October 2003 Archives

After my adventure with the Spanish medical system this past weekend--helping a friend who got ill (and is now better)--I'm happy to report that I've safely begun my fourth and final week of the course. I've survived the transition from the Intermediate students to the Beginners class, and have successfully taught two 1-hour lessons. Yesterday I was working on question forms and got into a bit of a tough spot clarifying the difference between "how much" and "how many"...can you explain that one?

This weekend has been exhausting, not much of a break between the third and final chaotic weeks of the course. Friday night I discovered the joys and terrors of the Spanish healthcare system as I played the worried big brother for my friend Sarah who took ill while we were at dinner.

Here's another sample of my students' work from my last lesson with the intermediate students. This one appears to have ignored most of my instructions, specifically about writing dialog, but still managed to come out more coherent than the previous one.

So Monday of this week was my last teaching practice session with the intermediate students. For my final lesson with them, I had them write some movie plots with vocabulary of ocean travel in the narrative tenses (simple past, past perfect, past progressive, and past perfect progressive). Here's a sample of one of the stories two of the students wrote...exactly as I received it.

I have finally found a computer with both a working floppy drive and an Internet connection!!! What this means is that you can finally see the photos from my only sightseeing trip in Barcelona so far...to the Sagrada Familia. This is proof positive for anyone who thinks I'm really just hiding in the hills of New Hampshire to get away from my ex-girlfriend, Maria. ;)

Here's an artist's rendering of what the final building will look like, or at least one end of it:

A bit of bad news tonight...the property manager for my old apartment says he's going to deduct $325 from my last month's rent deposit to pay for the removal of my rotting, old, gargantuan couch from my former apartment and all the trash that I left next to the house. Have I told you how much I really hate realtors.

Sorry about the depressed tone of that entry on Friday night. As you could tell I was very sleep starved. Today, after 11 hours of solid sleep, plus a hot shower, I am feeling much better. My flatmate, James, and I found a laundromat with dryers (which are VERY uncommon in Spain due to energy costs). I also realized that with the end of yesterday's classes that I have 10 class days remaining and then *SPLASH* into the job market.

Just a quick word about the two tutors for my class. J?em is the lead tutor on the course and Roger is the "assistant" tutor. It's silly that Cambridge University insist on these labels because both men have 20+ years of EFL teaching and school admin experience. They are both very nice, incredibly smart men who are good teachers with great senses of humor.

I've now finished my second week. My first lesson this week went better than the other two, but the one I taught on Wednesday was pretty weak because the subject--greetings and small talk on a job interview--was neither interesting or particularly challenging to the students. Luckily for me, I managed to spark their interest in the last 15 minutes with a discussion of what "genuine" means and whether they thought the characters in the tape we listened to were being genuine. I think that's the only reason they didn't lynch me or fall asleep.

I taught two classes in my first week. In the first class my tutor said I was good but a bit serious. The students responded well to the topic--favorite books. I was pleasantly surprised by the students' choice of books: cheesy romance novels, to "Angela's Ashes," to much more serious books about the political struggles in Chile and finally, one about an American doctor's travels among the Australian aboriginies--sorry, the titles of the last two escape me. In case you wondered, my favorite book is "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Teaching was fun once I got into the rhythm of being in front of strangers and leading the group. I only had to teach for 20 minutes which at some points flew and other points dragged, just like most things.

Dear Californians,

If you voted for Arnold Schwarzenegger in the recent recall election, you are an idiot. I don't personally know enough about Gray Davis' policies or failings to comment on whether I think he should have been recalled or not, but I would NEVER vote for someone who made as few or as vague statements about how he will fix California's multitude of social and economic ails as your newly elected "Governator." I hope you get whatever you deserve in the next three years. I look forward to watching the next several seasons of Bill Maher on HBO making fun of you sun-fried morons. I will be laughing at you, not with you.

So my first night in Barcelona--2 October--I'm completely exhausted, running on adrenaline, and need to keep moving to avoid my own stink--I'm in Spain, not France, so people notice (sorry Jane)--and I ask Jordi for directions to the nearest market so I can pick up some food and basic personal hygiene items while I wait for my luggage. Jordi sends me to a bargain market called "LIDL"--no idea what it means. My first challenge is to find a shopping cart, which is harder than it sounds.

Thanks to guilt inflicted by my host, Jordi, on the clerk from Air France, both pieces of my luggage showed up at the flat at 11:30 a.m. yesterday, just 30 minutes before I had to leave for my course orientation session.

My flatmate James and I went to the orientation session and met our other classmates for the course. There's 36 people taking the course and we were split up into three groups of 12 and then we'll be subdivided again into teaching practice teams of six. The people in my group--five Americans and seven Brits--all seem very nice and I'm looking forward to working with them.

Wednesday morning I awoke at 8:00 a.m. at my friends' Nancy and Karl's house . They put me up for the night so I wouldn't have to spend my last night in the U.S. on the floor of my apartment and so that I could make it to my final dental appointment on time. After the dental appointment--my teeth are in good shape--I finished, or should say reached a time-driven compromise regarding the fate of the remaining contents of my apartment. My divinely wonderful friend Amy made yet another trip from New Hampshire to Waltham and helped me shovel the last of my belongings into either the suitcase or the stack of bags, buckets, and boxes that either went to her house, my brother's place, or with me in a suitcase. She was even generous enough to efficiently pack my suitcase while I ran away for an hour to have a massage to loosen the knots from my back so I could have a reasonably comfortable 6 hour plane ride.