Expatiperro

Well, well, well, it's been a while. In case you were worried about me, I'm alive, still have a roof over my head, and am eating three moderately healthy meals a day. And who could ask for anything more?

I figure that since it's been an inordinate amount of time since I last posted, you've been dying to know about how life has been going over here for me. (Or you might have forgotten that this blog exists, which I would completely understand as well.) As tends to happened over the course of two months, much has happened. Some highlights include:

-Settling into teaching. This has been both extremely exciting and indescribably frustrating. I haven't experienced many better feelings than the one you get after a class where everything goes well, the students enjoy it and actually learn the material, and the hour's over before you know it. However, on the flip side, there aren't many worse things than a disaster class- no matter how much you prepare, the students aren't receptive, you forget the worksheets, and to fill the remaining 45 minutes, you have to resort to playing Simon Says over and over.

-Getting used to kids. I teach three different pairs of siblings: a 9 and 7 year old, a 6 and 4 year old, and a 6 and 5 year old. With the exception of the 9 year old, who speaks fantastic English for her age (complete sentences, great pronunciation, big vocabulary), all of the kids are at a pretty basic level, and since they're so young, I teach mainly through repetitive exercises, games, and coloring activities. Not having to prepare worksheets and conversation topics is a big time saver (I really wish I could teach my adults by having them color Teletubby pictures), but learning how to deal with kids has been a huge effort, especially since this is my first extended exposure with kids.

After 2 months of experience, I've come to the conclusion that kids are simultaneously adorable, AND total pain-in-the-asses. One minute they're hitting you on the back and begging you to play hide and go seek, and the next they're super excited about coloring a worksheet and telling you how much they love English. But by far the best part about kids- their short attention spans. If a lesson bombs, by the time the next class rolls around, they have no memory of how bad the previous class was. And for a beginning teacher prone to lesson meltdowns, that's a god-send.

-Winter break and traveling. I took advantage of my winter holidays to spend a week traveling around Andalucía with my parents, and then took off for Paris on New Yeas Day for 5 days to meet up with a friend from Columbia. Highlights included a private tour of the Alhambra; getting repeatedly lost driving around Córdoba and Sevilla in a rental car; an endless train trip to Paris involving 2 train changes and a night in Montpellier, France; stumbling into an anti-Israel protest in Paris and watching people burn cars from 20 feet away; having my first American breakfast in 4 months at an American-style diner in Paris; and not getting deported while flying back to Barcelona. My break was capped off by a visit from a dear Columbia friend, one Mr. Learned Foote, who had to suffer through my repeated questions on the state of the US, as well as some juvenile pranks of mine. But that's another story.

Needless to say, after 3 weeks off, readjusting to work has been a challenge, which has been made more complicated by the fact that I've lost 25% of my hours, leaving me perilously cose to the break-even line. Lots of free time and not much money to burn is not a good combination, so I'm having to scrounge for hours wherever I can find them. At least it gives me lots of time to hit the gym...

So I'm hoping that this post is the start of a more consistent pattern of posting on this blog. I do have lots of things to write about, and many pictures to post, and hopefully I'll be able to give you guys a better look at my life here in 2009 than I did last year. And if I begin to slack off, don't hesitate to call me out on it (thanks Mom and Anne!). Feliç Any Nou, y fins aviat!