First of all my assumption about the absurdity of preschool was spot on. Kids who are 2, 3, and 4 years old should be shitting their pants at home, not at school. Not to mention the fact that I am not a teacher, nor your babysitter, I am a "language assistant" and I personally don't feel like helping small children not soil themselves is part of that description....and yet here I am. They are little savage beasts. Best birth control you could ever imagine. I'm not going to have kids until I'm retired, or I'm going to raise them a lot better than these kids (which shouldn't be hard...they are savage little terrorists).
Anyways the first months were frightening to say the least. We'd have to take group potty breaks to the bathrooms where it's one big fornication hole. Not really, it just bugs me. I would tell anybody that I'm extraordinarily mature for my age and beyond my years with wisdom....but not with small children. And their bodily functions. When I went to preschool the girls would go to the bathrooms all at once and then the boys would come in afterwards by themselves. Maybe I'm overly sensitive but everyone goes at the same time here (which is just poor planning and laziness because you know what comes next? The awkward questions...they may not be able to pull their own pants down but they sure are observant. "Chelsea why does Marta not have a pito? Where is your pito? Chelsea do you have a pito?" If the kids don't know the basic colors in English trust you me they sure as hell won't understand "stop asking why Marta has a pito and just pee in the hole".
That wasn't the only scarring bathroom incident. I went with this little boy and he just stood there. He looks up at me with his little doe eyes and says "I have to pee." So I rubbed his back and said okay, go pee! He just kept staring at me and repeating "I have to pee..." and I kept urging him "come on! You can! You can go pee!" I was like a bathroom cheerleader for small people. He eventually started crying and I tried to calm him down, in Spanish even, and nothing. So I called for backup and apparently the problem was that he can't pull down his own pants. My first thought was, "oh hell no...". NO. I'm not undressing children, especially male ones. Who are 4 years old! Gives me the heebie jeebies. Plus I don't exactly think he was telling the truth about not being able to pull down his pants. We have this one kid named Hansiel that undresses himself all the damned time and throws his shoes at the other kids. And he's 3. He's a whole other terror.
The part that's shitty about all of this situation is the fact that I really am good with small kids...it's just the atmosphere. In this teaching setting I'm dying a slow painful death and I sleep most of the weekend to recover. When I see my preschool kids on the street it's wonderful. They love me, they hug me until I have to tap out for oxygen. I'm patient, I'm kind, I'm loving, I'm caring (contrary to what the above might lead you to believe.) They adore me. And they thing I'm magic. I heard them talking about me once and they said that because I "come from a far away land like England [eye roll] and speak English I've got magical powers. Plus I'm probably a princess because I have yellow [eye roll] hair." Quote unquote! They worship me and I really love it. The bad part is the other teachers. The person in charge of preschool, the principal, is the same principal in primary school...so she's got her hands full in 1st-6th grade (and trust me there's plenty of other shit [literally] going on there that she has to deal with. Not to mention preschool is in an entire other building so none of them ever cross paths. They do whatever the hell they want to do and get away with murder. Whenever I go down there they're watching YouTube videos of songs or children shows. That wouldn't bother me, except for the fact that once they get to 1st grade they're supposed to have a set of skills that they don't have. Some of those basic skills they lack are reading, writing, being able to sit properly in a chair for more than 2 minutes, paying attention to the teachers, following class rules, basic hygiene and cleanliness...I could go on. I only have 15 minutes with each class...on Monday I have an hour with the 3 year olds, Wednesday and hour with the 4 year olds, and Friday an hour with the 5 year olds. The 5 year olds I actually like, because they're the closest thing to normal students. They understand quite a bit of English, enough to let me give the entire class in English without the teacher's help. That's the problem. They say "Chelsea, don't speak any Spanish! You only have 15 minutes and we want them to hear as much English as possible." But then the teachers leave me alone (which is illegal by the way...). And the kids start running around the classroom. And hitting the other kids. And eating crayons (one day one kid ate 3 crayons before I caught him and I only knew that because of the different shades of remnants in his mouth...that is why it's illegal to leave me alone with them haha). The times I've asked them to stay they get huffy with me and act like I'm a complete waste of space. Thanks. I also don't like to keep asking them because I shouldn't have to be like, "hey, can you do actually do your job? Okay thanks."
So anyways. That was one big rant of why I've been stressed lately. I'm excited though because I'm going to start teaching the 4 and 5 year olds the alphabet so that will take up 26 weeks :D If I end up staying next year I'm going to have to get up the cojones to tell them politely that I refuse to be in preschool, because I just can't handle it. It's so unfortunate too because I am so awesome with the primary kids. I've finally hit a groove.
This is getting lengthy so I'll cut this off now. Tune in shortly for an update I'm going to title called "Red-Headed Horrors and Profane Utensils". It's gonna be a great one, the crazy nun is back at it again!
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Sunday, January 20, 2013
The Most Boring Birthday Ever And My Quarter Life Crisis
Hola a todos! I'm finally back in all-Spain mode now that I've fully unpacked and immersed myself back in my second (which has now become first-nature) culture. I'm writing my first post of the year and I'm glad to declare (again) that one of my New Year's resolutions is to blog more often. I also realize that's vague so I've just decided to declare (again) that I'll blog once every two weeks (at least). Hold me to it, people. Peer pressure goes a long way! I still have blogs to write from last year...but no worries, I write blog ideas on scrap paper so I have them all saved. When it's a slow week I'll do a retroactive blog to keep things interesting.
This is also my first blog post as a 25 year old...and while I realize that I'm still young and the world is my oyster or whatever, I honestly feel as old as an oyster looks.
This is also my first blog post as a 25 year old...and while I realize that I'm still young and the world is my oyster or whatever, I honestly feel as old as an oyster looks.
(For the record I edited this photo in Paint in public at Starbucks...you can't imagine the weird ass looks I got for putting a smiley face on a clam...and then continuing to blog about it)
See? Old, wrinkly, and wet (it's been raining here non-stop since I got here). Anyways there are various culprits to blame for my quarter life crisis. First of all I'm faced with the hardest decision of my life thus far, which is whether I should stay in Spain another year or head back home and start pursuing a real job. Whenever I'm forced to teach preschool (aka Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays) I'm 120% sure I should come home immediately, if not that exact same day. Other days when the weather is nice and I'm not so stressed out, I think of how fortunate I am to be here, and how little Indianapolis seems so small and almost boring in comparison to this amazing European city...and all of my friends and students that I love here...and never seeing them ever again...and then I start having those heart palpitations I had last Christmas and look up pictures of cats on Pinterest to calm myself down.
Grumpy cat is my currently my favorite...I wish my cats looked pissed all the time. This seriously makes me laugh to tears.
I'm putting off my decision as long as possible. I'll blog about it as soon as I know so that you all will know if you have to miss me another year or throw me a welcome home party (and yes I want a party. :)
Another reason I feel super old was my flight back. First of all my flight wasn't really expected to be a bag full of rainbows and unicorns anyways because A.) it was with American Airlines, B.) it was going through JFK in New York (and if you don't remember the hell I went through last year involving both of these horrors please reference my 3-part blog post detailing the trauma [that I STILL have nightmares about]) and C.) it was my birthday. I'm used to not having spectacular birthdays (it always falls on events that are more important) so I wasn't so disappointed and I've decided to change it this year to February 10 anyways so I can celebrate. Then, at the airport, my adventure began. First I passed through TSA and got stopped as I passed through the metal body scanner. I had taken off my boots and was wearing jean leggings and socks. My right ankle was showing up as a threat so they pulled me aside to pat down my ankle. I thought that was so absurd...my ankle! And with my leggings you'd clearly be able to tell if I was concealing guns or knives or weapons...pfff. Anyways as I'm struggling to put my boots back on, this other TSA guard approaches me and another guy next to me and says, "whoever puts their hands out first and closes their eyes gets a surprise!"
Now....in my 25 years of life thus far, I've learned that it's never a good idea to actually follow through with this kind of situation. You'll never actually be pleased by the outcome and it's sure to end in disappointment or disgust. Not to mention that it's coming from a complete stranger...I'm pretty sure that's the exact line that most flashers in trench coats use to operate and facilitate their business. Anyways the other dude I was in line with stuck out his hand (but didn't close his eyes) and the TSA guard gave him 20 cents in change, then went on some tangent about how Big Brother is watching (pointing to the cameras) and how if he were to pocket the money he'd be fired in a second. Both of them continued on about various conspiracy theories and I tried to do what I always do when confronted by wackadoodle strangers, get the hell out of dodge. Before succeeding though, of course, the TSA guard walks up to me and says, and I quote, "I love yo curlz." I was super confused so he clarified, "Ya hair, you sure got some pretty curlz." This was pretty interesting anyways because my hair was wavy and stringy at best so I just said "oh..........thanks" and tried to continue on without any more interactions with this clearly insane man. I wasn't quick enough though and he continued, "You're welcome...that's the way to ma heart. Curlz an' good cookin'." I laughed uneasily and said, "well unfortunately I've only got 50% of that, I can't cook for shit!" and ran on.
Once I got to the gate I was horrified to see that our airplane was the size of a matchbox car but tried not to think about it too much. I cried for no good reason on the way to New York and slept a little bit against the window. I was excited to get to New York mainly because I was starving and ready to set up camp and watch some TV. Unfortunately all of the restaurants in my terminal were absurd and weird food places (I don't need gourmet food in an airport...all I wanted was Wendy's.) Of course among all of the snobby Italian, sushi, and Indian restaurants there was a McDonald's so I settled for that and made my way to the gate. First of all, JFK doesn't have free wifi. Or electrical outlets. I truly don't understand how the most famous city in the world's biggest airport doesn't have modern amenities. I roughed it though, not worrying about battery because I wouldn't need it on the plane, and watched Big Bang reruns on my hard drive instead.
Cut to the flight and I was HORRIFIED to see that there were no little TV's on the back of the seats. STUPID-ASS AMERICAN AIRLINES, SO HORRIBLY WORTHLESS. Damn they suuuuuck. Not looking forward to the flight home...so I immediately popped a sleeping pill. My flight was generally uneventful. There was a bitchy French woman who was pretty unbearable but kinda fun to watch her harp at everyone else. The airplane was chock full of study abroad students...and I think I was literally the only person under 40 who was not a student. I felt so old. Everyone was like, "oh my God, like, where are you from? What school are you from?" THE Butler University....3 years ago (gag). I'm not study abroad..."oooh, oh my God! So, like, are you like really good at Spanish then?? Do you like love Madrid??"
This was an actual conversation that went on for the entirety of the 8 hour flight. It was also sprinkled with the girl speaking horrible horrible horrible Spanish, trying to prove that she was ready for study abroad. I think I let my bitterness about being old seep in a little bit though because I accidentally scared her by accidentally telling her that Spain is horribly racist and she was going to have an interesting time because she was 1/2 Chinese and Spaniards don't generally understand Chinese-Americans (if you look in any way Asian, they think you're Chinese (from China). Period). I swear it was an accident....and I didn't even realize it until she walked away and looked three times more nervous than she did at the beginning of the flight. I like to think I gave her a sort of heads up, though. Wisdom from her elders. That makes me feel better.
Anyways I ended up finding the only non-study abroad student, who was a water-polo player and coming back to finish her first year in Spain, and we made it back to the center together. I treated myself to a taxi from the main metro line (only 5 euros surprisingly!) for my birthday and slept the rest of the day.
Starbucks is officially kicking me off their wifi so tomorrow night I will try to update again with more amazing stories about Colonel Nun and the crazy things she's been up to these past 2 weeks (there is so much to tell). Stay tuned!
Sunday, November 11, 2012
"SMELL JOUR FINGAHS!!"
Hello, hello! I'm finally writing because I finally have time & energy...and health. Since the last time I wrote I have had the life drained from me from the preschoolers and in the past two weeks have been different kinds of sick three times. Living the dream, I tell ya.
Anyways since it's been so long of course this post would be like 55 pages...but since you all complain they're too long the way it is, I'll try to post about everything in three different segments...Halloween, preschool, and the apartment shenanigans. This post is dedicated to Halloween...which you probably couldn't tell from the title but you soon will.
Oh Halloween...where to start? Well first of all I'd like to thank my family and friends for all of the care packages you sent...I offically have so much Pumpkin Spice Via that I don't have to hoard it and I'm in love!! It means a lot as well because I know sending things internationally is expensive and it makes it easier to be away from home. You'd think after being here for so long I'd get used to it but I feel like it's the opposite for me. Anyways I was a pumpkin and I was adorable (not to toot my own horn but...toot toot). I ended up going out with my Spanish friends AND Canadian friends so all was well with the world.
At school, since it might be my last year, I wanted to do the coolest activity I had with all the students I possibly could. Thus far my greatest achievement as a teacher has been the Dead Man In A Cup game. At least in the eyes of my students...to recap, I close all of the blinds, windows, and doors so it's almost pitch black in the room and I tell them that a year ago, on Halloween, a man died. I don't know how, or why...but he's dead (insert slitting throat and dead face motion...they love it, gasping, cupping their mouths, squealing..) I explain that I went to the police station (otherwise known as the super market) and collected his body parts which are in 9 labelled white cups. Their job is to reach into the cup, feel (not look) and if they dare, smell, the "body parts" and then write on their paper what food it really is. Granted, this game is more for the Halloween experience than English language exercise, but I'm also a cultural assistant and it's arguably the most memorable activity we do all year. Because they're so young they find it nearly impossible to dissimilate what they're feeling from the idea of it being a body part so it TOTALLY freaks them out. Last year I only did it with 5th and 6th grade because I was afraid it was too scary...but this year I opened it up to 3rd and 4th grade as well. My 6th graders already knew what to expect so this year I made sure to make their food especially disgusting. I used frozen peeled grapes for eyes, mussels for the tongue, and canned sun dried tomatoes for intestines. I also boiled some carrots and put pistachio shells on them for fingernails...those were SUPER gross because even out of the cup they looked like putrid dead fingers. It was AWESOME.
But of course, in the end......Colonel Nun stole the show.
I was worried about doing the activity with my 3rd graders because they're a bit behind the rest of my classes...and I'm not sure why, but they are just...slow. They're my favorite students by far, they adore me, but academically they could use a push. To give them this push, Colonel Nun only speaks to them in English..........in her broken, poorly pronounced English. They have no clue what's going on at all times and one student, Flamboyant Daniel, came up to me one day and told me he had a secret...I asked what it was and he whispered in my ear "Chelsea I don't like the teacher....she scares me. Don't tell her!!!" .............hahah. Oh by the way, her name is Sister Maria Jose but she refuses to let any of the students call her by name. They all call us by our first names, or profe, or teacher...but she insists they call her "Da Teacher"....well, "Da teachuh" because of her "British" accent. All of the other teachers joke around and call her Mary Jo behind her back....which I find hilarious because she's the most intimidating human being I've ever met in my life and "Mary Jo" just does NOT fit the build. It'd be like finding out Hitler's nickname was Teddy, or Alf.
