school days

Columbus Day is—and I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised by this—a really, really big deal in Spain. They go ahead and take Monday and Tuesday off, shut down all the shops, and just party in the Plaza for the weekend. Since I have no lessons on Friday, that weekend became a five-dayer for me. After our unsuccessful day trip to Almendralejo, Levi and I spent Saturday and Sunday enjoying the holiday buzz in Zafra and getting settled in our apartment. I’ve been eating better in the past week than I have since I moved out of my parents’ house; Levi’s a great cook and I’ve been trying to learn to help out. It’s not pretty, but no lost digits so far, so that’s a win.

On Monday we went back to Almendralejo to give the police station another shot. The skinny mid-thirties paperpusher who invites us into his office has me in tears by the time I’m finally escaping—he’s spent the last half hour mocking my pronunciation, berating me for my lack of understanding of Spanish bureaucracy, and shouting at me when I ask him to repeat himself. It isn’t until later, after Levi and some fresh air have calmed me down, that I realize that this charming fellow, in his eagerness to treat me like shit, has overlooked the portion of the meeting where he was supposed to charge me €20 and take my picture, so it looks like I’ll have to go deal with him again. This time I’ll be ready with a tougher skin and some good insults.

Wednesday I found myself back with the same group of ten twelve-year-olds, and I take back what I said about their hesitation to speak English. After warming up to me a bit, they happily participated in a 50-minute lesson about American culture, throwing out adjectives to describe famous cities and forming simple sentences to discuss the careers of Hollywood celebrities and the qualities of hamburgers and hot dogs. One of the girls, although reluctant to speak English aloud, provides shockingly perfect Spanish translations whenever I accidentally go over their heads. They’re a sweet group of kids, too, really friendly and eager to please. I have them three times a week, which should be fun.

I also gave a lesson on Wednesday to the non-bilingual first years, a much bigger group who have the same eagerness to participate but largely lack the skills to do so very effectively. It was fun though, despite the utter chaos of managing a shouting, giggling group of twenty-five preteens. They seemed to enjoy it, and I had the hilarious opportunity to instruct them in the correct pronunciation of “Jonas Brothers.” It was a successful day.

Today was a little rougher, but I think I’ll be able to improve on it for next Thursday. Or at least I hope. Jesus, I hope. I had my little bilingual first years, who are by far my faves, for two great classes. But wedged in between those lessons was an English class with the fourth year non-bilinguals, a surly group of pimply fifteen- to seventeen- year olds who spent the entire hour staring blankly at me as I begged for participation. The “English” instructor occasionally screamed a translation at them in Spanish (and occasionally interrupted me to berate them for one thing or another), but the most I got out of them were the incredibly mispronounced names of a few celebrities (Brad Pitt = Brahpee, etc) and the English names for the seasons. It was pretty bad. I really have no idea what I’m going to do with these kids—they clearly aren’t interested and I’m not sure I have the patience for it. I have another fourth-year group of the same level next week, and I can only hope it won’t be quite so brutal.

Levi came to the school for my lunch break today, and after meeting a few of the teachers, he had some potential students lined up. Through the school, we’ve also found him a small group of eleven-year-olds, kids who will be starting secondary school next year and are working to improve their English in preparation. There’s an obvious dearth of quality English instruction here, so I think he’ll have luck finding work so we can continue to fund this bar habit.

Ps-Canned Guinness in Spain is REAL GUINNESS!