la bicibura

so i hope you are all as happy as we are here about obama winning. quel landslide too. we were having a post-tefl course beer (much needed by 9pm) in the bar on our way home, and a picture of obama and mccain flashed up with the word ganador under obama. winner. amazing. am now sitting waiting for the world to change, and hoping he doesn`t get assassinated straightaway. after that on the news was a report about the vice president (or one of the ministers, i couldn`t figure it out) here dying in a strange plane crash. i think he`s the drug minister actually and was on his way from a drug conference, so there are the usual conspiracy theories flying around (pardon the pun). so that`s not good news.

tonight we teach our 4th lesson of the course, me and skye are teaching a basic1 class about to be, and prepositions and the difference between a and the. all very easy, but once you`re actually standing there trying to explain it it becomes the hardest thing in the world. i know i know most of the grammar etc, but conveying it to foreigners is a totally different story. in general it has gone ok so far, each lesson seems to have improved for me in some way or other, the students are really responsive and well behaved and welcoming - it must be weird for them having their normal lessons interrupted for us to practise on them. so far i have taught the present continuous to a basic4 class, this went well, i had 5 mins left at the end so told them some things about england. someone asked me where liverpool was and i didn`t know, they had to show me in the end as somebody in the class knew.... ha ha. i also explained that although wales and whales sound the same, there are no whales in wales. and the day before that i taught there is and there are to a basic2 class, they were describing that there were some chairs in the kitchen, but one girl said chicken instead of kitchen, which resulted in hilarity. which was good as my objective for that lesson had to be to make things more humorous and fun.

today i washed my bike and went on a ride to the lake just now as the sun was setting. lovely view of the dead volcano and the pink clouds. there is a live volcano too, but you are not allowed up it, thank god (see previous volcano story from guatemala). it once erupted on ash wednesday, and a load of ash went up into the sky. what a sign. i think it`s last eruption of any note was in 2003.

i am still eating like a big fat mexican, for breakfast i get an omelette with ham and cheese, a load of tomatoes and onions, refried beans, a plate of papaya, a coffee, and an orange juice. then for lunch i have for example soup made of pasta and meat, followed by meat or stuffed peppers, or potato and cheese cakes etc. all very nice, and all with a non stop supply of tortillas. sometimes followed by strawberrys. when i get in at night around 10ish, rosa (my mother) immediately asks if i want a coffee and some food.

rosa has lived in her house for the last 50 years. the other day she decided to swap her bedroom with her studio (where she does sewing and makes cheese), so there were some workmen in painting the rooms and shuffling furniture around. they were meant to come to work on the saturday but didn`t turn up, seems that is a feature of workmen worldwide. rosa calls my bike a bicibura, which is a combination of bicicletta (bike) and burra (donkey), i think as some sort of comment that bikes have replaced donkeys or something. anyway it is always very funny when we refer to it as la bicibura, though i`m not fully sure i get the joke. i have now met the other lodger, eduardo, who is studying to be a primary school teacher at the university here, he lives here monday to friday and goes home to colima for the weekend. i spoke to him a bit in spanish and he spoke back to me in england, which is quite surreal.

the english language has 485,000 words, and spanish 675,000. i feel slightly short-changed. juan said it is because of the fact that spanish is a language with declensions. the average person`s vocabulary is 3000 words, and the more educated you are the more you know, and also you have a much larger passive vocabulary (ie words you can understand but wouldn`t necessarily use in most of your speech). i told him i think my spanish is becoming worse, but he said it is because i am becoming more aware of my limitations in it. the best way to learn a language in terms of retaining information and new vocabulary is by reading, so i bought the newspaper today and have been carrying it round with me in my bag all day, next to my spanish dictionary. i think this technique of carrying the words around with me will also work.

on friday we have to research job opportunities etc for when we finish the course (in just over 2 weeks, crazy).. apparently schools hire in early january and early august for the new terms, so i`m not quite sure what i´ll do. if anyone has a lot of money lying around that they don`t have any use for, i can send you my bank details.

i`m going to get an ice cream now. we are all trying to stop smoking, so this is my replacement therapy. i was supposed to meet skye and jayne in the square this morning for our first training session of our new fitness regime, but i accidentally set my alarm for 6.30pm oops. manaña manaña.

over and out. happy bonfire night. they don`t celebrate it here. x