If you read the previous entry, I am here to inform you that my first classes were just as hectic and chaotic as could be expected. As I mentioned before, I met briefly with the people from my school on Monday and left confused as ever, not knowing who I was teaching, what I was teaching or even how many students I was teaching.

Showed up for work on Tuesday early to find out the answers to these questions and many of life´s other mysteries. Got the necessary information and planned my lessons. I had a 2:00PM class to teach and planned that lesson first. I was travelling to a company to teach there (Volkswagon Finance if anyone cares...can´t imagine why you would though). I get there and find out the class contains no one on my list of students and, to my chagrin, they are farther along in the book than I was told. As a result, they have already covered everything I planned in my lesson. Luckily, I was born with cat-like reflexes and an uncanny ability to adapt on the fly and managed to throw together a lesson on the simple past vs. present perfect tenses. Worked like a charm and that´s why they call me "The Teaching Superstar".

The second class was not as smooth...

I arrive back at the school and plan a lesson for my 5:30 class. I find out that it is 7 kids, all ages 11-14. For those that might not know, many Spanish kids are forced to attend English classes by their parents and many have no interest in actually learning the language. You can imagine how productive they are. Twice a week for 1.5 hours each time, they are forced to sit in a room and use a language they don´t want to learn. To make matters worse, our copy machine broke before class. I had no materials and basically had to "wing" an hour and a half lesson with these 7 kids. To top it all off, 4 of them are the chattiest 12 year old girls I have ever met. Unfortunately, it´s all in Spanish. Is corporal punishment legal in Spain?

We start class and introduce ourselves.

First question to them was, "How many of you are forced to come here by your parents"?

Every hand shoots up in the air.

Second question was "How many of you want to learn English?"

Silence.
You could hear a pin drop. I think I actually heard some crickets in the background.

Thought to myself, "Serves me right. I was the one with the big mouth that had to say I enjoyed working with kids." The funny thing is that all the English teachers I met here warned me about exactly this type of situation. I was like "ok." The whole time, thinking "eh, they just don´t like kids or can´t work with them. Maybe they have trouble, but I´ll be able to do it."

Guess the joke is on me. Now, all I am thinking was "FUCK!"