¨¿Puedes hablar mas despacio, por favor?¨

Resuming where I left off last time...I was feeling pretty frustrated with my teaching. Thursday night I was at work until 8 p.m. trying to figure out what to do for my business finance class early on Friday morning. I am supposed to prepare them to talk about the financial state of businesses and prepare them to give a presentation about a business. I decided that the best thing to do was to teach them how to read a 10k report...probably the least interesting thing to do possible. And I got to class, and most of them were pretty disrespectful, and the one I yelled at last time for texting was still texting, and I left class as frustrated as ever.

That afternoon I had a class that I was meeting for the first time. The first two hours consisted of them giving me presentations with the differing financial policies of John McCain and Barack Obama as I graded them. The presentations were wonderful. The kids had obviously put lots of work into it, and some of them had memorized their speeches, and most of their English levels weren´t that high, but their motivation level was. One group had a mock debate between the two candidates, complete with an angry audience member whose house had been foreclosed. During the last hour I was supposed to talk to the students about the election (now see all of this time I´ve spent on cnn.com, www.fivethirtyeight.com and watching the Daily Show has not been in vain...) and then to start some debates between the kids. I told them about the elections with all of my ¨insider¨ info. Then we debated some issues like gun control and finally we had a debate of McCain vs. Obama for president. My goal of doing this was to actually create some political dialogue about the election because over here in Europe, there is no dialog--everyone supports Barack Obama and no one understands why anyone would vote for John McCain. (This is not to say that in America, there is a fruitful political dialog--what with all of the personal attacks that have been going on...) But in an ideal world, this election would produce such political exchanges. At the end of the class, I told the students they could leave, and they didn´t want to--even though it was 5pm on a Friday before a vacation. They all stuck around to ask me a few more questions. This was a breath of fresh air I needed in my teaching. The students were motivated, engaged and best of all (for my ego) interested in what I had to say. I know that what I need to do is spend less time working on the classes where the students don´t care. English is a very low priority for them--a requirement to graduate, but something they dont care about.

So Friday night I headed to Metz to spend the night with Helen so I could catch my shuttle. It was sort of weird to be back, but it was great to see Helen, and we went out with Claire. I need to make more of an effort to see my friends in Metz...it is only a 30 minute train ride, and it´s so nice to see old friends. It is bittersweet to go back to Metz though because even though I was only there 7 months, it really became home, and it is weird to go back when I don´t live there, and when most of my amazing friends don´t live there anymore.

My trip to Almeria was long, but I had no problems. The trip has been a little low key but nice. I have been enjoying lots of Spanish food--especially tapas. Carlos and I have just been bumming around town eating tapas, walking on the beach etc etc.

My Spanish skills are pretty bad. I mean, they are not bad considering that I have never had a formal Spanish class in my life, and that I only started learning a year ago. But considering how much time I will spend in Spain with all of my vacations this year/how little I like feeling like an idiot when talking to people here, they are awful. "Are you deaf?¨ Elena asked me in all seriousness when I didn´t understand something she said. The other day the maid was here and said, ¨You will only speak Spanish while I am here,¨ a command I ignored because why would I want the maid to eavesdrop on my breakfast conversation with Carlos? Anyway, just after that we went to get my hair cut because I figured that it would be better to take a native with me than to risk any ambiguities in France (last time I got a haircut in France, I left the parlor with an enormous, horrible afro....). Well, the hair dresser was the daughter of the maid, and the maid ended up there, and there everyone stood around and started talking about how bad my Spanish is. i.e. "If she wants to learn Spanish, she´d better start talking." ¨How long has she been studying? And she still isn´t talking?¨ The hair dresser was a little more optimistic, ¨I think she understands more than she lets on...¨ Anyway, it was pretty awkward for me that everyone was standing around criticizing/speculating about my language level. I didn´t quite understand enough to interject and was also a little shy/intimidated by the situation. I have been studying a lot since then and things are improving. I am discovering however, that the accent here in Andalusia is much harder to understand than other accents, with lots of abbreviated/mumbled words and dropped letters. I am getting really good at saying, ¨Can you speak more slowly please?¨

Elena has not left me alone for more than five minutes since I arrived. She is a good language teacher for me. We have a game where we go through all of the actions of the day. First, we get up; then we go to school; then we shower, etc etc. Or else she will say, ¨Draw a sun. Now a house. Now some grass.¨ It is working, and my vocabulary is growing thanks to her and thanks to the illustrated children´s dictionary that Carlos found with his old toys. "Kiiii-eeeeeeet! ¿Dondé estas?¨ she says every time she gets home and can´t find me. She does not seem to understand why Carlos gets to spend more time with me than she does, and gets jealous if he sits next to me. ¨She belongs to me!¨ Carlos finally told her. I am taking to playing with her every day while Carlos is in class. I do enjoy it, of course, especially the thousands of hugs and her telling me how much she loves me.

This weekend Carlos and I are going to celebrate our anniversary (it was yesterday) either by going to Cabo de Gata, which has some of the prettiest beaches in Spain or by going to Mini-Hollywood, which is a theme park in some of the preserved movie sets of American Westerns that were filmed here.

Little known fact--John Lennon wrote ¨Strawberry Fields Forever¨ while he was here in Almeria.

That´s all. Hasta Luego