Thursday, September 27, 2007 Day 1 of my 4 day weekend: Superhero Teacher Day

Thursday, September 27, 2007 Day 1 of my 4 day weekend: Superhero Teacher Day

I woke up at the butt crack of dawn to head over to Colegio San Lawerence to transform the minds of eager young students. Right…the first two classes went relatively well. Senorita Mabel (I finally figured out her name) asked me to do a small lesson on the plural form in English. Luckily she had a teacher guide with an extensive description, so I followed that. It is way more complicated than I’ve ever thought! (Who’s idea was it to change –y to –ie when an s is added. But the –y doesn’t change when it is preceded by an o, and a, or a u! Boo for English. And I thought learning Spanish was hard!) I think the kids understood, but I’m probably just fooling myself.

The third class, which Mabel always reminds me is the class from hell, really acted like that today. They didn’t listen to anything either of us said. They are basically like what you see at the beginning of a classic superhero teacher movie. Except I don’t feel like one of those amazing teachers that comes in and tames them all and they end up being perfect angels and winning some big time competition in the end. I feel like I want to kill one of them to set an example then super glue their annoying little butts to their seats and their mouths shut. Wow, now let me tell you how I really feel!

I just couldn’t imagine dealing with that every day. I go once a week for 4.5 hours and when I leave and I absolutely exhausted. I think Mabel is about to give up on them and just let them watch movies in English for the rest of the semester. Unfortunately, I’m afraid that might be the best option, mostly for her (and my) sanity.

After dealing with the monsters, I took the metro home. And for the first time since I’ve been here, I sat down on the floor of the metro: There were no seats open but I was so tired I couldn’t image standing all the way home. So I sat down. On the floor. This may seem strange, but it was quite significant for me.

Olga and I had almuerzo then I headed to bed to take a nap. I ended up sleeping till about 4:30, upset that I’d slept that much. I went for a quick run, showered, then worked on some homework till about 6:45. Then Olga and I walked to mass at another church super close by called San Vincente de Paul. Today is his feast day, so we wanted to go there to celebrate! I was thinking of Pappy and all the work he does with Saint Vinny’s in Eureka and was thrilled to be apart of the mass to celebrate the patron saint of the poor. The mass didn’t start till 7:15 but didn’t finish till almost 8:30! It was beautiful with everyone singing and the priest said a great homily. After mass Olga and I walked home quickly because we both had to pee! We had once, then I headed to bed to talk to Trevor, then I worked until I fell asleep.