Teaching English

Well as my roommate pointed out to me today, only 6 more months :P

I guess I'll start with school.  It's been going well... it's challenging.  So we had our formation day this past Tuesday, a week and a half after we had started and I think there were pros and cons to having it then.  Pros: we got to tell the lady in charge all the problems we're having so she can try and fix them.  Cons: we didn't know what we were doing for the week and a half before (and as it turns out for me, I was doing a lot wrong).  (For example showing up at a school with nothing prepared and the teacher saying here's the class, 45 minutes lesson go.)  It was a really helpful day and I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of this whole teaching English thing.  Starting that is...  In general, I really enjoy the kids, but it's so hard to know the level of the students.  Some look completely bored out of their minds and some have no idea what's going on.  I think part of this might be that there's almost always two grades in the same class.  So today for example the first school I went to was great.  The first teacher plans everything and then I take everything she does and use it in other classes :)  My second class at that school I really like, they're older and it's a small group so you can get them talking more without chaos erupting, I have to plan for that class, but the principal gives me materials and offers to help prepare things.  Then I have a bunch of young kids and I use what the first teacher did.  I'm finding I have to improvise a lot since sometimes it takes the whole 45 minutes to do what I planned on doing in 10 and sometimes what I thought would take longer doesn't and I have to come up with something else.  I think I have a lot of growing to do in giving directions too...

Anyways I'll skip the second school I was at today to move onto the third.  Basically my lesson was on the four seasons, which I had already introduced to them last week.  So after 45 minutes of trying in different ways to get them to know the seasons, they didn't.  In fact I'm not convinced anyone in the class did, except for maybe the Portuguese student who's just learning French too hehe oh dear.  It's tough too because I'm only supposed to speak in English and not to translate what I'm saying.  So I try... and very rarely succeed.  I mean when no one's listening to you or paying attention, it's much easier to speak the language they understand.

So to sum up, it's good, I like all the spare time I have, that's for sure, and really basically I get to play games with kids for my job 12 hours a week.

In other news, I went to the laundromat.  Yes, I'm sure that all of you reading this are very interested in my laundry situation :P  IT'S RIDICULOUSLY EXPENSIVE!  It was interesting since, believe it or not, I've never had to do laundry in a laundromat.  Luckily there was a guy there who I asked for help.  So I thought that I would dry my clothes since I thought if I'm spending all this money washing these clothes I want them to dry and not smell.  Well I don't know how long you had to put them in for, but in the end I carried my just-as-wet clothes home and hung them to dry, but the drying situation is going better this time since I hung them in the hallway.

To finish up, I will be doing the Camino from Leon to Santiago de Compostella starting next Sunday for "les vacances de Toussaint" (I have two weeks off).  I'm pretty excited for it.  So if you're reading this, say a prayer for me during that time.