Sorry, mis amigos for the infrequent posting...this last week has been MANIC.
Monday evening, bought more stuff for my kids and for the refugio. C´s getting pissed off that whatever he brings in soon gets stolen, lost, kicked over the wall or trashed. He rejected a ball I suggested for a much cheaper-quality one and still annoyed, said, "frankly, it´s all they deserve". I gently suggested that maybe they don´t respect or care for things as they don´t get any respect or care either. He conceded I had a point.
We bumped into Kirsten, Ali and John outside a bar; they´d texted me earlier but I hadn´t checked my phone, so a lucky spot. We joined them for a quick drink (well, quick once I manged to get the inattentive waiter over) before heading back for dinner - Aida cooks each night, so it´s a bit of a bind for not being able to spontaneously stay out, but I´m getting nicer, healthier food than I would be able to get in a restaurant anyway. And we´ve paid for it in our accomodation costs, so it´s in effect now ´free´.
We told Aida over dinner, how much we liked her cooking. That the other volunteers haven´t been so lucky; poor Catherine got served FOUR meat empanadas for her dinner last night (like Cornish pasties!) and nothing else. Kirsten gets given a range of sweet biscuits and some ´random weird mini breadsticks´ every morning (she thought her breakfast was so strange, she took several photos of it). Yum.
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Tuesday...fairly non-eventful as I remember (I´d like to blog more frequently, but Flor has theses to do, so I can hardly hog it for my own more leisurely pursuits...)
Oh yeah, John told me C was playing footy with some of the boys on Wednesday. I was surprised because C hadn´t mentioned it, although I said he´d be well up for it.
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Wednesday - C hadn´t mentioned it because no one had told him about the footy, but as I guessed, he was enthusiastic.
Today, the heavens opened pretty much all day and what must be all the rain in the world washed the streets with rivers of red from the coloured earth. Amazingly, I managed to catch 20 minutes on my walk into work when it stopped for a bit, and on the way back a nice lady offered John and I a lift most of the way home when we were huddled in a shelter waiting for a bus or the rain to stop, whichever came first, so I managed to *not* get drenched, unlike C.
That evening I texted to rally the chicas to come and watch the boys (thankfully it was a covered pitch), but Ali was heading to bed, and Kirsten had the best excuse EVER. She sent a fantastic text, which I just have to transcribe for you:
"Hi! Thanks to my rubbish spanish i´ve landed myself the job of 24 hour care of a week old honey bear! i should stop just nodding and saying ´si´ when I don´t understand something."
I replied saying it sounded so-o-o cute, but did 24 hours mean she was living on her project now?
"No i had to bring it home with me! it is so cute you guys have to see it....I have to feed it every 4 hours so staying in tonight. Will call...to arrange a show & tell!"
A honey bear!!! A week old!!! C and I did a little dance in excitement. We were already a bit ga-ga over some gorgeous little pups we´d seen. The nice pet-shop owner let me cuddle a very young black and white mongrel puppy (maybe 4 weeks old?), and he rested his tiny head and little paw on my chest, and nearly went to sleep, calmed by the beating of my heart. C wanted to take a pic, but I didn´t want to scare him, so sorry everyone, no puppy. I had to eventually hand him back, before I fell in love and wanted to buy him.
Hmmm. With images of a real-life baby ´Pooh´ bear in my head, I did a Google Image search and was disappointed to realise a honey bear looks more like an anteater :(
Anyway, so it was just me, una sola chica, that went to the footy with los chicos. I took the flash off my camera so as not to cause a distraction, to try and capture some of the moves. I´ll post pics later...
5-a-side turned out to be C, John, Tom, Marcello (V´s hubby) and one of his teenage sons opposite a group of 15-17 yr old Argentinian lads (!!!) who, C later said, had amazing skills, better than he ever had even in his competitive days. C was still pretty tasty on the pitch though, fancy footwork, nimble and *fast*. I was quite proud that the old man (he´s 35!) still had it in him and was easily better than most of his team mates.
That is until he injured himself in the last ten minutes and had to hobble off the pitch.
He took off his trainer (Squeamish?! Eating?! Skip this paragraph) and the whole nail had turned black as the blood was building up under his big, now throbbing, toe. Ouch.
The game had been a lot more exciting than the Guarani match we´d gone to, and although no one actually seemed to know the score, apparently we won by 1 goal. Bet the other side said the same.
After the boys went home for showers, we later met John & Tom at Cristobal (that restaurant I first had fish in) for a few beers. Getting there was a joke.
I´d asked the taxi driver to take us to ´Cristobal, por favor´ and he looked at me blankly. I repeated the name, clearly. Still a look of ´Que?´.
Oh come *on*, I thought, he´s probably lived here all his life, Posadas is hardly happening, and I can´t imagine he´s never dropped off or picked up at one of the most popular joints in town. I guessed he was pretending not to understand so he could take us tourists a merry route. Exasperated, I pulled a map out and we pointed "Aqui!". The taxi driver shrugged and set off. As soon as we saw the huge sign for the bar, we pointed it out "Aqui! Aqui! Cristobal!". He pulled up and feigned sudden comprehension, "Aaaaah! CrisTObal!".
I couldn´t resist a bit of sarcasm. I always think if you can have a joke and be sarcastic in a language you are getting more fluent, so I was secretly a bit pleased with myself.
Me: "Como se dice?" ("How do you say it?")
Taxi driver: "CrisTObal"
Me: "Aaaaah. CrisTObal. CRIStobal." (comparing how he said it and I said it) "Por que es *muy* diferente, no?"
C: "Come on you...!" (pulling me out of the car)
But HONESTLY! If a tourist came up to you in England and asked the way to "SANSboorris" or "TesCOSS" you´d guess what they meant, wouldn´t you?!
Idiot.
We passed a very agreeable evening out with the two boys (although I had to dig myself out of a hole when Tom gave himself an 8 for attractiveness, and I - generously, I thought - said I reckoned he was nearer a 7...). We decided to leave just before midnight as things were hotting up between the boys and a table of 5 nearby Argentinian chicas. Pretty boy John was attracting all the attention, much to Tom´s chagrin, and the girls had passed a note over via the waitress, saying that they would very much like to see them sometime (how very forward!). John, in his far-better Spanish, wrote a note back on the reverse saying that they would be in Power on Saturday night. Cool, I like his style!
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Next day, C was limping like a good ´un. We´d slept at the other end of the bed so he could elevate his foot on the wooden headboard with a towel underneath it, but it was the worst night´s sleep for him. My G&Ts meant for once I slept through his thrashing about all night, even through the annoying yappy dog that wakes us every morning from about 5am. (Even dog-lover C wants to kill the little b*stard).
I said there was no way he was going to the refugio - what if one of the kids trod on his foot? - and he´d have to go to hospital to get it sorted.
Like a typical bloke, he croaked that he´d soldier on (why does a sore toe mean a croaky voice?!) but I sternly told him that I wasn´t having him limping for days in pain and besides, with him incapacitated again, he was ruining my trip too by not being able to do anything (tough love, OK?!).
Besides, we had arranged to meet Ali & John for our first Tango class tonight. If he couldn´t dance this week, fair enough, but I knew he wanted to come along as he didn´t want me getting swept off by a dashing Argentinian hunk.
So off he went to the docs. Again. I wonder if C breaks the record for the most visits to a hospital in the shortest time for aany of i-to-i´s volunteers?!
_______
In the staffroom that morning, John was red-eyed and broken. He said he was up till 4.30 being sick (twice), and that after we left, Tom had decided to stagger home about 1.30 and he´d gone off for a drive with the chicas (one on each lap, apparently...) and when they later saw Tom passed out on a bench, they had to rescue him.
John was still wearing last night´s clothes, but he swore he´d just crashed on his own bed fully-clothed and got up really late this morning. Riiii-i-i-i-i-ght.
Ali & I carried John today, he really did look really bad; I was quite proud he´d turned up at all. There was a moment when he had to run out of the classroom, but luckily he didn´t actually throw up again.
5b were HILARIOUS today, screaming like girls at a Take That concert as we walked in and running over to throw themselves at me with hugs and kisses (they are still a bit shy of doing this with the newbies) and chanting "Ingles! Ingles! Ingles!"...I think it´s what being famous must be like, all the kids want to say hi, touch you, hug you, kiss you, get a smile or a wave from you, carry your stuff for you, wipe your board down for you...very very sweet. You wouldn´t get that in England. We had a relatively quiet lesson after the initial cacophony (John had to cover his hungover little ears) as they were filling in their revising Animals sheet, so John, I think, was grateful for small mercies! I asked the kids to not use their books and try and remember them, and I think it was a better lesson as they had to really think about it. I gave the boy who finished first a smiley sticker on his jumper. He proudly tried to show it off to his mate on the next desk, who would not look up and sullenly said "Yo vi" ("I´ve seen it").
We finished with a drawing game that John invented but needs my drawing skills. The class gets put into 2 teams, and I, Rolf-Harris-Style ("Can you tell what it is yet?") draw an animal, starting with the parts that least give the game away (eyes, teeth, a tail or ear...). The first with the correct name of the animal "En INGLES!" gets a point. The winning team is always over-excitable and sing footy chant-style jeers at the crestfallen losers ("O-lay, o-lay, o-lay, o-la-a-a-y.....") None of that polite English sportsmanship over here it seems...
John had to leave Ali & me to mark the work as he felt so nauseous, with promises to pick up the slack another day, and to see us later for Tango. That´s cool; there´ll be days when we all have to cover for each other a little bit, we´ve slipped into being a team pretty quickly and even Ali is growing in confidence day by day.
___________
Tango was excellent fun. C hadn´t expected to enjoy it, and as I said, was only coming to um, protect me, but really, he needn´t have been worried. The class was mainly full of middle-aged and older women, with a few older gents (far fewer in number). We cooed as one statuesque older gent, dressed in a tweed jacket and with a big white handlebar moustache ("A bit Lesley Philips" said C) gently guided a 6 year old chica round the floor (who turned out to be Ariel´s daughter - of Ariel & Cecelia, our Posadas-famous, award-winning Tango teachers).
That´s my gaydar out of sorts then; he was VERY camp with slicked back hair and the tightest T-shirt & trousers (and was that GUYliner he was wearing?!)
C and I swapped and danced with Ali & John respectively for the last 15 mins or so, which was really really weird, a bit like starting a new relationship, as I had to get used to John´s style with his far quicker and smaller, less sweeping steps and adapt my own to suit to stop toes being trodden on.
(I did tread on C´s sore toe once, lightly, btw, which I was soooo sorry for, but he did point out it was him who had taken the wrong step...)
We enjoyed it so much we´ve all signed up for a month (4 lessons) although we´re going to try Mondays as Thursdays were packed. In a new bar we found after Tango (our now post-Tango joint, we decided), Ali said this experience had *made* her trip so far, and she was going to sign up for classes when she returned to Ireland. She might have a point. For me, it was especially nice as I was learning something with C, kinda romantic.
Plus it´ll give me chance to get my Tango heels out once a week at least and put a floaty dress on!
That night, I drifted off into a contented and happy sleep. I´ve finally got workmates, we´re all starting to get a social life, work´s going brilliantly and it´s all good.
__________
Friday: the last two days have been BITTERLY cold (3 degrees last night V told us!).
As it was I was struggling to pack 3 month´s stuff in one rucksack and it was sweltering when we left London so I couldn´t and didn´t think to bring a winter coat, boots, tights or even jeans ("Argentina? It´s foreign, innit?! Bound to be ´otter than England!") so I´ve been making like Joey from ´Friends´ having to wear virtually everything in my wardrobe all at once.
At school, I introduced John & Ali to the cutest classes 4a & 4b. We did ´the alphabet in English´ for 4a and revised it for 4b quickly before moving onto everyone´s favourite lesson, ´Los Animales´.