Anyways the first problem with Colonel Mary Jo came when I was explaining the activity. I explained to them what was happening, I tried to explain quite clearly that there was FOOD in the cups, not body parts...and it was a fun game. I asked Mary Jo to help me explain and she turned right around and repeated what I had just said but in broken English, without a word of Spanish to help them. So I shrug it off, assume they'll figure it out as we go on...but notice they they are becoming increasingly terrified the more they touch the food because they never actually understood that there weren't real body parts in the cups. Therefore on their little slips of paper, where it said "Eyes", they wrote down "ojos".....because they thought they were real eyes. Other students who were mildly more intelligent, but not abundantly so, decided to count the objects in the cups. So for eyes they wrote 2. For fingers & fingernails they wrote 4. For tongue they wrote 1...but they STILL thought they were touching a dead man's body parts. I'm trying at this point to not bang my head against the wall and give myself a concussion. Finally MJ explains, super exasperated, in her growling Spanish that it's FOOD, it's not actually body parts, and that starving people in Africa could be eating this food that we're using for a game to nourish numerous families. Womp, womp, womp...so much for the fun Halloween game when we're the cause of starvation in third world countries. The game continued and everytime anybody reacted and said "Eww, gross!" she'd yell "NO!! Ees no disgusting!! EES FOOD, JEW EAT!! Babies!! Jew haf to guess!! SMELL!! JEW CAN SMELL!! SMELL JOUR FINGAHS!!! MY BABY LOOK!! JEW CAN SMELL DA FINGAHS!! (insert action of Colonel MJ smelling her fingers exageratedly). If that didn't scare the hell out of them then nothing ever will.
The next day's class came quickly and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to better explain the game since Mary Jo was not only not helping me explain, but killing all of the fun as well. I used all of my best gestures and body language to help explain to the kids that these are NOT real body parts (wink wink) but FOOD, normal things that just feel like body parts...not to be too scared! It's a fun game. So we get into a circle and we start...the kids are already looking really queasy and unsure of what to expect and the first body part is the eyes (grapes)...so the kids are touching, feeling, and the grapes are pretty flacid and gooey because they're no longer frozen...and then Mary Jo starts in...in Spanish even. "Careful!! When you touch the eyes they start to roll around!! Don't touch them too hard or they might jump out of the cup!!!............JES, JES....DEAD MAN'S EYES IN THE CUP, CUT FROM HIS FACE!!".......Hold your damned horses Mary Jo!! Where did that come from!? Yesterday you were depressing and suffocating all the fun and today you're literally scaring the crap out of them? What gives? I thought it was just an impulse so we continued...but as we continued her commentaries got darker and darker.
Lips (wet marshmallows): BABIES!! Feel da two leeeps...he can't talk anymore!! If you all talk too much in class that's what happens! Your lips fall off your face! And then they'll end up in the cup like the dead man!! Squishy and sticky lips!!
Intestines (dried tomatoes): Be careful babies! Da intesteens...dried and curled up together...it's like the stomach but longer where all of the food goes! Maybe there is some old food left over in there!!
Tongue (mussels): Babies he might lick you!! With his dead lifeless tongue...is it wet?? JESS?? Well he must have died recently!!
I thought we were going to lose someone to the toilet to go throw up, honestly. After this I was convinced she's bipolar. I love her, and she has even declared her love for me one day (that was a weird scenario...the kids all ran to me and hugged me one day and said "Chelsea, I love jew! You're my best friend" and her response was "JESS JESS I love you too, now SHIT DOWN. SHIT DOWN NOW!!") but she's so freaking special. Which is one of the reasons I love her, haha. She's seriously a loose cannon and you never know when she's gonna blow. It just so happens that this time she blew all over Halloween. Most kids who attend a Catholic school fondly remember the nuns smacking their hands with rulers...my 3rd graders will probably always rememember Mary Jo smelling her hands and screaming "SMELL JOUR FINGAHS!!!!"
Hopefully soon this week I'll update on my next source of entertainment and lack of patience: Preschool!
Anyways since it's been so long of course this post would be like 55 pages...but since you all complain they're too long the way it is, I'll try to post about everything in three different segments...Halloween, preschool, and the apartment shenanigans. This post is dedicated to Halloween...which you probably couldn't tell from the title but you soon will.
Oh Halloween...where to start? Well first of all I'd like to thank my family and friends for all of the care packages you sent...I offically have so much Pumpkin Spice Via that I don't have to hoard it and I'm in love!! It means a lot as well because I know sending things internationally is expensive and it makes it easier to be away from home. You'd think after being here for so long I'd get used to it but I feel like it's the opposite for me. Anyways I was a pumpkin and I was adorable (not to toot my own horn but...toot toot). I ended up going out with my Spanish friends AND Canadian friends so all was well with the world.
At school, since it might be my last year, I wanted to do the coolest activity I had with all the students I possibly could. Thus far my greatest achievement as a teacher has been the Dead Man In A Cup game. At least in the eyes of my students...to recap, I close all of the blinds, windows, and doors so it's almost pitch black in the room and I tell them that a year ago, on Halloween, a man died. I don't know how, or why...but he's dead (insert slitting throat and dead face motion...they love it, gasping, cupping their mouths, squealing..) I explain that I went to the police station (otherwise known as the super market) and collected his body parts which are in 9 labelled white cups. Their job is to reach into the cup, feel (not look) and if they dare, smell, the "body parts" and then write on their paper what food it really is. Granted, this game is more for the Halloween experience than English language exercise, but I'm also a cultural assistant and it's arguably the most memorable activity we do all year. Because they're so young they find it nearly impossible to dissimilate what they're feeling from the idea of it being a body part so it TOTALLY freaks them out. Last year I only did it with 5th and 6th grade because I was afraid it was too scary...but this year I opened it up to 3rd and 4th grade as well. My 6th graders already knew what to expect so this year I made sure to make their food especially disgusting. I used frozen peeled grapes for eyes, mussels for the tongue, and canned sun dried tomatoes for intestines. I also boiled some carrots and put pistachio shells on them for fingernails...those were SUPER gross because even out of the cup they looked like putrid dead fingers. It was AWESOME.
But of course, in the end......Colonel Nun stole the show.
I was worried about doing the activity with my 3rd graders because they're a bit behind the rest of my classes...and I'm not sure why, but they are just...slow. They're my favorite students by far, they adore me, but academically they could use a push. To give them this push, Colonel Nun only speaks to them in English..........in her broken, poorly pronounced English. They have no clue what's going on at all times and one student, Flamboyant Daniel, came up to me one day and told me he had a secret...I asked what it was and he whispered in my ear "Chelsea I don't like the teacher....she scares me. Don't tell her!!!" .............hahah. Oh by the way, her name is Sister Maria Jose but she refuses to let any of the students call her by name. They all call us by our first names, or profe, or teacher...but she insists they call her "Da Teacher"....well, "Da teachuh" because of her "British" accent. All of the other teachers joke around and call her Mary Jo behind her back....which I find hilarious because she's the most intimidating human being I've ever met in my life and "Mary Jo" just does NOT fit the build. It'd be like finding out Hitler's nickname was Teddy, or Alf.
Anyways the first problem with Colonel Mary Jo came when I was explaining the activity. I explained to them what was happening, I tried to explain quite clearly that there was FOOD in the cups, not body parts...and it was a fun game. I asked Mary Jo to help me explain and she turned right around and repeated what I had just said but in broken English, without a word of Spanish to help them. So I shrug it off, assume they'll figure it out as we go on...but notice they they are becoming increasingly terrified the more they touch the food because they never actually understood that there weren't real body parts in the cups. Therefore on their little slips of paper, where it said "Eyes", they wrote down "ojos".....because they thought they were real eyes. Other students who were mildly more intelligent, but not abundantly so, decided to count the objects in the cups. So for eyes they wrote 2. For fingers & fingernails they wrote 4. For tongue they wrote 1...but they STILL thought they were touching a dead man's body parts. I'm trying at this point to not bang my head against the wall and give myself a concussion. Finally MJ explains, super exasperated, in her growling Spanish that it's FOOD, it's not actually body parts, and that starving people in Africa could be eating this food that we're using for a game to nourish numerous families. Womp, womp, womp...so much for the fun Halloween game when we're the cause of starvation in third world countries. The game continued and everytime anybody reacted and said "Eww, gross!" she'd yell "NO!! Ees no disgusting!! EES FOOD, JEW EAT!! Babies!! Jew haf to guess!! SMELL!! JEW CAN SMELL!! SMELL JOUR FINGAHS!!! MY BABY LOOK!! JEW CAN SMELL DA FINGAHS!! (insert action of Colonel MJ smelling her fingers exageratedly). If that didn't scare the hell out of them then nothing ever will.
The next day's class came quickly and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to better explain the game since Mary Jo was not only not helping me explain, but killing all of the fun as well. I used all of my best gestures and body language to help explain to the kids that these are NOT real body parts (wink wink) but FOOD, normal things that just feel like body parts...not to be too scared! It's a fun game. So we get into a circle and we start...the kids are already looking really queasy and unsure of what to expect and the first body part is the eyes (grapes)...so the kids are touching, feeling, and the grapes are pretty flacid and gooey because they're no longer frozen...and then Mary Jo starts in...in Spanish even. "Careful!! When you touch the eyes they start to roll around!! Don't touch them too hard or they might jump out of the cup!!!............JES, JES....DEAD MAN'S EYES IN THE CUP, CUT FROM HIS FACE!!".......Hold your damned horses Mary Jo!! Where did that come from!? Yesterday you were depressing and suffocating all the fun and today you're literally scaring the crap out of them? What gives? I thought it was just an impulse so we continued...but as we continued her commentaries got darker and darker.
Lips (wet marshmallows): BABIES!! Feel da two leeeps...he can't talk anymore!! If you all talk too much in class that's what happens! Your lips fall off your face! And then they'll end up in the cup like the dead man!! Squishy and sticky lips!!
Intestines (dried tomatoes): Be careful babies! Da intesteens...dried and curled up together...it's like the stomach but longer where all of the food goes! Maybe there is some old food left over in there!!
Tongue (mussels): Babies he might lick you!! With his dead lifeless tongue...is it wet?? JESS?? Well he must have died recently!!
I thought we were going to lose someone to the toilet to go throw up, honestly. After this I was convinced she's bipolar. I love her, and she has even declared her love for me one day (that was a weird scenario...the kids all ran to me and hugged me one day and said "Chelsea, I love jew! You're my best friend" and her response was "JESS JESS I love you too, now SHIT DOWN. SHIT DOWN NOW!!") but she's so freaking special. Which is one of the reasons I love her, haha. She's seriously a loose cannon and you never know when she's gonna blow. It just so happens that this time she blew all over Halloween. Most kids who attend a Catholic school fondly remember the nuns smacking their hands with rulers...my 3rd graders will probably always rememember Mary Jo smelling her hands and screaming "SMELL JOUR FINGAHS!!!!"
Hopefully soon this week I'll update on my next source of entertainment and lack of patience: Preschool!
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Chelsea's English Masterpiece Theater
Good evening, Spain, and good afternoon America! You all win, I blogged instead of cleaning. I am a master at rationalizing the shit out of anything, though, so I unloaded the dishwasher, reloaded it, and prepped my breakfast for tomorrow...that covered my "productivity" quota enough to write to you fine ass people and procrastinate the cleaning of the bathroom until tomorrow. I also poured myself an ice cold glass of sangria...I'm doing an experiment to see if it makes me more interesting. You can all vote later. Oh and I will not be saluting Russia anymore because apparently if you use their native language they aren't interested in reading your blog anymore...ironic. It also could be that I trusted Google Translate a little too much and said something heinous in Russian. We say potato, they say vodka.
This calm Sunday night will be spent shitting my pants and worrying about finally starting work tomorrow. I was going to visit my school on Friday just to say hi to everyone and get the kissing thing out of the way (although for better or worse I'm getting used to being kissed by coworkers) but my other teachers caught wind of it (because all my coworkers are gossips and thanks to WhatsApp are able to do it light years faster than ever before...a very key reason why I love them so much, haha) and arranged an impromptu meeting with our new principal. The old head nun (not to be confused with the bat-crap crazy yet loveable leather-skirted nun) changed schools [read: got rotated to another school] and we have a new one. Her name is Sister Solitude of Youths. Or Sister Loneliness...of Youth. It's really not fair to translate it because it sounds better in Spanish, Sister Soledad...but it's kind of funny to do it anyways. It makes me want to sing Sister Christian to her for some reason...which is even more ironic, if you consider the lyrics.
Is that blasphemous? It feels pretty inappropriate...but come on, so funny. I can't wait to tell Jenny, the new assistant at our school. I'll feel better if I'm not the only person singing "MOTORIN'!!!" in my head when I see my boss.
Anyways, my meeting with Sister Christian went really well. She met me, was impressed by my Spanish, and offered me a "promotion"...although after I considered everything I'm going to use "promotion" in air quotes because I have a feeling it's going to be a big pain in the ass. Rocio, our English coordinator, called me Thursday after she heard I was coming to school and asked in confidence if I would be willing to work more hours. She was so excited to be the first to tell me the school wanted to offer me three extra hours a week (which doesn't seem like much but I think I'll end up getting an extra 150 euros a month...which means I can travel more and get bitten in the ass less by my little prick private class kids) with the preschoolers. I told her no problem, I'd keep my mouth shut (because Sister Christian wanted to be the first one to break the news) and pretend to be surprised. Let me tell you how surprised I really was, though, when Sister Christian asked how I thought I'd handle working with the 3-5 year olds..........................3-5?
This chick is 3 years old. (By the way, there is an abundance of hits if you search for "Smoking 3-year old"....like DIFFERENT three year olds. What the hell is going on over in Thailand?!) Okay, granted, I don't expect many of my new students (...okay, so I don't expect any of my new students...) to be chain-smoking miscreants but I wasn't expecting 3 year-olds. Last year we had tossed around the idea of me teaching the oldest kids in preschool (the 5 year-olds) one hour a week...which would only add three extra classes. Sister Christian sprung it on me that I would be teaching ALL of preschool. I believe I have blogged in the past about my visit down to Spain's version of pre-school. I think all kids must attend school in Spain once they are 2-3 years old. Most of these students can barely manage to not soil themselves in any given two hour time increment. I visited one of the teachers I used to work with down there last year and her only job (that I witnessed) was her making sure none of the "students" murdered or seriously injured their fellow classmates with obscure sharp objects around the classroom and that they didn't shit their pants. Literally. One kid did shit his pants. That's it. How am I going to teach them English? Sister Christian was quite adamant about not speaking a word of Spanish with them (which is also going to be a challenge since I quit pretending last year) and suggested I use story-telling and puppet theater to facilitate English, so they could just hear me speak and absorb. I can just see it now, Chelsea's Masterpiece English Theater presents "Who Crapped In The Corner?; A Fecal Mystery [based on a true story]." Based on my previous experience of only fifteen minutes, I'm quite positive by the end of the year they will have mastered the phrases "Why are you holding your crotch?", "Do you have to go to the toilet?", "We don't go poo-poo on the floor", and "Stop hitting each other." I feel like I might be being a little pessimistic, but on the positive side there's guaranteed to be an overwhelming amount of material for my little blog here, so......yay? Yay! In the end, adding all of pre-school, I will have around 600 students, total. Luckily, in pre-school, I only have 20 minutes with each class...so best or worst case scenario, it won't be too difficult to squirm through. Through which to squirm. I am an English teacher after all...never end a sentence with a preposition. Or use fragments.
In other good news, I'm finally 7/8 settled in to my apartment. I was avoiding it like the plague because I hate unpacking (which seems weird, I know, but it simply reminds me how much crap I have accumulated in Spain and makes me seriously depressed thinking about how I'm going to eventually get it all home once I decide to move home. I haven't thrown away one copy of Cosmo since I've been here...I wouldn't say I'm a hoarder but I'm only 5 bottles of nail polish, 3 gel pens, and a missing pet trapped in my clutter away from officially qualifying for the title. Luckily I don't have a pet (that I'm aware of) so I won't ever legitimately qualify. I unpacked all of my stuff-stuff and am still in the process of unpacking my clothes. I got through two huge space bags and two small space bags, got really excited and took a celebratory nap, and then when I woke up realized there was one more big space bag...so I gave up and am leaving that for later. Like tomorrow, or next weekend. Or 2013 if the world doesn't end. If there was anything more than that one space bag I was seriously considering burning all my clothes and becoming a nudist. I'd have to move to the coast to a beach town to fit in, and I'd for sure be the cutest person on the beach considering all the old wrinkly nudeness I've seen...my boobs would also be the perkiest, since the other women at the beach practically step on theirs...actually this scenario is getting a little too appealing, so let's change topics before it becomes my reality, haha.
