Saturday, November 20, 2010

look at the past week & why i'm a good and bad teacher.

hollerrrrr from Lugo!


















This weekend was supposed to be all about goal keeping but i keep waking up late! i'm really trying but it is quite a difficult task to change your internal clock.

anyway. here are some sort of noteworthy happenings:

-i had to go to the police station to get my temporary residence card. i decided not to trouble oscar & went by myself. oh boy. it was definitely a bit anxiety provoking since i did not understand anything the disgruntled office employee was telling me. as it happens, i bumped into the "un hombre loco" from maria's party & it was my good fortune cause he helped me out. so yyay that is done.

-i randomly met another auxillary @ the supermarket last wknd. we met up the day after to hang and guess who i bumped into once again.. un hombre loco! haha. anyway, about the other auxillary, i found out that my school's better than his. and i live way closer to the city center. and i'm just more awesome in general. score! 

-oscar made a boy cry in the 6th grade class this week. this boy seems like a pretty masculine kid too, haha. he was just teasing the kid, saying he did his hw in class rather than at home, but the kid got very upset & protested that he did it at home.. and started crying. we were shocked! oscar was all "it's ok! i'm not gonna eat you! do i look like a monster?" and one kid said yes and that kid got a zero for the day. life ain't no joke, yo.

-on the other hand paula's class is less strictly governed so i got really serious with them and demanded respectful listening... after which i was worried that paula might think i was too strict (i wasn't. i was a fair amount strict, but she is so sweet i was afraid she'd find it too strict.) instead paula said to me at the end of class, "Erica, I think you are a very good teacher." this totally made my week :)

-in a different in-class incident i prove i am not all that great of a teacher afterall! in 1st grade we were having a lesson and oscar was explaining something or other when all of a sudden, the boy in the front row right next to me-BOOM!- falls over backwards in his chair right onto the floor!! Oh my god. It was so funny. The room fell dead silent and all eyes were on him as he scrambled up as quick as possible, put his chair back in place, turned to his notebook quickly and pretended to be deeply inthralled with his work, as if nothing happened. At which point Oscar starts giving him a serious speech in spanish, something like "what were you doing? that's what happens when you fool around, you should be quietly paying attention, not fooling around, what do you think this is a playground?" etc etc. MEANWHILE.. I am holding my breath, squeezing my lips shut, looking down, trying as hard as humanly possible to remain serious despite the fact that I found the entire incident absolutely hysterical. i knew i could not mess up oscar's serious speech by laughing. that would be the worst. because even a student that giggled got scolded by oscar. i can see the kids sort of smiling/holding back smiles-which makes it that much harder for me- but no one laughs. finally oscar looks up at me to continue with the lesson and the second he does, i feel my face betraying me and he can see it too, i can not even speak. and he cracks a slight smirk, and says "Are you ok?" and that was it. i LOST it. i begin to shake with laughter and i am trying so so so hard to hold it in but it is futile, i had tears in my eyes, he goes, "Are you crying? What happened?" and i am just dying, i can't even look at the poor kid that fell, I felt so awful but I could not stop. Ohhh.. it was absurd. I was so red just from trying to hold in the laughter.. it was the funniest thing ever. Oscar realized it was hopeless and started asking, "What's wrong with Erica? What happened to her? Does anybody know?" and the kids were giggling. god. i can't believe i did that. i am still laughing about it! we were laughing about it on the way home.. speaking of which..

-me, oscar, paula, and another fellow carpool to work. said other fellow..lets call him Mac...stinks. i wondered why no one ever mentioned this whenever he got out of the car. well, we finally discussed this matter last week. i opened the window after he got out and paula said "good idea erica!" and i said, "yes, Mac is a bit.. smelly, no?" Paula and Oscar start laughing and paula said oh erica, you are brave! but oscar says, "what are you talking about? erica, how could you say that?" and i felt so guilty! I didn't know what to say! and then oscar continued, "I think what you mean to say is...he is stinky!" and we all just died haha.. but he kept going, "He is so stinky! He stinks! He smells awful! oh my god! it's terrible!" it was so freaking funny. good heavens. just this past week was an especially potent one and oscar started talking about it in the car while Mac was still there (but he speaks no english). haha, terrible.. we are just laughing and Mac has no idea why. so mean, i know.

-i went out with my roommate Patricia the other night for her friend's bday.. i like Patricia's friends, they're very down to earth. i had lots of spanish practice. one of the girls that came spoke english-she spoke english to me and I spanish to her! it was fun. i had two beers and a bunch of tapas.. Lugo is known for this free tapas with a drink thing. it's great. well, maybe not so great because at 3am I woke up hurling my guts out to the point of scorching my throat. ewww. not fun. not going to OD on tapas ever again.
Duff beer!!!

Patri, me, Fanny

fanny's cat Neo-good god he is so mushy!!! i love him.


those are my weekly highlights. i will try to be a better blogger, but i'm quite lame when it comes to this sort of thing.

chau chicos ;)
e


ps: my next goal is to use capitals more consistently. 



Tuesday, November 9, 2010

black lungs, sore throats

i'm gonna get black lung here! why do people still think it's cool to smoke? sucks.

tengo dolor de garganta. i have a sore throat. getting out of bed today sucked. and two people said i didn't looked well. awwwesome. i have to start sticking to a more normal sleep schedule. 

today:

-the principal pulled me aside to talk about an art project that they're doing and i understood almost half of what she was saying! woo!

-a boy in the 3rd grade class gave me a plastic pink heart. awww. i think it's a bicycle peg..

-two girls in the 3rd grade class made me a paper boat..awww. it said "welcome erica" ...although i've been there 2 weeks now.

-i fell asleep in the car on the way home. dios mio.

