Wednesday & Thursday - Week VI

WEDNESDAY - The sun was certainly shining bright this morning when I pulled open the curtains but within a few hours it all went wrong as they say and it's cold and wet. Very cold and that kind of wet that chills the bones. I'm glad I took a long walk this morning along the water since the fine weather did not hold out. One must take advantage of any sunlight and get out and about quickly.

I had my first solo teacher practice today with Inma, a girl from Malaga, Spain who was in two of my teacher practices at the school. The session went exceptionally well and I think she benefited greatly from it. She's a very good student and she learns pretty quickly. I have discovered that I like correcting people. Maybe I like it too much, I don't know, but it was fun just constantly correcting her word choice, sentence structure and pronunciation. I don't know what this says about me but it's probably why I like directing plays as well. There is always a sense of being the person in control when you're directing and it's sort of the same thing with this. We spent three and half hours working on past, present and future sentence structure and the time really flew by because we were talking about travel she has done, what she is doing now and what she wants to do in the future.



Then it was a visit to library to get more work done on my grammar cheat sheet. So much to include but I'll get it all down with a little more time and focus.

I met Fiona, who runs the off at school around 7:00pm and we went for coffee at Java Cafe which is nearer to the center of town. The streets are now all decorated for Christmas which is nice. After Java Cafe we went to a creative movement class near the Town Hall Theater. It was an hour and half of just being creative and dancing any way that the spirit moved us. There were only four people, myself, Fiona and nice man named Michael and the women who organized it all, Tina. The class is based on the 5 Rhythms Dance process which is, according to a web page on the practice, a creative movement practice with no set steps. A moving meditation suitable to all bodies and souls that long to be free and love to dance. The class begins with a warm-up where we just got ourselves up and moving around and then according to the music playing we moved our bodies in relation to the five rhythms of Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical and Stillness. I had taken a course in the Five Rhythms about 8 years ago in New York so it was very familiar and for only 5 Euros it was a great thing to do on a rainy night and a perfect way to unwind after spending so many hours sitting down talking or working on my lap top. The room was lit with only candles and natural light streaming in from the windows so I was able to really let go and get into the flow.

Fiona and I walked home. She lives right next door to my apartment complex so it worked out perfectly and she's so sweet. She's going to keep me posted on job listings that come through the school office. She has one now for Vietnam but she said it's in the North and extremely cold and wet in the North country. And you all have kept up with how unhappy the rain makes me here only imagine if I was 20 hours away from New York and contracted to be there for over a year. Needless to say I said thank you for the offer to recommend me but I think I'll skip Northern Vietnam.

THURSDAY - Okay, there has been some sun today and some rain and some more sun and some more rain. Typical!

I stopped off at school today because the Director, Patrick needs me to add a few things to one of my assignments before he can pass me. Apparently I forgot to analyze all of the vocabulary and pronunciation problems Lars, the young German kid I interviewed a month ago, made during our interview. I do still have the recording of the interview so I'll get that too him by tomorrow afternoon.

I met with Marisol, Vanessa and Patricia all from Spain this morning at 11:00am and we worked for two and half hours. I did mostly the same thing I did with Inma which was working on past, present and future. The girls are great and so enthusiastic about learning. They did throw me some curve balls with odd questions like why do you say either instead of neither? Now that really isn't a hard question on the surface but then I had to get into "or" and "nor" and that led to further questions about "within" and "between" and the conversation continued like that for a while. They are like sponges and they just want to absorb all I have to say but truly I have to stop and think about what and why we say what we say before I can respond. This is great practice for me because it's working with just one student at a time or a small group like today and not 12 students all wanting attention.

After my teaching practice I headed to the library where I bumped into Inma who sat next to me to study. A 40 something Irish man came over to flirt with her. I got such a kick out of it because she had just told me yesterday that Irish men try to pick her up a lot and that she knows that many of them are just looking for sex. This guy may have just been being nice and she had clearly met him before today because there was some familiarity in their conversation. I think he likes her and he offered to help her practice her English. She doesn't seem interested in him so I'm sure it won't go very far. Here is a picture of her while she studies in the chair beside mine.

A few moments' later Eloy, also from Spain and also a student from school saw me and came over for a chat. He's so sweet and at an advanced level. He's studying her to take the English language proficiency test so he can get a good job. I introduced him to Inma and in just a quick moment they discovered they were both from Southern Spain, he from Saville and she from Malaga. It was so sweet because Eloy jumped up and went over to Inma and kissed her on both cheeks and introduced himself more formally. I love that people, from Spain, Italy, etc. even if they are strangers; greet one another in this lovely way. It's so civilized. And yes, I am fully aware that sometimes you don't want some stranger kissing your cheek but in cases like this where they are both young and attractive it can be a good thing. That sounds so superficial, I know. It was also funny to see them interact with each other in English because I was there when they clearly wanted so much to speak Spanish instead. Eloy even said, as he crouched down between mine and Inma's chairs, that normally he would have continued speaking with Inma from his original seat to the left of me because in Spain, for some reason, they like to talk loudly to each other from longer distances than necessary. I guess it could be like two people in a room and they'd have a conversation with each other while being in opposite sides of the room. It was good he didn't try to do that here since it is a library and there is some decorum necessary despite cultural preferences.

It was off to the gym where I took this picture of a tree because something about the unruliness of the branches against the night sky just caught my fancy.