I'm surprisingly home alone, even at 11:30 p.m., because Paco is still with his boyfriend in Sevilla and Irene left to go kayak down some rapids or something. All I could understand while she was squealing excitedly about it was "so much water!!...so fast!!!....the terror!!! EEEEK!!" I'm assuming it was kayak-related. Let's hope. Paco left me homework this weekend before he left....I was supposed to practice Mario Kart in the next level of difficulty so he could race me once he gets back. I adore him but he's the worst influence ever...and I am, equally, to him. Numerous times this past week it's been 12:30 a.m. and he comes crashing in, "SHELLTHEEEEE....eeets time to play da Mario!!! Come on, leetle squeetle (squirrel) I'm goin to ween to jew!!!" (he's going to beat me...he can't remember "beat" so he always mistranslates to "I'm going to win you". Hilarious). I always wonder what our neighbors think because we are quite loud...one time last week I actually beat him. I was on my A game and he kept having bad luck...and I beat him. All of Madrid could hear him screaming "COME BACK JERE JEW BABY BEETCH!!!!!" as I won. (My character I always choose is Baby Peach, so he thinks he's being super clever...unfortunately the name has stuck and now anytime he wants to play he no longer calls me Shellthee, he comes bounding in and yells "Baby beeeetch, we have to play!!" Luckily I don't think the neighbors understand him.) I don't think, without proper video evidence, I could explain how serious Paco is about Mario Kart. He's never met anyone who can challenge him and he loves and hates it at the same time. One time I came home and he was listening to music in his room, blasting it at full volume, so I assumed he was busy and started playing on my own. He comes in a little bit later and threw a fit. "What are you doing!?! You're playing and you didn't even invite me to come play?? YOU'RE TRAINING!!! I can't believe it you're training so you can beat me!! IRENE!!!! She's been TRAINING!!!" My life not be high speed and exciting but you can damn well bet I would never train for Mario Kart to beat my gay roommate.
Except this weekend. I definitely did this weekend. But don't tell Paco...I'm gonna let him find out himself :D Love you all, pray for me and my first week of 21 hours.
This calm Sunday night will be spent shitting my pants and worrying about finally starting work tomorrow. I was going to visit my school on Friday just to say hi to everyone and get the kissing thing out of the way (although for better or worse I'm getting used to being kissed by coworkers) but my other teachers caught wind of it (because all my coworkers are gossips and thanks to WhatsApp are able to do it light years faster than ever before...a very key reason why I love them so much, haha) and arranged an impromptu meeting with our new principal. The old head nun (not to be confused with the bat-crap crazy yet loveable leather-skirted nun) changed schools [read: got rotated to another school] and we have a new one. Her name is Sister Solitude of Youths. Or Sister Loneliness...of Youth. It's really not fair to translate it because it sounds better in Spanish, Sister Soledad...but it's kind of funny to do it anyways. It makes me want to sing Sister Christian to her for some reason...which is even more ironic, if you consider the lyrics.
You know those boys don't wanna play no more with you, it's true...MOTORIN'! What's your price for flight...in findin' Mr. Right?
Is that blasphemous? It feels pretty inappropriate...but come on, so funny. I can't wait to tell Jenny, the new assistant at our school. I'll feel better if I'm not the only person singing "MOTORIN'!!!" in my head when I see my boss.
Anyways, my meeting with Sister Christian went really well. She met me, was impressed by my Spanish, and offered me a "promotion"...although after I considered everything I'm going to use "promotion" in air quotes because I have a feeling it's going to be a big pain in the ass. Rocio, our English coordinator, called me Thursday after she heard I was coming to school and asked in confidence if I would be willing to work more hours. She was so excited to be the first to tell me the school wanted to offer me three extra hours a week (which doesn't seem like much but I think I'll end up getting an extra 150 euros a month...which means I can travel more and get bitten in the ass less by my little prick private class kids) with the preschoolers. I told her no problem, I'd keep my mouth shut (because Sister Christian wanted to be the first one to break the news) and pretend to be surprised. Let me tell you how surprised I really was, though, when Sister Christian asked how I thought I'd handle working with the 3-5 year olds..........................3-5?
This chick is 3 years old. (By the way, there is an abundance of hits if you search for "Smoking 3-year old"....like DIFFERENT three year olds. What the hell is going on over in Thailand?!) Okay, granted, I don't expect many of my new students (...okay, so I don't expect any of my new students...) to be chain-smoking miscreants but I wasn't expecting 3 year-olds. Last year we had tossed around the idea of me teaching the oldest kids in preschool (the 5 year-olds) one hour a week...which would only add three extra classes. Sister Christian sprung it on me that I would be teaching ALL of preschool. I believe I have blogged in the past about my visit down to Spain's version of pre-school. I think all kids must attend school in Spain once they are 2-3 years old. Most of these students can barely manage to not soil themselves in any given two hour time increment. I visited one of the teachers I used to work with down there last year and her only job (that I witnessed) was her making sure none of the "students" murdered or seriously injured their fellow classmates with obscure sharp objects around the classroom and that they didn't shit their pants. Literally. One kid did shit his pants. That's it. How am I going to teach them English? Sister Christian was quite adamant about not speaking a word of Spanish with them (which is also going to be a challenge since I quit pretending last year) and suggested I use story-telling and puppet theater to facilitate English, so they could just hear me speak and absorb. I can just see it now, Chelsea's Masterpiece English Theater presents "Who Crapped In The Corner?; A Fecal Mystery [based on a true story]." Based on my previous experience of only fifteen minutes, I'm quite positive by the end of the year they will have mastered the phrases "Why are you holding your crotch?", "Do you have to go to the toilet?", "We don't go poo-poo on the floor", and "Stop hitting each other." I feel like I might be being a little pessimistic, but on the positive side there's guaranteed to be an overwhelming amount of material for my little blog here, so......yay? Yay! In the end, adding all of pre-school, I will have around 600 students, total. Luckily, in pre-school, I only have 20 minutes with each class...so best or worst case scenario, it won't be too difficult to squirm through. Through which to squirm. I am an English teacher after all...never end a sentence with a preposition. Or use fragments.
In other good news, I'm finally 7/8 settled in to my apartment. I was avoiding it like the plague because I hate unpacking (which seems weird, I know, but it simply reminds me how much crap I have accumulated in Spain and makes me seriously depressed thinking about how I'm going to eventually get it all home once I decide to move home. I haven't thrown away one copy of Cosmo since I've been here...I wouldn't say I'm a hoarder but I'm only 5 bottles of nail polish, 3 gel pens, and a missing pet trapped in my clutter away from officially qualifying for the title. Luckily I don't have a pet (that I'm aware of) so I won't ever legitimately qualify. I unpacked all of my stuff-stuff and am still in the process of unpacking my clothes. I got through two huge space bags and two small space bags, got really excited and took a celebratory nap, and then when I woke up realized there was one more big space bag...so I gave up and am leaving that for later. Like tomorrow, or next weekend. Or 2013 if the world doesn't end. If there was anything more than that one space bag I was seriously considering burning all my clothes and becoming a nudist. I'd have to move to the coast to a beach town to fit in, and I'd for sure be the cutest person on the beach considering all the old wrinkly nudeness I've seen...my boobs would also be the perkiest, since the other women at the beach practically step on theirs...actually this scenario is getting a little too appealing, so let's change topics before it becomes my reality, haha.
I'm surprisingly home alone, even at 11:30 p.m., because Paco is still with his boyfriend in Sevilla and Irene left to go kayak down some rapids or something. All I could understand while she was squealing excitedly about it was "so much water!!...so fast!!!....the terror!!! EEEEK!!" I'm assuming it was kayak-related. Let's hope. Paco left me homework this weekend before he left....I was supposed to practice Mario Kart in the next level of difficulty so he could race me once he gets back. I adore him but he's the worst influence ever...and I am, equally, to him. Numerous times this past week it's been 12:30 a.m. and he comes crashing in, "SHELLTHEEEEE....eeets time to play da Mario!!! Come on, leetle squeetle (squirrel) I'm goin to ween to jew!!!" (he's going to beat me...he can't remember "beat" so he always mistranslates to "I'm going to win you". Hilarious). I always wonder what our neighbors think because we are quite loud...one time last week I actually beat him. I was on my A game and he kept having bad luck...and I beat him. All of Madrid could hear him screaming "COME BACK JERE JEW BABY BEETCH!!!!!" as I won. (My character I always choose is Baby Peach, so he thinks he's being super clever...unfortunately the name has stuck and now anytime he wants to play he no longer calls me Shellthee, he comes bounding in and yells "Baby beeeetch, we have to play!!" Luckily I don't think the neighbors understand him.) I don't think, without proper video evidence, I could explain how serious Paco is about Mario Kart. He's never met anyone who can challenge him and he loves and hates it at the same time. One time I came home and he was listening to music in his room, blasting it at full volume, so I assumed he was busy and started playing on my own. He comes in a little bit later and threw a fit. "What are you doing!?! You're playing and you didn't even invite me to come play?? YOU'RE TRAINING!!! I can't believe it you're training so you can beat me!! IRENE!!!! She's been TRAINING!!!" My life not be high speed and exciting but you can damn well bet I would never train for Mario Kart to beat my gay roommate.
Except this weekend. I definitely did this weekend. But don't tell Paco...I'm gonna let him find out himself :D Love you all, pray for me and my first week of 21 hours.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
I'm In Love With A Boy Named Paco
Hello America & Spain! And my two viewers who always manage to pop up from Russia...привет! (I Googled that...it means "hello" in Russian...feel special you two creeps).
I know I haven't written for a little while, but if we all take into consideration how often I wrote last year (due to emotional roller coasters and lack of will power) this is pretty good, right?
The good news is that so far everything seems to be going really well. Last year I ended up in the wrong apartment, far away from Madrid, with the wrong roommate...and to top that off she was never even home, so it was like I lived alone. I think that started the year off on the wrong foot....so I'm looking to really make up for it this year.
As you all should know, I have a gay roommate. Sometimes I feel like it's wrong to single him out as the gay roommate...he's also the only male roommate...but it seriously is the best way to describe him. I swear I'm not marginalizing...if anything I love him more for it. You should all be gay and maybe I'd love you more too, haha. Kidding...mostly.
Anyways I'm in love with Paco. We've only been living together for a week now and it's already a very strong relationship. He's very sassy and very effeminate....not drag queen effeminate, just...normal effeminate. He's also very quirky...for example he's in love with Toy Story. Yesterday he introduced me to his Toy Story dolls...he has Buzz, Woody, Bullseye (the horse), and Jessie (the cowgirl)...if you turn them on and put them together, they talk to each other. Just to clarify, this is where the gay-roommate clarification comes in. Let's all imagine that my roommate last year, Manuel, the one-man star of Carrie in our apartment, had these toys. Coupled with his chronic schizophrenia and talking to his other personalities in the shower (that he was completely unaware of), the addition of Buzz and Woody would probably send me screaming for a straight jacket from the nearest loony bin. And to be completely honest with you, if he DID have those dolls, I wouldn't be one bit surprised. He was a very nice guy but also very unfortunate to live with (especially near the end). Paco also has Toy Story shower gel, Toy Story posters, and tends to leave the empty boxes from his dolls around the house as decorations. Clearly he's going to be a breeze to shop for at Christmas.
Paco also comes in a two-part package. There's Paco...and then there's his boyfriend, Beto. They are polar opposites...Paco is sassy and outgoing and Beto is quieter and relaxed. My first night in the apartment Beto came over and rummaged through all of the stuff I brought from America....including but not limited to my nail polish, my muffin mixes (don't judge, they're cheap and easier to make than muffins from scratch), my stickers for the kids, my Halloween paraphernalia, and my hair spray. He's nosey but in a loving way. Last week I made muffins and they spent a good 5 minutes picking out which cupcake papers they wanted me to make them in. They gave me shit for awhile too because Paco says that I have brought "all kinds of vices and corruption into this apartment"...for the past week we've been battling on Mario Kart until at least 1-1:30 in the morning. I told them I didn't have to make the muffins, I was just doing it to show them, and they freaked out. "NO NO NO, you are GOING to make them, we're just gonna get fat, that's all... But yes, make them.... Now. Please."
Another fun dynamic to the apartment is that Paco speaks pretty good English. Every once in awhile he'll come bursting into a room (he has to make an entrance) and shout "Eets time for da Eengleesh hour!!! From now, we must espeak en only da Eengleesh!" Unfortunately Beto does not speak any English, and they tend to get in very huffy fights when Paco declares Da Eengleesh Hour and Beto doesn't want to participate. I tried to tell Beto he could start slowly and practice with me to get better (he's taken at least 5 years of it in school) but he gets very flustered and just tries to absorb into the wall, usually. Paco started screaming at him one time "Come on now, Beto!!! Jew know da Eengleesh!! Jew can espeak weet Chelsea, ees berry easy!" I tried to talk to him with the most simplest question I could think of, so that he could appease Paco and feel accomplished...so I asked him slowly and caring "How was your day?" Beto stops, thinks a second, and says, "My name ees Beto." That threw Paco into a bit of rage, haha, and lead to a pretty intense fight where Paco started yelling at him in English about how he wasn't thinking and should know more and Beto ended up cleaning to relieve his stress. I don't exactly understand how the two resolve their problems because magically, 20 minutes later, they were fine again. I was really kinda worried that my English Hour could be the straw that broke the camels back for the couple of 3 years...but apparently that's normal for them, haha. Paco then told me, "Beto wans, when he ees growing, to be working een a laundry becos he loff clean...he loff to take away de dust an do da vacuum." The fun thing about Paco is that he understands me most of the time and I also understand him...but he also makes a lot of hilarious mistakes. For example one night, after I made the muffins and we were cleaning up, Beto said in Spanish "A mi me encanta mojar las magdalenas en la leche." But it was English Hour so Paco clarifies and says, "Beto say dat he loff to wet da moofeens een da meelk." I thought I was going to die from laughing. I tried to explain the numerous things wrong with this sentence but that only armed Paco with more inappropriate vocabulary than he already knows. Another time I was doing the dishes and Paco asks me, "Do jew see da paper here on da freedge?" I had noticed it, actually, the first day I went to the apartment. They have a collection of magnets on the fridge and one little flyer for Latin escorts who do "all services". I hoped, and figured, it was just a joke but I did think it was pretty funny considering the tenants. "Een dees apartment we loff da prostitutation. I saw dees paper, on a car, and I say to Irene 'we HAVE to take da paper, ees so funny!! Because jew know, I am a prostitute too." And then he ran off and had a dance party to Ke$ha.
Basically, my room is tiny but I love the relaxed environment of the new apartment. Irene, the girl, is hardly ever home because she is into every hobby under the sun. She loves kayaking, repelling, climbing, playing guitar, playing piano....and one night she came out of her room super proud because she had written and recorded a song she wrote about kayaking (she's doing a great job of combining her hobbies, haha). I'm pretty sure she has ADHD but she's quite fun too. Besides the fact that they both talk at the speed of light (and Paco is from Sevilla so he has a lisp with every S he says...he already told me "Chelsea, from now on I'm going to call you ShellThee, because that's how I'd say it in Sevilla.") I think my Spanish is also vastly improving because our television doesn't have a remote control right now and everything is stuck in Spanish (I usually cheat when I'm watching programs I love because the dubbing is so awful). So for now I feel like I'm exactly where I should be. School doesn't start until Monday, so this week I need to actually start unpacking and make a concerted effort to really settle in and stop procrastinating. I'll try to update one more time before we start school, because Lord knows that will bring a whole slew of new adventures. Ta ta for now!
