Statues, crazy kids and concert

After the nightmare first day on Wednesday, Thursday was a breeze. I had two half hour classes with 4 and 5 year olds and one and a half hours of music class (which involved playing the recorder, hopping around to music and playing a bit of keyboard). Thursday is going to be my favourite day.

It was 2 euro pint night again, so went out with some of the guys and had pinchos afterwards. In the Espolon, there were these weird bronze statues that had sprung up out of nowhere. They were pretty cool.

And then on Friday, when I got to school, the English teacher was sick again. There was a teaching student training to be an English teacher, who was supposed to be going along to the classes to see how they were run. So she said to me 'I'm not trained to be an English teacher yet, just a language teacher, so you'll have to lead the class.'

Again, I was like 'WHAT???' My teaching experience consists of one-on-one tutoring of Maths and English and babysitting my nephew.

I had actually prepared something (thanks to the principal's suggestion on Thursday) so I did a slideshow presentation on Australia and got them to ask me questions. One of the first things they asked was 'Do you have a boyfriend?' I also taught them how to sing 'I Still Call Australia Home' from the Qantas ad. It was that or 'I Come From A Land Down Under', which has flowing beer and chundering men.

The sixth grade class was even worse. Another teacher was there supervising and she said 'I don't speak a word of English so you'll have to teach the class.' So I did what I did with the fifth grade class, but because these kids were older, I got through it in half an hour. And then I stood there going 'Ok... I'm done. What do you guys want to do now?'

HONESTLY. I had no idea of their level of English, I hadn't been told I was supposed to teach them for an hour, I don't know how to interact with children. Bah! Bah!

The first grade kids are nice though. Very, very obedient. Very easy to deal with.

On Friday night, I went to a Spanish rock concert, of a band called Extremoduro, with Javi and some friends. It was great but I think I have permanent hearing damage now. Stayed home on Saturday night for the first time since arriving. Was fantastic to sit at home in my pyjamas reading a book.

Yesterday, I finally met up with Quique. He'd been in Mexico when I arrived and then I was away. I think the last time I saw him was at Pancakes On The Rocks (yummm... pancakes...) a year ago. He came back to Spain in February after his exchange year at UTS. We went for pinchos and he explained the difference between pinchos and tapas.

Tapas are from the south and pinchos are from the north. Pinchos are better.