Thursday 22 October 2015

Halloween Games and the Great Asturian Weather

Hola de nuevo!

 Now that my teaching has properly kicked off, I've been super busy this week which is why I'm a little later than usual with this post! I've loved it this week though, I thought I'd be a lot more stressed-out after a full-blown week of teaching, but I actually had a lot of fun! I'm one of those people who loves making lists and planning, so imagine my delight when I could not only plan the activities for 11 lessons, but rush in a teacher-ly fashion to and from the photocopier, printing and collecting various worksheets and seating plans! I know it sounds lame, but it was so satisfying picking up a huge stack of paper still warm from the printer, knowing that it was all entirely my own work and I was ready to go.
 Now of course, things didn't always run totally smoothly! Some of my classes are completely angelic, and a pleasure to talk to; they learn the words, they want to use them, and they try to speak it as best they can. Others...well, they seem to be training as apprentices for Satan. They talk over me when I try to help, and then stare incomprehensibly at me when I tell them in my most simplified English (which by the way, they've been learning since they were 4) the instructions for a task. It never occurred to me that I'd have to tell people off! I feel a complete fraud when I put on my best teacher's voice and say sternly "Sit down, be quiet and do the work. It often helps if you pick up your pen." But hey! Part of the learning curve, right? My teachers are all really lovely and help me as much as they can, so thankfully I haven't been in that situation too much! Mostly, this week has been hours of playing Halloween games and teaching useful, practical words like "Goblin" "Cauldron" and "Werewolf". 

The bar where the teachers and I have a coffee every day
 Something else relatively exciting that began this week was my first conversation class as an English conversation tutor! I have two appointments in a week at the moment, one with a really lovely lady who works as an English teacher outside of Oviedo, who I have the pleasure of meeting every Friday simply to chat to so she can practice and modernise her English, and the other is with the adorable 4-year-old son of one of the teachers at my school! Quite a contrast, since one is practically a native speaker, and the other has only just learned to speak his own language let alone another! But I had huge fun watching Peppa Pig for an hour, and by the end of the class, I am pleased to say he could, just like Peppa's brother George, say "DINOSAUR!" with great enthusiasm! :D I've been told there might also be others who want to try to arrange sessions with me or for their children, so possibly that'll be a thing by next week too!
Another thing that properly happened this week was the infamous rainy Asturian weather! The photo above obviously isn't representative of this, because luckily so far the weather has been beautiful! Everyone here tells me that October here is always guapo (a word which, in every other part of Spain can only be used for people, but here they use it for everything!!) but at the start of the week, it absolutely tipped it down. Cats and dogs, stair-rods, you name it, it was coming down, so much so that my ill-judged speedwalk to the bus stop one morning wearing my completely un-waterproof coat over my head, had to be stopped as I dashed into the nearest chemist and bought the first umbrella I could get my hands on! 
 I'll be continuing with my Halloween-themed lessons next week, but I'm quite looking forward to moving onto Guy Fawkes and Bonfire Night, since they obviously don't celebrate that here, so the next couple of weeks should be pretty good! Whew, that was a bit of a muddle of things, hope you are keeping up- I tend to write this the way I would say it, so I apologise if it's a tad hard to follow haha!

Hasta pronto! xxx

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