John´s developed a great snail impersonation. He´ll grab a kid´s rucksack, put it on and start crawling along the floor, oblivious to the red-earth dirt, and the kids LOVE it. He´s really good with them, a natural. I like how all our different styles and strengths are coming together and we are finding our equilibriums in the class, I´m the "rock", the one the kids and newbies look to for reassurance and help, John´s the silly teacher, like a big brother to the boys and a dreamboat for the girls, although he´s also really good with disciplining them, and Ali, the shyest of the 3, is gradually coming out of her shell and feeling more comfortable with helping the kids out as her Spanish improves. She´s also good at planning lessons.
Later that day after marking Ali & I sat at the staffroom computer (Windows 98!) and typed up the progress made for each class into a spreadsheet (yeah yeah, me and my spreadsheets!)
I´d been writing it down in my notebook on different pages, but I needed to do something we´d all have access to. I felt an amazing sense of satisfaction as I looked at how far we´d come already in 3 weeks. With all this info at a glance, we even managed to plan the following week!
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At 6pm, Kirsten came round with her baby honey bear, all wrapped up in an old checked shirt of Pilar´s (her host) and then in her zip-up fleece to keep it warm. She looked pregnant, and therefore very funny with the glass of wine I offered her. We cooed over the tiny thing, although I was a bit disappointed it didn´t do anything, but as C pointed out, I don´t do much when I´m asleep either. Fair point.
When it finally stirred, K offered me a chance to hold Pooh Bear (or Winnie) as we´ve decided to call it. (Honey bear, Hunny, geddit?!). As my hands were freezing (we have no heating!) I put my gloves on to hold the wee thing. It rested on my shoulder and sniffed my face with it´s tiny cold, wet nose which tickled and made me laugh. It then started to drag itself up my body with surprisingly strong grip, which meant I eventually had to let go as it scrabbled to dive under my hair and to the warmth of the back of my neck. I then *squealed* (a little in pain) as it clawed it´s way through my hair to the top of my head! K eventually pulled the little critter off and C took over. Pics to follow...
We were planning to stay in tonight but it was Tom´s birthday, so V invited us to hers for pizzas, empanadas and a few drinks. Flor kindly lent K & I a warm coat each before we headed out.
I think it was being so tired (not the vino, oh no), but C said something I got upset about and I blanked him childishly for a bit at the end of the evening. Stupidly I can´t even remember what it was about, but I went to bed in a huff.
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Saturday: Woke up knowing we´d had a tiff last night but I was too embarrassed to admit I´d no idea why I was annoyed with him, and he didn´t want to bring it up again either, so eventually I think we both decided to ignore it and carry on as if nothing had happened.
Tried to buy a coat today: can´t find anything I like, so I´ll have to borrow Flor´s again tonight.
Am about to get ready to meet Kirsten in town (at midnight!). Ali is round now and I´m being anti-social, so I´ll end here for now and hope to blog again in the week, Flor´s workload permitting...
Friday, 30 May 2008
Monday, 26 May 2008
Los nuevos voluntarios...WITH MORE PHOTOS!
The new kids on the block arrived on Saturday. We met them in the afternoon in a bar in town, had a spot of lunch and I think I´ve discovered two new drinking buddies, to (temporarily) replace my regular gal pals in London - YAY!
Tom is from Ireland and is teaching football. The quietest of the four, I think he was pretty spaced from jet-lag; he didn´t say much more. John, the other guy is a *very* pretty boy with huge blue eyes, from Eastbourne (Lisa! Someone else from Eastbourne!) and a gap year student, then we have Alison from Ireland - a another gapper - and Kirsten from Oz, who´s super-fit and plays hockey to some competitive sort of level as well as producing multimedia stuff and documentaries. Her work gave her 9 months off and are holding her job open. (Hmph!)
John & Ali are my new colleagues from Monday, so they fired questions at me rat-tat-tat about the school. C and I told everyone about Posadas, ´Power´ nightclub, the bars on the riverside which we hadn´t visited yet, and the pound shops where they could stock up on stuff they might need. We advised Kirsten, who is doing the conservation project, to get thick gloves or risk bites from potentially rabid monkeys. And she´d thought she´d be dealing with ickle fluffy animals!
The new boys left for a siesta soon after eating (lightweights), leaving us chicas and C (he always gets left with the girls, have you noticed?) to demolish a couple of bottles of wine (no vino por C...para las antibioticas), before we tottered home and I had a tipsy snooze on the sofa.
I woke to find I´d missed 3 calls from Natalia, presumably to cancel that evening´s plans, but I couldn´t reach her back. C & I headed out anyway, with vague plans to meet the newbies and Catherine later, which in the end didn´t materialise because they were all tired. What´s wrong with youngsters these days!?!
But remembering we were in bed by 9.30 on the first night, I´d expected as much.
We two tried to find the recommended fish restaurant in our guide book, failed to, and, hungry now, I whinged a bit as we struggled for 45 minutes find anywhere that was open on a Saturday night (weird!). Plus my new, v. cute patent black ballet pumps with a little bow on - a necessary purchase as my Primarni pumps are already trashed, that´s 8 quid shoes for you - were rubbing after all that trudging (that´s 42 pesos shoes for you...7 quid).
Eventually we fell on the first place open, Cristobal, a busy brasserie-style joint, and I wolfed down the first bit of fish I´ve had all trip (salad, no chips...losing the lard, remember?!) whilst we people-watched and marvelled at the amazingly retro hairstyles (Status Quo and home perm kits were mentioned), and, not for the first time, the love that knows no (style) boundaries, that which Argentinian girls seem to have for eye-wateringly tight spray-on jeans and leggings, which pretty much means it´s Camel-Toe Central.
Yeuk - don´t they know we´re trying to eat!??!
Fell asleep watching Kill Bill. Only Uma can get away with something that clingy round her nether regions.
_______
Yesterday, Sunday 25th - we joined Kirsten & Ali for a day trip to San Ignacio - site of the Jesuit Ruins (apparently featured in the film The Mission, which I haven´t watched). Today at school, John told me that Misiones has the third largest Jewish population in the world (after Israel and the States). C was incredulous - what about Golders Green? - so I´ll have to verify that fact tomorrow, don´t quote me yet.
Our coach took an hour to get there and cost 5 pesos each. About 80p. We ran onto the top deck to bagsy the back row like kids on a school trip. Our seats were big, plumptious and comfortable, reclining to 45 degrees, footrests, with cup holders, and a man with a tray of hot coffee came round during the journey (precisely before we got to a very bumpy bit...I nearly christened C with mine). Read and learn, London Underground!
Now I don´t drink coffee, but the Northern bird in me says ´It´s freeee! ´ave it!´, so I took the double-espresso-sized cup offered. C passed. Us 3 girls then spent the next 10 minutes delicately sipping the over-strong, ridiculously-sweet coffee, and wincing between sips, before I discovered the aforementioned cup-holders and we got rid of the offending beverages.
The best bit of the day was actually just *before* the ruins, when we stumbled across a charming little cafe/restaurant with a smiley man we found out was called Diogenes Lenguaza (´un poco dio, un poco diablo!´ he joked), who reminded me of my dad with his warm hospitality and mannerisms, and, unusually, proceeded to *talk* us through a lengthy menu, a lesson in comprehension if there ever was one. I was delighted to realise I understood most of it and latched onto the grilled salmon, as did the other chicas. C had steak & chips, like a proper Brit.
A ´welcome´ in every language from Diogenes
Ali & Kirsten, my new drinking buddies
My Argie ´Dad´...apparently you can Google him.
After the meal and another two bottles of vino (I love these girls already!) Diogenes took us through a large collection of photos (on the end wall, with more on a long trestle table below it) of him on his travels. D and his wife in Scotland, London, New York, Germany...etc...meeting the Queen and the King of Spain (as you do), and with various famous Argentinian singers, actors and dignitaries at his gaff. He told us he loves travelling, although he only speaks Spanish. He also told me, as C played with his dog...a cross bred German Shepherd called Palermo (in honour of his favourite team, Boca Juniors), that he lives in Posadas too, used to have a restaurant there, but it closed in the recession, so now he just has two. Think he does alright though; our meal came to 300 pesos all in, about 50 quid (they have no pound sign on this keyboard if you´re wondering), which is quite pricey for here. Still, we´d eaten well and had a lovely time, so we agreed it´d be good for a couple more Sunday lunches...there´s bugger all to do where we live, I´m realising, after all. (Although we probably missed the most exciting day in Posadas as we only remembered it was Revolution Day, as we left on the bus).
The Jesuit ruins were...well, a pile of 400 year old rocks. Go figure. Still, I´m the sort of girl who, in the middle of vast rolling countryside, has yawned ´Seen one tree, seen ´em all´...so you might be more impressed than I was. I´m a city girl...and Buenos Aires is 9 weeks away!
The artiest shot I could get of, basically, a pile of old rocks.
Still, my lack of interest might also be as after 3 glasses of vino, we girls were struggling to concentrate on reading the descriptions of the artefacts in the museum. Even in English.
It got dark really quickly as we walked from the ruins to catch our bus back. As the road seemed to go on forever, C started joking about us missing the last bus and having to spend the night, horror-movie style, in the woods. Before we could run to the stop, 2 buses went past. Shit! When *was* the last bus? Why hadn´t anyone checked?! Panic set in.
Then next vehicle that pulled up to the stop was a minibus, the sort that takes old people out on day-trips. But it had ´Posadas´ on the side.
Lo and behold, the ´conductor´ beckoned us on, and took our 5 pesos each. We realised too late that it was the most packed minibus *ever* - standing room only and C was stood virtually in the doorway. We were all pressed up together, like the tube at rush hour, but it felt *far* more precarious. A mini-bus. In the dark. In rural Argentina. With a driver who kept taking his eyes off the road to reach for the fresh maté his assistant kept brewing up from a flask.
Fear. On the bus back. We actually *were* packed this close
I tried to put images of me hurtling through the windscreen out of my mind for a whole hour, whilst also trying not to think about those girls who recently died on that bus ride in Quito. Of course it didn´t work; if I tell you *not* to think about pink elephants, that will be the image in your head now, yes?
I sincerely hoped this wasn´t going to be the last thing I ever did.
______
Thankfully it wasn´t.
Monday; school today with my new colleagues. We will need to find our rhythm, it was a little chaotic finding the best way of working in front of an unforgiving audience, with no dress rehearsals, but I can see that extra people is a good thing, although 3 might be overkill.
They´ve asked me to start doing afternoons next week too (eek!), so I might see if we can start working a shift system, with 2 people per lesson.
Above: A couple more pics of my kids from last Friday. Just for fun.
Fresh meat is always exciting in any environment, but I noticed John in particular was getting lots of attention from the chicas, in particular a 9 year old in 5a, Triana, the one who looks like Drew Barrymore in her ET days. (And if you think that´s a bit young, remember most kids round here are parents by 16/17)
Whenever John went near her crew of girlie girls to give them their exercise books, she squealed and fanned herself with her hands as she´s probably seen ladies on the telly do when they see a good-looking man. (OK, OK, I´ll get a pic of him, but I didn´t want to scare him by papping him on day one, OK?!)
As John and I were marking later (Ali had to whizz back today), he laughed when I told him about Triana and said he did notice it was hard when he was trying to get them to look at their work and they kept gazing up at him. Hilarious!
BTW The newbies are not 23, as I was told. They´re both only 19 (although quite mature, you wouldn´t guess).
But Christ, now I really *do* feel old! :)
Tom is from Ireland and is teaching football. The quietest of the four, I think he was pretty spaced from jet-lag; he didn´t say much more. John, the other guy is a *very* pretty boy with huge blue eyes, from Eastbourne (Lisa! Someone else from Eastbourne!) and a gap year student, then we have Alison from Ireland - a another gapper - and Kirsten from Oz, who´s super-fit and plays hockey to some competitive sort of level as well as producing multimedia stuff and documentaries. Her work gave her 9 months off and are holding her job open. (Hmph!)