I know I haven't written for a little while, but if we all take into consideration how often I wrote last year (due to emotional roller coasters and lack of will power) this is pretty good, right?
The good news is that so far everything seems to be going really well. Last year I ended up in the wrong apartment, far away from Madrid, with the wrong roommate...and to top that off she was never even home, so it was like I lived alone. I think that started the year off on the wrong foot....so I'm looking to really make up for it this year.
As you all should know, I have a gay roommate. Sometimes I feel like it's wrong to single him out as the gay roommate...he's also the only male roommate...but it seriously is the best way to describe him. I swear I'm not marginalizing...if anything I love him more for it. You should all be gay and maybe I'd love you more too, haha. Kidding...mostly.
Anyways I'm in love with Paco. We've only been living together for a week now and it's already a very strong relationship. He's very sassy and very effeminate....not drag queen effeminate, just...normal effeminate. He's also very quirky...for example he's in love with Toy Story. Yesterday he introduced me to his Toy Story dolls...he has Buzz, Woody, Bullseye (the horse), and Jessie (the cowgirl)...if you turn them on and put them together, they talk to each other. Just to clarify, this is where the gay-roommate clarification comes in. Let's all imagine that my roommate last year, Manuel, the one-man star of Carrie in our apartment, had these toys. Coupled with his chronic schizophrenia and talking to his other personalities in the shower (that he was completely unaware of), the addition of Buzz and Woody would probably send me screaming for a straight jacket from the nearest loony bin. And to be completely honest with you, if he DID have those dolls, I wouldn't be one bit surprised. He was a very nice guy but also very unfortunate to live with (especially near the end). Paco also has Toy Story shower gel, Toy Story posters, and tends to leave the empty boxes from his dolls around the house as decorations. Clearly he's going to be a breeze to shop for at Christmas.
Paco also comes in a two-part package. There's Paco...and then there's his boyfriend, Beto. They are polar opposites...Paco is sassy and outgoing and Beto is quieter and relaxed. My first night in the apartment Beto came over and rummaged through all of the stuff I brought from America....including but not limited to my nail polish, my muffin mixes (don't judge, they're cheap and easier to make than muffins from scratch), my stickers for the kids, my Halloween paraphernalia, and my hair spray. He's nosey but in a loving way. Last week I made muffins and they spent a good 5 minutes picking out which cupcake papers they wanted me to make them in. They gave me shit for awhile too because Paco says that I have brought "all kinds of vices and corruption into this apartment"...for the past week we've been battling on Mario Kart until at least 1-1:30 in the morning. I told them I didn't have to make the muffins, I was just doing it to show them, and they freaked out. "NO NO NO, you are GOING to make them, we're just gonna get fat, that's all... But yes, make them.... Now. Please."
Another fun dynamic to the apartment is that Paco speaks pretty good English. Every once in awhile he'll come bursting into a room (he has to make an entrance) and shout "Eets time for da Eengleesh hour!!! From now, we must espeak en only da Eengleesh!" Unfortunately Beto does not speak any English, and they tend to get in very huffy fights when Paco declares Da Eengleesh Hour and Beto doesn't want to participate. I tried to tell Beto he could start slowly and practice with me to get better (he's taken at least 5 years of it in school) but he gets very flustered and just tries to absorb into the wall, usually. Paco started screaming at him one time "Come on now, Beto!!! Jew know da Eengleesh!! Jew can espeak weet Chelsea, ees berry easy!" I tried to talk to him with the most simplest question I could think of, so that he could appease Paco and feel accomplished...so I asked him slowly and caring "How was your day?" Beto stops, thinks a second, and says, "My name ees Beto." That threw Paco into a bit of rage, haha, and lead to a pretty intense fight where Paco started yelling at him in English about how he wasn't thinking and should know more and Beto ended up cleaning to relieve his stress. I don't exactly understand how the two resolve their problems because magically, 20 minutes later, they were fine again. I was really kinda worried that my English Hour could be the straw that broke the camels back for the couple of 3 years...but apparently that's normal for them, haha. Paco then told me, "Beto wans, when he ees growing, to be working een a laundry becos he loff clean...he loff to take away de dust an do da vacuum." The fun thing about Paco is that he understands me most of the time and I also understand him...but he also makes a lot of hilarious mistakes. For example one night, after I made the muffins and we were cleaning up, Beto said in Spanish "A mi me encanta mojar las magdalenas en la leche." But it was English Hour so Paco clarifies and says, "Beto say dat he loff to wet da moofeens een da meelk." I thought I was going to die from laughing. I tried to explain the numerous things wrong with this sentence but that only armed Paco with more inappropriate vocabulary than he already knows. Another time I was doing the dishes and Paco asks me, "Do jew see da paper here on da freedge?" I had noticed it, actually, the first day I went to the apartment. They have a collection of magnets on the fridge and one little flyer for Latin escorts who do "all services". I hoped, and figured, it was just a joke but I did think it was pretty funny considering the tenants. "Een dees apartment we loff da prostitutation. I saw dees paper, on a car, and I say to Irene 'we HAVE to take da paper, ees so funny!! Because jew know, I am a prostitute too." And then he ran off and had a dance party to Ke$ha.
Basically, my room is tiny but I love the relaxed environment of the new apartment. Irene, the girl, is hardly ever home because she is into every hobby under the sun. She loves kayaking, repelling, climbing, playing guitar, playing piano....and one night she came out of her room super proud because she had written and recorded a song she wrote about kayaking (she's doing a great job of combining her hobbies, haha). I'm pretty sure she has ADHD but she's quite fun too. Besides the fact that they both talk at the speed of light (and Paco is from Sevilla so he has a lisp with every S he says...he already told me "Chelsea, from now on I'm going to call you ShellThee, because that's how I'd say it in Sevilla.") I think my Spanish is also vastly improving because our television doesn't have a remote control right now and everything is stuck in Spanish (I usually cheat when I'm watching programs I love because the dubbing is so awful). So for now I feel like I'm exactly where I should be. School doesn't start until Monday, so this week I need to actually start unpacking and make a concerted effort to really settle in and stop procrastinating. I'll try to update one more time before we start school, because Lord knows that will bring a whole slew of new adventures. Ta ta for now!
Monday, September 3, 2012
Here I Go Again...
It's that time again! I can no longer drive, I sweat at all hours of the day and freeze my ass off at night, drink my weight in water and sangria, get shamelessly gawked at and hit on by all Africans or men over the age of 50, and have reduced half of my caloric intake. That's right, I'm back in Spain!! Yay? Haha...
I will admit that this journey back has been less eventful, which by all standards is amazing considering my past experiences. I don't think it will ever get easy to make the big change, to either country, but I keep deciding to do it so I guess I'm not allowed to complain. Clearly I had a hard time at Christmas coming home, simply because I couldn't actually GET home without a complete nervous breakdown, but it wasn't a breeze in the summer, either. It was mostly biological...I was still on Spain time and I couldn't sleep well, so I put on Univision (the Mexican channel) so things would seem more normal. Clearly my life is in shambles, haha.
Anyways, back to the return journey. My airplane from Indy to Washinton Dulles was shittastic. I have some friends in America, and I won't name names, who cannot drive for shit. They double-foot the accelerator and the brake and really try to push your gag reflex to the limit......they'll accelerate to the speed they want, then let off & let it slow down on its own....then speed up again quickly...then slow down....then hit the brake...then accelerate....are you getting nauseated while reading this? I am by just typing. It also really gets your neck prepped for a good whiplash. Anyways that's what the pilot was doing with the plane. You'd hear the jets rev up, my ears would pop, we'd ascend a little bit...then all of a sudden, silence. The jets would stop, we'd start to fall substantially, my stomach dropped...then the jets came back on, and we'd go up, and my ears would pop.....then we'd fall again. I finally hunched over my legs because I've realized that if I'm hunched over, my stomach doesn't register the changes because I'm pretty disoriented. I managed to look out of the corner of my eye and the guy across the way from me was staring at me. I'm almost positive he thought I was going to throw up and seemed really excited for a digestive pyrotechnic show. Sorry, dude.
Dulles was not exciting...the worst part about travelling alone is travelling alone. You have to haul all your shit to the bathroom, to the shops, through the restaurants. Plus you feel pretty alone. I always try to spot a trusting old lady or family that I ask to watch my carry on while I go to the bathroom....I usually only have my clothes packed in it so it's no big deal. Some witch from TSA that was patrolling caught me, though, and wouldn't let me leave my stuff. She was so unfair, she told me I had to take it with me or she'd call the police. I personally think she had a Mall Cop Inferiority Complex, except more so since she wasn't riding a Segway....so I just didn't go to the bathroom for 4 hours out of spite and watched Weeds. SO MEAN.
Hmm, what else. On the flight here I sat next to an extra annoyed Phillipine teenage boy. He was so hostile and moody you would have thought he was a 13-year-old girl who was grounded from going to a Justin Beiber concert. I spent the first 5 hours of the flight fighting with him over the armrest. It's a delicate balance but everytime he'd put on his headphones I'd stab my elbow over so I could establish control. I usually don't care and curl up into a little ball anyways but our flight attendants were extra hip-y. Girthy hips. Wide ass hips. So everytime they'd walk past me they'd bust into my elbow with half their body without any apology and continue on, leaving their fluid rear practically waving at me with contempt as they continued on.
I arrived at 7:30 a.m. Madrid time on Wednesday, went back to Rebecca's apartment, and took a nap. Once I woke up I went off to see two apartments with no luck. The next day I saw 4 more and met Jenny, the new English assistant at our school. She's British! And awesome! She's still getting used to Madrid so I hauled her to all of my apartments. It came down to two that I liked....one was going to let me know because the roommates were going to decide and the other one was first come first serve. Of course I liked the choosey one the best but if I waited to hear from them, and they said no, and I went to the other apartment and it was rented, I'd be screwed. I was torn and didn't know what to do, and somewhat defeated because a lot of the apartments were being really bratty and mean girl about it (we'll let you know, we're going to choose the person we all like the best). It's been a really frustrating situation because 1.) they haven't asked me any important questions about myself or about my living habits or anything useful and 2.) I want to live with Spaniards to practice speaking Spanish but most apartments full of Spaniards don't want to live with a gringa foreigner American girl.
Before I even got here my mom told me "I'd find what I was meant to have"...so I figured I'd go home and call her to see what I should do. I trekked home, exhausted, and was about to call her when I saw a message from one of the apartment sites from a girl who liked my post and thought I'd fit in here. I almost didn't go because I had JUST come from the neighborhood and really didn't want to leave AGAIN to go all the way back...I'd be less lazy but Rebecca's apartment isn't on the same metro line or bus line so I have to transfer and I already hate the metro anyways...but I went just because her e-mail was so energetic and cute. I got to the apartment and I could tell just from listening to her that she was awesome. She's bubbly, short, fun, sassy. There were Abbey Road posters on the wall, an 80's pop art Lip phone (as in the phone is shaped like a pair of lips), a Dolce Gusto coffee maker (dyyyyying!), a beautiful bright living room and windows, lime green kitchen with a hot pink toaster, nice decent sized bathroom...the bedroom is small but the rest of the apartment was GORGEOUS. I stopped her in the middle of the tour and said I'd take it. I asked if Paco, the boy who wasn't home, was just a friend (because I'm not trying to live with a couple...ew) and she said "oh yeah, he's just a friend...look, here's me, here's Paco, and here's Paco's boyfriend."
THAT WAS IT, SIGN FROM GOD. PACO'S GAY & THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE MY APARTMENT!!!
Honestly, I'm surprised in hindsight that I didn't freak her the hell out. I told her I'd seriously go to the ATM and get the deposit at that moment. Unfortunately she had already had another guy who was really interested too and she had to discuss it with Paco. Um, please. I didn't tell her this but I've never met a gay man in my 24 years of existence who didn't like me and I was not about to have Paco be the first. We kept talking, I mentioned that I make pastries and crap and she got excited and decided she'd tell Paco to suck it up, she decided on me. I knew Paco wouldn't regret it anyways, though. C'mon. Gay men are my people. I'm a magnet. I explained that to her too. In the end they chose me and I'm here now!
The apartment is literally right around the corner from my apartment last year...5 doors down. I can walk to school, I can walk to the city center and spend all my money in the shopping district...it's beautiful. Paco also loves Mario on the Wii and has about five Mario games (and was just energetically and enthusiastically telling me about how they spent at least 5 hours one night trying to get a star in the Rainbow World...irony :P) and it's his coffee maker so I have a feeling I'm right where I'm supposed to be. One of my teachers even offered me her car so she came Saturday to get all my crap in one trip and drop it off. In comparison, it's been quite an easy transition and now I'm just trying to get adjusted to being back in Spain and preparing to go back to work. I first need to unpack, though, so I can sleep in my tiny tiny little bed. I think my bed last year was only 4-5 inches wider, but that makes a lot of difference. I'm in cahoots with my dad, though, to figure out a way to fix it without buying a whole new mattress. Anyways I'll update with more exciting things as they occur but as always this is the just beginning-I'm alive post. I'll blog again soon!
I will admit that this journey back has been less eventful, which by all standards is amazing considering my past experiences. I don't think it will ever get easy to make the big change, to either country, but I keep deciding to do it so I guess I'm not allowed to complain. Clearly I had a hard time at Christmas coming home, simply because I couldn't actually GET home without a complete nervous breakdown, but it wasn't a breeze in the summer, either. It was mostly biological...I was still on Spain time and I couldn't sleep well, so I put on Univision (the Mexican channel) so things would seem more normal. Clearly my life is in shambles, haha.
Anyways, back to the return journey. My airplane from Indy to Washinton Dulles was shittastic. I have some friends in America, and I won't name names, who cannot drive for shit. They double-foot the accelerator and the brake and really try to push your gag reflex to the limit......they'll accelerate to the speed they want, then let off & let it slow down on its own....then speed up again quickly...then slow down....then hit the brake...then accelerate....are you getting nauseated while reading this? I am by just typing. It also really gets your neck prepped for a good whiplash. Anyways that's what the pilot was doing with the plane. You'd hear the jets rev up, my ears would pop, we'd ascend a little bit...then all of a sudden, silence. The jets would stop, we'd start to fall substantially, my stomach dropped...then the jets came back on, and we'd go up, and my ears would pop.....then we'd fall again. I finally hunched over my legs because I've realized that if I'm hunched over, my stomach doesn't register the changes because I'm pretty disoriented. I managed to look out of the corner of my eye and the guy across the way from me was staring at me. I'm almost positive he thought I was going to throw up and seemed really excited for a digestive pyrotechnic show. Sorry, dude.
Dulles was not exciting...the worst part about travelling alone is travelling alone. You have to haul all your shit to the bathroom, to the shops, through the restaurants. Plus you feel pretty alone. I always try to spot a trusting old lady or family that I ask to watch my carry on while I go to the bathroom....I usually only have my clothes packed in it so it's no big deal. Some witch from TSA that was patrolling caught me, though, and wouldn't let me leave my stuff. She was so unfair, she told me I had to take it with me or she'd call the police. I personally think she had a Mall Cop Inferiority Complex, except more so since she wasn't riding a Segway....so I just didn't go to the bathroom for 4 hours out of spite and watched Weeds. SO MEAN.
