A is for. . . .um. . . .uh . . .

My tiniest student, David, is going to be super good at English. Why? Because at the tender age of 3 his parents began a pretty hard-core English regimen with him: cartoons in English, dad speaks to/at him in English, and I walk on down twice a week to have classes with him.

A three year old is hard to have for private classes. Even though we only have a half hour, after about fifteen minutes he jumps up and starts running in circles or throwing Gormiti toys around. Once calmed down, we resume our song or dance or whatever.

This year I have spent part of the time teaching him the alphabet song. My seven year old, Claudia, knows how to say all the letters in English and it's really convenient when I have to spell new words for her. So with David, we sing that song about 10 times each class while making an alphabet book. You know, the kind with cute pictures of words that start with that letter.

A for apple:

B for ball. C for cat:

Standard alphabet stuff. The only problem is, with certain letters, my mind goes absolutely blank on any word in English appropriate for his level that starts with that letter. No simple nouns, no easily illustratable animals, nothing. So here, after flipping through his brother's learn to draw book full of animals, we find J for jaguar:

Not bad, nice recovery. Here's I for insect, also found after consulting the book:

Then there's S for um, snake:

At V, I totally failed. V for vendetta? Nope, not appropriate. V for vandalism? Tampoco. V for verrrrry stupid English teacher? Probable, but nope. I came up with V for

VIPER!

Trying to explain the subtle anatomical differences between snakes and vipers clearly did not go over well, as this one looks like an apartment building with a tail rather than a snake or a muscle car.

The bad news? I still haven't gotten to W, X, Y, or Z.

X for Xerox copies? Y for yoda? Help!

Notes on pasta

Why is it SO HARD to make an appropriate amount of pasta for one person for lunch?!

AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO HAS THIS PROBLEM?!

Excuses

This weekend was ridiculously cold and rainy in Málaga. (Well, when I say ridiculous, I mean ridiculous for Southern Spain.)

The sun came out for a minute for this picture. This is a reduced form of
puddle of death that forms outside my door, aka Lake Teatinos.

It's not usually cold and rainy here, so people don't really do much when it is. It is an awesome understanding that the whole city is in on: I don't go out, you don't go out, we don't go out, nobody gives anybody shit for it.

I had a weekend plan of going to the Oktoberfest downtown, drinking beer out of a huge jar, and hopefully adding to my drunken hat collection, now 3 hats strong! But, it rained. So I stayed in at José's house and we watched soccer.

Do I feel bad for not going out?

Nope. Because I'm pretty sure nobody else was there either.

This is why it's awkward

Yet another round of waiting in line for hours on end in the relentless pursuit of this year's foreigners card.

• Oficina de Extranjeros: 3ish hours of useless waiting. They told me since I already had a number I just had to go to the Police Station.
  
• Day One at the Police Station: 1 hour of semi-useless waiting. I did get a complete list of documents and photocopies I had to provide as well as the form I needed to pay the tax.
  
• Day Two at Police Station: 10 minutes of useless waiting. I arrived with all documents and was trying to enter when, at 1:40, before their schedule 2 p.m. closing time, that they wouldn't let anyone else in. It was a new, highly unpleasant security guard who, when I notified him that the office indeed hadn't closed yet, looked at me with his eyebrows raised, shrugged angrily, and said "That's it, no more, what more can we do?" What can you do? Well if you work Monday to Friday 9 - 2, actually work until 2. Boy those 25 hour weeks get long.
  
• Day Three at Police Station: 2 hours of useless waiting. Normally the line in the police station isn't as long, but when I arrived there was a line of about 50 people outside and probably another 20 inside. After waiting and watching the new security guard utterly fail to attend to the needs of the public in a timely and pleasant manner, he brusquely picked up the signs for the foreigners line, slammed the door shut, and informed us that the office was closed. Nevermind the line hadn't moved for like 30 minutes, telling us before that we wouldn't be able to get in would be too easy.
  
• Day Four at Police Station: 1 hour and success! I arrived before school and breezed inside, noting that my favorite doorman must be on some sort of break. The woman at the desk thumbed through my papers, they banged out a few fingerprints, I'm on my merry way.