John & Ali are my new colleagues from Monday, so they fired questions at me rat-tat-tat about the school. C and I told everyone about Posadas, ´Power´ nightclub, the bars on the riverside which we hadn´t visited yet, and the pound shops where they could stock up on stuff they might need. We advised Kirsten, who is doing the conservation project, to get thick gloves or risk bites from potentially rabid monkeys. And she´d thought she´d be dealing with ickle fluffy animals!
The new boys left for a siesta soon after eating (lightweights), leaving us chicas and C (he always gets left with the girls, have you noticed?) to demolish a couple of bottles of wine (no vino por C...para las antibioticas), before we tottered home and I had a tipsy snooze on the sofa.
I woke to find I´d missed 3 calls from Natalia, presumably to cancel that evening´s plans, but I couldn´t reach her back. C & I headed out anyway, with vague plans to meet the newbies and Catherine later, which in the end didn´t materialise because they were all tired. What´s wrong with youngsters these days!?!
But remembering we were in bed by 9.30 on the first night, I´d expected as much.
We two tried to find the recommended fish restaurant in our guide book, failed to, and, hungry now, I whinged a bit as we struggled for 45 minutes find anywhere that was open on a Saturday night (weird!). Plus my new, v. cute patent black ballet pumps with a little bow on - a necessary purchase as my Primarni pumps are already trashed, that´s 8 quid shoes for you - were rubbing after all that trudging (that´s 42 pesos shoes for you...7 quid).
Eventually we fell on the first place open, Cristobal, a busy brasserie-style joint, and I wolfed down the first bit of fish I´ve had all trip (salad, no chips...losing the lard, remember?!) whilst we people-watched and marvelled at the amazingly retro hairstyles (Status Quo and home perm kits were mentioned), and, not for the first time, the love that knows no (style) boundaries, that which Argentinian girls seem to have for eye-wateringly tight spray-on jeans and leggings, which pretty much means it´s Camel-Toe Central.
Yeuk - don´t they know we´re trying to eat!??!
Fell asleep watching Kill Bill. Only Uma can get away with something that clingy round her nether regions.
_______
Yesterday, Sunday 25th - we joined Kirsten & Ali for a day trip to San Ignacio - site of the Jesuit Ruins (apparently featured in the film The Mission, which I haven´t watched). Today at school, John told me that Misiones has the third largest Jewish population in the world (after Israel and the States). C was incredulous - what about Golders Green? - so I´ll have to verify that fact tomorrow, don´t quote me yet.
Our coach took an hour to get there and cost 5 pesos each. About 80p. We ran onto the top deck to bagsy the back row like kids on a school trip. Our seats were big, plumptious and comfortable, reclining to 45 degrees, footrests, with cup holders, and a man with a tray of hot coffee came round during the journey (precisely before we got to a very bumpy bit...I nearly christened C with mine). Read and learn, London Underground!
Now I don´t drink coffee, but the Northern bird in me says ´It´s freeee! ´ave it!´, so I took the double-espresso-sized cup offered. C passed. Us 3 girls then spent the next 10 minutes delicately sipping the over-strong, ridiculously-sweet coffee, and wincing between sips, before I discovered the aforementioned cup-holders and we got rid of the offending beverages.
The best bit of the day was actually just *before* the ruins, when we stumbled across a charming little cafe/restaurant with a smiley man we found out was called Diogenes Lenguaza (´un poco dio, un poco diablo!´ he joked), who reminded me of my dad with his warm hospitality and mannerisms, and, unusually, proceeded to *talk* us through a lengthy menu, a lesson in comprehension if there ever was one. I was delighted to realise I understood most of it and latched onto the grilled salmon, as did the other chicas. C had steak & chips, like a proper Brit.
A ´welcome´ in every language from Diogenes
Ali & Kirsten, my new drinking buddies
My Argie ´Dad´...apparently you can Google him.
After the meal and another two bottles of vino (I love these girls already!) Diogenes took us through a large collection of photos (on the end wall, with more on a long trestle table below it) of him on his travels. D and his wife in Scotland, London, New York, Germany...etc...meeting the Queen and the King of Spain (as you do), and with various famous Argentinian singers, actors and dignitaries at his gaff. He told us he loves travelling, although he only speaks Spanish. He also told me, as C played with his dog...a cross bred German Shepherd called Palermo (in honour of his favourite team, Boca Juniors), that he lives in Posadas too, used to have a restaurant there, but it closed in the recession, so now he just has two. Think he does alright though; our meal came to 300 pesos all in, about 50 quid (they have no pound sign on this keyboard if you´re wondering), which is quite pricey for here. Still, we´d eaten well and had a lovely time, so we agreed it´d be good for a couple more Sunday lunches...there´s bugger all to do where we live, I´m realising, after all. (Although we probably missed the most exciting day in Posadas as we only remembered it was Revolution Day, as we left on the bus).
The Jesuit ruins were...well, a pile of 400 year old rocks. Go figure. Still, I´m the sort of girl who, in the middle of vast rolling countryside, has yawned ´Seen one tree, seen ´em all´...so you might be more impressed than I was. I´m a city girl...and Buenos Aires is 9 weeks away!
The artiest shot I could get of, basically, a pile of old rocks.
Still, my lack of interest might also be as after 3 glasses of vino, we girls were struggling to concentrate on reading the descriptions of the artefacts in the museum. Even in English.
It got dark really quickly as we walked from the ruins to catch our bus back. As the road seemed to go on forever, C started joking about us missing the last bus and having to spend the night, horror-movie style, in the woods. Before we could run to the stop, 2 buses went past. Shit! When *was* the last bus? Why hadn´t anyone checked?! Panic set in.
Then next vehicle that pulled up to the stop was a minibus, the sort that takes old people out on day-trips. But it had ´Posadas´ on the side.
Lo and behold, the ´conductor´ beckoned us on, and took our 5 pesos each. We realised too late that it was the most packed minibus *ever* - standing room only and C was stood virtually in the doorway. We were all pressed up together, like the tube at rush hour, but it felt *far* more precarious. A mini-bus. In the dark. In rural Argentina. With a driver who kept taking his eyes off the road to reach for the fresh maté his assistant kept brewing up from a flask.
Fear. On the bus back. We actually *were* packed this close
I tried to put images of me hurtling through the windscreen out of my mind for a whole hour, whilst also trying not to think about those girls who recently died on that bus ride in Quito. Of course it didn´t work; if I tell you *not* to think about pink elephants, that will be the image in your head now, yes?
I sincerely hoped this wasn´t going to be the last thing I ever did.
______
Thankfully it wasn´t.
Monday; school today with my new colleagues. We will need to find our rhythm, it was a little chaotic finding the best way of working in front of an unforgiving audience, with no dress rehearsals, but I can see that extra people is a good thing, although 3 might be overkill.
They´ve asked me to start doing afternoons next week too (eek!), so I might see if we can start working a shift system, with 2 people per lesson.
Above: A couple more pics of my kids from last Friday. Just for fun.
Fresh meat is always exciting in any environment, but I noticed John in particular was getting lots of attention from the chicas, in particular a 9 year old in 5a, Triana, the one who looks like Drew Barrymore in her ET days. (And if you think that´s a bit young, remember most kids round here are parents by 16/17)
Whenever John went near her crew of girlie girls to give them their exercise books, she squealed and fanned herself with her hands as she´s probably seen ladies on the telly do when they see a good-looking man. (OK, OK, I´ll get a pic of him, but I didn´t want to scare him by papping him on day one, OK?!)
As John and I were marking later (Ali had to whizz back today), he laughed when I told him about Triana and said he did notice it was hard when he was trying to get them to look at their work and they kept gazing up at him. Hilarious!
BTW The newbies are not 23, as I was told. They´re both only 19 (although quite mature, you wouldn´t guess).
But Christ, now I really *do* feel old! :)
Friday, 23 May 2008
OK...it wasn´t man flu...NOW WITH PICS
Firstly, thanks for the posts and Facebook comments, dear readers...it´s nice to get feedback and these little snippets of love and support from back home are a real boost. (PK, the full ´blackboard debacle´ (as it may forever be known) is on the link below the one you read...click from the bottom link up for the story in the right order! ; ) x
Secondly, I´m slowly (due to the connection) adding pics to previous blogs over this week, so do scroll back through the posts, and thirdly, to answer a question, I´m blogging 2-3 times a week, so keep checking for updates!
Thursday 22 May; today, my two naughtiest classes, 5B and 6B. We revised telling the time in 5B. Again, I´m not sure they can tell the time in Spanish, but we try. (Sigh!). I also noticed, after a chat with C last night, that at 1 hour 20 mins, the reason my kids go a bit mentalist is because the lessons are too long. I can keep their attention for the first 45 mins (as C reminded me, our own lessons were only about that long: a double period was 90 mins), up to an hour they started to get twitchy. You can forget teaching them anything in the last 20 mins, when the naughtiest will start tearing it up good and proper. Imagine trying to keep the tykes interested in a language that´s not your own, whilst trying to teach them a language that´s not theirs, and then a concept they don´t get in their own language?!?! I´m amazed I kept them interested for as long as I did. I mentioned my thoughts to Graciela in the break, she said she´d look at changing the classes. BTW, if you think my Spanish is coming on leaps and bounds...sorta, but there´s a lot to be said for using your hands and facial expressions too!
We had that old favourite...´Los animales´ for 6B. They weren´t nearly as impressed with my drawings as the other class : ( , although my animal impressions went down well and the boys at the front took great pleasure in trying to guess the animal *beneath* the current one through the cheap, thin paper of the pad I´d drawn them on. The blackboard, to my eternal relief, worked *OK* with a damp rag. It´s still more legible than it was before, which is the main thing: I noticed far fewer spelling errors in their work this time.
Back home; C *still* not well and getting *worse*. This, I felt, after days of teasing from Aida and Flor, really did necessitate a visit to ´el medico´. Besides, me spending so much time with him, and not getting this ´cold´ didn´t seem right...
I, (like you, John), am still perplexed as to ´the mystery of the missing bra´, and fear it will never be solved (C reckons there may be a black (bra) market in underwear with proper cup sizes) but mummy dearest has done her stuff on figleaves.com so we have reinforcements (quite literally!) on their way.
V came round tonight and between us 4 women, managed to nag C into going to the docs with V, whilst Flor & I settled down to watch ´Memoirs of a Geisha´ (with Spanish subtitles). I last saw the film with my mum on a girlie (and as it turned out, Oriental-themed) day in London. I then took her for a potter through Chinatown and through a seedier bit of Soho (much to her amusement) before a final stop for tea and lovely little rainbow-coloured cakes at Yauatcha (go! And the dim sum downstairs are FAB too).
Anyway, I digress.
C´s only gone and got himself PNEUMONIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I´m not sure how you catch it, but I appear, for now at least, to be in rude health. As I joked to Aida and Flor later that evening, ´Las mujers estan *mas* fuertes!´
But I do feel a little bit guilty now for thinking it was only man flu ...
Still he´s on the pills, feeling better for finally knowing what´s wrong with him, and should be back at work on Monday (I thought it was life threatening?! The wonders of modern medicine, eh?!) so worry ye not.
PS Mum/Dad, if you´re reading this, please don´t tell C´s mum as she´ll only worry and get on a plane out here. He´ll tell her when it´s over. I had to mention it here though to apologise about thinking he was exaggerating in my last post!
_______________
23 May...Friday; my cutest classes 4A & 4B. I got to school and realised the whole school were all dressed up in their finest; one of my boys, Lucas, in an obviously hand-me-down suit jacket a few sizes too big, a lot in fancy dress, and the poorer kids - the majority - in their white ´lab coats´ which act like a cheap uniform, covering - and keeping clean - whatever they are wearing underneath. It was big celebrations for Revolution Day in Argentina (actually on 25 May, Sunday). At 9am, the kids were gathered in the playground, and each form did a little dance/song to celebrate. Little Macarena looked adorable in the dress her mum Fabiana said it took her 10 nights to run up (blurry pic, but you get the gist!)
Lucas and his crew...