Hmm, what else. On the flight here I sat next to an extra annoyed Phillipine teenage boy. He was so hostile and moody you would have thought he was a 13-year-old girl who was grounded from going to a Justin Beiber concert. I spent the first 5 hours of the flight fighting with him over the armrest. It's a delicate balance but everytime he'd put on his headphones I'd stab my elbow over so I could establish control. I usually don't care and curl up into a little ball anyways but our flight attendants were extra hip-y. Girthy hips. Wide ass hips. So everytime they'd walk past me they'd bust into my elbow with half their body without any apology and continue on, leaving their fluid rear practically waving at me with contempt as they continued on.
I arrived at 7:30 a.m. Madrid time on Wednesday, went back to Rebecca's apartment, and took a nap. Once I woke up I went off to see two apartments with no luck. The next day I saw 4 more and met Jenny, the new English assistant at our school. She's British! And awesome! She's still getting used to Madrid so I hauled her to all of my apartments. It came down to two that I liked....one was going to let me know because the roommates were going to decide and the other one was first come first serve. Of course I liked the choosey one the best but if I waited to hear from them, and they said no, and I went to the other apartment and it was rented, I'd be screwed. I was torn and didn't know what to do, and somewhat defeated because a lot of the apartments were being really bratty and mean girl about it (we'll let you know, we're going to choose the person we all like the best). It's been a really frustrating situation because 1.) they haven't asked me any important questions about myself or about my living habits or anything useful and 2.) I want to live with Spaniards to practice speaking Spanish but most apartments full of Spaniards don't want to live with a gringa foreigner American girl.
Before I even got here my mom told me "I'd find what I was meant to have"...so I figured I'd go home and call her to see what I should do. I trekked home, exhausted, and was about to call her when I saw a message from one of the apartment sites from a girl who liked my post and thought I'd fit in here. I almost didn't go because I had JUST come from the neighborhood and really didn't want to leave AGAIN to go all the way back...I'd be less lazy but Rebecca's apartment isn't on the same metro line or bus line so I have to transfer and I already hate the metro anyways...but I went just because her e-mail was so energetic and cute. I got to the apartment and I could tell just from listening to her that she was awesome. She's bubbly, short, fun, sassy. There were Abbey Road posters on the wall, an 80's pop art Lip phone (as in the phone is shaped like a pair of lips), a Dolce Gusto coffee maker (dyyyyying!), a beautiful bright living room and windows, lime green kitchen with a hot pink toaster, nice decent sized bathroom...the bedroom is small but the rest of the apartment was GORGEOUS. I stopped her in the middle of the tour and said I'd take it. I asked if Paco, the boy who wasn't home, was just a friend (because I'm not trying to live with a couple...ew) and she said "oh yeah, he's just a friend...look, here's me, here's Paco, and here's Paco's boyfriend."
THAT WAS IT, SIGN FROM GOD. PACO'S GAY & THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE MY APARTMENT!!!
Honestly, I'm surprised in hindsight that I didn't freak her the hell out. I told her I'd seriously go to the ATM and get the deposit at that moment. Unfortunately she had already had another guy who was really interested too and she had to discuss it with Paco. Um, please. I didn't tell her this but I've never met a gay man in my 24 years of existence who didn't like me and I was not about to have Paco be the first. We kept talking, I mentioned that I make pastries and crap and she got excited and decided she'd tell Paco to suck it up, she decided on me. I knew Paco wouldn't regret it anyways, though. C'mon. Gay men are my people. I'm a magnet. I explained that to her too. In the end they chose me and I'm here now!
The apartment is literally right around the corner from my apartment last year...5 doors down. I can walk to school, I can walk to the city center and spend all my money in the shopping district...it's beautiful. Paco also loves Mario on the Wii and has about five Mario games (and was just energetically and enthusiastically telling me about how they spent at least 5 hours one night trying to get a star in the Rainbow World...irony :P) and it's his coffee maker so I have a feeling I'm right where I'm supposed to be. One of my teachers even offered me her car so she came Saturday to get all my crap in one trip and drop it off. In comparison, it's been quite an easy transition and now I'm just trying to get adjusted to being back in Spain and preparing to go back to work. I first need to unpack, though, so I can sleep in my tiny tiny little bed. I think my bed last year was only 4-5 inches wider, but that makes a lot of difference. I'm in cahoots with my dad, though, to figure out a way to fix it without buying a whole new mattress. Anyways I'll update with more exciting things as they occur but as always this is the just beginning-I'm alive post. I'll blog again soon!
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
...And Then I Unleashed The Minds Of Sixty 12-Year-Olds...And Peed My Pants From The Results
While I would argue forever that I'm a nurturing teacher, sometimes the most entertainment from my stay here in Madrid are the grammatical errors my students make and the hilarious shit they accidentally say in English. This blog-post will highlight the most recent shit-show I accidentally accomplished; a creative writing contest.
My 6th graders are a little...slow. Well, actually I can't decide. Either my 5th graders are GENIUSES and my 6th graders are normal....or my 5thgraders are normal and my 6th graders are complete idiots. But they're not stupid....they're just lazy. And that pisses me off. Anyways I tried to find a fun exercise for them because they had just learned how to use the past tense. I assigned a short story writing activity that would be a creative writing competition, to see who could write the most creative story. The winner would receive a 1-day late homework pass (which is unheard of in Spain...I put some in their Easter egg activity and they tried to use them for all of their classes...haha, little jerks. They're quite conniving...one kid who got a homework pass actually auctioned it off during recess and the highest bidder paid 8 euros [which doesn't seem like a lot but it started off with “I'll give you a pencil...I'll give you a pencil and some candy...I'll give you a euro!!”....clearly it escalated quickly]). This seems like a good idea but there were a few snags. For one, creative writing and thinking is rare here. They're lapdog students. You tell them to jump, they ask how high. They do what you tell them to do and if you let them off their leashes, they stay put. It's exasperating and I'm not sure how to break them out of their shells. The second problem was that I told them to write a story, which they read as historia...or history. So I told them to “invent or create a story about a day in the life of a celebrity”...and most of them wrote a vague biography about a celebrity. And didn't invent anything. UGH.
From Lidia...
My 6th graders are a little...slow. Well, actually I can't decide. Either my 5th graders are GENIUSES and my 6th graders are normal....or my 5thgraders are normal and my 6th graders are complete idiots. But they're not stupid....they're just lazy. And that pisses me off. Anyways I tried to find a fun exercise for them because they had just learned how to use the past tense. I assigned a short story writing activity that would be a creative writing competition, to see who could write the most creative story. The winner would receive a 1-day late homework pass (which is unheard of in Spain...I put some in their Easter egg activity and they tried to use them for all of their classes...haha, little jerks. They're quite conniving...one kid who got a homework pass actually auctioned it off during recess and the highest bidder paid 8 euros [which doesn't seem like a lot but it started off with “I'll give you a pencil...I'll give you a pencil and some candy...I'll give you a euro!!”....clearly it escalated quickly]). This seems like a good idea but there were a few snags. For one, creative writing and thinking is rare here. They're lapdog students. You tell them to jump, they ask how high. They do what you tell them to do and if you let them off their leashes, they stay put. It's exasperating and I'm not sure how to break them out of their shells. The second problem was that I told them to write a story, which they read as historia...or history. So I told them to “invent or create a story about a day in the life of a celebrity”...and most of them wrote a vague biography about a celebrity. And didn't invent anything. UGH.
While most of their efforts were repetitive, at best...some turned out to be the most entertaining literature I have ever read, and not due to plot. Grammatical errors, mistranslations, and general confusion are the protagonists of these stories...and it's awesome. Here we go:
From Kyla (who is from the Phillipines and speaks excellent Spanish):
Selena Gomez was a celebrity girl...She had an episode: Wizards of Waverly Place. Her name was Alex...I ed Selena Gomez and her episode. (she really put the heart...exactly like that) One day, she went to New Zealand and someone painted her face with a red paint. She looked like a clown. After that, when she was walking in a town there was a boy didn't stopped looking at her and then the boy came over her and bitted her. I was so sad when I knew that Selena Gomez died. And someone tld me that that's not just the cost of her life, a monster scared her and Selena was shocked or surprised. That's the scary and funny story of how Selena Gomez died.
From Ana Belen (who was confused about the biography/story issue)
Once upon a time in EE.UU (Spanish for USA) had one girl so-called Britney Spears. She had the oppurtunity were singer. She's the princess in the Pop. She's the best singer in the world. (I want to know where she go the “So-called”...that cracks my shit up every time)
From Raul...
One day went for street a Messi (famous Barcelona soccer player) and fell in the sewer. Then he attent up (tried to go up...)but the exit was very up. Then Messi attent to look for other exit. Then beginning to walk, walk, walk during for hour, he found a rats and cat and others thangerous animal. The end. He found and other exit, he up and he are in American. He not believe he are in the American.
From Javier...(who by the way has handwriting that looks like a serial killer...which doesn't help the overall tone and terror of this story)
Crazy story, crazy famous, am I crazy?
In the past Christmas the famous killed and was killed. I start my story:
In the Christmas of the 2011 the famous murdered other famous. They were crazy! Jack killed Messi and Paquito el Chocolatero killed Manolo del Bombo (I have no idea who Paquito is...but apparently Manolo del Bombo is some guy who goes to the soccer draft every year and is famous for his crazy outfit and playing some huge drum...) (Manolo was stupid.) Cristiano killed Iker Casillas (I don't know for what...) But the person didn't was famous laughth this. They were crazy too. I continue. Michael Jackson take her medicine and his doctor killed he. But it isn't the true. The true is Cristiano Ronaldo killed he and he gave the fault to a doctor. I think that for...I...I don't know. I know that's the story and it is the important information. I know. Or...I am crazy? All pepol are crazy.
Shakira. She met a friends, there are grannies. She was ashamed, the people lagthed of she...the grannies went to a gym. They are very stronger. There was super grannies because they went to a gym. She went to a coffee shop and she had or drank alcohol...The grannies went to her house and took the dog. The dog ate gum or candies and the dog did a ball of gum. It was a bubble in the house. The dog could speak and said to Shakira “help me please”. This was disster!
From Judith...
Shakira was born 10th April in Mexico. Came Spain and mad famous. Sang and danced alone. She was creacy. (crazy...)She broked her hips white dancing.
From Carla (who is a genius...super smart...speaks amazing English)
Silvestre Stalone did a lot of movies, one of them was “Rocky”. In the movie he played the part of an old boxing fighter. He also made some great training and worked really hard, with some other guy, that was his old trainer. His wife was really beautiful; until she decided to do some surgery on her face. He did some other movies like “Rambo”.This one was kind of dramatic, because his people died in some war, so he wants revenge (well something had to be predictable). Besides that he had a lot of friends like Arnold (I don't know if I spelled right). He was, he is, and he will always be my favorite celebrity!
From Josue (who never listens to me and refuses to follow directions...basically wrote one sentence about a rapper than named most of the songs he could think of)
Once upon a time one boy called Porta is sicer the rap and Hip-hop. (from what I can tell, Porta is a Spanish rapper) Born in Spain, year 1994, some the music is: Dragon Ball Rap, Aprecia lo que tienes(Appreciate what you have), Hay un sentimiento muerto (There's a dead feeling), Nueva generacion (New generation), Mi Frikimundo (My FreakyWorld), Tetris Rap, Transforme Bipolar, Querida alma gemela (Dear Soulmate), Sin Ti (Without you), En boca de tantos (In the mouth of many), Mi cuento de hadas (My fairy tale)...*
* Side note- I'm going to look up Porta on Spotify tonight because I am so curious what is music is like with such varying titles...
From Victoria...
Harper Seven Beckham...when she was four months, took tongue the paparazzi.
And finally, the best of the best...my personal favorite....Alberto. A quick note about Alberto: He is very smart. He is hard-working. He goes to the British Council for English lessons and I would unofficially name him #2 or #3 in the class. This was just a wonderful, innocent, amazing accident. Enjoy.
From Alberto...
Pepe hasn't got hair and is very good player but this week end no play and he was going to the bitch. In the bitch he had a girlfriend and very friends. He played witch his girlfriend football, bitch and witch his girlfriend to volleyball. When he was in his house he ate for breakfast an egg, bacon, milk and cereal, one apple and banana. Then he have a shower witch his rubber duchie. Then he went to the bitch and then he have a milkshake witch his girlfriend.
For those of you who are curious...bitch = beach, witch = which, and duchie = duckie. The end.
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Cinco de mayo: When historical knowledge gets you free margarita refills and chicken
Hiiiiiii
world...I know it's been awhile but I don't think anything too
interesting has been going on in my life to report or discuss.
Unfortunately. And then when things do happen I think “ooh, that's
funny I'll blog about it”...then I get lazy, put it off until the
next day, sleep 8 hours, and wake up not remembering what the hell I
was going to blog about. I used to be good at writing it down but
now...not so much. I'm going to try and be better at it, though. I
promise.
This past
week was awesome. Tuesday and Wednesday were holidays of some sort,
so the schools gave us Monday off as well and made it a long weekend.
I have Fridays off, though, so it turned into a 6-day weekend
followed by a 1-day work week. I can DEFINITELY get used to that.
Unfortunately it rained the ENTIRE time, practically, so it was hard
to do the things I wanted to do like start running (read: jogging)
and see more of the city (I know the city pretty well but I could
stand to explore more...take more pictures...I forget how bad-ass it
is living in Madrid since I've been here for so long).
The next
fun even was Saturday, which if course was Cinco de Mayo. For all of
you who don't know, Cinco de Mayo is (obviously) a Mexican holiday,
celebrating the Mexican triumph at the Battle of Puebla. None of my
friends were doing anything, and Spaniards couldn't care less about
Mexican history...so I went with Rebecca and some of the other
assistants from her school to a Mexican restaurant named Montezuma.
It was a pretty classy place. Rebecca & I got there first and the
first thing I noticed was that there wasn't any music playing. COME
ON! If it's Cinco de Mayo, I need some mariachi music in my face...or
something. Eventually they turned on some elevator Spanish
music...but it wasn't meant for a Mexican restaurant (and by that I
mean the American Mexican restaurants, haha...I was hoping for El
Rodeo to magically appear in Spain.) We ordered margaritas and I
think I confused the shit out of the waiter because I asked for sugar
instead of salt. He told me he'd try...and in the end came through!
We ended up waiting for the other girls a little bit (because
Montezuma is located in a back alley on a hill far away from
landmarks) but I didn't care. I'm always a happy little camper if I
have a delicious margarita in front of my face. During the summer I
swear 1/2 of the money I spent is with friends at Rodeo drinking
margaritas on the patio and eavesdropping on the workers (I think I'm
the only one who does that, though...haha) Therefore, the taste of
margaritas=home. The waiter kept checking on us to make sure we
didn't want to order and Rebecca was a little brat and told the
waiter I wanted to hear some Juanes (the most cliché Mexican singer
ever...Juanes is the go-to singer in every Spanish class across
America...right before Shakira). In her defense I DID say I wanted to
hear Juanes but I didn't feel like sharing that with the waiter. I
felt the need to explain my rudeness in judging their music so I
reminded him it was Cinco de Mayo and we're Americans, so we tend to
celebrate the holiday more than Mexicans do...and we were there for
that purpose and I just wanted the ambiance to feel more...Cinco-y.
He tried to test me and asked if I even knew why we celebrate Cinco
de Mayo and I quickly retorted with the Battle of Puebla. (Look Mom &
Dad! That summer in Mexico served for something :) He was impressed,
mainly because he had asked not because he was testing me, but
because he forgot. And for this I was rewarded with a free refill of
my delicious sugar-rimmed margarita. Mmmmm... Sadly the restaurant
got busy and our waiter left us and was substituted by a middle-aged
Asian woman. I was thoroughly amazed and confused for a little bit.
