Today was just another day of school and private classes. The students are learning the parts of the body and by golly they are learning so much at once! I feel like we are just throwing English in their face, but hey, I guess that's okay! They are going to have one long list of vocabulary when this year is over with. For example, I'm pretty sure in the first few years on learning Spanish, I knew the very basic body parts: eyes, nose, mouth, face, head, ears, arms, hands, fingers, legs, feet, toes, hairs. Now take that list and add eyebrows, eyelashes, tongue, neck, shoulder, elbow, wrist, knees, hips, ankles, waist, thumb, index finger, middle finger, ring finger, little finger (pinky in British English apparently), etc. and that's the list of vocabulary for my first graders. Whoa. Not gonna lie, just learned the Spanish words for all of the fingers today, haha. The students at my school have been studying English for technically 2ish years and are already learning the names of the fingers. I have been studying Spanish for 8ish years and I am just now learning the specific names of the fingers. Makes me feel somewhat unaccomplished and yet today I feel accomplished because now I know them. :)
Anyway, after school, I had my three and a half hours of private classes. They all went very well and I am impressed every week by the amount of English that they all know. I can't wait to see their progress throughout the year. Also, one of the books that one of my students and I are reading deals with some issues of World War II and I am pleasantly surprised about how much she knew about the United States' involvement in the war. She hadn't heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor, but she knew about Hitler and she knew about the atomic bombings. She also knew about what was going on in Spain at that time with Franco and such, so I thought that was pretty cool! I mean, obviously she learned about it in school and I know I learned about it at her age, but the fact that she was telling about it in what is her foreign language proves that she has a pretty high level of English. It just makes me happy. :)
Once I got home, I plopped down and relaxed, made dinner, and chatted online with Stephanie and Karin. We are trying to figure out what to do this weekend. We were originally thinking Valencia, but like Granada last weekend, everyone and their dog will be in Valencia for this motocross championship thing, how random?! So, instead we might take a day trip to Segovia, which is another ancient-esque town a little outside of Madrid. We might try and plan Valencia for next weekend instead. Hopefully the world champion for mobile phone throwing or stone skipping aren't scheduled to be there next week.* I'll have to check the schedule. Anyway, long story short, I have no idea what this weekend has in store for me.
On another note, this morning when I was walking to the metro, I noticed that there was a lot of trash on the ground. I couldn't decide if it was always like this or if I was just now noticing. And I couldn't think about how Chicago is, when I've been there. I don't think it's riddled with trash, not like it is here right now anyway. Well, come to find out the the street cleaning service workers are on strike because many of them might get laid off and wages are being cut. However, by strike, I don't just mean that they are not showing up to work, but it has been reported that some are actually spreading garbage around in the streets and littering big time. I have not witnessed this yet, but it does seem to be a problem. However, another problem is that the government just simply does not have the money to pay them a lot either because of the economy right now. It's quite interesting. So, that's that.
Lastly, you probably will not understand this at all, but it made me laugh and I'm putting it on here so that someday I will see it again and it will make me laugh again.. It is a tumblr webpage that has a bunch of memes about auxliares, which is my title/what I do. Click here if you want to try and make sense of it.
Have a great night! Buenas noches!
*Those are real world championship competitions, Google it.
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