6:35 a.m. – Woken up by my Spanish roommate’s yoga music. Om.
6:50 a.m. – Facebook, Gmail, Twitter. The Breakfast of Champions.
7:32 a.m. – Daily walk from my apartment to the metro.
7:43 a.m. – There are two cute girls on the metro when I board. They’re interested in passes to Kapital (the nightclub where I work). Feeling good.
7:58 a.m. – At Moncloa station, I board bus 681 toward Alpedrete, the town where my school is. David, the bus driver and a friend of mine, greets me warmly with the only English phrase he knows: “Get the %&$* outta here!”
8:10 a.m. – Vocab practice with David and a lady who always sits up front; I ask them to define words in the newspaper that I don’t know, and they make fun of me.
8:40 a.m. – We arrive in Alpedrete, a small town at the base of a mountain range, where my school is.
8:42 a.m. – At the gas station mart across from school, I purchase trail mix. Second Breakfast of Champions.
9:00 a.m. – English class with second grade Class B.
9:03 a.m. – The class welcomes 7-year-old Dana back from Bulgaria, where she spent Christmas. She tells us that Santa Claus stops there on December 22, three days ahead of the rest of us. “He’s gotta’ start somewhere,” I say.
9:05 a.m. – Paloma, one of the two teachers I work with, makes her daily announcement that it’s time to change the date. A different student does it each day, with me asking, “What day is today?” and “How do we spell ‘Wednesday’?” and “What’s the date?” “No, not ‘twenty-thirst,’ ‘twenty-third.'” I ask them what the weather’s like, and then they have to help me write the whole date on the blackboard. Early in the year I had the idea of writing the day of the week in bubble letters, and the next day in some other strange font. This backfired: I now have to come up with something original every day.
9:08 a.m. – We award the Elmo hat to one lucky student. This is a new tradition in class, my mom’s idea. She saw my fuzzy Elmo baseball cap at home and told me to present it to the student who best speaks English each day.
A couple minutes before, Paloma had the Elmo hat on her head. Paula, in some ways the teacher’s pet, tells her, “Paloma, are you very beautiful in the hat of Elmo.” Always on the job, I correct her: “Paloma, you look very beautiful in the Elmo hat.” Paloma smiles. We have two teacher’s pets today.
9:12 a.m. – We ask the kids to tell us, “When do we have science class? English? At what time?” Some pick it up quicker than others.
9:20 a.m. – Reading exercises.
9:50 a.m. – The computer isn’t working (this happens at least once a week), so I hunt in the library for a book to read them.
10:00 a.m. – Reading of Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin, illustrated by Betsy Lewin. A charming story about cows who have a typewriter and go on strike against Farmer Brown because he won’t buy them electric blankets. Too bad Ignacio (aka Nacho) has to miss it because he’s misbehaving. I ask a student what a hen is and she points to a cow’s butt. The whole world recites, “Click, clack, moo!” and has fun. Except poor Nacho.
10:30 a.m. – Remember how exciting it was when the teacher re-arranged seating assignments and you had new friends to sit next to? Remember how much you hated getting put next to the smelly kid? Well, some things never change.
10:55 a.m. – We give out stickers to the kids who spoke English well during class. Five stickers at the end of the week earns you a diploma.
11:00 a.m. – Recess! Hallelujah!
11:03 a.m. – Every morning, while the kids have recess, the professors gather in the lunch room and have a snack and coffee or juice, on the house. Third Breakfast of Champions.
11:05 a.m. – Tebow Time. My colleague and good friend JuanJo asks me for the latest update on the Tim Tebow saga, which he says has made its way into Spanish news reports. I fill him in on Tebow’s season and previewed the matchup between the Broncos and the Patriots. Then we discussed Ricky Rubio’s prospects for success in the NBA, how awesome Pau Gasol is, and how much of a ballhog (“chupón”) Kobe Bryant is.
11:30 a.m. – Class with first-graders. Six-year-old Mónica gives me a Mickey Mouse pen that she brought back from Disneyland Paris. She says her family drove there in a car and that Mickey Mouse kissed her brother.
11:42 a.m. – Trying to get them to differentiate between “bear” and “bird,” which often come out sounding the same.
11:49 a.m. – Teacher: “Who is making that noise?”
Five students, in unison: “Diego!”
11:56 a.m. – Cristián and Adhara are pretending to punch each other.