The ceremonial opening
´Yaaaaay, Macarena!´
A shorter lesson due to the celebrations, so as I only have 4a once a week, I figured, revise numbers. I´m getting good at games which require audience participation, but noticed the bright kids *always* come up to write the answers on the board. So I concocted a game where each child gets a number (1-25) and I write sums on the board. Anyone can guess the answer, but only the kid with the right number gets to come up and write it, as a word, (´Si, en Inglés!´) on the board. It kept *all* the kids involved as their number could come up at any time.
I decided to do ´the alphabet´ with 4b, as the English alphabet *sounds*, and is sightly different to the Spanish one (no ´ñ´ and no ´ll´...I had to explain to the kids as they shouted ´Falta! Falta!´ thinking I´d made a mistake in missing them out...). Flor had suggested I teach them this basic - I´d skipped it originally, thinking ´of course they´d know the alphabet in English by now´, but I was wrong. Note: these kids are 8-9, and have been learning English since they were 5. What *exactly* did anyone before me teach them?!?!? I used a similar tactic with alphabet picture cards, calling out words and the child with that word´s initial letter had to step up and write it on the board.
At lunch I went to the nearby cafe and got talking to the lady behind the counter. Somehow she started talking about her daughter, who it turns out is 15 and suffering from lung cancer. She showed me a picture on her phone, a pretty girl with a headscarf on, presumably covering the effects of chemo. Her mum´s eyes filled with tears when I asked if she was in hospital and she told me no, at home, because they couldn´t go to the hospital any more. Whether that was due to distance, cost, or the physical state of her daughter I wasn´t sure, and didn´t know how to ask, so I just said sadly, ´Lo siento´. I mentioned my oldest friend Lizzy who is battling cancer at the moment, I guess, to show I understood a little bit, but I thought about the difference in access to medical treatment in the UK. I felt a bit depressed about this poor lady´s situation, and how helpless she must feel, as I walked back to school.
Met Fabiana´s son, Lucas, 11 at lunch as I was marking. A bright kid with very good English, he goes to an English speaking private school (so she doesn´t send her kid here, I noted!) and we had a lovely little chat. He´s so much more advanced than the 11 year olds I teach. He showed me a perfectly-spelled essay he´d written on the history of Walt Disney. Mine can´t write a sentence about their own family yet!!!
Me marking (with my homemade exercise books, tied up with string...)
More ´Revolutionary´ shenanigans after lunch, so I stayed to take pictures for Graciela and Cristina, who decided to make me unofficial photographer for the day.
´What *YOU* looking at?!´
Altogether now...´aaaaah!´
Dancing in the playground/assembly area
All day, that is, except for the bit when G introduced me to the whole school (and their parents) and I had to step up and say a few words in Spanish to them all. CHRIST, I could have been warned!!! I managed to burble out something about being ´muy contento in la escuela´ and Cristina got some awful shots (all but one deleted now) of me looking nigh on pregnant. Note to self, ´that top + those combats = don´t do it´.
Everyone said the weight would start to drop off me out here, but Aida´s cooking, puddings and the ´dulce de leche´ (a sweet gooey caramel-ly spread for bread which they also use in yummy pastries) have put paid to that. I regretted the two slices of pizza I ate at lunch and am now on a no-puddings-no-dulce regime, I told Aida.
The new voluntarios have arrived in Posadas today and have their orientation tomorrow, so V said she´d call me to meet them. From next Monday I´m going to have two young whippersnappers (both 23) joining me in my class (I´m sticking to 27, then!). It´ll be nice to have some English-speaking company at school, and help in the classrooms, although I have relished being able to bond with the staff and kids alone, and my Spanish has improved for it too. An interesting new dynamic, anyway.
Got home, checked outfit again in mirror - why does it look alright now?!?! - and popped round to see Norma, our Spanish teacher and V´s mum, to apologise in person for our absence this week due to C´s illness (we agreed to resume classes on Monday), and also to see if she was OK. V told me last night, her mum had broken her arm in ´a stupid fall´ - aren´t they all? - last weekend. Poor love is in a cast past her elbow. It´s her right (writing) hand too!
Guess what...it was pizza for tea...!!!! But it was very tasty, Flor´s homemade.
I stopped at three slices and tried to pick the ones with least cheese on.
Ah well, ´el diet´ (I made that one up) begins tomorrow.
Oh no, we´re going out for dinner with Natalia and her bloke...Sunday then...?!
Secondly, I´m slowly (due to the connection) adding pics to previous blogs over this week, so do scroll back through the posts, and thirdly, to answer a question, I´m blogging 2-3 times a week, so keep checking for updates!
Thursday 22 May; today, my two naughtiest classes, 5B and 6B. We revised telling the time in 5B. Again, I´m not sure they can tell the time in Spanish, but we try. (Sigh!). I also noticed, after a chat with C last night, that at 1 hour 20 mins, the reason my kids go a bit mentalist is because the lessons are too long. I can keep their attention for the first 45 mins (as C reminded me, our own lessons were only about that long: a double period was 90 mins), up to an hour they started to get twitchy. You can forget teaching them anything in the last 20 mins, when the naughtiest will start tearing it up good and proper. Imagine trying to keep the tykes interested in a language that´s not your own, whilst trying to teach them a language that´s not theirs, and then a concept they don´t get in their own language?!?! I´m amazed I kept them interested for as long as I did. I mentioned my thoughts to Graciela in the break, she said she´d look at changing the classes. BTW, if you think my Spanish is coming on leaps and bounds...sorta, but there´s a lot to be said for using your hands and facial expressions too!
We had that old favourite...´Los animales´ for 6B. They weren´t nearly as impressed with my drawings as the other class : ( , although my animal impressions went down well and the boys at the front took great pleasure in trying to guess the animal *beneath* the current one through the cheap, thin paper of the pad I´d drawn them on. The blackboard, to my eternal relief, worked *OK* with a damp rag. It´s still more legible than it was before, which is the main thing: I noticed far fewer spelling errors in their work this time.
Back home; C *still* not well and getting *worse*. This, I felt, after days of teasing from Aida and Flor, really did necessitate a visit to ´el medico´. Besides, me spending so much time with him, and not getting this ´cold´ didn´t seem right...
I, (like you, John), am still perplexed as to ´the mystery of the missing bra´, and fear it will never be solved (C reckons there may be a black (bra) market in underwear with proper cup sizes) but mummy dearest has done her stuff on figleaves.com so we have reinforcements (quite literally!) on their way.
V came round tonight and between us 4 women, managed to nag C into going to the docs with V, whilst Flor & I settled down to watch ´Memoirs of a Geisha´ (with Spanish subtitles). I last saw the film with my mum on a girlie (and as it turned out, Oriental-themed) day in London. I then took her for a potter through Chinatown and through a seedier bit of Soho (much to her amusement) before a final stop for tea and lovely little rainbow-coloured cakes at Yauatcha (go! And the dim sum downstairs are FAB too).
Anyway, I digress.
C´s only gone and got himself PNEUMONIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I´m not sure how you catch it, but I appear, for now at least, to be in rude health. As I joked to Aida and Flor later that evening, ´Las mujers estan *mas* fuertes!´
But I do feel a little bit guilty now for thinking it was only man flu ...
Still he´s on the pills, feeling better for finally knowing what´s wrong with him, and should be back at work on Monday (I thought it was life threatening?! The wonders of modern medicine, eh?!) so worry ye not.
PS Mum/Dad, if you´re reading this, please don´t tell C´s mum as she´ll only worry and get on a plane out here. He´ll tell her when it´s over. I had to mention it here though to apologise about thinking he was exaggerating in my last post!
_______________
23 May...Friday; my cutest classes 4A & 4B. I got to school and realised the whole school were all dressed up in their finest; one of my boys, Lucas, in an obviously hand-me-down suit jacket a few sizes too big, a lot in fancy dress, and the poorer kids - the majority - in their white ´lab coats´ which act like a cheap uniform, covering - and keeping clean - whatever they are wearing underneath. It was big celebrations for Revolution Day in Argentina (actually on 25 May, Sunday). At 9am, the kids were gathered in the playground, and each form did a little dance/song to celebrate. Little Macarena looked adorable in the dress her mum Fabiana said it took her 10 nights to run up (blurry pic, but you get the gist!)
Lucas and his crew...
The ceremonial opening
´Yaaaaay, Macarena!´A shorter lesson due to the celebrations, so as I only have 4a once a week, I figured, revise numbers. I´m getting good at games which require audience participation, but noticed the bright kids *always* come up to write the answers on the board. So I concocted a game where each child gets a number (1-25) and I write sums on the board. Anyone can guess the answer, but only the kid with the right number gets to come up and write it, as a word, (´Si, en Inglés!´) on the board. It kept *all* the kids involved as their number could come up at any time.
I decided to do ´the alphabet´ with 4b, as the English alphabet *sounds*, and is sightly different to the Spanish one (no ´ñ´ and no ´ll´...I had to explain to the kids as they shouted ´Falta! Falta!´ thinking I´d made a mistake in missing them out...). Flor had suggested I teach them this basic - I´d skipped it originally, thinking ´of course they´d know the alphabet in English by now´, but I was wrong. Note: these kids are 8-9, and have been learning English since they were 5. What *exactly* did anyone before me teach them?!?!? I used a similar tactic with alphabet picture cards, calling out words and the child with that word´s initial letter had to step up and write it on the board.
At lunch I went to the nearby cafe and got talking to the lady behind the counter. Somehow she started talking about her daughter, who it turns out is 15 and suffering from lung cancer. She showed me a picture on her phone, a pretty girl with a headscarf on, presumably covering the effects of chemo. Her mum´s eyes filled with tears when I asked if she was in hospital and she told me no, at home, because they couldn´t go to the hospital any more. Whether that was due to distance, cost, or the physical state of her daughter I wasn´t sure, and didn´t know how to ask, so I just said sadly, ´Lo siento´. I mentioned my oldest friend Lizzy who is battling cancer at the moment, I guess, to show I understood a little bit, but I thought about the difference in access to medical treatment in the UK. I felt a bit depressed about this poor lady´s situation, and how helpless she must feel, as I walked back to school.
Met Fabiana´s son, Lucas, 11 at lunch as I was marking. A bright kid with very good English, he goes to an English speaking private school (so she doesn´t send her kid here, I noted!) and we had a lovely little chat. He´s so much more advanced than the 11 year olds I teach. He showed me a perfectly-spelled essay he´d written on the history of Walt Disney. Mine can´t write a sentence about their own family yet!!!
Me marking (with my homemade exercise books, tied up with string...)More ´Revolutionary´ shenanigans after lunch, so I stayed to take pictures for Graciela and Cristina, who decided to make me unofficial photographer for the day.
´What *YOU* looking at?!´
Altogether now...´aaaaah!´
Dancing in the playground/assembly areaAll day, that is, except for the bit when G introduced me to the whole school (and their parents) and I had to step up and say a few words in Spanish to them all. CHRIST, I could have been warned!!! I managed to burble out something about being ´muy contento in la escuela´ and Cristina got some awful shots (all but one deleted now) of me looking nigh on pregnant. Note to self, ´that top + those combats = don´t do it´.
Everyone said the weight would start to drop off me out here, but Aida´s cooking, puddings and the ´dulce de leche´ (a sweet gooey caramel-ly spread for bread which they also use in yummy pastries) have put paid to that. I regretted the two slices of pizza I ate at lunch and am now on a no-puddings-no-dulce regime, I told Aida.
The new voluntarios have arrived in Posadas today and have their orientation tomorrow, so V said she´d call me to meet them. From next Monday I´m going to have two young whippersnappers (both 23) joining me in my class (I´m sticking to 27, then!). It´ll be nice to have some English-speaking company at school, and help in the classrooms, although I have relished being able to bond with the staff and kids alone, and my Spanish has improved for it too. An interesting new dynamic, anyway.
