Volunteering!
Quick update...
After kicking some ass on doing loads of Spanish homework on the weekend, I was brought down to earth in a spectacular crash by my teacher Mariella today, and my multitude of grammatical mistakes brought home that I have learned much, young apprentice, but I am not a Jedi yet.... but that is a problem for tomorrow morning, for now I feel like a glass of red wine!
In the interim, intrepid Aussie Joel and myself thought that since we are really really ridiculously good looking and intelligent to boot, it would be a great idea to go help out at a non-profit local school to teach some English to 10 year olds. After being led there by fellow student Terra, we got actually had a pretty good class, and tag-teamed them... some of the girls had some good basics down and they were actually well behaved. After the first hour we were brimming with confidence and had a strategy down to teach them some real stuff, like phrases with colours and objects...
And lo, once again the Big Guy struck us down in our pride with a new class of absolutely impossible six year olds, who all had bladder problems from the word go and, typically, there was the gang-leader-in-training complete with sweatsuit in the corner who, safely surrounded by his cronies, did not listen to a thing we had to say and did his best to keep the other kids distracted as well.
After one or two moments of numbing fear, kinda like when you are stacked up with four different steaks and a pizza in the restaurant and you completely forget which table you are serving, or when you´ve just forgotten your passport on the train which has already left for Madrid, we once again regrouped with the ultimate strategy: Let them scream the words out jointly at the top of their lungs, this ensures we at least have their attention for 15 second spurts, plus by the 3rd round we are mostly deaf and half oblivious anyway.
Feeling once more suitably virtuous, we eventually escaped (thank the Lord that the bell went five minutes early) and now, armed with some tips from more seasoned do-gooders that are doing this for more than a week, we are going to dive back into teacherdom later this week. Ey, the things we do....
Take care true believers!
Quick update...
After kicking some ass on doing loads of Spanish homework on the weekend, I was brought down to earth in a spectacular crash by my teacher Mariella today, and my multitude of grammatical mistakes brought home that I have learned much, young apprentice, but I am not a Jedi yet.... but that is a problem for tomorrow morning, for now I feel like a glass of red wine!
In the interim, intrepid Aussie Joel and myself thought that since we are really really ridiculously good looking and intelligent to boot, it would be a great idea to go help out at a non-profit local school to teach some English to 10 year olds. After being led there by fellow student Terra, we got actually had a pretty good class, and tag-teamed them... some of the girls had some good basics down and they were actually well behaved. After the first hour we were brimming with confidence and had a strategy down to teach them some real stuff, like phrases with colours and objects...
And lo, once again the Big Guy struck us down in our pride with a new class of absolutely impossible six year olds, who all had bladder problems from the word go and, typically, there was the gang-leader-in-training complete with sweatsuit in the corner who, safely surrounded by his cronies, did not listen to a thing we had to say and did his best to keep the other kids distracted as well.
After one or two moments of numbing fear, kinda like when you are stacked up with four different steaks and a pizza in the restaurant and you completely forget which table you are serving, or when you´ve just forgotten your passport on the train which has already left for Madrid, we once again regrouped with the ultimate strategy: Let them scream the words out jointly at the top of their lungs, this ensures we at least have their attention for 15 second spurts, plus by the 3rd round we are mostly deaf and half oblivious anyway.
Feeling once more suitably virtuous, we eventually escaped (thank the Lord that the bell went five minutes early) and now, armed with some tips from more seasoned do-gooders that are doing this for more than a week, we are going to dive back into teacherdom later this week. Ey, the things we do....
Take care true believers!
posted by Pieter G at 4:46 PM
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