A 10am-8pm Day

So it's 5 in the morning, and I have been awake for 1 hour. :(

I'm trying to prepare for class today. I didn't have much time yesterday or this weekend. It would be really nice if they told me in advance about the things that I need to prepare for the night school. I don't find out what I have to do until I get there. Although I am an english assistant, I prepare my own lesson for the hour, and I lead the class. The teachers sit there and apparently lose all sense of reality, rarely helping me as I struggle. Bwah. It irritates me sometimes, but it will help me decide whether teaching is in my future. It may be. I was telling my friend the other day that all of this is strange. I am the quieter one in social situations, but I do feel comfortable in front of a classroom when I have something prepared. I'm not as nervous as I am when I'm sitting with a group of new people, trying to choose my words carefully and care enough to say anything at all. I have been working on that all my life. Oh well...

Yesterday was ok. It was great until I arrived at the official language school and was accused of doing something forbidden by the program. I'm not supposed to correct the written work of the students, because I'm not the teacher. Hmm. Well, I haven't been doing this, so I didn't understand the problem. I told the director that I didn't understand, and another teacher started speaking slowly and loudly like I was a level 1 English student. That pissed me off. She then proceeded to show me books to help me understand the problem. Mmk. I didn't understand the director's reason for telling me this, since I have only been correcting students' speech. She heard that English assistants at the official language schools in Logroño (the city I live in) have been correcting students' written work. I guess she thinks we all congregate under the clock somewhere and all decide to break the rules. I tried not to let it bother me too much, because I had to be happy for my intermediate 1 class.

Last night was my first time meeting the Monday intermediate 1 class. They were very cool and were very interested in my ballroom dancing. That took up a lot of time. I love it! There wasn't much of any classroom work. The objective was to get them ALL to talk, and not just the ones who obviously speak better English. It was a challenge until we started talking about sports. One girl has lived in the US and so likes US football. Everyone knows the spanish LA Lakers player Pau Gasol. He was here last week and received a Rioja prestige award.

We also talked about the Masters Golf tournaent and... the "feminine eteam", uh I mean, women's volleyball team. One guy thought that people only talk about the women's volleyball team because of the "lovely ladies". They were still debating this as I exited for the last bus to Logroño. I wonder how it ended...

Well, I'm going to finish preparing my lesson. Then I'm going to eat all the cookies that I can find and drink all the strange tasting skim milk that is left in the carton.

Chao!