En el Colegio

Probably at least half of the comedy of my life occurs in the colegio, mi querido CEIP Manuel Perez. When it's not the little kids saying crazy things, it's the adults doing everything from teaching to planning to gossiping to chatting in exxxxtra loud voices.

This morning, a Thursday, I walked into the third grade class, only to realize I was in the wrong place. I walked in, certain that the day was going to get off to a great start with eight and nine year olds, and subsequently realized my error, after they asked why I was there (moments after the 5-second-excitement of me walking in had faded). Sometimes you just have to make like a payaso and exaggerate your way out of a situation. I do that a lot.

So then I ended up across the hall with the 6th graders, only the head teacher is attending to an inspector who came to visit today so I was fending for myself. Luckily the maestro who's class it actually was, stayed, otherwise I'm sure I would have had to stop them from talking at least twice as many times as I did. Alas. The best part of the class was the portion I fubbed in to fill the remaining fifteen minutes. For the last couple of weeks I've gone over pronunciation with them. They've been learning how to describe people, i.e. short, curly, brown hair, eyes, height, etc. Only, they pronounce eyes like, I mean, I don't even know how to spell what they're saying, but I guess it would look something like this: ï-jez. So, to spare my ears, and whoever elses they may encounter once they get over their fear of speaking, I have my own phonetic chart for them - eyes for example should be pronounced like ¨ais¨, which makes less sense for English speakers than for Spanish speakers. Needless to say, I ended the class by talking about myself and making them read some of the problem words as I described myself, where I'm from, what I love to do. Best part was adding in that I have two cats named Max and Tyrone; Tyrone was momentarily pronounced: Tee-rone-ay, but we corrected that as well...

Right now, I usually have a planning period, but not much got done. The teachers' printer is out of ink, and what we really needed to do was print an exam for the third graders. We're waiting for another printer to get freed up, but the inspector is throwing things off a bit. Anyhow, I'm off to the patio now. Esta muy soleado, y quero salir!!! Y quizas jugar con los ninos, aunque more likely I'll just sit or stand and watch for the next veinte minutos antes de subir a las ultimas clases. Gracias por una semana en que trabajo solo tres dias. Obvio que este sea la vida.