CELTA, Day 2

Hi there; here I am, not but nearly dead! So. Yes. This will be a delirious post because your normally genteel host has a leak at the base of his skull through which the liquefied remnants of his brain are draining down his spine. Yes, it's that kind of exhaustion. Physically I'm not too damaged; I've been at the push-ups and crunches regularly, which is making me wiry, not big ("the point", I call it).

Okay...I'm going to stop trying, here. There's no point.

Today I taught for twenty minutes. Something about a story, and predicting what might happen based on given vocab. My class skews Mexican but includes a Bolivian, a Belorussian, a Mongolian, and a Zimbabwean. The ages range from 18 to 65. I can name them: David, Citlolla, Minerva, Humberto, Socorro, Emma, Zafarina, Blanca, Jara, Angelica, Juan, Humberto, Alejandra, Leonardo, Nina...and that is all, between the ones who came yesterday and the ones who came today.

I washed my camera with my laundry, so I hope you weren't expecting any more pretty pictures. I'll have to order one soon so that I can take it with me to Spain. Then, the pretty pictures will resume.

Anyway, they are an understanding class and dealt well with the students' (our) bumbling through lessons.

Who is my friend? My friend is Tammam, a Syrian whose Gmail is set to "German" so that he is forced to practice German all the time. He knows Arabic and English and German and perhaps a little Japanese. Tammam, he prints my shit out for me because my computer won't connect to the son-of-a-bitchin' printer at school. Such is life.

We learned Japanese numbers and times today.

I bought a bike for $140 from a dude on Craigslist. One block from Katie's its back brakes were gone. The tires were flat when I got the bike. I rode it the five miles down to school and on the way back, about 25 blocks from home, the small derailleur just popped off onto the street and the chain, it just hung there. I was parched when it happened and after walking that bastard 25 blocks back home, spittle had solidified all around my mouth and my hair was plastered in places to my head and generally full of Denver street dirt. When I got home I looked in the mirror and felt ashamed.

This class...is fucking hard. I wake up at six every day. I get on the bus around seven and get to school at eight. Classes start at 9:30, so I have that time to set up a lesson plan and have Tammam print it out. Tammam is one of the sharpest kids I've met in there, by which I mean he's at some Syrian apex of social and educational aptitude that makes sense to my sense of "who are possible friends here?"; likewise, he must smell it on me because we secretly appraise each others' work in the interest of pushing the other forward. The others in our group, they are on their own.

In thirty minutes, Savi will wake up in Marseilles. So will Lindsey Myers. I will talk to Savi even though I'm exhausted. That's how it works; we talk at night and in the morning because those are two times during which we are awake at the same time. I think Marseilles is ten hours different than Denver; I can't ever keep track. We're scanning plans for me to work illegally in Spain. Also, we're scanning ways to scam the Spanish authorities into thinking I've never entered the country when indeed I will have. It's complicated, but involves Gibraltar and England and bets on the attitudes of Spanish border patrol agents.

The lights in here just went off for no apparent reason. The power is on; the lights are off. Such is life.

This class is killing me; I know it. I can feel when some awful blade is sawing away at the sweet cord of life within me. One month, I keep telling myself; one month more.

Tomorrow I teach 12 students for forty minutes. My teaching time will be 1/6 complete. I must read now, before Savi wakes up. I have 26 minutes. I have to do well in order to see her. I will do well.

Oh, and these Koran-burners...small rant here...clearly don't understand that the Bible is written in Arabic, that Muslims serve in the US Military, that NO ONE CARES ABOUT FLORIDA ANYWAY YOU PATHETIC EEJITS and WHY DON'T YOU THROW YOURSELVES IN WHILE YOU'RE AT IT? PEOPLE THAT BURN BOOKS HATE KNOWLEDGE AND BY DINT OF THEIR INCENDIARY IGNORANCE OUGHT TO BE CAST INTO SOME OIL SLICK AND FRY ME UP SOME SHRIMP BURGERS, BUBBA, BECAUSE I LOVE GULF SHRIMP.


It is SO dry here, and I think I'm allergic to the school building.

The sammies I eat are delicious, and by that I mean they are some of the best eatin' this side of the Miss-a-sip.