My new friend, Lola

Had my first day at work today. It was slightly traumatising.

Let me just say that I've never had to do much with big groups of kids before. So to meet five different classes with about 20 kids each was extremely daunting. And the Infantil class, with three year olds... The teacher asked me to sit at the front of the class, so I did, expecting her to sit down next to me and do something that I could imitate.

She said to me 'Why don't you teach them something? You've got something prepared, haven't you?' I was like 'What? What?'

Then she handed me a stuffed toy elephant who's their mascot (called Ellie) and told me to teach them something about Ellie. Scrounging around desperately to come up with something, I said 'Ok... This is Ellie the Elephant. She has a BIIIIIIG nose! A BIIIIIIG nose.'

The children stared at me blankly. I continued on, trying to keep a huge smile on my face. 'And she has BIIIG ears! BIIIIG ears!'

I had no idea three year olds could be so silent. The teacher took pity on me. She said to the kids (in Spanish) 'Can you repeat please, "BIIIIG ears!"'

Silence.

She gestured for me to continue.

'Ellie has a small tail,' I said. 'A Small Tail. Can you say "small tail"?'

Apparently not. They were looking at me like I was some crazy lady come out of nowhere and gabbling in some foreign language. One of the boys was snivelling and had snot dribbling from his nose. The teacher told me to take Ellie around to each of them and say 'This is Ellie' and make her give them a kiss (extremely unhygienic I thought). At least they smiled and kissed her when I did that. Until I got to this one boy, who turned away and started crying.

I was terrified he'd start an orchestra of weeping but the teacher put on some music and got them to clap along, and then she gave them a picture of Ellie to colour in. But honestly, what are you supposed to do with three year olds? They can barely say their own names. I can tell I'm going to dislike Ellie a lot before the month is out.

Anyway, fearing a debacle like today, I've actually prepared something for tomorrow. I've cut out body parts from coloured paper (photo is of assembled body) so we can play a semi pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey kind of game tomorrow, except with arms and legs and eyes and ears. But I'm a bit worried about the fact that she's naked- is it too obscene? And I wasn't too keen on her skin tone because normal people don't have that shade of pink.

I quite like her. I've decided to call her Lola.

And the first thing I did after class was buy a hand disinfectant gel.