Spanish is hard.
On Monday it rained like a sonofabitch. At one point while walking to work I had to take refuge under the awning of the entrance to this Argentine steak house. The bonus was that normally less than half of the students show up when it so far is drizzles.
Thursday the power was out throughout at least this part of San Luis because for the two days prior the wind was blowing like days reminiscent of spring in Mammoth. You couldn’t walk down the street in the middle of the day without getting dirt and what-not blown into your face, eyes, and ears. Leaves and branches littered the streets for a while. Even our tree-like bush decided to end it all too; it’s horizontal now, roots and all. Maybe it’s taking a little siesta (heh, Word doesn’t believe that ‘siesta’ is misspelled and it actually has ‘forty winks’ as one of the synonyms). Because using a class room after 6 requires lighting, we had the rest of the evening off and had ourselves a little barbeque. Later we bumped into 3 lovely girls and the local joint.
Student evaluations have come back: they’re wildly inconsistent and some are even irrational. It’s left me reluctant to go to my morning class, but more than happy to go to my first evening class. The coordinator has also finished her rounds of observations and hadn’t any complaints, so, whatever. They only thing she mentioned was that I missed good opportunities to correct pronunciation. I disagree. There are times to correct and times to just let them blabber on in English. It’s more damaging to stop them from talking because that’s what I’m trying to get them to do. I think it’s better to correct pronunciation only when they’re giving me one sentence or something.
Friday I broke a 4-day trend of not bathing. For one of those days the water heater was on the fritz, then we ran out of water on top of the roof (water that trickles in from the city stays in a holding tank below the house and is automatically pumped up to the top to provide water pressure), then after we manually turned in on, the dirtiest water you’ve ever seen came out of our pipes. Whatever was trying to get through our pipes clogged up the water to one of the showers. I’m now on my 3rd day in a row having had a bath.
Let’s see, this is a 3-day weekend because Monday is Constitution day. Independence Day is on September 12th I think. For teachers however it’s really a 2-day weekend seeing that there’s work to be done on Saturdays. Anyway, on Saturday night we went to some club that was playing drum n base or whatever. Not my style, really. One of my students was there. He got severely out of control – whaling around, etc. I heard that at the end of the night he had a run-in with the cops, but it must have turned out alright because otherwise we wouldn’t have known. With us at the drum&base thing was the 50 year old Canadian. She had a lot to drink, and had a little to smoke so she, I think, was a bit out of her element. At some point in night she was flailing about directly in front of the turn tables. The next day, which is today, I passed her on the street and she was surprisingly in one piece.
There’s this German-Mexican dude who owns a juice shop down the street and apparently has hook-ups. He invited us to his cousin’s club later that night. The cover is 70 pesos, but several of us got in para gratis. The 3 girls that we met a couple of nights before stopped by. This club played all mixed regeton, so it was a little more hoppin’. Some of these girls can shake it, damn.
And today was the Super Bowl. We watched it a Caliente, a casino and sports book. There’re big screens, a lounge like environment, etc. Weeks before, they said that they were going to be playing the American feed, CBS, with the calls in English and with same commercials -- the whole thing as it’s supposed to be enjoyed. When we arrived they kept it on the Deportas channel. One after another, an English speaker – the lot of us and several other patrons – would inquire about getting the American feed on. For every person he gave some b.s. excuse. At the end of the 1st quarter they finally submitted and changed it to CBS. A round of applause came from the patrons when it was changed. I liked how he ‘threw a rock’ to win a Budweiser while playing ‘rock, paper, scissors.’ I won 10 pesos, but the guy I bet couldn’t make 10 pesos with the cash he had so would have to pay me my winnings later. When we went to the store I was giving him a hard time about a donation card for undernutritioned infants. Unfortunately, he turned the same trick on me and asked why I wasn’t going to buy it. Taking the initiative on what was supposed to be my behalf, he purchased the donation with the 10 pesos he owed me. Let’s see, what’s this thing called anyway …? “Un Kilo de Ayuda” (a ton of help, I guess).
Ugh, SO glad I don’t have to work tomorrow.
That’s about it for now I guess.
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