-i had my very first students to tutor today! two of oscar's friends who know very little english. it went surprisingly well. yo creo (i believe). Well, considering the language barrier. sweet. i can kind of communicate. the money i made is going straight to getting a temporary residence card. isn't it ironic. dontcha think.

-speaking of rain, it's been raining. ugh. i have made up my mind. i dislike the rain.

-nacho (my roomie) made spanish tortilla today.. the eggs were not cooked through... and i ate it anyway because they said "no te preocupes" don't worry. & if we get sick-we get sick together.

-speaking of sick i'm a bit sick.

chau! :)
e

ps: i'm so happy pepper is back!! i love her sweet little troublemaking face so much i want to just bite it! i wish she was here :(

Monday, November 8, 2010

pepper is found & other good things

it's monday evening and my little wee kitten Pepper is (as Paula would say-) "sound & safe" :)

hooray hooray hooray! three cheers for my Marco Polo for his hard work planting signs everywhere.. and for now understanding that sometimes my worries are not in vain! (right??)
she was given back sunday morning, apparently some bloke a few blocks away found her and had seen the signs for our lost little one. he said to Marcus: "i don't know how you deal with her, she woke us up at 3am suckling on my ear." 
hahaha. thats my pepper alright. yayyyyy!!!! pepper is back!!!! 

saturday i hung out with Paula & her amigas.. it was her friend Maria's birthday. it was a great time and just what i needed to get my mind off of Pepper. (cause obviously she was still missing at the time)
we went to an Argentinian restaurant for dinner and then a couple of bars for drinks & dancing! 

L to R: don't recall but i liked her, me, un hombre loco, maria, tonio, paula

we had a lot of laughs particularly because there was an especially odd fellow there who we suspect was just beyond drunk because he was soo obnoxious. we all tried to ignore him, i mean we were VERY blatantly ignoring him but he didn't seem to notice. while i was talking to paula's friend he was shouting translations at her and when she answered me in spanish he shouted translations at me! haha. we just couldnt stop laughing. it was ridiculous. wow. i ended up pouring his drink in a different glass. we were laughing about it but he never noticed. hahaha sssabotage! 

his rum & coke: now "wine"
none of them really knew him, he was just a friend of maria's. maria is awesome too and can speak a good amount of english-she talked a lot about this band called "Mattafix" or some such thing.. how she loves them so much and the singer is the most beautiful man in the world! haha. she was very funny. actually all of the girls were great. they were so so sweet, i had a great time with all of them, they made me feel so comfortable. good times.

there were no candles so she blew out the toothpicks ;)

me and paula with the birthday girl on the right
maria, tania, don't remember but she was sweet, and me

spanish cameron diaz and I
i love Paula too of course. i think she is one of my very favorite people here so far. she's such a cool person; so sweet, so fun, so friendly. she looks and sort of acts like a spanish Cameron Diaz. i told her that but she was like "what! nooo.. where are the blue eyes? and blond hair?" it's true though. 

alright, lesson prepping time. tengo escuela manana.
besos!
e

Saturday, November 6, 2010

and now: a complaint

there is someone walking in high heels in the apartment above me and has been doing so since 9am this morning!!! it's so annoying!! *cluck clunk clunk*

get some slippers lady!!!

Friday, November 5, 2010

highlights and lowlights

hullo.

i am blue today :(

lets see, highlights of the week:

-el colegio. the school. everyone there is so nice & i love the kids. the 3rd graders started sporadically hugging me in Paula's [POW-la's] class yesterday. and in oscar's class, we had a lesson in which i went around asking the kids about themselves and then they had to answer in english. i did most of the class but oscar took care of 3 pairs of students. afterwards those students were jealous & complained to oscar that they didn't get to talk with me. then he said "Now I'm jealous!" haha.. aww :)
in the first grade class there are so many students whose cheeks i just want to pinch! SO cuuute!!! with their little innocent confused faces awwwww! i can't stand it!

-on wednesday i was going to go explore the city center but then my roommates convinced me to party with them and their friends. we played a lot of fun drinking games haha. and they made a drink, apparently a staple of the youth in spain, called "Calimocho"  It's wine mixed with coca cola mixed in a big pot like soup. and actually it was quite tasty. calimocho soup for everyone! good times, stayed up way too late.

-on tuesday went to town with oscar to buy a dictionary and bumped into an old colleague of his. said colleague convinced me to go to his school (he's also an english teacher) one day to speak with the kids. don't know if that was just talk. we'll see. i'd love to see more of spain & get to see other schools! we went cafe hopping. you buy a drink, you get food for free! ah, the beauty of Tapas.

-i finally explored the city center today. it's so lovely and the town is so quaint and adorable. i really love it. there are parts of it where the buildings are decrepit and old and for reasons unknown to me i really love those parts. i don't know, i like it's charm. and crumbling walls mixed with broken glass looks interesting to me. it's a mystery. i walked their famous giant roman walls too. the walls are something like 1,000 years old and they make a full circle around the city center. so you can take a walk all the way around, it's about a mile and a half long.

Lowlights: Pepper is missing and I'm really upset :(

..
e

Monday, November 1, 2010

en la distancia te puedo ver, cuando tus fotos me siento a ver






Que tu ausencia me devora entero el corazon
Your absence devours my heart entirely
Y yo no tengo remedio mas que amarte
And I have no remedy but to love you
*
Cuando hay un abismo desnudo
When there is a naked abyss
Que se opone entre los dos
That stands between us

Yo me valgo del recuerdo Taciturno de tu voz
I try to remember the sound of your voice
Y de nuevo siento enfermo este corazon
And again I feel heartsick
Que no le queda remedio mas que amarte
And I have no remedy but to love you