Tuesday - Week VIII

I woke up to find a overcast sky and such dreariness. The ground was covering in a thin layer of snow and it looked so cold from window. I was disappointed but running late so I had to get myself up and out of the house to meet my students. I put on two layers of leggings, two cashmere sweaters, a cotton top, a wool sweater jacket and my rain coat. Yes, I overestimated the cold and was wearing far too many layers but at least I was toasty warm as I walked along. On the walk into town it started to brighten up and the sun was shining when I got to the city center. Happy day after all!

As I was taking a picture of Quay street when I saw my student, Patricia coming toward me so I took a picture of her with her hands up in the air as she waved hello. I spent the morning and early afternoon teaching the Spanish girls at our favorite little pub on Quay street. See the picture here of the outside of the pub for reference. We had a lively discussion and the girls were all very excited to be talking about books and food and the myriad of things that came up and continually took us off track. The people at the pub are now getting to know us and the staff come over to participate in the lessons which I think is great. I think they must have gotten a kick out of our conversation about cockroaches. Yes, you read it correctly, the dirty disgusting bugs. How did we get on that subject you might ask, well it's easy, we were talking about what would make us uncomfortable at a restaurant. The girls said, if it was dirty and I said absolutely yes, like if a cockroach were to walk across the floor while you were eating. And the girls agreed wholeheartedly. I was surprised at first that they knew what the word cockroach meant and they said "the word is cucaracha in Spanish so it's easy to make the connection." I of course said you mean like in the song "La Cucaracha" and as a matter of fact that's exactly what they meant. It turns out, and if any of you reading this knew what the song meant I applaud you, because the lyrics "La cucaracha, la cucaracha, ya no puede caminar, porque no tiene, porque le falta, las dos patitas de atrás” means, unbelievably, “The cockroach, the cockroach, can't walk anymore because it doesn't have, because it's lacking its two back feet.” Now let’s face it the person who wrote this must have been drunk but the song does have a fun rhythm so this just goes to show you it doesn’t matter if you’re singing about a cockroach who lost her legs if song has a good dancing beat we’ll happily embrace it. We had a lot of laughs during our lesson today and here is a lovely picture I took Vanessa already enjoying herself and we had only just begun.

I left the girls and met Halil at 2:00pm and we went over to the Bridge Mills building to do Frank a favor and watch his new artists co-op gallery. He didn't have any of the participating artists to come and work the shop so he asked if I would teach my lesson there and keep and eye on things so of course I did. It was cold in the shop but Halil an I survived and we actually used all the paintings and pictures in the shop throughout of lesson. I had him pretend to be a shop keeper and I was a customer and he had to explain to me what was going on in each work of art. He did well and the three hours went by pretty quickly.

Jean Marie met me at the Budding Cafe and we were off to the gym. I was so happy to spend an hour or so sitting in the warm jacuzzi.