Got home, checked outfit again in mirror - why does it look alright now?!?! - and popped round to see Norma, our Spanish teacher and V´s mum, to apologise in person for our absence this week due to C´s illness (we agreed to resume classes on Monday), and also to see if she was OK. V told me last night, her mum had broken her arm in ´a stupid fall´ - aren´t they all? - last weekend. Poor love is in a cast past her elbow. It´s her right (writing) hand too!
Guess what...it was pizza for tea...!!!! But it was very tasty, Flor´s homemade.
I stopped at three slices and tried to pick the ones with least cheese on.
Ah well, ´el diet´ (I made that one up) begins tomorrow.
Oh no, we´re going out for dinner with Natalia and her bloke...Sunday then...?!
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
Feeling drained, achey and a little bit homesick...
C´s been fluey since Sunday - he wasn´t feeling great at the match and deteriorated after that. It did seem like a cold to me, but you know men, there was a lot of dramatic holding of his head and lots of loud snuffling, which of course means I haven´t had any quality sleep for 3 nights.
He´s been off work all week (today is Wednesday) so my days were simply going to school and coming back to bring him Gatorade, cakes, cough-sweets etc. It did mean we got to miss Spanish lessons for a few days, which to be honest is a welcome break as my head is screwed after having to communicate mainly in Spanish at work anyway (I have to explain concepts to the kids in Spanish), then marking for 2.5 hours, then wolf lunch down and rush back to cram more Spanish for 1.5 hours.
I´m ashamed to say I didn´t go into school today, exhausted by the last two weeks and lack of sleep catching up on me. I also feared I was coming down with C´s thing, feeling achey and hot, but I think a day´s sleep and I´m feeling better for it.
I´ve been in a *foul* mood since yesterday, too, as Aida has somehow managed, in my first clothes wash to lose one of my bras. I´d seen it hanging out to dry, but now it´s gone and she *says* she´s never seen it...hmmm. I only brought 3 out with me, so I´m mightily annoyed. Tried to find a new one out here today, but the quality is far inferior and they don´t seem to do cup sizes?!?! (And I need cup sizes!!!).
This experience alone suddenly made me feel very very homesick, and I rang my mum & dad. It was nice to hear their voices, however briefly.
I´m going to have to go on www.figleaves.com later, send my mum a reference number and get her to mail one out with my new cash card (I managed to lose that in the first week).
I´m a little bit worried though, because I don´t want my mum to find out how much I spend on underwear!
A few little bits from my school days this week; firstly, my suspicions were right (John, one of my blog fans, you´ll love this); it *wasn´t* blackboard paint. Gulp.
I haven´t taken 6B yet; that joy is tomorrow, so I´ll have to deal with it then. Says a lot that their form teacher was pleased anyway as the kids could see the board, but I think I´ll have to try and find some proper blackboard paint and do it again...I can´t leave it like that! They have to wash the chalk off with a damp rag. I realised this as I walked past at lunchtime and snuck in to have a quick go on the blackboard. I ran out when I couldn´t rub the chalk off.
Tuesday, I did ´Los Animales´ with 5a. This lesson is popular with all the classes, what with my animal impersonations and my drawings. I overheard some of the boys chatting about the pictures and asking each other where they thought I got the drawings from. One of them supposed it was a computer. I interrupted to say ´Nooooooo! It was meeee!´(in Spanish, natch), to which they said ´A mano?!´ ... ´Si! A mano!´ ...´Noooo!!!!´
So I proved it by re-drawing my monkey on the board (that´s not a euphemism, it really was a picture of a monkey), to amazed ´ooohs´ and ´aaaahs´ from the children, and then, a little round of applause when I finished. I beamed and took a little bow. Think I´ve gained cool points with the boys, especially.
They did then of course expect me to draw every animal on the board, so I did a few random ones. The way I teach them is they first have to tell me the name in Spanish (sneakily improving my Spanish at the same time, see?!) and then ´En Inglés´. As I was drawing one animal, I was a little shocked to hear some kids shouting out ´F*cker! F*cker!´ over and over again.
Had I done something wrong?!?!
No, I´d just drawn a seal.
Which is ´foca´ in Spanish (See?! Now you´ve learnt a new word too! Stick with me, kidda...you´ll be as fluent as me by the end of this experience)
When one girl persuaded me to draw tiger in her book, of course they all wanted one, so as the lesson wrapped up, I said if they wrote ´My favourite animal is...´ I would draw that animal in their book. Marking time then saw me drawing an awful lot of tigers and snakes, a few crocodiles and lions, a couple of goats, and one dog and butterfly.
As well as cool points for my drawing skills, I´m also scoring fashion points with the chicas. On Monday, the girls of 5a (I love the girls, they are no trouble at all, and one mega-cutie looks just like an Argentinian Drew Barrymore in her ET days) also said they liked my pink dress. I´m already sick of dressing down in combats all the time, so I thought, sod it, fuschia pink dress, (with black footless tights, the more naughty boys could try looking up my skirt) and little black ballet pumps. And on Tuesday, I wore a Che Guevara t-shirt and mini denim skirt with more footless tights and pumps, which the girls of 6a said they liked.
I´ll be working the tango heels to school before you know it.
For 6a, I did ´mi familia´. Fabiana had puffed her cheeks out and told me that would be a difficult lesson as most of them came from broken homes, but I managed to get somewhere. I asked them to put the names and ages of their family in a picture first (hoping the picture would act as an ´aide memoire´ when we got to the writing bit...but very few children actually got that far) and was amazed that a lot of these 10-11 year olds had parents in their mid-late 20s. No wonder education doesn´t seem important to the kids here; it evidently wasn´t to most of their parents. And their chances of using the English I teach them after I´ve gone are probably next to nothing; most people in Posadas don´t speak even a smattering of English, bar perhaps ´Hello´/´Goodbye´ (and that´s the teachers in my class, educated professionals!). They don´t need to if they´re not going to be going anywhere else.
I met Natalia yesterday in the staffroom, who, I was amazed, greeted me in perfect English. She´s the English teacher. I was surprised as I´d been there over a week and wasn´t aware they had one. Turns out she only works there part time. She asked me to join her to teach 8a, so Fabiana offered to make me a sandwich as I was about to go to lunch. These kids, she explained on the way to class are rude, disruptive, disrespectful, difficult, come from poor backgrounds, and are this way because most of them have already done this year (so they´ll be 14) and have been held back, so they are a bit bored, too.
It was a bit of an impromptu lesson in comprehension as Natalia asked me to tell them about myself and they had to then repeat back to Natalia what they understood. Which even when I spoke in the most basic English, at slow pace, and repeated what I´d said, wasn´t very much. As she kept asking me for more and more info about myself, I struggled to find stuff that was *appropriate* for 14 year olds, and for kids from such a poor area (I couldn´t start talking about heels and designer handbags, cocktail bars, client lunches in nice restaurants, advertising deals worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, going to loads of gigs and parties)...but somehow managed to paint an edited and wholesome image of my previous life in London.
He´s been off work all week (today is Wednesday) so my days were simply going to school and coming back to bring him Gatorade, cakes, cough-sweets etc. It did mean we got to miss Spanish lessons for a few days, which to be honest is a welcome break as my head is screwed after having to communicate mainly in Spanish at work anyway (I have to explain concepts to the kids in Spanish), then marking for 2.5 hours, then wolf lunch down and rush back to cram more Spanish for 1.5 hours.
I´m ashamed to say I didn´t go into school today, exhausted by the last two weeks and lack of sleep catching up on me. I also feared I was coming down with C´s thing, feeling achey and hot, but I think a day´s sleep and I´m feeling better for it.
I´ve been in a *foul* mood since yesterday, too, as Aida has somehow managed, in my first clothes wash to lose one of my bras. I´d seen it hanging out to dry, but now it´s gone and she *says* she´s never seen it...hmmm. I only brought 3 out with me, so I´m mightily annoyed. Tried to find a new one out here today, but the quality is far inferior and they don´t seem to do cup sizes?!?! (And I need cup sizes!!!).
This experience alone suddenly made me feel very very homesick, and I rang my mum & dad. It was nice to hear their voices, however briefly.
I´m going to have to go on www.figleaves.com later, send my mum a reference number and get her to mail one out with my new cash card (I managed to lose that in the first week).
I´m a little bit worried though, because I don´t want my mum to find out how much I spend on underwear!
A few little bits from my school days this week; firstly, my suspicions were right (John, one of my blog fans, you´ll love this); it *wasn´t* blackboard paint. Gulp.
I haven´t taken 6B yet; that joy is tomorrow, so I´ll have to deal with it then. Says a lot that their form teacher was pleased anyway as the kids could see the board, but I think I´ll have to try and find some proper blackboard paint and do it again...I can´t leave it like that! They have to wash the chalk off with a damp rag. I realised this as I walked past at lunchtime and snuck in to have a quick go on the blackboard. I ran out when I couldn´t rub the chalk off.
Tuesday, I did ´Los Animales´ with 5a. This lesson is popular with all the classes, what with my animal impersonations and my drawings. I overheard some of the boys chatting about the pictures and asking each other where they thought I got the drawings from. One of them supposed it was a computer. I interrupted to say ´Nooooooo! It was meeee!´(in Spanish, natch), to which they said ´A mano?!´ ... ´Si! A mano!´ ...´Noooo!!!!´
So I proved it by re-drawing my monkey on the board (that´s not a euphemism, it really was a picture of a monkey), to amazed ´ooohs´ and ´aaaahs´ from the children, and then, a little round of applause when I finished. I beamed and took a little bow. Think I´ve gained cool points with the boys, especially.
They did then of course expect me to draw every animal on the board, so I did a few random ones. The way I teach them is they first have to tell me the name in Spanish (sneakily improving my Spanish at the same time, see?!) and then ´En Inglés´. As I was drawing one animal, I was a little shocked to hear some kids shouting out ´F*cker! F*cker!´ over and over again.
Had I done something wrong?!?!
No, I´d just drawn a seal.
Which is ´foca´ in Spanish (See?! Now you´ve learnt a new word too! Stick with me, kidda...you´ll be as fluent as me by the end of this experience)
When one girl persuaded me to draw tiger in her book, of course they all wanted one, so as the lesson wrapped up, I said if they wrote ´My favourite animal is...´ I would draw that animal in their book. Marking time then saw me drawing an awful lot of tigers and snakes, a few crocodiles and lions, a couple of goats, and one dog and butterfly.
As well as cool points for my drawing skills, I´m also scoring fashion points with the chicas. On Monday, the girls of 5a (I love the girls, they are no trouble at all, and one mega-cutie looks just like an Argentinian Drew Barrymore in her ET days) also said they liked my pink dress. I´m already sick of dressing down in combats all the time, so I thought, sod it, fuschia pink dress, (with black footless tights, the more naughty boys could try looking up my skirt) and little black ballet pumps. And on Tuesday, I wore a Che Guevara t-shirt and mini denim skirt with more footless tights and pumps, which the girls of 6a said they liked.
I´ll be working the tango heels to school before you know it.
For 6a, I did ´mi familia´. Fabiana had puffed her cheeks out and told me that would be a difficult lesson as most of them came from broken homes, but I managed to get somewhere. I asked them to put the names and ages of their family in a picture first (hoping the picture would act as an ´aide memoire´ when we got to the writing bit...but very few children actually got that far) and was amazed that a lot of these 10-11 year olds had parents in their mid-late 20s. No wonder education doesn´t seem important to the kids here; it evidently wasn´t to most of their parents. And their chances of using the English I teach them after I´ve gone are probably next to nothing; most people in Posadas don´t speak even a smattering of English, bar perhaps ´Hello´/´Goodbye´ (and that´s the teachers in my class, educated professionals!). They don´t need to if they´re not going to be going anywhere else.
I met Natalia yesterday in the staffroom, who, I was amazed, greeted me in perfect English. She´s the English teacher. I was surprised as I´d been there over a week and wasn´t aware they had one. Turns out she only works there part time. She asked me to join her to teach 8a, so Fabiana offered to make me a sandwich as I was about to go to lunch. These kids, she explained on the way to class are rude, disruptive, disrespectful, difficult, come from poor backgrounds, and are this way because most of them have already done this year (so they´ll be 14) and have been held back, so they are a bit bored, too.
