Hello Loyal Blog Readers,
Today will be a short update as I have been stricken with a cold (ironic, I know) and don’t have much ganas (that is an untranslatable word meaning something like I don’t have the urge/don’t feel like) of writing. Who gets a cold in 90-degree weather, I ask you? Well, turns out, quite a lot of people and it is going around my school hence I now have a runny nose and a sore throat. I don’t know what’s worse, the sore throat or the irony of my current situation. I think probably the irony, although tomorrow will be interesting if I have no voice with which to yell at my middle-schoolers.
My boss gave me quite a scare this week and then some good news. First, she told me that the high school classes would be taking a national exam of which she didn’t have a copy or a past example, also, she didn’t know when it would be administered or if I would get to see it before I had to give it to my students. Having been teaching from a book and working under the assumption that I would be able to create the assessment (which I did, last weekend), I had a series of mini-heart attacks. If you’re not a teacher, the gravity of such a situation might not hit you, but suffice it to say that changing an assessment after 5 weeks of instruction that has been geared towards a certain book/assessment is not even slightly good practice and TOTALLY unfair to the students. So Jeanne, my boss, gets this message from the AP of the school, Ricardo, who is lovable, but horribly unorganized, and passes it along to me as I’m walking up to my high school class. I go up to class, get them started on something and then head directly to the office to confront Ricardo. Turns out, it was all a big misunderstanding because Jeanne doesn’t speak much Spanish and Ricardo doesn’t speak much English… I get to give my assessment (that took me forever to write, I damn well better be able to use it!) and class can continue as planned. Phew. The good news given by Jeanne is minimal, really, but I asked her if I could wear black bottoms as well as navy blue and she said that as long as I did my job, she didn’t care what I wore! Small victories people, small victories!
Aaah, my Halls cough drops just arrived via my nephew. Excellent.
Mexico played Costa Rica yesterday evening and won 3-0. We’re on our way to the World Cup if we can manage to beat Honduras (Blanca…) this Wednesday… then we (and by we, I mean Mexico… if the US soccer team was behind Mexico then I would be routing for them, but since they’re ahead of Mexico in the points race, I’m for Mexico) play 2 teams that will be out of contention for the Cup… I’m learning the soccer system, which I still maintain is much more stupid and convoluted than the football or baseball systems of the US, but for some reason Pako disagrees. We had a lively discussion over which sport was more interesting, American football or soccer… Really? Who could possibly think soccer was more interesting? Pako’s argument was that they stop playing too often in football, my argument was that you could go 90 minutes straight without a single goal. And the only reason they say “goaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal” when someone does finally manage to score is to drag out those 30 seconds of excitement that come to pass once, if you’re lucky, or twice if you’re really, really lucky throughout a game. We agreed to disagree, but we both knew I was right.
Ok, this is longer than I intended it to be because I honestly can’t believe anyone would prefer soccer over football and I had to get that off my chest. Football season starts for me next Sunday and I’ll be sitting in a sports bar watching my Packers start down the path towards the
Superbowl! Ahhh football season, my favorite season of the year! This week’s picture is of a sea turtle we saw on the beach. It was about 4 times bigger than Tekila (my dog) and 100 times braver. When Tekila saw the turtle, he turned tail and ran the other way.
Signing out again, hoping to recover my voice and energy by tomorrow at 8:30am. Saludos to all and unless you’re Blanca, keep your fingers crossed that Mexico beats Honduras on Wednesday!
amor y besos!
Leyah
Today will be a short update as I have been stricken with a cold (ironic, I know) and don’t have much ganas (that is an untranslatable word meaning something like I don’t have the urge/don’t feel like) of writing. Who gets a cold in 90-degree weather, I ask you? Well, turns out, quite a lot of people and it is going around my school hence I now have a runny nose and a sore throat. I don’t know what’s worse, the sore throat or the irony of my current situation. I think probably the irony, although tomorrow will be interesting if I have no voice with which to yell at my middle-schoolers.
My boss gave me quite a scare this week and then some good news. First, she told me that the high school classes would be taking a national exam of which she didn’t have a copy or a past example, also, she didn’t know when it would be administered or if I would get to see it before I had to give it to my students. Having been teaching from a book and working under the assumption that I would be able to create the assessment (which I did, last weekend), I had a series of mini-heart attacks. If you’re not a teacher, the gravity of such a situation might not hit you, but suffice it to say that changing an assessment after 5 weeks of instruction that has been geared towards a certain book/assessment is not even slightly good practice and TOTALLY unfair to the students. So Jeanne, my boss, gets this message from the AP of the school, Ricardo, who is lovable, but horribly unorganized, and passes it along to me as I’m walking up to my high school class. I go up to class, get them started on something and then head directly to the office to confront Ricardo. Turns out, it was all a big misunderstanding because Jeanne doesn’t speak much Spanish and Ricardo doesn’t speak much English… I get to give my assessment (that took me forever to write, I damn well better be able to use it!) and class can continue as planned. Phew. The good news given by Jeanne is minimal, really, but I asked her if I could wear black bottoms as well as navy blue and she said that as long as I did my job, she didn’t care what I wore! Small victories people, small victories!
Aaah, my Halls cough drops just arrived via my nephew. Excellent.
Mexico played Costa Rica yesterday evening and won 3-0. We’re on our way to the World Cup if we can manage to beat Honduras (Blanca…) this Wednesday… then we (and by we, I mean Mexico… if the US soccer team was behind Mexico then I would be routing for them, but since they’re ahead of Mexico in the points race, I’m for Mexico) play 2 teams that will be out of contention for the Cup… I’m learning the soccer system, which I still maintain is much more stupid and convoluted than the football or baseball systems of the US, but for some reason Pako disagrees. We had a lively discussion over which sport was more interesting, American football or soccer… Really? Who could possibly think soccer was more interesting? Pako’s argument was that they stop playing too often in football, my argument was that you could go 90 minutes straight without a single goal. And the only reason they say “goaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal” when someone does finally manage to score is to drag out those 30 seconds of excitement that come to pass once, if you’re lucky, or twice if you’re really, really lucky throughout a game. We agreed to disagree, but we both knew I was right.
Ok, this is longer than I intended it to be because I honestly can’t believe anyone would prefer soccer over football and I had to get that off my chest. Football season starts for me next Sunday and I’ll be sitting in a sports bar watching my Packers start down the path towards the
Superbowl! Ahhh football season, my favorite season of the year! This week’s picture is of a sea turtle we saw on the beach. It was about 4 times bigger than Tekila (my dog) and 100 times braver. When Tekila saw the turtle, he turned tail and ran the other way.Signing out again, hoping to recover my voice and energy by tomorrow at 8:30am. Saludos to all and unless you’re Blanca, keep your fingers crossed that Mexico beats Honduras on Wednesday!
amor y besos!
Leyah
No comments:
Post a Comment