Have you ever seen an Asian working at a Mexican restaurant? It's
funny. Anyways by the end of the meal my intelligence and delightful
personality (I like to think) scored me free margarita and free
chicken...it was the best meal I've had yet in Spain! I was so
stuffed though...so stuffed. Cinco is the new Thanksgiving.
Afterwards
we walked to Sol, the center of Madrid, to grab some ice cream and
enjoy the sun. Guess what we found....not one, but TWO mariachi
bands!! I don't think anybody knew about the holiday but I was
thoroughly touched. One band had an older Mexican couple watching,
who started dancing (Video #1) and the other group had this old man,
who I will refer to as the Energizer Bunny, who was dancing to the
music on his own free will for at least 30 minutes. Then this little
baby Asian girl came and started dancing with him. It was ADORABLE.
(Video #2)
This post
was supposed to be more about the hilarious things my students write,
though, and not so much about my life. Prepare to pee your pants in the next post!
Sunday, March 25, 2012
....And Then There Was Blood
....this blog post can also be known as the funniest thing that has happened to me since I got here.
Just to catch up on the past weeks of my life, I celebrated St. Patrick's day by having my wee-ones make hats to catch leprechauns and my older kids made toilet-paper roll piggy-banks. My school website is creating a page to show the parents what all we did, so I will share that once it's up and going. I did the same activities with my private classes. This was hilarious because those kids are 4 and 6, so they were SUPER into looking for leprechauns. I found it ironic because their family is loaded and pay me 30 euros an hour to essentially play with their kids in English for an hour. And their children are incredibly hell-bent on finding a small Irish man to kidnap and become rich with his gold. Then again, playing with these little assholes for an hour in English is more difficult than it sounds (and some days I deserve triple what I earn). I won't start on this quite yet (I will save it for another blog) but the little boy has some serious issues. I don't know if he watches too much television or his parents are certified porn stars or something, but he's seriously misguided in life. If I didn't know any better I'd think that Ren and Stimpy were his parents. Nicolas is 6. He's in first grade, can barely write his own name, can barely read, and is obsessed with sex and bodily functions. At first I wondered if it was normal but then I realized that I have over 420 students and none of them are that disgusting. The only time they laughed at something "naughty" was when my 5th graders learned the word "underwear". Meanwhile Nicolas two weeks ago pulled down his pants to show me what a "weiner" was when I refused to acknowledge that I understood him in Spanish. Later that week he bit me in my ass. Imbalanced. The only reason I don't quit is because a.) I get paid 60 euros a week from them for (usually) easy work and b.) the little girl, Marta, is only 4 but has really grown to like me and talks to me in the little English that she knows. She usually doesn't talk at all, even in Spanish...she just makes noises and hums to herself...so I feel like we've come such a long way to quit on her. Anyways, I taught Marta and Nicolas about the leprechauns and they asked if we could go outside to hunt for leprechauns. I told them yes, I drew them magnifying glasses that we cut out and colored, and headed downstairs. Please close your eyes and imagine this: An American girl with two small Spanish children who are yelling in broken English, looking for clues through their shitty paper magnifying glasses, picking up every piece of trash they find and calling it evidence, while wearing a ridiculous paper hat and looking for a small Irish man. Among the things we picked up and took upstairs were a phone number, a bottle of prescription eye drops, and a rusty paintbrush. Meanwhile, there is a group of Spanish children playing soccer who immediately stop to stare at us, perplexed, and a group of mothers who started yelling at that children that maybe if they listened, "to the pretty, nice, blonde girl that they could learn some English as well." I have no shame here.
Anyways, back to today. So I'm planning for Easter this upcoming week. It's the week before our Spring Break, so I'm in survival mode trying to make it to next Friday. I think I have a death wish, because with my younger kids I told them to bring in a hard boiled egg or two for painting. Then the week after Spring Break (when I'm lazier than hell) we'll do an Easter Egg Hunt. I can only imagine what all is going to go wrong with this plan but I'll be sure to properly document and report back.
Currently, because I'm preparing for Easter, my bedroom (and specifically my bed) looks like the Easter Bunny's secret lair. It's covered with plastic eggs, candy, gummy bears, stickers, and more candy. It's really hard to find big bags of candy here that don't cost my first born child. And it's pretty lame to put one piece of shitty candy in an Easter egg. So two pieces of candy per kid, times 420ish students...I've started looking at EVERYTHING to figure out what I could buy in bulk to give to the kids that isn't so expensive. Gummy bears and dental floss were my cheapest options....and clearly I'm not that big of an asshole to give them dental flossers (although some of them could stand to learn about some dental hygiene...). I want to maintain my celebrity status at school.
So I'm sitting on my bed, door shut, watching Parks and Recreations (not that funny but I feel special it takes place in Indiana haha) when my roommate (the lovely male roommate) starts yelling my name. I yell "what" and continue stuffing eggs....with so much shit on the bed it's impossible to get up and open the door. He keeps yelling my name like a lunatic and tells me he's hit himself on the head with something. I roll my eyes and collect my stuff, trying to explain that I'm busy and can't run out of the room quickly. I open the door and he's nowhere to be found. He's talking to himself, howling in the bathroom and rambling on about how he's dizzy and hit his head and he should have showered before, son of a bitch, he should have showered before, goddamned window, someone's whore mother (that's like the go-to insult here..."your whore mother" (it's the equivalent of "damnit" in America)...if you are suuuuper pissed then the mother of all insults or swearing is "I shit in your whore mother" or "I shit in the milk". I really don't get it but it cracks my shit up when I translate it in my head in English). I walk in and ask what's wrong when he looks at me, blood dripping down his face as he's rolling toilet paper around his hand, explaining that he hit his head.
Here are the questions I wanted to say, but couldn't think quickly enough in Spanish to ask;
He runs back into my bedroom and, looking absolutely confused out of his mind, asks what the hell these things are? Don't I have alcohol?? Or anything to clean the cut?? What do I do Chelsea?!?! (Side note: I'm NEVER going on even a single date with a Spaniard. If this is what I have to look forward to, this complete lack of self-sufficiency, I'd rather die alone). I told him to clean the cut with the wipe, put the gauze on it...and probably even better if he had tape to tape the gauze. "BUT WHAT IS THIS...it's in ENGLISH! I can't even read it!!" Just because it's in English doesn't mean that it's poisonous or bad for you...it's not like American medicine is voodoo or similar to a witch-doctor. It's a damned alcohol wipe, you fool. I explained, simply, that the wipe was to clean, and the gauze was to use to help it clot. He asks, one more time, if I don't have any alcohol or anything. THIS HAS ALCOHOL. READ IT. ALCOHOL is spelled the exact same way in English as in Spanish.
I tried to sneak away again but eventually guilt got to me and I decided I should continue meandering in the hallway just in case he has another freakout. I mopped up the hallway blood, listened to him continue to mumble (I swear the window stabbed his forehead and knocked all sense out of his body...like Freaky Friday, except he didn't change bodies, he just became really stupid. And practically naked.) I cleaned up all his nasty bloody toilet paper make-shift tourniquets (dumbest idea ever) and walked back into the hallway. I'm not that vein but usually when I walk to the kitchen I can see myself in the mirror in the hallway. The mirror is gone. It's a long stand mirror. I look around, hella confused, until I look into the living room and there is Genius, sitting in a chair, propping up the mirror on the convection oven, so he can look at his head. He wasn't doctoring his wound or doing anything productive, he's literally just sitting there looking at himself with pity. I go and get my Lucky Tiger (it's technically an anti-hemmorhoid ointment but is amazing on cuts and cleaning wounds. I've used it since I was in daycare.) and hand it to him. He gives me his fantastic speech again, "What the f*** is this?? It's in English! I'm just supposed to put this on my head?!? What is it??" It's ointment...to help the cut heal. It won't shrink your head or make you any more idiotic than you already are so what do you possibly have to lose? I don't know how to say ointment so I told him it would help it get better. That's when I noticed that a.) his back was really hairy and b.) he had stolen my vodka out of the cabinet because he didn't believe that the alcohol wipes (clearly labelled) had alcohol in them. So he used more toilet paper to wipe down the cut with vodka. (This explains all of his cursing I had heard ealier, before I came out of the bedroom for the second time. I'm sure that hurt like a bitch but to his credit it was a $4 bottle of the cheapest bottle of vodka I could find...so...it was probably close to pure ethanol.) He's still weeping and asks what he should do because he needs to shower. I told him if I were him I'd wait to shower until it had stopped bleeding or he felt less dizzy (psyched out). He told me that wasn't an option because he REALLY needed to shower (which is why his back was hairy...he had just shaved his head and luckily for my retinas it was clinging to his half wet back...so attractive. I feel like I should have been paying him for the show [sarcasm]) I rolled my eyes (don't ask for my advice if you aren't going to listen) and told him that he should probably put some paper towel or something on it if he was going to shower because we all know he's a baby and the water wouldn't feel wonderful for him.
He asks if I think he should go to the hospital and I told him it looked pretty split open, but he assured me it was just the knot on his head from hitting it. Once again, if you don't want to hear what I have to say.....don't freakin ask. I grabbed my hand mirror and told him to look in the bathroom to see what he thought. He freaks out and decides he needs stitches. I told him I bet it would heal on its own but stitches might not hurt (news flash: I speak Spanish, not Medicine. If this were my problem, I'd have shut the window in the shower in the first place, and if I had hit my head I'd wait til it stopped bleeding, put a bandaid on it, and move on with my Easter egg stuffing. Or called Jeri and she'd tell me exactly what to do, after I sent her numerous pictures of the wound. The internet is a beautiful thing. This is how I solved my electricity problem when we blew a fuse.) He then asks how he gets to the hospital, where he should go, what should he do?? ...............................did he miss the past 4 months where I'm an American??? I avoid the hospital and clinics at all costs. I have NO clue. You're asking a bald person where the best person is to get your hair cut. You're asking a girl for the best doctor to get a prostate exam. You're asking a homeless person about the housing market. You're asking a priest for sex tips. I felt bad but...I can't help you. I told him to call the other roommate and maybe she could tell him what to do. The only thing I could help him with was offering that he probably shouldn't take the metro, and should call a cab. That's good advice right?
He left shortly. I asked if he was heading off and he tells me (in the tone that could best be described as a moody 16 year old girl who doesn't get what she wants and tells her parents, "Don't worry about it...I'll just die alone with no friends. It's not a big deal.") that I shouldn't worry about it, he's going to the hospital and will take care of it. I don't think anything I did could have satisfied him unless I would have stitched up his head myself with my travel sewing kit. So I don't feel bad. But he did come back to the house (reasonably quickly) with like 6 mini-staples in his head. I have learned many lessons from this experience (that wasn't even really mine to be had) but most importantly I'm going to shut the bathroom window before I get in the shower.
And probably try to mildly wound any significant other I might have before getting serious to make sure he's somewhat self-sufficient and not a completely incompetent man-baby. (These are also times when I realize I'm soooooo not ready to have children.)
Just to catch up on the past weeks of my life, I celebrated St. Patrick's day by having my wee-ones make hats to catch leprechauns and my older kids made toilet-paper roll piggy-banks. My school website is creating a page to show the parents what all we did, so I will share that once it's up and going. I did the same activities with my private classes. This was hilarious because those kids are 4 and 6, so they were SUPER into looking for leprechauns. I found it ironic because their family is loaded and pay me 30 euros an hour to essentially play with their kids in English for an hour. And their children are incredibly hell-bent on finding a small Irish man to kidnap and become rich with his gold. Then again, playing with these little assholes for an hour in English is more difficult than it sounds (and some days I deserve triple what I earn). I won't start on this quite yet (I will save it for another blog) but the little boy has some serious issues. I don't know if he watches too much television or his parents are certified porn stars or something, but he's seriously misguided in life. If I didn't know any better I'd think that Ren and Stimpy were his parents. Nicolas is 6. He's in first grade, can barely write his own name, can barely read, and is obsessed with sex and bodily functions. At first I wondered if it was normal but then I realized that I have over 420 students and none of them are that disgusting. The only time they laughed at something "naughty" was when my 5th graders learned the word "underwear". Meanwhile Nicolas two weeks ago pulled down his pants to show me what a "weiner" was when I refused to acknowledge that I understood him in Spanish. Later that week he bit me in my ass. Imbalanced. The only reason I don't quit is because a.) I get paid 60 euros a week from them for (usually) easy work and b.) the little girl, Marta, is only 4 but has really grown to like me and talks to me in the little English that she knows. She usually doesn't talk at all, even in Spanish...she just makes noises and hums to herself...so I feel like we've come such a long way to quit on her. Anyways, I taught Marta and Nicolas about the leprechauns and they asked if we could go outside to hunt for leprechauns. I told them yes, I drew them magnifying glasses that we cut out and colored, and headed downstairs. Please close your eyes and imagine this: An American girl with two small Spanish children who are yelling in broken English, looking for clues through their shitty paper magnifying glasses, picking up every piece of trash they find and calling it evidence, while wearing a ridiculous paper hat and looking for a small Irish man. Among the things we picked up and took upstairs were a phone number, a bottle of prescription eye drops, and a rusty paintbrush. Meanwhile, there is a group of Spanish children playing soccer who immediately stop to stare at us, perplexed, and a group of mothers who started yelling at that children that maybe if they listened, "to the pretty, nice, blonde girl that they could learn some English as well." I have no shame here.
Anyways, back to today. So I'm planning for Easter this upcoming week. It's the week before our Spring Break, so I'm in survival mode trying to make it to next Friday. I think I have a death wish, because with my younger kids I told them to bring in a hard boiled egg or two for painting. Then the week after Spring Break (when I'm lazier than hell) we'll do an Easter Egg Hunt. I can only imagine what all is going to go wrong with this plan but I'll be sure to properly document and report back.
Currently, because I'm preparing for Easter, my bedroom (and specifically my bed) looks like the Easter Bunny's secret lair. It's covered with plastic eggs, candy, gummy bears, stickers, and more candy. It's really hard to find big bags of candy here that don't cost my first born child. And it's pretty lame to put one piece of shitty candy in an Easter egg. So two pieces of candy per kid, times 420ish students...I've started looking at EVERYTHING to figure out what I could buy in bulk to give to the kids that isn't so expensive. Gummy bears and dental floss were my cheapest options....and clearly I'm not that big of an asshole to give them dental flossers (although some of them could stand to learn about some dental hygiene...). I want to maintain my celebrity status at school.
So I'm sitting on my bed, door shut, watching Parks and Recreations (not that funny but I feel special it takes place in Indiana haha) when my roommate (the lovely male roommate) starts yelling my name. I yell "what" and continue stuffing eggs....with so much shit on the bed it's impossible to get up and open the door. He keeps yelling my name like a lunatic and tells me he's hit himself on the head with something. I roll my eyes and collect my stuff, trying to explain that I'm busy and can't run out of the room quickly. I open the door and he's nowhere to be found. He's talking to himself, howling in the bathroom and rambling on about how he's dizzy and hit his head and he should have showered before, son of a bitch, he should have showered before, goddamned window, someone's whore mother (that's like the go-to insult here..."your whore mother" (it's the equivalent of "damnit" in America)...if you are suuuuper pissed then the mother of all insults or swearing is "I shit in your whore mother" or "I shit in the milk". I really don't get it but it cracks my shit up when I translate it in my head in English). I walk in and ask what's wrong when he looks at me, blood dripping down his face as he's rolling toilet paper around his hand, explaining that he hit his head.
Here are the questions I wanted to say, but couldn't think quickly enough in Spanish to ask;
- Are you sure you just hit your head and weren't stabbed in the face?
- Why is there so much blood?
- Why are you using toilet paper to clot the cut instead of paper towel or an actual towel? Clearly the toilet paper is just clinging to your spikey hair and making your entire head look like a toilet bowl scrub brush.
