I had my first class this evening. After a long morning of emailing and getting no responses from anonymous douches with rooms on craigslist and compartodept.cl, I trudged over to the Providencia office for my first official class. Not knowing how long it would take for me to get to the place, I ended up arriving about 20 minutes early to my first class. I spent that time documenting in my "teacher" notebook (previously my improv notebook, "writing for creative success" class notebook, and workout diary for a week or two) how I felt like a complete fraud, having no training on what it took to be a successful English teacher other than an online class where I essentially guessed my way to an A for the course. It was very motivating stuff, but it gave the illusion that I was hard at work and busy when my student arrived.
We started by talking a bit about his expectations for the class, and got to know each other a little bit. It was sort of heartening, because his struggles with English reminded me a lot of my struggles with Spanish. He just ignored some of the words I would say, and took a long time to come up with his responses to questions. Some basic greetings, how to say "goodbye" a couple different ways, and mock conversations took up most of the time. He had to leave early, so I spent another half hour or so doodling until it was time to leave.
Also, I saw an apartment today. It was a complete shithole (sorry mom, but it was). The mattress looked like it was slept on previously by the swamp thing, and there were more cracks in the couches than carpet fibers on the tastefully colored rag in the middle of the floor beneath the broken coffee table. The guy who was there was a Canadian named Dave who looked like the burnout son of J. Jonah Jameson. I told him I'd think about it.
Alright, time to practice my Spanish. Until next time, anonymous internet folk!
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