The first week of October is the first week of school in Spain and you know what that means...the Teaching Superstar has to crawl out of bed before 11am now. And he isn´t happy about it. And over the summer I learned a few new tricks.

This year I decided to suck it up and teach more hours, including relenting on my prior to 2pm teaching ban. What this means is that I now wake up at 6am on Tuesday and Thursday. Make no bones about it, it blows, but hopefully the extra money will be worth it. It also means that generally I wake up at 6am on Thursday and proceed to see the clock turn to 6am on Friday. Talk about a long day. But, like college, I just don´t do class on Friday so some things don´t change.

I also realized that I might have to take a class with children. As you may know, I am not a fan of teaching kids here. But, if you want a solid block of hours at night, the only classes generall available at 5.30pm are kids. So, this year I have some 12 and 13 year olds two days a week and some 16 year olds the other two days. I finally figured out how to get the upper hand. On Tuesday, I walked into my first class with the 16 year olds and figured I would try a trick from the movies. They always say that when you go to prison, you have to find the weakest fish on your first day and lay the smack down. After that, no one wants to fuck with you and they give you some respect. You can shower safely. Pee standing up if you want. Eat your own lunch, etc...you get the idea. So, after about 10 minutes I found my fish. 3 minutes after savagely beating Camilla to the stunned amazement of the other 7 students I had won my first battle. We´ll see what happens next...