11:58 a.m. – We ask them what a peacock is. I joke with Maria Jose, the first-grade teacher, about the Spanish for peacock, which translates to “royal turkey.”
12:06 p.m. – Worksheet time. In the background, I put on Don McLean’s song “Vincent.” Most of the class complains.
12:16 p.m. – Worksheet correction. Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Lookin’ Out My Back Door.” Kids like this one.
12:29 p.m. – Speech about how they can’t cheat and/or copy off their neighbors. Not received well.
12:30 p.m. – Two-hour lunch break commences. Yes, you read that correctly.
12:40 p.m. – The Mickey Mouse pen has already stopped writing.
12:42 p.m. – Private English conversation class with Charo, one of the teacher’s who is a greenhorn English student. We watch YouTube videos of the ABC song, the Days of the Week song, and the Months of the Year song. You know the tunes.
1:06 p.m. – Charo tells me to get off Facebook and teach her some more.
1:38 p.m. – Lunch and laughs in the school dining room. All-you-can-eat and tasty. Salad, a type of Spanish soup, two types of meat dishes, bread, dessert – nothing is safe with me around.
2:03 p.m. – Seconds.
2:15 p.m. – When Nature calls …
2:24 p.m. – Leaving bathroom, a teacher named Jesus asks me, “¿Qué tal?” (“How’s it going?”)
To which I reply, “Más ligero.” (“Lighter.”)
It would appear that working around children hasn’t made me any more mature.
2:34 p.m. – Half of second grade class B are out of their seats, and the floor under Sergio’s desk looks like the inside of a paper shredder. Paloma scolds them for, well, acting like children. Two kids lose recess tomorrow.
2:41 p.m. – While I’m trying in vain to draw vertebrae on the board, one of the students points out that we have an actual skeleton in the class. One skeleton, and one dummy.
2:46 p.m. – “What’s your favorite food?” “My favorite food is …”
2:53 p.m. – Nerea likes cheese and hot dog pizza.
2:54 p.m. – Nacho loses his Star Wars storm trooper action figure until the end of the week. Tough day for Nacho.
3:02 p.m. – Paloma takes Lara to the nurse with a stomach ache. I try to preserve order in the classroom. Chaos prevails.
3:12 p.m. – Afternoon awarding of The Elmo Hat. Congrats to Naila and Paula.
3:20 p.m. – Changing the date in second grade class A.
Student: “Why do all the names of the days end in ‘d-a-y’?”
Smart-alec Sam: “Why does a dog sniff your butt?”
Class confused.
“Why not?”
4:00 p.m. – Saved by the bell!
4:05 p.m. – More Facebook (I swear to Addicted I’m not God) and prep for after-school classes.
5:03 p.m. – En route to first after-school class with three girls, ages 6-9, and their father. The girls don’t say hi to me. Never do. “Nice to see you guys, too,” I tell them. The looks on their faces say, “Shut your face, English Devil!”
5:10 p.m. – After downing some coffee and chocolate, class starts. One of the three girls does her work brilliantly, one more or less cooperates, and the third refuses to do anything but draw insulting caricatures of Yours Truly.
5:50 p.m. – Near the end of class, I cave in to their demands, and we play Simon Says. Simon tells me to pick my nose and eat my boogers.
I have delicious boogers.
6:12 p.m. – Dinero. Moolah. Cash money.
6:16 p.m. – Waiting for the bus back to Madrid. It is not warm out.
7:13 p.m. – On the metro to my last class. Madrid has one of the best metros (and, in general, public transportation systems) in the world. But, to borrow a Yogi Berra line, nobody rides it anymore – it’s too crowded.
7:30 p.m. – Need $1.40 (except make that a euro sign) to buy my favorite salmon sandwich in Atocha Renfe metro station. I have $1.39 … and I remember telling the gas station dude to keep the one cent of change when I bought trail mix in the morning. Beat.
7:40 p.m. – I plop onto the couch at my last lesson.
7:40:30 p.m. – Attacked by a pair of dachshunds, Berta and Edi (Eddie).
8:40 p.m. – Dying here. But almost done.
8:45 p.m. – Antonio (aka Cuki) had to read a story about the band Boston and their song, “Rock and Roll Band,” for class. No joke.
9:01 p.m. – Antonio asks me what I did today.
So I teach him a useful English phrase: “Funny you should ask.”
9:10 p.m. – Class over. More dinero. I give Antonio our customary, end-of-class fist pound and head out.
Hasta mañana.
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