donde esta mi casa?

day one of TEFL course. my mexican "mother" rosa elia walked me to school, talking at me in spanish all the way, which is actually proving very useful, i`m definitely becoming slightly better at understanding her and other mexicans. they don`t even bother trying to speak slowly, which is good for your brain to get used to that speed of trying to understand things.

did some general admin at the school and paid for the course - no going back now... met my fellow students, there`s me, skye and jayne (and a mysterious 4th one who will appear tomorrow, rumour has it). skye is 20, from beaconsfield, jayne is 50, from canada. they are both really nice and we get on very well and are all slightly scared at what we have let ourselves in for. jayne only booked her ticket on friday and left on saturday from canada, and skye has been living in mexico for a while and speaks really good spanish. i will use her as my translator. our teacher is called juan, he is i don`t know how old, but older than us, he wears glasses and i noticed they got more wonky as the day went on. he is the main tefl trainer at the school and has tons of experience, he is both american and mexican, and his father lived or was from kingston upon hull, east yorkshire. juan studied in leeds and london when younger, he preferred london, but liked the fish and chips from yorkshire. his approach to teaching is very humanistic and learner-centred, very relaxed and authoritative at the same time. a good role model. we had a faux french lesson to remind us what it is like to be a foreign language learner. actually i found his french accent somewhat dubious, mais qui suis-je a commentar?

the first rule he then taught us is that we are not to teach grammar under any circumstances. he gave as a metaphor that if you wanted to learn the piano, what good would it do you to know how many white and black keys there were, and what wood the piano is made from, and what different styles of piano there were, and what the history of the piano was, and how the hammers hit the strings to produce a sound. though i agree that we wouldn`t want to put people off with an overload of grammar, surely it enhances your understanding and learning to some extent. i gave him the metaphor (not metaphor in fact but real life experience) that as an amateur cello learner, i have found it very useful to know exactly how the sound is produces as this informs my making a nicer sound on the instrument. i think he thinks i`m some sort of grammar purist enthusiast now, which i slightly am (thanks to latin). anyway the conclusion was that we, as potential teachers, need to know grammar inside out but not force feed it, rather wait for students to ask specific questions about it. turns out also that most latin american english learners will not want to learn english to native speaker level, and it will be mainly for the purposes of getting better paid jobs - by 2010 65% of jobs in mexico will require english, and by 2025 90% will. interesting statistics, and at the moment around 80% of jobs in places like india already require it. so that answers my question of yesterday as to whether they will want to use their english to be reading shakespeare and chaucer - apparently not. unbelievable. in my lessons that is all they will be doing, that and grammar drills, whilst listening to baroque cello music.

after morning classes, we were supposed to return to our relative houses for lunch. which jayne did, as she knew where her house was. me and skye however walked round in circles, wishing we had paid more attention to the route our mothers took us on that morning. we had to decide whether to spend the remaining lunch hour time walking in circles, or admit defeat and go for tacos. given that we only knew our house numbers, not the street or direction, we went for tacos. juan reappeared to teach us some more but when we explained our ridiculous predicament - that we didn`t know where we lived - he took us to his house and made some phone calls and we were succesfully re-housed. this town is quite small, but the problem is it is a grid based town, so to me all the sides of the central square look the same, and there are 2 churches on opposite sides - i mean how confusing do you want to be? it is not a big town, population around 100,000. skye at least had the excuse that she had only arrived this morning and only had the address of her house, but i have no excuse except of course that the part of my brain that deals with complex instructions and remembering directions was removed by aliens when i was little.

anyway, visiting juan`s house was fun as it turns out he has a pool, a tennis court, a trampoline, a gym (not in his house but in the complex he lives in), and we can use these facilities as much as we like. which won`t be much given the horrendous timetable we were given this morning for our course.. so tomorrow me and jayne are going for a pre-grammar swim, rosa is going to send me off with a sandwich and banana for after the swim as we agreed it would be dangerous to swim after a big breakfast. and today`s breakfast was big, it was 2 quesadillas, papaya, refried beans, cheese and lots of really nice coffee and orange juice. apparently in mexico when you say no thanks to the offer of more food they take it to mean yes please, but i doubt she had any more food to offer me after all this. rosa makes her own cheese in the mornings, and also make and/or mends clothes. she is very well dressed and smart and well presented. last night we walked to the church, she goes to mass there every sunday night at 7pm. she had invited me to mass but i was unsure what this would involve, so i explained i`m not catholic, she said that was fine and that god was universal didn`t i think. yes i said. so instead i wandered around the town while she was at church, there was lots of candy floss stalls and little shops open and cars honking their horns, and little flags (bunting i suppose is the correct term) as they have had a week of fiestas this last week - quel surprise, a mexican town having a week of fiestas, they probably even have fiestas to celebrate it not being a fiesta day in mexico. then i peered into the church and it was beautiful so i may convert to catholicism and go to mass next sunday - or are you allowed to go to mass as a non practising quasi buddhist with slightly christian beliefs but who hasn`t quite decided but likes the gold and silver and incense burning?

so after the re-housing phone calls, skye got picked up by her mother, and rosa came to meet me and jayne. rosa and juan had a really funny conversation about what had happened, i wasn`t sure if it was a proper argument but i checked with her later and it was all in good faith and funny. i would`ve felt bad if they`d fallen out over me getting lost. then we went spontaneously shopping, i bought some very nice new trainers as i had thrown away my previous ones as they became so disgusting. slight shame as they were the ones that cycled me across the andes 2 years ago, but i think you can`t be too sentimental about nike trainers. when we showed the people in the trainer shop juan`s business card, we got a 15% discount - he`s clearly a useful friend/teacher to have. i also bought a mobile phone - for the massive price of 15 pounds - that includes sim card with 100 pesos of time on it (100 pesos is around 5 pounds, which makes the phone 10 pounds). very exciting. this means, blog readers, that you can now text or phone me, and it will cost me nothing, but you loads! what an offer, irresistable! el numero is 001-341-114-7987. though so far robert has tried to ring me and it didn`t work, so perhaps it`s not that straightforward, i will investigate tomorrow and update.

after this me and jayne walked home, her house is en route to mine, and her sense of direction is way better so it seemed a clever option to stick with her. i met her mother and had a tour of their house - much bigger and more modern than mine, on 2 floors, has internet and great view of one of the 2 confusing churches. she made 200 almond biscuits this morning, i tried one, they were amazing - that is obviously how she built her empire.

rosa is meeting me soon to march me home - am only100metres from the house, but obviously can`t be trusted, so i better go. blogs may get shorter as tefl days get longer and my brain gets more tired.

hasta luego x