It was a bit of an impromptu lesson in comprehension as Natalia asked me to tell them about myself and they had to then repeat back to Natalia what they understood. Which even when I spoke in the most basic English, at slow pace, and repeated what I´d said, wasn´t very much. As she kept asking me for more and more info about myself, I struggled to find stuff that was *appropriate* for 14 year olds, and for kids from such a poor area (I couldn´t start talking about heels and designer handbags, cocktail bars, client lunches in nice restaurants, advertising deals worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, going to loads of gigs and parties)...but somehow managed to paint an edited and wholesome image of my previous life in London.
They all thought I was mad to give it all up. Perhaps I am, but it will help me appreciate my lot more than anything when I return, I´m sure.
At least a new element in their class (me) meant, on the whole, they behaved. None of them wrote anything down, some didn´t have books. One boy just sat on a chair (no desk) and swung back on it till he fell off, to raucous laughter from his mates. I´m amazed at how disorganised and undiciplined the teachers are.
A highlight; when Natalia asked them to guess my age, one said ´diez y ocho! diez y ocho!´. Eighteen! He can go *straight* to the top of the class, I don´t care *what* his English is like.
They were of course all amazed then when I admitted to being ´27´. Natalia will properly fall off her chair when I tell her the truth! She dashed off after a very short and unstructured lesson to her other school, presumably a private one that pays better. We have agreed to go out this weekend. It´s a relief to have a ´colleague´, no matter how obviously disinterested she is in these children, to talk to in English. It´s the kids I feel sorry for though. If even she has given up on them and can´t be bothered, they haven´t got a rat´s chance, have they?!
When I´m feeling a little negative, I start thinking, what´s the point?!
Then I was marking Facundo´s work, a boy who was the most polite and studious in my first week (the only one with a workbook) and, Jekyll & Hyde-like, an absolute horror on Monday. After the lesson, I mentioned his behaviour to Fabiana and Graciela, and they said he was from a very poor, bad home and very changeable in his moods. I noticed, although he´d done everything wrong in the lesson on how to tell the time (I´m not actually sure most of these 10 year olds know how to tell the time in Spanish, either; they were shouting some very random numbers out when I asked ´Que hora es?´ ...so me teaching them the time in English is getting a little ahead of ourselves, I now realise...), he had found time to write, in very neat writing, and highlighted in yellow felt tip ´sos la mejor maestra sapna´ (you are the best teacher, sapna). Either he was trying to butter me up after being naughty, or the other teachers truly are rubbish.
Either way, I took the book home and asked Flor to translate ´And you could be the best student with a bit more concentration, Facundo!´
Tuesday, I was marking his next lot of work on los animales. Even though he´d been a bit naughty still, he´d somehow managed to catch up on his work and... it was faultless. I gave him a ´Fantastico Facundo!´ And a shiny sticker (My Goofy stamp, like most things I´ve bought here, is poor quality and running out already).
Back to school tomorrow; 5b and 6b. This teaching lark is hard work.
Respec´ to you, Lisa, Kev and auntie Mira for doing this full-time in England.
Sunday, 18 May 2008
Balls! NOW WITH PICS
We went to our first footy match in Argentina today, courtesy of ´el Presidente´ of Guarani de Franja (local footy team), Cesar, who is the boyfriend of Flo´s eldest sister Mariana, so we sat in the director´s box, right on the centre line, second row.
M says that she gets to travel a lot as his girlfriend, and gets called the ´First Lady´of the club. She´s certainly perfect WAG material, beautiful, slim, immaculately turned out, big shades and heels, loves shopping...but bright, sweet and funny as well (dammit!). As Steve had asked at the BBQ the other night, ´So she looks like Penelope Cruz and loves football...what´s wrong with her?!´
A slightly scary moment; within the first ten minutes, the fans kicked off and were throwing BRICKS and stuff onto the pitch until the riot police came on. M said this was the first time it had happened in 4 years. Must have decided to put a show on for us Brits. Turns out some away fans were goading ours from outside the ground which set off the home fans trying to kick the door down to fight them. Anyway, luckily we were in the posh bit on the other side of the pitch. The game had to stop for fifteen minutes.
´Sucre´; quite fit
I also amused myself by understanding most of the Spanish swear words being shouted.
Also funny was that the main reason for the 6 or so riot police, seemed to be to escort the ref off the pitch at half-time and at the end of the match. I know he made some duff decisions, but was he *really* that unpopular...?
Not a popular man
In the end though, ´we´ sucked, lost 2:1 and the other team get promoted. Cesar, M said, will be crying all night.
Anyhoo, got lesson prep to do now. ´Chow´ for now...
M says that she gets to travel a lot as his girlfriend, and gets called the ´First Lady´of the club. She´s certainly perfect WAG material, beautiful, slim, immaculately turned out, big shades and heels, loves shopping...but bright, sweet and funny as well (dammit!). As Steve had asked at the BBQ the other night, ´So she looks like Penelope Cruz and loves football...what´s wrong with her?!´
A slightly scary moment; within the first ten minutes, the fans kicked off and were throwing BRICKS and stuff onto the pitch until the riot police came on. M said this was the first time it had happened in 4 years. Must have decided to put a show on for us Brits. Turns out some away fans were goading ours from outside the ground which set off the home fans trying to kick the door down to fight them. Anyway, luckily we were in the posh bit on the other side of the pitch. The game had to stop for fifteen minutes.
I´m not saying the game was dull, but...
Says a lot that this was the most interesting part of the match.
As the game was a bit dull and we were down and getting nowhere near the goal, in the 2nd half I decided to focus on the cute players instead. There was a shaven-headed one who looked like ´Sucre´ off Prison Break who was more watchable than most. Another player who provided much entertainment was ´Mr Fall Guy´ on the opposition who took diving to another level, even when there was no-one near! Got a few pics of Sucre, but a bit blurry - he kept moving, dammit! C said that was kinda the point, but as far as I could see, the point is to score and they weren´t doing that either.
As the game was a bit dull and we were down and getting nowhere near the goal, in the 2nd half I decided to focus on the cute players instead. There was a shaven-headed one who looked like ´Sucre´ off Prison Break who was more watchable than most. Another player who provided much entertainment was ´Mr Fall Guy´ on the opposition who took diving to another level, even when there was no-one near! Got a few pics of Sucre, but a bit blurry - he kept moving, dammit! C said that was kinda the point, but as far as I could see, the point is to score and they weren´t doing that either.
´Sucre´; quite fitI also amused myself by understanding most of the Spanish swear words being shouted.
Also funny was that the main reason for the 6 or so riot police, seemed to be to escort the ref off the pitch at half-time and at the end of the match. I know he made some duff decisions, but was he *really* that unpopular...?
Not a popular manIn the end though, ´we´ sucked, lost 2:1 and the other team get promoted. Cesar, M said, will be crying all night.
Anyhoo, got lesson prep to do now. ´Chow´ for now...
Saturday, 17 May 2008
NOW WITH PICS! Too much gin, dancing to bad music and painting stuff green...
We had a lovely evening last night, a meal with Aida, Flo and Silvina (the middle sister) and Aida led a round of applause on how much Spanish I had learnt in a week, and she said we were the nicest couple they´d had stay yet (Aida tends to get the couples because they have a double room to let). I joked she probably says that to all of them.
Catherine and Jen came round and we headed out for a few drinks about 10ish.
Found a bar and ordered a G&T. The biggest ever (a full tall glass of gin & ice, a bottle of tonic AND a double-shot glass on the side, with...more gin), for just over a quid. I actually felt giddy after half of it and we left the bar a couple of hours later with it still only half drunk (as was I).
There is, as yet, no T in my G, and note the shot glass of extra G.
Decided to stick to cola in ´Power´, which we hit about 1.20am. The club was weirdly full of boys. Where were all the chicas?! I wondered if we´d hit a gay night, but Flo´s told me tonight at dinner that the boys tend to hit the town on a Friday, the girls and couples on a Saturday. How very strange. How do the single boys and girls meet in the first place?!
C & I struggled to find one of the 8 rooms in the club playing any music we actually knew or liked (OK we are both music snobs, but still), so after a vain attempt at a bit of a dance to some electronica, we decided, seeing as we´d pulled anyway, to go home by about 3. Still can´t get used to Latino socialising hours. ´Mucho mas chicos´ were arriving as we left, and C was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. God, are we getting *that* old?!
Next day, up to the DIY store before 12 (they all shut after that) and I managed to ask for blackboard paint, roller tray, rollers, brush, sandpaper and a sanding block (OK, I cheated with mime and a bit of pointing and drawing). As the point of language is to make yourself understood though, I was quite pleased with this random achievement - and all before breakfast.
We met Fabiana at 3pm outside ´la escuela´. She´d brought her 2 ´sobrinas´ (nieces), Macarena and Camila (again!) aged 6 and 15, who, all unexpectedly, started helping us sand the board down. Many hands, light work, and C and I were left to paint the board eventually (Fabiana did try to ´help´ but I kept having to stop her making a mess and offering un-needed advice, in Spanish, bless her).
Fabiana, Macarena, Camila and C get sanding
Macarena, with sooty moustache from the sanding
Macarena shows off her sooty hands. Cute, huh?!
In between coats, C & I went out for a little break and casually watched a few local boys playing a footy game on the red-earth pitch over the road. Little Macarena, who had become our unofficial ´helper´ followed us out. She shyly informed us she didn´t like football but loves ´el basket´ (basketball is huge out here too) and then started hiding behind things and appearing as I played at ´Donde es Macarena?!´.
As we sipped maté in the sun with Fabriana and Camila, F informed us her nieces actually had 4 other ´hermanos´ who lives in a ´refugio´ as their father had died of leukaemia five years previously. Their mother didn´t care about her 6 kids, and F had taken these two girls in to raise with her own son, Lucas, 11, but unfortunately she couldn´t take them all in as her house was too small. (Are you amazed I´m understanding this much Spanish?! I am!).
I thought of the kids at C´s hellish-sounding refugio and shuddered. How could their mother could give up on her six children and split the family up like that? And how amazing is F, taking in these children, holding down a job and renovating her school in her spare time? I found out today that she, the head and another school director, Cristina (the one who keeps trying to get me off with the maths teacher), also attacked the guttering, roofing, gardens and changed the rotten windows, helped by money from donations.
That´s not real chalk. It´s a pen top. The camera *does* lie, see.
We left F and the kids at their little house (it is *tiny*), played with her dog ´Junior´ for a bit and headed home, exhausted by an honest day´s graft in the heat.
Dinner tonight was a girls night in (Flo, Mariana, Silvina, me, Camila the dog...and C). Lots of banter, mainly at poor C´s expense, being the only man...and M commented how much my Spanish had come on too. Yay!
We looked at the kids on C´s camera, and I did end up shedding a tipsy tear when I saw the kid he´d bonded with most, a 4 year old boy who looks like a tiny Tiger Woods, with a face that lights up when he smiles, which C said, is a lot. What chance do these kids have? What happens when we (and other voluntarios, who bond with these kids) leave?
As I type, C´s gone to bed, he´s been wiped out all day, I guess after a very intense week, and Flo and her chicas are having a drink before going clubbing (it´s midnight and they´ve not headed out yet).
After today´s manual labour, I´m ready for bed too...
Bummer...I *am* getting old...!
Catherine and Jen came round and we headed out for a few drinks about 10ish.
Found a bar and ordered a G&T. The biggest ever (a full tall glass of gin & ice, a bottle of tonic AND a double-shot glass on the side, with...more gin), for just over a quid. I actually felt giddy after half of it and we left the bar a couple of hours later with it still only half drunk (as was I).
