Day 10: Bad Teacher vs. Good Teacher

I was rudely awoken by a rooster cockadoodledooing right in my ear. It was the most obnoxious ring tone I could find on my new phone and was reserved for the "OH SHIT YOU'RE SO LATE" alarm... but last night I had mixed up the real alarm and the late alarm times and this was my punishment. My alarm on my phone has a feature that makes you do math problems in order to shut it up - but at 7:30 am, with minimal hours of sleep, pissed off by this damn squawking, eyes still blurry and knowing full well this raucous noise had most certainly woken my roomie Abby up, too, I was in NO MOOD to do math problems. I was in the MOOD to violently murder this obnoxious rooster that had interrupted my peaceful slumber and that of my poor roomie, who didn't even have to wake up for another two hours! I fidgeted with the screen, but I was far too upset to know what to do and frantic to turn it off before Abby had no shot at going back to bed. So I tore the battery out of the phone and belly flopped back onto my pillow. UGH.

Needless to say, my day didn't really start off on the right side of the bed...

I sleep-walked to the bus stop, dozed off on the bus ride and mindlessly facebooked for my first period (which I have off on Wednesdays, that is) and had a full fledged mini-personal-crisis in which everything I had ever loved or had a passion for came under fire and I was filled with a churning sense of "whatamIdoinghere" and "thiswasmylastplan...ihavenobackupplanfml" and "studpidteachingandstupidlanguagesandismyblogboringorisitjustmeandwhyismybellysobloatedallthetime" and, scariest of all, "omgthisistherealworldandthisisreallife...wtfhaveigottenmyselfinto???"

As I walked to my first class, I glanced at my reflection in the window and said to myself, "Well, at least you're looking cute today. There's totally something to be proud of there, Sweet Cheeks." I was sure all I would want to do when I got in that classroom would be to pull a massive Cameron Diaz a la "Bad Teacher" and pull some dark sunglasses over my eyes, sneak a shot of strong liquor and tell the kids to watch a movie or something and not to bother me... but much to my surprise, their smiley little full-of-anticipation faces made me melt just a tiny bit. Who woulda guessed...!

My only slip up during that first class (well, one of them anyway) was when they were reviewing present tense in English and nobody could remember to use the 3rd person 's.' I marched up to the board and wrote down the THIRTEEN possible endings for Spanish present verbs and then wrote down the ONE viable option for regular English present verbs. I knew better than to open my mouth but oh how I wanted to shout "ARE YOU SERIOUS? I HAD TO MEMORIZE THIRTEEN ENDINGS FOR YOUR LANGUAGE WHEN I WAS YOUR AGE. YOU REALLY CAN'T TAKE THE TIME TO MEMORIZE ONE???" I went on a small harangue about it to the teacher, but either he didn't understand my ridiculously fast-paced English or he thought I was nuts, because he just looked at me and attempted a half smile and quickly went to the other side of the room to pretend to help students with their exercises. You win some, you lose some. Eh. (Ha.)

The rest of the day went much smoother and I was totally excited to have last period with Laura, as she's just great with the little 1st graders and makes them giggle and really understand what's going on and get really into it all. She's made me the official artist of the group and I get to draw them a new animal at the beginning of each class if they were good earlier in the day. Then she asks them to name the animal and holds a class vote on the first five names suggested. Today's animal? Lily the Sheep. Um, yeah... aDORable. ^_^

During the day I received an email back from the family I had contacted yesterday afternoon who was looking for an English tutor for their two children. They were very enthusiastic about my profile, they said, and wanted to meet me later this week. I have an unofficial interview set up with them for tomorrow after school! I'm excited and mostly nervous - I'm not sure I'm really qualified to teach their kids (but I'll try my darndest!) and I've never done a job interview in SPANISH (but it should be really interesting... and, if nothing else, good experience!). Serendipity in the making? We'll see. All I know is I could certainly use the bit of extra money and a nice thing to add to my resume! ;)

Anyway, after school I finally succeeded in opening a bank account (yippee!!), saw an ad for the school I work in at the mall (so cool!) and got new jewelery for my Monroe piercing (as I was offically informed today that it is in fact NOT congruent with the dress code - figured... sheesh) and, after much trial and error, figured out how to take the new one out and put it back in (I hope it doesn't close tomorrow! Eek! We shall see...). The evening was spent with my fajitas I made yesterday (omg yum), and chilling in front of the TV with my laptop and giggling with my roomies about our unique experiences from the day (Katie totally wins with the pic she brought home from the doctor... omg hahaha... but I feel bad publishing the story for the internet to read... perhaps another time - and with a good pseudonym!!). Finally, a nice, relaxing night at home with next to no stress. Ahhhh. :)

XOXO