estoy malito

One week working with kids and I´m already sick. Not too sick or anything just a sore throat wanna sleep all day kind of sick. Luckily I have Fridays off work, so I got to sleep all day. I´ve watched the better part of a season of Dos Metros Abajo, i.e. Six Feet Under, and now as promised I´ll do the school spiel.

I work at a small public school in Pozuelo de Alarcón a town just west of Madrid. It used to be a sleepy little pueblo, but has grown a sprawling halo of really rich gated communities, corporate headquarters, and big box stores. I work in the part that used to be the sleepy little pueblo. The student body is probably about half immigrants from Morroco, Romania, Bulgaria and Latin America. There´s this one guy whose parents work for the UN in Sudan, "But for some reason I had to leave, I don´t really understand why." That just about broke my heart.

They are phasing in a bilingual program. Grades 1-4 have English and Science in theory entirely in English. I work mainly with the 1st and 4th grades, plus a couple of classes with the 5th and 6th. The 1st grade teacher, Eva, is a little intense. This is her first year working in the public schools, and with such young kids, and the discipline problems are driving her crazy (me too actually). She´s pretty pesimistic about it all, which makes it a little tough for me, but she´s a good teacher and we get along fine. Cristina teaches 4th grade and she´s maybe a little too laid back. For example, she´ll take five minutes to have a conversation with me about nothing too important while the kids run around the room. But who am I to critcize either of them, I just waltz in there 16 hours a week and after one week I´m sick. It´s challenging but rewarding.

I started giving some private lessons for a a neighborhood association run by a bunch of overbearing mother types. Right now it´s kind of a hassle. I thought we had agreed on the prices, but some of the parents want to bargain more. It´s not strictly about the money, at this point, I just feel like they´re trying to push me around and I don´t like that. I think I´m gonna tell them to take it leave it, if only I knew how to say that.