There is, as yet, no T in my G, and note the shot glass of extra G.Decided to stick to cola in ´Power´, which we hit about 1.20am. The club was weirdly full of boys. Where were all the chicas?! I wondered if we´d hit a gay night, but Flo´s told me tonight at dinner that the boys tend to hit the town on a Friday, the girls and couples on a Saturday. How very strange. How do the single boys and girls meet in the first place?!
C & I struggled to find one of the 8 rooms in the club playing any music we actually knew or liked (OK we are both music snobs, but still), so after a vain attempt at a bit of a dance to some electronica, we decided, seeing as we´d pulled anyway, to go home by about 3. Still can´t get used to Latino socialising hours. ´Mucho mas chicos´ were arriving as we left, and C was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. God, are we getting *that* old?!
Next day, up to the DIY store before 12 (they all shut after that) and I managed to ask for blackboard paint, roller tray, rollers, brush, sandpaper and a sanding block (OK, I cheated with mime and a bit of pointing and drawing). As the point of language is to make yourself understood though, I was quite pleased with this random achievement - and all before breakfast.
We met Fabiana at 3pm outside ´la escuela´. She´d brought her 2 ´sobrinas´ (nieces), Macarena and Camila (again!) aged 6 and 15, who, all unexpectedly, started helping us sand the board down. Many hands, light work, and C and I were left to paint the board eventually (Fabiana did try to ´help´ but I kept having to stop her making a mess and offering un-needed advice, in Spanish, bless her).
Fabiana, Macarena, Camila and C get sanding
Macarena, with sooty moustache from the sanding 
Macarena shows off her sooty hands. Cute, huh?!In between coats, C & I went out for a little break and casually watched a few local boys playing a footy game on the red-earth pitch over the road. Little Macarena, who had become our unofficial ´helper´ followed us out. She shyly informed us she didn´t like football but loves ´el basket´ (basketball is huge out here too) and then started hiding behind things and appearing as I played at ´Donde es Macarena?!´.
As we sipped maté in the sun with Fabriana and Camila, F informed us her nieces actually had 4 other ´hermanos´ who lives in a ´refugio´ as their father had died of leukaemia five years previously. Their mother didn´t care about her 6 kids, and F had taken these two girls in to raise with her own son, Lucas, 11, but unfortunately she couldn´t take them all in as her house was too small. (Are you amazed I´m understanding this much Spanish?! I am!).
It´s obvious F adores children, and seeing her with the kids at school, that they do her. Camila sweetly leant in, kissed her ´tia´ (auntie) and said ´Ella es mi madre´.
___
Second coat and the board, I have to say, looks spanking new. I´ll post some pics when I´ve worked out how to do it. My slight fear is that my baby-Spanish has meant we got paint that was merely the *colour* of a green blackboard as opposed to actual blackboard paint (it had a picture of a house on the tin, confusingly). I´ll see on Monday when I can´t rub the words off, I guess!
___
Second coat and the board, I have to say, looks spanking new. I´ll post some pics when I´ve worked out how to do it. My slight fear is that my baby-Spanish has meant we got paint that was merely the *colour* of a green blackboard as opposed to actual blackboard paint (it had a picture of a house on the tin, confusingly). I´ll see on Monday when I can´t rub the words off, I guess!
That´s not real chalk. It´s a pen top. The camera *does* lie, see.We left F and the kids at their little house (it is *tiny*), played with her dog ´Junior´ for a bit and headed home, exhausted by an honest day´s graft in the heat.
Dinner tonight was a girls night in (Flo, Mariana, Silvina, me, Camila the dog...and C). Lots of banter, mainly at poor C´s expense, being the only man...and M commented how much my Spanish had come on too. Yay!
We looked at the kids on C´s camera, and I did end up shedding a tipsy tear when I saw the kid he´d bonded with most, a 4 year old boy who looks like a tiny Tiger Woods, with a face that lights up when he smiles, which C said, is a lot. What chance do these kids have? What happens when we (and other voluntarios, who bond with these kids) leave?
As I type, C´s gone to bed, he´s been wiped out all day, I guess after a very intense week, and Flo and her chicas are having a drink before going clubbing (it´s midnight and they´ve not headed out yet).
After today´s manual labour, I´m ready for bed too...
Bummer...I *am* getting old...!
Friday, 16 May 2008
Straight to the top of the class...
Sorry I´ve not blogged for the last few days - they´ve been whizzing by in a routine of walk to work with more books for my new classes (the ladies at the stationery store know me very well by now), classes, then I mark all the way through lunch so I don´t have to carry the bleedin´things back again, power-walk home to grab some food (usually a whole green pepper, cucumber - they´re a third the size of ours - two plum tomatoes, a corn on the cob and a bread roll from Elsa, the grocer across the road) before 1.5 hours Spanish with Norma.
Late arvo, we usually take a walk into town for yet more stuff for our projects. C wanted some more cheap clothes too, his stuff is too nice (I was better prepared, my travel/festival stuff is mainly Primark) and ends up getting trashed by the kids. On Tuesday he´d had a dirty nappy thrown at him which hit him square on the chest.
Wednesday we bought some outdoor paint so they could paint goals and a penalty area (although C is not sure where any of the 17 balls he´s so far brought into the refuge have gone), plus a few simpler things like hopscotch so the kids have some games that they can´t lose, steal, hoard or trash.
That evening we had a crisis meeting with V. I won´t bore you with the details - C monopolised the conversation, Catherine didn´t much chance to speak and I´d heard it all before, so I got up halfway through and went online for a bit.
C said to me earlier that he thinks Catherine is being too sunny and ´Mary Poppins´, unrealistic in what they can achieve, whilst he is ´just being realistic´, but I know which take is slowly driving me ´un poco loco´.
V then turned to me and asked how I was getting on. Before I had chance to answer, she said that Graciela and Fabiana loved me and had said I was the BEST volunteer they had ever had...YAY!!! Anyone who knows me knows I can be quite tough on myself, so you can imagine this was a massive boost.
My only question to V was as I´m loving the school and the refuge sounds like hell on earth, could I stay doing what I was doing?
She said they have a break for 2 weeks in July (winter holidays!) so I may do a short stint at the refuge still, or, she suggested another refuge which is smaller and apparently better run. She was, to be fair, embarrassed that her volunteers had had such a bad experience and actually said that she would look into i-to-i not supporting that project any more, which probably made us all feel worse. What happens to the kids then?
Apparently the lady who runs it is seriously ill in hospital, has been for a month, which is why it´s all descended into a filthy, wild, chaotic mess. The children, C said, have reverted to animals. I´m thinking Lord of the Flies, but smellier.
In the end though, C agreed to see the week out and think about things.
________
Thursday 15th May
C visibly struggled to face the day when his alarm went off. I felt guilty as I, by contrast, was full of beans and raring to go, day two with 6b. (No 5b, so I had a tiny lie-in).
He moaned about having to do the painting in the yard, how they wouldn´t be able to get a quiet moment to do it, how he was really rubbish at drawing, etc etc. I sat down and drew him a few simple shapes and ideas, memories from my own playground. One was a winding snake, stripey, really simple - with a head and forked tongue. We´d run along the path that windy snake made for hours if we could...I´ve no idea why to this day.
C frowned. He didn´t feel capable of drawing a snake, so I quickly came up with other games that could be done with parallel lines and numbers, making myself later for work in the process.
Everything I did made no difference. Frustrated and exhausted from lack of sleep, I let rip.
I said since we´d arrived he´d done nothing but moan, every conversation had to be monopolised by how bad it was for him, he´s moaned so much he´s managed to put me off the other project too, yet Catherine was coping, how come? That we all have our troubles, nothing is ideal for any of us, but that´s what we´re here for and he should just get a grip and GET ON WITH IT. My project was difficult at first too - and I´m the only volunteer there, it could have been a lonely existence - but I just got stuck in. PLUS when I do try to help him by listening, advising or helping in a practical way (the games, helping them buy special paint for the tarmac in my slightly-better Spanish, paying for his project equipment with the money I raised), all he does is moan some more, and frankly, I was getting SICK of it.
He looked at me, stunned at my sudden outburst, thanked me curtly for bringing those points to his attention and walked out of the door, without a kiss goodbye.
__________
My earlier rant seemed to work. When I called C later to check in (and apologise), he said he´d talked to Catherine, pulled his socks up and decided he wasn´t going to let those kids down.
And as luck would have it, Catherine could paint snakes.
_______
I was exhausted that evening so had a disco nap 7-8.15 and woke disorientated, thinking first it was the middle of the night and where was C, then ´Oh God, I´ve slept in and I´ve got 4a and 4b today!´. A quick check of the time and I calmed down and read a bit of (a now out-of-date) ´Heat´ magazine. I´m rationing these silly little tastes of home.
That night all of us i-to-i ´voluntarios´ (Catherine, London girls Jen & Kat who are doing C´s next football project for 2 weeks, Gail and Katrina - an American mother and daughter working on a cnservation project for two weeks, and later, Glaswegian Adam and Irish Steve who work part-time at the refuge after their footie project - I hadn´t met the guys until tonight, but knew the rest from our orientation day) went to an Argentinian barbecue at V´s.
C tucked into the meat like a man possessed (lovely options for the 3 veggies...) and we all swapped our experiences voraciously, OD´ing on the fact we could speak English all night and not have to struggle for vocabulary for once.
Poor Katrina was sporting a rather fat bandage on her finger where a monkey had bitten through her finger (to the bone, apparently - yeuk - she´s getting rabies jabs) which made a great story, but I did have to reel C in from telling them about the dirty nappy incident as we were all eating.
Party boys Adam and Steve were up for going bowling. I am a bit of a demon on the lanes, the only sport I´m any good at, weirdly, so I instantly got a bit competitive and decided to stop drinking more ´vino tinto´.
Then Catherine pointed out it was gone 1am and I suddenly got tired, realising I would have 50 new kids to cope with the next day in two classes, plus 50 more books to carry in, and there was just no way I´d do it functioning on 3 hours sleep. C decided to stick with me, and so us 3 party poopers left the kids to play. I feel responsible for my kids though, and just can´t do this job with a hangover (a state which is virtually *de rigeur* in media!)
It´s alright for the others - they just swing the kids around, kick a ball about, paint a ´muriel´, muck out a monkey, and then they´re done. I´m shaping young minds!
We promised the guys we´d join them Friday at´Power´, (seeing as we never made it that far last Saturday...I´m such a lightweight...)
______
Friday: I bounded into work, looking forward to the day ahead.
I bought 2 reams of photocopy paper for the school copier on the way in as I was warned by Fabiana not to make too many copies as the school hadn´t got much money...but equally, the kids have no textbooks, so what am I to do?!
On Wednesday when when I was marking 6b´s work, I realised that the kids were making the same mistakes - and it wasn´t my writing, either. Their blackboard is so old and faded, it´s almost impossible to see anything written on it. How they learn anything, I have no idea. I brought it up with V and C & I are going to try and find some blackboard paint and sort it out. The only time they can let us do it is Saturday.
Fabiana thanked me for offering to do this. She told me that things were even worse two years ago and that last year three of the teachers, including herself, had taken it upon themselves to paint the school throughout. I asked how many days it took and she said ages, they did it little by little and paid for it out of their own pocket. And these ladies don´t get paid very much.
Fabiana had asked me what I did in England and when I explained I used to work for Él Telegrafico´ but gave it all up to come out here and now had ´no trabaje´ when I go back, she shook her head disbelievingly and said I was mad.
You check my highlights though...did you have as good a week as this...?
1) Today, some of the boys from 6a running over as I walked through the school gates, excitedly yelling ´Hi teacher!´ and asking me if I was taking their class that morning. I was secretly thrilled they looked so crest-fallen when I said not, but they did perk up when I added ´a lunes!´ (on Monday).
2) Pretty much every child I´d taught waved, smiled or yelled ´Hello!´ or ´Hi Teacher!´ as I walked to and from classes / the staff room today.
3) A pudgy boy, one of the ones who gave me a hard time on Monday, high-fived me yesterday.