- Why are you asking me what to do?? You're a 26 year old man who cut your forehead...why are you crying and panicking and freaking out like you just sliced off your arm?
He runs back into my bedroom and, looking absolutely confused out of his mind, asks what the hell these things are? Don't I have alcohol?? Or anything to clean the cut?? What do I do Chelsea?!?! (Side note: I'm NEVER going on even a single date with a Spaniard. If this is what I have to look forward to, this complete lack of self-sufficiency, I'd rather die alone). I told him to clean the cut with the wipe, put the gauze on it...and probably even better if he had tape to tape the gauze. "BUT WHAT IS THIS...it's in ENGLISH! I can't even read it!!" Just because it's in English doesn't mean that it's poisonous or bad for you...it's not like American medicine is voodoo or similar to a witch-doctor. It's a damned alcohol wipe, you fool. I explained, simply, that the wipe was to clean, and the gauze was to use to help it clot. He asks, one more time, if I don't have any alcohol or anything. THIS HAS ALCOHOL. READ IT. ALCOHOL is spelled the exact same way in English as in Spanish.
I tried to sneak away again but eventually guilt got to me and I decided I should continue meandering in the hallway just in case he has another freakout. I mopped up the hallway blood, listened to him continue to mumble (I swear the window stabbed his forehead and knocked all sense out of his body...like Freaky Friday, except he didn't change bodies, he just became really stupid. And practically naked.) I cleaned up all his nasty bloody toilet paper make-shift tourniquets (dumbest idea ever) and walked back into the hallway. I'm not that vein but usually when I walk to the kitchen I can see myself in the mirror in the hallway. The mirror is gone. It's a long stand mirror. I look around, hella confused, until I look into the living room and there is Genius, sitting in a chair, propping up the mirror on the convection oven, so he can look at his head. He wasn't doctoring his wound or doing anything productive, he's literally just sitting there looking at himself with pity. I go and get my Lucky Tiger (it's technically an anti-hemmorhoid ointment but is amazing on cuts and cleaning wounds. I've used it since I was in daycare.) and hand it to him. He gives me his fantastic speech again, "What the f*** is this?? It's in English! I'm just supposed to put this on my head?!? What is it??" It's ointment...to help the cut heal. It won't shrink your head or make you any more idiotic than you already are so what do you possibly have to lose? I don't know how to say ointment so I told him it would help it get better. That's when I noticed that a.) his back was really hairy and b.) he had stolen my vodka out of the cabinet because he didn't believe that the alcohol wipes (clearly labelled) had alcohol in them. So he used more toilet paper to wipe down the cut with vodka. (This explains all of his cursing I had heard ealier, before I came out of the bedroom for the second time. I'm sure that hurt like a bitch but to his credit it was a $4 bottle of the cheapest bottle of vodka I could find...so...it was probably close to pure ethanol.) He's still weeping and asks what he should do because he needs to shower. I told him if I were him I'd wait to shower until it had stopped bleeding or he felt less dizzy (psyched out). He told me that wasn't an option because he REALLY needed to shower (which is why his back was hairy...he had just shaved his head and luckily for my retinas it was clinging to his half wet back...so attractive. I feel like I should have been paying him for the show [sarcasm]) I rolled my eyes (don't ask for my advice if you aren't going to listen) and told him that he should probably put some paper towel or something on it if he was going to shower because we all know he's a baby and the water wouldn't feel wonderful for him.
He asks if I think he should go to the hospital and I told him it looked pretty split open, but he assured me it was just the knot on his head from hitting it. Once again, if you don't want to hear what I have to say.....don't freakin ask. I grabbed my hand mirror and told him to look in the bathroom to see what he thought. He freaks out and decides he needs stitches. I told him I bet it would heal on its own but stitches might not hurt (news flash: I speak Spanish, not Medicine. If this were my problem, I'd have shut the window in the shower in the first place, and if I had hit my head I'd wait til it stopped bleeding, put a bandaid on it, and move on with my Easter egg stuffing. Or called Jeri and she'd tell me exactly what to do, after I sent her numerous pictures of the wound. The internet is a beautiful thing. This is how I solved my electricity problem when we blew a fuse.) He then asks how he gets to the hospital, where he should go, what should he do?? ...............................did he miss the past 4 months where I'm an American??? I avoid the hospital and clinics at all costs. I have NO clue. You're asking a bald person where the best person is to get your hair cut. You're asking a girl for the best doctor to get a prostate exam. You're asking a homeless person about the housing market. You're asking a priest for sex tips. I felt bad but...I can't help you. I told him to call the other roommate and maybe she could tell him what to do. The only thing I could help him with was offering that he probably shouldn't take the metro, and should call a cab. That's good advice right?
He left shortly. I asked if he was heading off and he tells me (in the tone that could best be described as a moody 16 year old girl who doesn't get what she wants and tells her parents, "Don't worry about it...I'll just die alone with no friends. It's not a big deal.") that I shouldn't worry about it, he's going to the hospital and will take care of it. I don't think anything I did could have satisfied him unless I would have stitched up his head myself with my travel sewing kit. So I don't feel bad. But he did come back to the house (reasonably quickly) with like 6 mini-staples in his head. I have learned many lessons from this experience (that wasn't even really mine to be had) but most importantly I'm going to shut the bathroom window before I get in the shower.
And probably try to mildly wound any significant other I might have before getting serious to make sure he's somewhat self-sufficient and not a completely incompetent man-baby. (These are also times when I realize I'm soooooo not ready to have children.)
Friday, February 24, 2012
The Boys In Spain Annoy Mainly Because They're A Pain
Hello, hello! And most importantly Happy Friday, I've been waiting for this day since Tuesday (I didn't go to school on Monday, I took a personal day...see below) but that's quite normal, I do that every week. I'm excited for a quiet weekend in after the craziness of Carnival last week. I have to survive my private class today at 5, and then it's officially the weekend!
I have yet to update about the new apartment but I'm in love with its location more than anything. It's a very, very, very small apartment. I just realized a couple of days ago that I literally cannot outstretch my arms all the way in the kitchen, it's that narrow. I have the medium sized bedroom that has lots of drawers to keep my stuff in, but it's quaint. I like it. If I keep it clean, there's plenty of space to do what I need to do. To live. That's if I keep it clean......which is a different story. I have two roommates, a boy and a girl who are both about 24/25ish. To be honest, I feel like I live with a girl and a 16-year-old girl. The actual girl is amazing, she's hilarious and fun. She's from the south of Spain and unfortunately goes home every other weekend to visit her family & boyfriend, but she's awesome. The boy...such a piece of work. He's from the south of Spain too. He's a sports journalist, basically, who gets paid to write about different sporting events. In America this type of person would be similar to a jock or someone more...athletic. My roommate is the biggest nerd I've ever met. Maybe geek is a better word. He's tall, t-shirt & jeans kind of guy but plays computer games 95% of his free time. If we don't hear him screaming from his bedroom at some stranger in another country via his gaming headset...then he's probably not home. I don't even mind that. I can live with the complete nerdiness. I do have a hard time dealing with his "around the house" apparel. He has these matching dull green sweatpants and sweatshirt with a wolf on it that he wears all the time. They smell funny. And the sweatpants are hideous. They're substantially tight and have elastic around the ankles. He doesn't own slippers, so he likes to pair them with some of those ugly strappy male sandals and socks.
He looks like the one in the middle. With these shoes:
I'd take a real live picture if it didn't make me nauseous and give me unnaturally strong urges to cut up the sandals and take a pair of sharp fabric scissors to the elastic ankles of the sweatpants.
Like I said, I deal with it all. What is hard to handle is him being a Spanish male who is out of the house for the first time. In Spain, people usually tend to live at home until they get married, and then finally move out when they are 30ish (they marry later here). That causes certain...well, problems. Spanish guys seem to be a LOT more immature. They aren't quite as self-sufficient. They think they are the hottest shit on the planet (because they live with personal cheerleaders, their mothers, until they get married...to another personal cheerleader.) Take that male out of his mother's household, put him in a new city...eventually (you hope) he might learn how to be more self-dependent and less demanding.
Well, not yet.
Of course all of that is just a generalization for many of the boys I have met. It's not true for all of them. And most of that information I got from my teachers at school, haha. My roommate doesn't understand cohabitation. On paper he gets it but in real life it just doesn't seem to be settling into his brain. For example, we all three have to share the bathroom and the living room. He's a nosey little bitch. So if one of those three areas is occupied, wait 30 seconds and he'll come poking his nose in to see what's going on. Maybe it's a territory issue....like dogs when they have to pee all over everything that's already been peed on. If I'm "peeing" in the living room, he's gotta come see what I'm doing, and "pee" there too. If I'm in the kitchen, he will walk back and forth in the hallway just poking his nose in because all of a sudden, now that I'm using the kitchen, he wants to do use it too. The girl & I cook together in the kitchen all the time with no problems...but he has to have it all to himself. And the bathroom.....good God, the bathroom. I feel like the bathroom is a sacred place. I don't care what you do in there but it's private time. Unless I'm about to piss my pants, I'm not going to knock on the door and ask you to get out. I expect the same courtesy. I lived with 50 girls in a sorority house and we NEVER had any issues. The bathroom is not different than the kitchen or the living room. I was in there for about a minute one night, washing my face and getting ready for bed, and I hear him come storming out of the bedroom and knocks on the door "CHELSEA...how much longer are you going to be in there?? A long time??" ....no, don't worry, I'm just washing my face. When I'm finished you can come proverbially piss all over the place. It's also his tone of voice that he uses. I feel like there is a certain commeradery among roommates...a politeness if you will. If someone's somewhere you need to be, you ask politely "when you're finished could you let me know?" Or if someone accidentally turns on water while you're in the shower, "Would you mind waiting until I'm out of the shower? The water just got cold!" All of these instances have happened between the girl and I and we have no problems. We're friends. The princess, however, who I might start calling Your Royal Highness, doesn't have that tact. Here's how Your Royal Highness deals with these situations. "HURRY UP, I NEED TO SHOWER BEFORE I GO TO BED!!!!" or my favorite...while banging on the door to the kitchen as I was washing dishes (I started washing dishes before he went into the bathroom) "CHELSEA!!! SHUT OFF THE WATER, I'M IN THE SHOWER AND IT'S COLD AS F***"
Assface. He couldn't be a bigger, more inconsiderate asshole if he intentionally tried. And I honestly don't care, it's just annoying. I avoid him and do what I need to do without giving a crap. He gets annoyed/jealous when I talk to the girl and we have bonding moments. One night I came home and they were in his room because he was showing her some video game about zombies and farms. She asked me how my day was, and I started telling them some funny stories...and all of a sudden he gets up, throws on his jacket, and runs out the door. We asked where he was going and he said "SHOPPING" then slammed the door in our faces. We had no idea what the hell had just happened. When he got home he was pouting because he was trying to show her this video game and then she started talking to me and clearly didn't care about it anymore....what a freaking lunatic.
He also has this weird obsession, being such a geek, of showing his body. I swear to God every time I'm trying to have a conversation with him he lifts up his shirt and starts stroking his hairy stomach. It's as horribly awkward as it sounds. Then one day I came home and he was shaving his head...and maybe his body....ugh who knows. I walk in the door and I'm staring at a very well lit, half naked roommate, with the bathroom door wide open and him shaving himself. Hair all over the floor. Hair all in the sink. (For this exact reason, plus he doesn't know how to cover his mouth when he coughs, I moved all of my personal things [i.e. toothbrush] out of the bathroom a month ago) I couldn't hide my horrified expression (he's not bad looking but personal grooming doesn't really get my motor running, it actually turns my stomach) and he looks at me, scratching his stomach again, and says, "What?? What's wrong with you??" ....clearly he couldn't possibly fathom why this moment was not the highlight of my 24 years of existance. Not to mention that there is ALWAYS hair all over the bathroom. And here's the thing....girl hair is not that gross. It's long. It's shiny. You know it came from a girl's head. Boy hair...............disgusting. It's short, dark, curly, and you have no idea what follicle on the body it came from. To me, it all looks like pubic hair. And that makes me want to gag. There's boy hair in the sink. Boy hair all over the bathroom. Boy hair in the shower. Living with one boy is 100 times worse than living with 50 girls. That's all I'm saying. And if he was more pleasant and polite, I'd care less about his bear hair all over the apartment.
Anyways. Like I said, I'm not affected that much by him. I know that rant makes it seem like I hate him but I really don't. It seemed like an entertaining rant and I haven't let it out to anybody yet. I still love the apartment. Monday, though, we had a tiff and he pissed me off so much that I stayed home from school to take a personal day. Every weekend I like to bake, and there's always a pile of dishes that aren't mine. I like to have a clean kitchen, though, so I always wash all the dishes. Numerous times. This past weekend I was so annoyed with it that I left all the dishes in the sink and didn't wash them. Then, randomly, Monday morning I hear my roommates screaming at each other at 7 a.m. I come stumbling out and asked the girl what's wrong. She said that it was just the apartment and how it's so dirty. I started to tell her how I was going to clean the living room later that day (we rotate the common rooms for cleaning each week) and he barges into the kitchen and yells that he wants all of the dishes cleaned by the time he gets home. To me. And I can't really snap back in Spanish at 7 a.m. when I have just been woken up and am getting screamed at for something I didn't do. And I told him I have been washing my dishes all week and leaving the rest and I wasn't going to clean HIS dishes. Plus the fact that he keeps dumping his old food and soup down the drain, on top of all of the dirty dishes....so that dishes that only had a couple of crumbs are now covered in an oily, tomatoe-y mess. He flipped the hell out, started cussing me out for 5 minutes, and then went to his bedroom to continue. I went to my room, started crying because I hate confrontation and was so annoyed with him (maybe some of the dishes were mine, but why the hell wouldn't you just have an adult conversation on Sunday night calmly, instead of blowing a gasket at 7 a.m. on a work day?? How stupid are you??) I knew a couple of the dishes were mine from making pancakes so I figured I was in such a bad mood I shouldn't be dealing with small children, so I texted my teachers, stayed home, and started cleaning the dishes. He came in and was like "are you gonna clean them or do I have to do them after I get home? Just leave them and I'll do them when I get home". No, douchebag. I'm already doing them. I just kept crying and cleaning. It ended up being a good thing because I cleaned the whole house. Dishes, the living room, my bedroom...and took out all the trash. I haven't talked to him since but the way I see it I owe him nothing so he can keep playing with his imaginary friends online and I'll live my life normally (but a little bit more organized as to avoid his crazy bipolar meltdowns).
So those are the roommates. Our neighbors are fun too. One of our neighbors has heard me on the phone with Jeri before and has been trying to catch me because she's Swedish or something and doesn't speak much Spanish. She keeps asking the girl if she's the one who's been speaking English. In the mean time I wonder what else she's heard because the walls are made of paper and I say a lot of stuff I wouldn't with English-speaking roomates because they don't understand me....haha. I met another neighbor one day at the front door and she's hilarious. I'm guessing she's 95 years old, has an amazing fashion sense, and has like fifteen names. I was telling her I'm from the States and this weather seems cold, even for me. She told me her name was Maria Teresa, or Maite, or Maria, or just Teresa....and she lives in 3A if I ever need anything. I love neighbors like that.
The apartment is located ten minutes away from my school (walking) so I get to walk to school every morning. This comes with a lot of pro's and con's. The pro's are being able to walk to school and the fact that it's so centrally located. I can walk to the center of Madrid in 20 minutes. It's also in between two main Metro lines. I also live next door to the Madrid Harley Davidson. European bikers are much different than American bikers. In America they wear lots of leather, long curly hair, bandanas, and look like they could kill you with one look. Europeans also wear lots of leather, but they are very very well groomed. This causes all European bikers to look like they belong in a gay bar or club. It cracks me up. And makes me feel quite at home.
