so far so good

So I’m into my first week of teaching and so far it’s pretty fun. I am teaching 4 classes of “upper intermediate” students, and one four hour class of “advanced.” The classes that are the most fun are those comprised completely of younger students, which is really only one of them; 5 students, all between 15 and 20. With them I can have a little fun and they’re more forgiving. There is another class, 15 students all of whom are older business types, that is a bit serious and a little demanding. I’m the youngest person in the classroom. On the first day one of the students decided that she disagreed with some sentence structure or another (it had something to do with using “was” instead of “is”). Because she was flat wrong and arguing about it would have detracted from the focus of the lesson, I was sort of short with her about why I was right and she was wrong. When I got home it dawned on me why she believed what she did, so today I made a short point about her confusion – detailing to her and the class … well, you get the drift.

When I get home and start chatting with my roommates, I have to force myself to stop annunciating and avoiding slang in my speech. I use a lot of four letter words just to shake the trend. For the first hour or so after work I tend to sound like some sort of automated over-the-phone menu system.

I haven’t held my “advanced” class yet. It’s only one day a week, but as I said, four hours long. There’s another teacher who has the same level 5 days a week. I think I’ll enjoy this level the most because the first few lesson plans involve argumentation. Shit, finally a practical application of some good ol’ fashioned philosophy.

I wonder what my students thought of me when for a moment I thought that the English alphabet has 26 letters and that “satellite” is spelled with one L. Ah well, I corrected myself later and there were only 2 students there.. one of them probably didn’t know what the fuck I was saying anyway.

Does anybody know the difference between “speak” and “talk?” It’s the first day, and some damn punk is already stumping me.

new years, etc.

Oh my Vishnu. What happened? Where am I? Today is January 1, 2007 – I think. Mexicans do things a little bit differently for New Year’s Eve. As it turns out, they spend time with their families and even exchange gifts, much in the same fashion as in Christmas. The real fun doesn’t begin until some time after 12. Until then people are lighting off fireworks in the streets and in their front and back yards below power lines and trees; next to cars and houses. It was really a war zone walking from the house to the club. A helmet and a flack jacket wouldn’t have been entirely inappropriate.

This teacher’s girlfriend has some connection at this club called Tonic. She used said connection to get a hold of a few “VIP” passes. If it weren’t for these passes, we wouldn’t have been able to enter. I felt like a rock star. There was a band and the place was packed. Mixed drinks were 35 pesos. Lots of dancing and lots of pretending that I understood what the pretty girls were telling me … I think you all get the picture – it’s a “fancy” Mexican club on New Year’s Eve. Use your imagination. This girl I was dancing with (yeah! I’ve been dancing!) said that she wanted to pick me up and take me to dinner the next evening at 8pm. She never showed. Whatever.

5:30 AM rolls around, the lights come on, and people start to leave. As I was walking down the street I came across some guys around my age hanging around their car that was blasting some kind of Mexican music or another. They asked if I liked tequila. I told them that of course I did. So the booze kept flowing, but now street side. Their English was unintelligible so, well, it was interesting. I got home at about 7am.

Tomorrow is the first day of work. I really hope that my brain recovers enough by 6am in order to teach how to use … past continuous reflexive pronouns or whatever (I totally made that up, but really, I’m going to be learning this grammar shit moments before I have to teach it). I’m not a religious man, but if you’re out there somewhere, save me Superman.

There’s one last thing that I’m still struggling to come to terms with: Mexican time. That is, whatever equation is used to translate a length of time when spoken to the real amount of time that is observed. For example, 10 minutes is something like 45 minutes, “right now – orita” is something like 15 minutes, and “tomorrow” never comes. Teachers tell me that although class may start at, say, 9AM, students will start arriving around 9:30. We’ll see how this goes.

… this is how it went: my 7am class doesn’t have enough students enrolled yet and my 9am, which has 7 students enrolled, was totally vacant. I have 3 more classes today, but I’m not expecting much of a turn out. I’m told that people will start showing up a week into the term. I’ve been advised to not teach any lessons and instead just bullshit around with them for 1 and ½ hours. Otherwise, when students start showing up, I’d have to repeat the lessons.