Time...

As many of you know, I have trouble with time. I don't really have a firm grasp of it, nor do I understand it for my life. I have been here nearly a month and I can't believe it. Sometimes it feels like I have been here forever, this is what I've always done and always will do. However, when I went to Granada and saw friends from the US, returning to Coria was completely surreal. Other times it feels like I just got here, especially when I learn something that I really should have known before. I had been correcting the children when they said 'football' for soccer. I just realized yesterday that they do call it football in British English so they are right.. Duh. Why didn't I think about this before? Why did this occur to me randomly nearly a month after starting this? Another disorienting aspect is the weather. I've never known sun, constant sun, in the fall/winter, so this weather seems like late summer.

I'm getting more used to my job. I'm beginning to know the classes, too, which ones are good and which ones stare at me blankly or talk the whole time amongst themselves. I dread going to some classes and accompanying some teachers. The behavior of the class depends greatly on the behavior of the teacher, and some exercise no discipline whatsoever. They stare at the children and roll their eyes as if there were nothing they could do to control them. These ones I dread. I also hate the classes that stare blankly. Do you understand? No answer. Yes or no? No answer. My favorite moment was when one teacher told them to open their books to page 69. She adds, "Sixty-nine, the erotic number. You can say anything, they don't understand." The additional conversation classes (which I do by myself) are going well because these students want to learn and they already know a lot. Next week I'm going to start giving private conversation lessons to some children of one of the teachers here. O god more children!

I am learning so much about Spain. I am understanding more about tapas (or pinchos, as they are commonly called in Coria--this threw me for awhile), encountering their strange meats. You guys will never believe. I'm learning more about the politics and class differences as well as the Spanish mentality in general. Qué raro, ¿no? Sydney understands.