What I did have time to put my finger on is why exactly waiting at the foriegner's office is worse than waiting at the numerous other bureaucratic institutions that we have to deal with here in the land of Catholic holidays and cigarette breaks: personal space.

The average line at these foreigner's offices is composed of Central and South Americans, Africans, Asians, Middle Easterners, old men, young families, working professionals, super awesome and ridiculously good looking blonde auxiliars, babies, etc. etc. Every single one of these groups has a different understanding of the etiquette of waiting in line.

For example, young Moroccan man with the scar from his lip to his face, I see you trying to cut in front of me. You keep inching forward, but I, in fact, have peripheral vision.

Family from Africa with two adolescents, a toddler, and a baby: spread on out, there's room for all in the hallway, no need to maintain any semblance of a line.

Woman from South America: Please, keep moving forward behind me, get in here right close like. I love being three inches away from strangers.

An equivalent feel for this awkwardness:

Until (hopefully) next year, foreigner's office!

Eurotrash!!

It's I ever wanted in music: repetitive, catchy, featuring saxophone solos.

 Molester 'staches.

The perfect mix of kinda awkward Eastern European English lyrics. Tighty whiteys.

I love to hate on it. But the truth is if you stick me in a spinning class on a stationary bike or in a discoteca with a drink in hand and put on eurotrash really loud, I will rock that shit.

Did I mention the saxophone?

Fusion food

If I have a Spanish-American baby in like 5 years or so, when I'm 28, it would be weaned solely on this.

It's cool dude, we get it, we're hip, we're with it

Another orientation done. Check.

Thursday was the open bar orientation for auxiliars working in Malaga province. Every year they haul us all out to a vocational high school in the city and talk at us for three hours about health insurance and the foreigner's office and how to get a bank account and what is the bilingual initiative. A bit dry.

But, then they TOTALLY redeem themselves.

That vocational high school has a school of hospitality where kids who want to work as chefs, waiters, or in tourism learn how to pour a good glass of sherry, serve up paella to hungry guiris, and make sure that my hand always has a full glass of something in it. So, we file into their adjoining restaurant space where the free drinks and tapa massacre takes place. Also, there's an 80's cover band. Whoever plans orientation sure knows their audience.

Totally unrelated photo of Portimao, Portugal.

The Gonskis and I, knowing how it went down last year, canceled our evening plans and got to it. We started conversing with a lovely older gentleman who was one of the organizers. Over tiny plates of paella he was telling us about his recent retirement from working in the school system, his neighborhood, Mercadona, etc.

All was fine, but something was off. He was speaking slowly, clearly. Each R and every S was enunciated. No cutting out of D's. "He must be slowing himself down for us," I thought. "I hope it is clear at this point in the conversation that we've been here a while, we can fend for ourselves in Andaluz."

The slow, even rhythm continued.

"How odd, none of the other presenters slowed down at all for us when they were speaking. I mean, us Andalucian people are going to have to get used to the accent really quick anyways, might as well get started now." 

At this point the man, midway through a glass of wine, informed us that he had been in Malaga for 16 years. His origin: Basque. Nope, not talking at us like we didn't understand, just a northerner.

Bilbao.

At this point of the evening I thought it best to return to the wine. No misunderstandings there.

That time I gave a toddler a violent children's book

At the grocery store in Florida this summer I snagged a sweet set of children's books. They are perfect for ESL.

This one, for example.

A bunch of animals putting on hats of assorted shades. Then, oops! there is a turkey who has a bit of a problem.

He just can't get it right!


I should have known, however, that this book was not culturally appropriate. No, it's not because there is a topless elephant, but rather a difference in the native flora and fauna of Spain. Here, they don't have delicious, succulent, beautiful turkey. A New World, specifically Mexican, animal, neither the turkey nor Thanksgiving are on Spanish children's radars.

I should have known this, as last year when we made a ballin' turkey at my school with feathers where the kids wrote what they were thankful for and all that jazz, the kids kept calling it the big chicken, much to my dismay.

It´s a TURKEY

So it was not surprising when my 3.5 year old student finished the story and was a slightly puzzled.

"Seño, why is the chicken bleeding?"

Good question, small one, good question.