4) One of my little girls in 4b today returned shyly as I was packing up and gave me a wrapped boiled sweet.
5) All the kids falling over themselves to carry my bags, books, etc to the staffroom after lessons.
6) The look on the kids´ faces when they realise the pens I handed out did not have to be returned and are, in fact, for them to keep.
7) The fact that I´ve told all my classes I´m ´veinte-siete´ (27) years old and they believe me. (One little boy, 10, even put up his hand at this information and informed me that ´Mi madre es veinte-seis´ - 26)
8) Me understanding and joining in on staffroom banter. Cristina keeps trying to get me off with the maths teacher, who, according to her is ´muy lindo´. I informed her ´hablo uno nobio´, which isn´t as weird as it sounds, as the Spanish pronounce ´b´ as ´v´ and the word actually means ´boyfriend´. (Which means I´m a ´nobia´. Nice.)
9) Graciela the Head, giving me a badge that the staff wear and telling the rest of the team that I was now a colleague. I proudly put it on.
10) ´Torta de chocla´ (a local corn cake) and salad for lunch, in the sun. Healthier, tastier and cheaper than anything my chums at the Telegraph will find in the canteen, I thought.
11) Having a conversation and proper banter with the cafe owner and his staff in Spanish.
12) Fabiana having saved me a slice of her birthday cake and offering it to me today. Yum.
13) THIS IS THE BEST ONE. Marking a little boy´s work yesterday who had made lots of mistakes in my first class. I hadn´t wanted to discourage him, so merely put ´Buen´, whilst his classmates got ´Muy buen, Augustin!´ and a red cartoon ´Goofy´ stamp (one of those self inking things) with the word ´GOOD!´underneath it. If their work is faultless, they get ´Éxcelente, Brenda!´, the Goofy stamp AND a shiny sticker (the stakes are higher now I´m running low).
Day two: his second set of work was *faultless*. He´d raised his game to get the reward! I wrote ´Excelente! Perfecto, Santiago!´, stamped Goofy on his work and adorned the page with a shiny red ladyird, ecstatically.
I started thinking yesterday that if I´m making that much of a difference to that little boy in 24 hours, then what could I do in a year? I casually mentioned to C that I could afford to live out here and do this for longer if I rented my house out in London. He said nothing.
Anyway C´s back and I need a disco nap if I´m to give the *real* twenty somethings a run for their money tonight :)
Late arvo, we usually take a walk into town for yet more stuff for our projects. C wanted some more cheap clothes too, his stuff is too nice (I was better prepared, my travel/festival stuff is mainly Primark) and ends up getting trashed by the kids. On Tuesday he´d had a dirty nappy thrown at him which hit him square on the chest.
Wednesday we bought some outdoor paint so they could paint goals and a penalty area (although C is not sure where any of the 17 balls he´s so far brought into the refuge have gone), plus a few simpler things like hopscotch so the kids have some games that they can´t lose, steal, hoard or trash.
That evening we had a crisis meeting with V. I won´t bore you with the details - C monopolised the conversation, Catherine didn´t much chance to speak and I´d heard it all before, so I got up halfway through and went online for a bit.
C said to me earlier that he thinks Catherine is being too sunny and ´Mary Poppins´, unrealistic in what they can achieve, whilst he is ´just being realistic´, but I know which take is slowly driving me ´un poco loco´.
V then turned to me and asked how I was getting on. Before I had chance to answer, she said that Graciela and Fabiana loved me and had said I was the BEST volunteer they had ever had...YAY!!! Anyone who knows me knows I can be quite tough on myself, so you can imagine this was a massive boost.
My only question to V was as I´m loving the school and the refuge sounds like hell on earth, could I stay doing what I was doing?
She said they have a break for 2 weeks in July (winter holidays!) so I may do a short stint at the refuge still, or, she suggested another refuge which is smaller and apparently better run. She was, to be fair, embarrassed that her volunteers had had such a bad experience and actually said that she would look into i-to-i not supporting that project any more, which probably made us all feel worse. What happens to the kids then?
Apparently the lady who runs it is seriously ill in hospital, has been for a month, which is why it´s all descended into a filthy, wild, chaotic mess. The children, C said, have reverted to animals. I´m thinking Lord of the Flies, but smellier.
In the end though, C agreed to see the week out and think about things.
________
Thursday 15th May
C visibly struggled to face the day when his alarm went off. I felt guilty as I, by contrast, was full of beans and raring to go, day two with 6b. (No 5b, so I had a tiny lie-in).
He moaned about having to do the painting in the yard, how they wouldn´t be able to get a quiet moment to do it, how he was really rubbish at drawing, etc etc. I sat down and drew him a few simple shapes and ideas, memories from my own playground. One was a winding snake, stripey, really simple - with a head and forked tongue. We´d run along the path that windy snake made for hours if we could...I´ve no idea why to this day.
C frowned. He didn´t feel capable of drawing a snake, so I quickly came up with other games that could be done with parallel lines and numbers, making myself later for work in the process.
Everything I did made no difference. Frustrated and exhausted from lack of sleep, I let rip.
I said since we´d arrived he´d done nothing but moan, every conversation had to be monopolised by how bad it was for him, he´s moaned so much he´s managed to put me off the other project too, yet Catherine was coping, how come? That we all have our troubles, nothing is ideal for any of us, but that´s what we´re here for and he should just get a grip and GET ON WITH IT. My project was difficult at first too - and I´m the only volunteer there, it could have been a lonely existence - but I just got stuck in. PLUS when I do try to help him by listening, advising or helping in a practical way (the games, helping them buy special paint for the tarmac in my slightly-better Spanish, paying for his project equipment with the money I raised), all he does is moan some more, and frankly, I was getting SICK of it.
He looked at me, stunned at my sudden outburst, thanked me curtly for bringing those points to his attention and walked out of the door, without a kiss goodbye.
__________
My earlier rant seemed to work. When I called C later to check in (and apologise), he said he´d talked to Catherine, pulled his socks up and decided he wasn´t going to let those kids down.
And as luck would have it, Catherine could paint snakes.
_______
I was exhausted that evening so had a disco nap 7-8.15 and woke disorientated, thinking first it was the middle of the night and where was C, then ´Oh God, I´ve slept in and I´ve got 4a and 4b today!´. A quick check of the time and I calmed down and read a bit of (a now out-of-date) ´Heat´ magazine. I´m rationing these silly little tastes of home.
That night all of us i-to-i ´voluntarios´ (Catherine, London girls Jen & Kat who are doing C´s next football project for 2 weeks, Gail and Katrina - an American mother and daughter working on a cnservation project for two weeks, and later, Glaswegian Adam and Irish Steve who work part-time at the refuge after their footie project - I hadn´t met the guys until tonight, but knew the rest from our orientation day) went to an Argentinian barbecue at V´s.
C tucked into the meat like a man possessed (lovely options for the 3 veggies...) and we all swapped our experiences voraciously, OD´ing on the fact we could speak English all night and not have to struggle for vocabulary for once.
Poor Katrina was sporting a rather fat bandage on her finger where a monkey had bitten through her finger (to the bone, apparently - yeuk - she´s getting rabies jabs) which made a great story, but I did have to reel C in from telling them about the dirty nappy incident as we were all eating.
Party boys Adam and Steve were up for going bowling. I am a bit of a demon on the lanes, the only sport I´m any good at, weirdly, so I instantly got a bit competitive and decided to stop drinking more ´vino tinto´.
Then Catherine pointed out it was gone 1am and I suddenly got tired, realising I would have 50 new kids to cope with the next day in two classes, plus 50 more books to carry in, and there was just no way I´d do it functioning on 3 hours sleep. C decided to stick with me, and so us 3 party poopers left the kids to play. I feel responsible for my kids though, and just can´t do this job with a hangover (a state which is virtually *de rigeur* in media!)
It´s alright for the others - they just swing the kids around, kick a ball about, paint a ´muriel´, muck out a monkey, and then they´re done. I´m shaping young minds!
We promised the guys we´d join them Friday at´Power´, (seeing as we never made it that far last Saturday...I´m such a lightweight...)
______
Friday: I bounded into work, looking forward to the day ahead.
I bought 2 reams of photocopy paper for the school copier on the way in as I was warned by Fabiana not to make too many copies as the school hadn´t got much money...but equally, the kids have no textbooks, so what am I to do?!
On Wednesday when when I was marking 6b´s work, I realised that the kids were making the same mistakes - and it wasn´t my writing, either. Their blackboard is so old and faded, it´s almost impossible to see anything written on it. How they learn anything, I have no idea. I brought it up with V and C & I are going to try and find some blackboard paint and sort it out. The only time they can let us do it is Saturday.
Fabiana thanked me for offering to do this. She told me that things were even worse two years ago and that last year three of the teachers, including herself, had taken it upon themselves to paint the school throughout. I asked how many days it took and she said ages, they did it little by little and paid for it out of their own pocket. And these ladies don´t get paid very much.
Fabiana had asked me what I did in England and when I explained I used to work for Él Telegrafico´ but gave it all up to come out here and now had ´no trabaje´ when I go back, she shook her head disbelievingly and said I was mad.
You check my highlights though...did you have as good a week as this...?
1) Today, some of the boys from 6a running over as I walked through the school gates, excitedly yelling ´Hi teacher!´ and asking me if I was taking their class that morning. I was secretly thrilled they looked so crest-fallen when I said not, but they did perk up when I added ´a lunes!´ (on Monday).
2) Pretty much every child I´d taught waved, smiled or yelled ´Hello!´ or ´Hi Teacher!´ as I walked to and from classes / the staff room today.
3) A pudgy boy, one of the ones who gave me a hard time on Monday, high-fived me yesterday.
4) One of my little girls in 4b today returned shyly as I was packing up and gave me a wrapped boiled sweet.
5) All the kids falling over themselves to carry my bags, books, etc to the staffroom after lessons.
6) The look on the kids´ faces when they realise the pens I handed out did not have to be returned and are, in fact, for them to keep.
7) The fact that I´ve told all my classes I´m ´veinte-siete´ (27) years old and they believe me. (One little boy, 10, even put up his hand at this information and informed me that ´Mi madre es veinte-seis´ - 26)
8) Me understanding and joining in on staffroom banter. Cristina keeps trying to get me off with the maths teacher, who, according to her is ´muy lindo´. I informed her ´hablo uno nobio´, which isn´t as weird as it sounds, as the Spanish pronounce ´b´ as ´v´ and the word actually means ´boyfriend´. (Which means I´m a ´nobia´. Nice.)
9) Graciela the Head, giving me a badge that the staff wear and telling the rest of the team that I was now a colleague. I proudly put it on.
10) ´Torta de chocla´ (a local corn cake) and salad for lunch, in the sun. Healthier, tastier and cheaper than anything my chums at the Telegraph will find in the canteen, I thought.
11) Having a conversation and proper banter with the cafe owner and his staff in Spanish.
12) Fabiana having saved me a slice of her birthday cake and offering it to me today. Yum.
13) THIS IS THE BEST ONE. Marking a little boy´s work yesterday who had made lots of mistakes in my first class. I hadn´t wanted to discourage him, so merely put ´Buen´, whilst his classmates got ´Muy buen, Augustin!´ and a red cartoon ´Goofy´ stamp (one of those self inking things) with the word ´GOOD!´underneath it. If their work is faultless, they get ´Éxcelente, Brenda!´, the Goofy stamp AND a shiny sticker (the stakes are higher now I´m running low).
Day two: his second set of work was *faultless*. He´d raised his game to get the reward! I wrote ´Excelente! Perfecto, Santiago!´, stamped Goofy on his work and adorned the page with a shiny red ladyird, ecstatically.
I started thinking yesterday that if I´m making that much of a difference to that little boy in 24 hours, then what could I do in a year? I casually mentioned to C that I could afford to live out here and do this for longer if I rented my house out in London. He said nothing.
Anyway C´s back and I need a disco nap if I´m to give the *real* twenty somethings a run for their money tonight :)
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