a day in the life

my TEFL course is nearly over here. i am very excited about that as it has been exhausting and we have all succumbed to having afternoon naps like old people just to get through the long days. i thought in homage to the course i would write a day in the life about it.

i wake up at 7.30ish and at some point between then and 8am el lechero (the milkman, but that title makes him sound rather lecherous) arrives to bring the milk to the fridge. he has a very loud voice. he owns lots of cows, obviously, in a field nearby, rosa told me. he plays them classical music while he milks them, apparently it makes the milk taste better. i wouldn`t know as i have only had his (or rather the cows`) milk in coffee in case it tastes funny on its own as some foreign milk does. the milk in japan tasted like meat. as the weather is getting colder now, rosa told me el lechero is going to put little coats on the cows. i have a funny mental image of the becoated cows being milked by the very loud milkman whilst listening to mozart. anyway. i get up, have breakfast (orange juice, coffee, quesadilla or omelette or marmalade sandwich like paddington bear, fruit). then i cycle on la bicibura to school through the one way system, or sometimes if i`m feeling lazy and illegal, the wrong way through the one way system as it`s quicker. it isn`t quite as strict here when it comes to cycling the wrong way down one way streets as i think the mexican police have far bigger corruption and drugs, oops i mean fish, to fry.

we have lessons with juan from 9 on things like grammar / theories of language learning / language awareness, until 11ish when we go for a coffee break at the casa de pasteles next door. we drink coffee and sometimes eat cheesecake, then we either have more classes with juan or with savannah. then at 12.30 it is lesson planning time until 2ish when we leave for lunch. but sometimes the lesson planning turns a bit frantic if we have a hard topic or class, or if the lesson is early (earliest they start is 3.30). generally though, we go home and have a siesta, and lunch which i always hope is quesadillas and avacado - the avacados here are absolutely amazing. today i had meat with vegetables and tortillas. rosa keeps making jelly too, so last night my supper was bright green jelly and chunks of melon. i was still hungry, so made her make me a quesadilla which i ate while we chatted about the cows, and an english cement company here called cementos toltecos, and discussed that my surname means pepinillos.

after lunch i finish lesson planning, either at school, or in bed, depending on the topic. not sure what i mean by that, but anyway. then we teach at either 3.30, 5, 6.30 or 8. then we usually go to our local bar PM for a post teaching beer, and depending on our communal state of (usually fragile) mind, we either stay for one beer or 5. the main meal here is lunch, so i don`t have to be home for any dinner really. and now that we have discovered the most amazing hamburger stall in all of mexico, we usually stop there on our way home to soak up the beer. who would have thought a year ago i was a triathlete... on sunday night me and skye went for a hamburger, and got halfway up the block when we decided it was so good we wanted another one, so went back to get another. senor hamburguesa found this quite funny.

rosa has 2 little canaries at our house, i asked if we could name them shakira and nacho (thanks to jo molloy for the suggestion!), but this was shunned for the more macho names of carlitos and lucrecia. rosa was telling me she used to have a lot more birds in the past, i think she said 1,600 altogether, but i`m fairly sure my amateur spanish must be at fault on that particular fact because i don`t know how they would have fitted in the house.

last night i started reading el principito (the little prince) by st exupery in spanish, i bought it in peru and have been carrying it round with me all this time. yesterday had been very stressful and i had a craving for reading something totally escapist. it`s a good book to learn spanish with as it has pictures, and is for children.

so tomorrow we have our last day of lessons and teaching, thursday we have a grammar test in the morning and present our portfolio of work in the afternoon, then we do an hour tutoring a student one to one, then drink ourselves into a stupor in relief at it all being over. friday we have a graduation lunch and more drinking. we discussed buying big ball gowns for the occasion but this idea went off the boil in around week 2. plus there aren`t too many ball gown shops in ciudad guzman.

and then on saturday i go to la paz in baja california, mexico for a holiday with robert, hooray, then to guadalajara for the weekend. i have applied for 3 jobs so far, one has written back from tlaquepaque in guadalajara, so maybe i will puruse that one. sounds good and you get free accommodation.

fact of the day - in your whole life, you will communicate 95% by speaking, and only 5% by writing. when learning a language, or anything in fact, you retain only 35% of information presented orally, but 70% of that presented in written format.

and finally - a brief synopsis of last weekend - we went to a club near the lake called 446 as it was free whiskey until midnight. drank lots of free whiskey. got home at 4am a bit drunk. spent saturday in an ongoing dilemma of where to find a hamburger seeing as senor hamburguesa doesn`t open until dark. got an unsatisfactory hamburger, then went to the cinema on a bus to see the new bond film. had an ice cream but still wanted another hamburger. the bond film is good, filmed in chile, panama, and mexico. we didn`t fully understand the plot, but enjoyed it nonetheless. had another dilemma about whether or not we wanted to go out again, but didn`t in the end. sunday was spent shuffling around, tidying my room, eating tortillas, doing homework, riding my bike etc.

over and out.