The con's.....there are many. For one, I live next to my school and so do many of my students. I can no longer leave my apartment without makeup and doing my hair because 85% of the time I run into my students. This might sound conceited (and if you were to come to school with me one day you'd understand) but I'm kind of famous at my school. I have more than 420 students and all of them adore me (because I have the fun class of the week usually). Now that I've been speaking Spanish more with them, all of the shy ones feel more comfortable talking to me when they don't know what to say in English and we're all a lot closer. Basically, when we're not in school (or even if it's just lunch break) and they see me on the street, they act like they've just seen Brad Pitt walking half naked down the street. Jumping. Shouting. Waving like a crazy person. Screaming in English. And because they're screaming in English, everyone turns and looks with a look like, "what the hell?? Why is this small child screaming in English?" Most of the time I see them and say hi and ask how they're doing (it's a ritual...."How are you? I'm fine thanks, and you?" If you don't ask how they are, and just say hello, most of my students look confused, wait 15 seconds, then say "............I'm fine, thanks, and you??" without even being prompted). Also, one of my least favorite students lives in the next apartment down. She's annoying and has the worst behavior of any female student I have. Her mother is also annoying because she likes to brag about how amazing her daughter's English is, to ME, her English teacher. At first I didn't know her well (she's a new student) but after getting to know her through punishing her almost every class, I have a lot more that I don't say to her mother now. Every morning her mother tries to wait for me outside the building so I can walk to school with her, practice English, and the mother doesn't have to leave the house. Of COURSE it's my luck to live next to the one student I practically loathe. And of course she has the biggest mouth of anybody at school and tells everyone we're neighbors.
I also have a "bad" habit of listening to my iPhone on the way to school, to avoid gypsies begging for money and men hitting on me or calling me "rubia"...blonde. If even one man under the age of 40 and under 300 lbs. hit on me, I'd reconsider my walking habits. Until then...headphone ignorance. This causes problems because I cannot count how many times my students run up to me at school and tell me "I saw you yesterday!! I said hi, but you didn't hear me because you had your headphones in...." *insert sad puppy face*. I feel so awful but my headphones cancel out all noises. I've begun taking out my headphones when I reach the street of the school, but sometimes that's not good enough. One of my teachers told me yesterday that she was with a group of students, about 8, who were all screaming at me at the top of their lungs trying to get my attention, and thought I was ignoring them. She said her daughter (who isn't my student, she's only 5 and in preschool...but she sees me during lunch & on the way to school sometimes and really likes me) was in the front of the pact screaming and waving like a maniac. Luckily the teacher saw me take out my headphones and was able to explain that's why I was "ignoring" them, I had no idea they were there.
All in all, I'm happier here. Being close to my life is very important for my work life and my social life. I'll try to update soon with the other catch-up news...but it felt really good getting all this off my chest :) Until next time!
I have yet to update about the new apartment but I'm in love with its location more than anything. It's a very, very, very small apartment. I just realized a couple of days ago that I literally cannot outstretch my arms all the way in the kitchen, it's that narrow. I have the medium sized bedroom that has lots of drawers to keep my stuff in, but it's quaint. I like it. If I keep it clean, there's plenty of space to do what I need to do. To live. That's if I keep it clean......which is a different story. I have two roommates, a boy and a girl who are both about 24/25ish. To be honest, I feel like I live with a girl and a 16-year-old girl. The actual girl is amazing, she's hilarious and fun. She's from the south of Spain and unfortunately goes home every other weekend to visit her family & boyfriend, but she's awesome. The boy...such a piece of work. He's from the south of Spain too. He's a sports journalist, basically, who gets paid to write about different sporting events. In America this type of person would be similar to a jock or someone more...athletic. My roommate is the biggest nerd I've ever met. Maybe geek is a better word. He's tall, t-shirt & jeans kind of guy but plays computer games 95% of his free time. If we don't hear him screaming from his bedroom at some stranger in another country via his gaming headset...then he's probably not home. I don't even mind that. I can live with the complete nerdiness. I do have a hard time dealing with his "around the house" apparel. He has these matching dull green sweatpants and sweatshirt with a wolf on it that he wears all the time. They smell funny. And the sweatpants are hideous. They're substantially tight and have elastic around the ankles. He doesn't own slippers, so he likes to pair them with some of those ugly strappy male sandals and socks.
He looks like the one in the middle. With these shoes:
I'd take a real live picture if it didn't make me nauseous and give me unnaturally strong urges to cut up the sandals and take a pair of sharp fabric scissors to the elastic ankles of the sweatpants.
Like I said, I deal with it all. What is hard to handle is him being a Spanish male who is out of the house for the first time. In Spain, people usually tend to live at home until they get married, and then finally move out when they are 30ish (they marry later here). That causes certain...well, problems. Spanish guys seem to be a LOT more immature. They aren't quite as self-sufficient. They think they are the hottest shit on the planet (because they live with personal cheerleaders, their mothers, until they get married...to another personal cheerleader.) Take that male out of his mother's household, put him in a new city...eventually (you hope) he might learn how to be more self-dependent and less demanding.
Well, not yet.
Of course all of that is just a generalization for many of the boys I have met. It's not true for all of them. And most of that information I got from my teachers at school, haha. My roommate doesn't understand cohabitation. On paper he gets it but in real life it just doesn't seem to be settling into his brain. For example, we all three have to share the bathroom and the living room. He's a nosey little bitch. So if one of those three areas is occupied, wait 30 seconds and he'll come poking his nose in to see what's going on. Maybe it's a territory issue....like dogs when they have to pee all over everything that's already been peed on. If I'm "peeing" in the living room, he's gotta come see what I'm doing, and "pee" there too. If I'm in the kitchen, he will walk back and forth in the hallway just poking his nose in because all of a sudden, now that I'm using the kitchen, he wants to do use it too. The girl & I cook together in the kitchen all the time with no problems...but he has to have it all to himself. And the bathroom.....good God, the bathroom. I feel like the bathroom is a sacred place. I don't care what you do in there but it's private time. Unless I'm about to piss my pants, I'm not going to knock on the door and ask you to get out. I expect the same courtesy. I lived with 50 girls in a sorority house and we NEVER had any issues. The bathroom is not different than the kitchen or the living room. I was in there for about a minute one night, washing my face and getting ready for bed, and I hear him come storming out of the bedroom and knocks on the door "CHELSEA...how much longer are you going to be in there?? A long time??" ....no, don't worry, I'm just washing my face. When I'm finished you can come proverbially piss all over the place. It's also his tone of voice that he uses. I feel like there is a certain commeradery among roommates...a politeness if you will. If someone's somewhere you need to be, you ask politely "when you're finished could you let me know?" Or if someone accidentally turns on water while you're in the shower, "Would you mind waiting until I'm out of the shower? The water just got cold!" All of these instances have happened between the girl and I and we have no problems. We're friends. The princess, however, who I might start calling Your Royal Highness, doesn't have that tact. Here's how Your Royal Highness deals with these situations. "HURRY UP, I NEED TO SHOWER BEFORE I GO TO BED!!!!" or my favorite...while banging on the door to the kitchen as I was washing dishes (I started washing dishes before he went into the bathroom) "CHELSEA!!! SHUT OFF THE WATER, I'M IN THE SHOWER AND IT'S COLD AS F***"
Assface. He couldn't be a bigger, more inconsiderate asshole if he intentionally tried. And I honestly don't care, it's just annoying. I avoid him and do what I need to do without giving a crap. He gets annoyed/jealous when I talk to the girl and we have bonding moments. One night I came home and they were in his room because he was showing her some video game about zombies and farms. She asked me how my day was, and I started telling them some funny stories...and all of a sudden he gets up, throws on his jacket, and runs out the door. We asked where he was going and he said "SHOPPING" then slammed the door in our faces. We had no idea what the hell had just happened. When he got home he was pouting because he was trying to show her this video game and then she started talking to me and clearly didn't care about it anymore....what a freaking lunatic.
He also has this weird obsession, being such a geek, of showing his body. I swear to God every time I'm trying to have a conversation with him he lifts up his shirt and starts stroking his hairy stomach. It's as horribly awkward as it sounds. Then one day I came home and he was shaving his head...and maybe his body....ugh who knows. I walk in the door and I'm staring at a very well lit, half naked roommate, with the bathroom door wide open and him shaving himself. Hair all over the floor. Hair all in the sink. (For this exact reason, plus he doesn't know how to cover his mouth when he coughs, I moved all of my personal things [i.e. toothbrush] out of the bathroom a month ago) I couldn't hide my horrified expression (he's not bad looking but personal grooming doesn't really get my motor running, it actually turns my stomach) and he looks at me, scratching his stomach again, and says, "What?? What's wrong with you??" ....clearly he couldn't possibly fathom why this moment was not the highlight of my 24 years of existance. Not to mention that there is ALWAYS hair all over the bathroom. And here's the thing....girl hair is not that gross. It's long. It's shiny. You know it came from a girl's head. Boy hair...............disgusting. It's short, dark, curly, and you have no idea what follicle on the body it came from. To me, it all looks like pubic hair. And that makes me want to gag. There's boy hair in the sink. Boy hair all over the bathroom. Boy hair in the shower. Living with one boy is 100 times worse than living with 50 girls. That's all I'm saying. And if he was more pleasant and polite, I'd care less about his bear hair all over the apartment.
Anyways. Like I said, I'm not affected that much by him. I know that rant makes it seem like I hate him but I really don't. It seemed like an entertaining rant and I haven't let it out to anybody yet. I still love the apartment. Monday, though, we had a tiff and he pissed me off so much that I stayed home from school to take a personal day. Every weekend I like to bake, and there's always a pile of dishes that aren't mine. I like to have a clean kitchen, though, so I always wash all the dishes. Numerous times. This past weekend I was so annoyed with it that I left all the dishes in the sink and didn't wash them. Then, randomly, Monday morning I hear my roommates screaming at each other at 7 a.m. I come stumbling out and asked the girl what's wrong. She said that it was just the apartment and how it's so dirty. I started to tell her how I was going to clean the living room later that day (we rotate the common rooms for cleaning each week) and he barges into the kitchen and yells that he wants all of the dishes cleaned by the time he gets home. To me. And I can't really snap back in Spanish at 7 a.m. when I have just been woken up and am getting screamed at for something I didn't do. And I told him I have been washing my dishes all week and leaving the rest and I wasn't going to clean HIS dishes. Plus the fact that he keeps dumping his old food and soup down the drain, on top of all of the dirty dishes....so that dishes that only had a couple of crumbs are now covered in an oily, tomatoe-y mess. He flipped the hell out, started cussing me out for 5 minutes, and then went to his bedroom to continue. I went to my room, started crying because I hate confrontation and was so annoyed with him (maybe some of the dishes were mine, but why the hell wouldn't you just have an adult conversation on Sunday night calmly, instead of blowing a gasket at 7 a.m. on a work day?? How stupid are you??) I knew a couple of the dishes were mine from making pancakes so I figured I was in such a bad mood I shouldn't be dealing with small children, so I texted my teachers, stayed home, and started cleaning the dishes. He came in and was like "are you gonna clean them or do I have to do them after I get home? Just leave them and I'll do them when I get home". No, douchebag. I'm already doing them. I just kept crying and cleaning. It ended up being a good thing because I cleaned the whole house. Dishes, the living room, my bedroom...and took out all the trash. I haven't talked to him since but the way I see it I owe him nothing so he can keep playing with his imaginary friends online and I'll live my life normally (but a little bit more organized as to avoid his crazy bipolar meltdowns).
So those are the roommates. Our neighbors are fun too. One of our neighbors has heard me on the phone with Jeri before and has been trying to catch me because she's Swedish or something and doesn't speak much Spanish. She keeps asking the girl if she's the one who's been speaking English. In the mean time I wonder what else she's heard because the walls are made of paper and I say a lot of stuff I wouldn't with English-speaking roomates because they don't understand me....haha. I met another neighbor one day at the front door and she's hilarious. I'm guessing she's 95 years old, has an amazing fashion sense, and has like fifteen names. I was telling her I'm from the States and this weather seems cold, even for me. She told me her name was Maria Teresa, or Maite, or Maria, or just Teresa....and she lives in 3A if I ever need anything. I love neighbors like that.
The apartment is located ten minutes away from my school (walking) so I get to walk to school every morning. This comes with a lot of pro's and con's. The pro's are being able to walk to school and the fact that it's so centrally located. I can walk to the center of Madrid in 20 minutes. It's also in between two main Metro lines. I also live next door to the Madrid Harley Davidson. European bikers are much different than American bikers. In America they wear lots of leather, long curly hair, bandanas, and look like they could kill you with one look. Europeans also wear lots of leather, but they are very very well groomed. This causes all European bikers to look like they belong in a gay bar or club. It cracks me up. And makes me feel quite at home.
The con's.....there are many. For one, I live next to my school and so do many of my students. I can no longer leave my apartment without makeup and doing my hair because 85% of the time I run into my students. This might sound conceited (and if you were to come to school with me one day you'd understand) but I'm kind of famous at my school. I have more than 420 students and all of them adore me (because I have the fun class of the week usually). Now that I've been speaking Spanish more with them, all of the shy ones feel more comfortable talking to me when they don't know what to say in English and we're all a lot closer. Basically, when we're not in school (or even if it's just lunch break) and they see me on the street, they act like they've just seen Brad Pitt walking half naked down the street. Jumping. Shouting. Waving like a crazy person. Screaming in English. And because they're screaming in English, everyone turns and looks with a look like, "what the hell?? Why is this small child screaming in English?" Most of the time I see them and say hi and ask how they're doing (it's a ritual...."How are you? I'm fine thanks, and you?" If you don't ask how they are, and just say hello, most of my students look confused, wait 15 seconds, then say "............I'm fine, thanks, and you??" without even being prompted). Also, one of my least favorite students lives in the next apartment down. She's annoying and has the worst behavior of any female student I have. Her mother is also annoying because she likes to brag about how amazing her daughter's English is, to ME, her English teacher. At first I didn't know her well (she's a new student) but after getting to know her through punishing her almost every class, I have a lot more that I don't say to her mother now. Every morning her mother tries to wait for me outside the building so I can walk to school with her, practice English, and the mother doesn't have to leave the house. Of COURSE it's my luck to live next to the one student I practically loathe. And of course she has the biggest mouth of anybody at school and tells everyone we're neighbors.
I also have a "bad" habit of listening to my iPhone on the way to school, to avoid gypsies begging for money and men hitting on me or calling me "rubia"...blonde. If even one man under the age of 40 and under 300 lbs. hit on me, I'd reconsider my walking habits. Until then...headphone ignorance. This causes problems because I cannot count how many times my students run up to me at school and tell me "I saw you yesterday!! I said hi, but you didn't hear me because you had your headphones in...." *insert sad puppy face*. I feel so awful but my headphones cancel out all noises. I've begun taking out my headphones when I reach the street of the school, but sometimes that's not good enough. One of my teachers told me yesterday that she was with a group of students, about 8, who were all screaming at me at the top of their lungs trying to get my attention, and thought I was ignoring them. She said her daughter (who isn't my student, she's only 5 and in preschool...but she sees me during lunch & on the way to school sometimes and really likes me) was in the front of the pact screaming and waving like a maniac. Luckily the teacher saw me take out my headphones and was able to explain that's why I was "ignoring" them, I had no idea they were there.
All in all, I'm happier here. Being close to my life is very important for my work life and my social life. I'll try to update soon with the other catch-up news...but it felt really good getting all this off my chest :) Until next time!
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