lunes, abril 04, 2005

 

brown soul

a long, hard day. work weasels its way home. yadda yadda yadda.

morning duty is the bane of my existence. it's one thing to have it monday mornings, but it's quite another for it to be on waffle/pancake days. the smell of syrup and children makes me nauseous, and there's nothing sicker than sticky fingers and open-mouth chewing than today's winner who ate his waffles and syrup with a tin of beefaroni. i wanted to retch right then and there.

on the upside, monday mornings go by pretty quickly. we review our ten new spelling words (amazing how that literally takes half an hour, but since it's also some serious word study i'm fine with it) and go to the library, so we've only got like 45 minutes to do everything else for lg. arts. this afternoon i prepped the shit out of my kids for the lesson i'm doing for my observation, only to find out after school that there was a scheduling mistake and it's actually on wednesday. oh well, one more day to practice... and to kick things up a notch, my mentor next door is gonna watch me teach tomorrow's science lesson and give me feedback about how to improve for the observation. hopefully everything will turn up roses.

i stayed after school for 3.5 hours. my mentor and i discussed stuff for about an hour and then i finally got my writing centers together. they aren't anywhere near complete yet, but at least they're usable now. while i was going lamination and paper cutting crazy, one of my favorite co-workers came into the lounge. after a bit of chatting she asked if she could observe me sometime after TAKS madness is over. i checked to see if she knew spanish; she said no, so i gave her an emphatic thumbs-up to the observation... i get pretty self-conscious about my spanish in front of native speakers... i learned everything i know in college and when i spent the summer in méxico, so i make plenty of silly mistakes (my kids were particularly amused when i confused "ojo" and "oso", "dedo" and "dado"), translate very literally at times, and occasionally assume cognates and use obviously unacademic tex-mex (i use the verb "checar" and sometimes say "debes de" but have never and will never use "parquear", "carpeta" for anything other than a folder, and add the "s" to the end of 2nd person singular preterite verbs... like "dijistes"). anyway, point being i'm fine with non-spanish speakers watching me do my thing. this co-worker tried to impress me by saying the few spanish phrases she knew, and i was appropriately (and playfully) impressed. when i proclaimed that one such phrase made her sound like a native speaker, she pounded her fist on her chest and proclaimed she has a brown soul. this is a fifty-something white lady from the east coast talking. i love how i bring out the brown in people =)

Comments:
¿No que no lo hacía? Here is my blog.
http://siemprealascarreras.blogspot.com
ME
 
I had no idea that you didn't learn Spanish until you were older. That is so awesome! You're motivating me to improve my own Spanish skills. Hopefully an old (29 year old) dog can learn new tricks after all!

Oh, and I read that Dave Eggers book too. I loved it as well, though I wanted to edit some things out (I can't help it; I used to work as an editor). I loved his sense of humor.
 
Ohhhhh...I am still reeling from the waffles with tin of beefaroni. Siiiiiick! I hate morning duty too, but mine's not that bad!
 
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