Hump Day and it's all down hill from here

Day 17

Wednesdays are oddly productive. I teach the 6th graders and the 4th graders. It’s amazing how much you can do when the children have an ounce of control over their ability to focus. And holy mackerel, they actually understand me when I speak English. Granted I still get blank stares when I talk, but when I call them out and ask them a question they can answer it, most of the time. I love Wednesdays because I actually feel like I’ve done something and the kids have actually learned something. I’ve discovered that my level of productivity is directly inverse to the number of times I have to yell BE QUIET! SIT DOWN! As well, Wednesdays are a treat because I get to teach with Meri. She speaks English with the most precious British accent. I feel like an ogre grunting in my American English, teaching the kids my course pronunciation. Sometimes for fun I slip into a British accent, but none of them can tell a difference. To them it’s all foreign English. But Meri is a delight for more than just her accent. She can be ruthless in class. She has the typical brazen tongue of a Spanish woman who has something she wants to say. We’ll be in front of the class and the kids will have just butchered a reading aloud activity and she’ll turn to me and say in a normal voice, “They are just horrible. They can’t speak it at all. This really is the worst class.” And I just hold back the laughter that bubbles up, all the while thinking, did she just say that right in front of their faces?? And the best part about these exclamations is that they occur almost everyday. “That was just terrible” “they’ll never learn.” She is so outspoken and I love it. They’re not really that bad, but hey, they’re only 12 years old after all.

An oddity I’d like to share with you. I want to ask this young man who stands at the traffic light at the end of the Paseo del Parque (at the end of the central gardens) and juggles during the red light in front of the waiting cars. No one really takes much notice of him, only to count down when they can run him down when they get a green, hopefully squashing his eye-sore-orange pins. He drops the pins EVERY TIME. He is there everyday. I’ve made it a habit to check because he fascinates me. He never gets better. But everyday, there he is, running out into the traffic to juggle. And he never asks for money either. I can’t understand it…not enough love at home? I also often think, that is the lamest way to get an adreniline rush- I’m going to go drop pins in front of stopped cars! YEAH! Like slumbering bowling balls, the cars idle, apathetic to the young man’s charades. And like gutter balls that have no desire to hit the pins, the cars slowly rev their engines, bypassing the young man as he scampers out of the way at the last minute, grasping for the slippery pins. Its Spain…I learn to just stop asking questions.

And a funny story from the teacher’s lounge the other day. I was “chatting” (exchanging for the most part mutually understood words) with another professor who is a professional triathlete, talking about the run we both did on Sunday. He asked how I did and I said decided to play it modest and said, “Just okay. I was stuck behind a LOT of people. So I was pretty slow.” He proceeded to ask my time and I said, “__:_’ {insert my time, with a few minutes shaved off to make myself look better :) } The only polite thing was to ask him how he did. He sputtered, “Fatal fatal!” and I laughed and said, “Okay, okay, what does fatal for YOU mean?” with a face of disgust he spit out “34 minutes.” I doubled over in laughter and he said, “See I told you that was bad. I wasn’t even in the back; I was up in the front line with the professionals and still went that slow.” I looked up and said, “No, no, you ran VERY FAST. MUCH faster than me. I think it’s funny that you think you’re slow.” If a 5:30 mile is slow, I might as well have log rolled my way to the finish line because either way I was slower than slow. If slow had a slow younger sister that was me. I’m sure he thought, “Did she walk it with her eyes shut?” and then he so kindly offered to go on a run with me after school one day. In Álora, which I had previously decided, loosely translated meant “big ass climb.” I laughed and said I’d be his water girl and run with him while he walked to cool down. I’d save him from performing CPR on me, even though people give besos all the time in Spain, I think doing mouth to mouth resuscitation when I have a cardiac arrest trying to keep up with him might be a bit to much even for a Spaniard.

And before I go, I must say, I HAVE THE BEST FAMILY EVER! THANK YOU MOM AND DAD!! Got to give them credit where credit is due. I may be on the Costa del Sol, but it’s COLD at night… only my mom whose also cold 24/7 would send me Halloween socks to keep me warm in my bed. :) I love you both. Fly the coop of that empty nest and let’s burn some euro on some café and bon bons.

Not to shun the rest of my loving fan base, I adore you all as well. But you didn’t send me pumpkin socks and DARK chocolate dark enough to almost be a straight cacao bean.

Love to you all!