School wise, Wednesday is my easy day. The day starts with 11th grade (<3), break, Alejandro's 5th grade, break, Laura's 1st grade (<3), done. I teach for a grand total of three hours and get my two favorite classes! So awesome.
The only monumental moments of the day were:
1) When one of my favorites in 11th grade drew his interpretation of "Russian Unicorn"!!!
2) When I told one of the 5th grade girls off for only ever speaking Spanish. :)
3) Hector bought me a Coke - just because! ^_^
After school today I had Picasso, as he'd had an appointment on Monday and had to reschedule. Class with him wasn't really so successful, and I think I am going to have to be a bit more creative with how I get him motivated, but I have to remember it is all a process and one cannot be expected to work miracles in just one hour a week.
I went straight from his house to the train, made a pitstop at Starbucks to refuel, and then showed up at Patty's door RIGHT on time. :) Awesome. Patty had made some adorable spread sheets of vocabulary since the night before and proudly showed them to me. She'd found little graphics for each word and it was absolutely adorable! Working with her continues to be amazing. At first I was scared I wouldn't have enough material to cover three hour over a two day period, but it turns out that we go over one concept, and then practice, and then from there she has lots of specific questions I can answer, and we get deeper and deeper into things. Her questions are all very intelligent and I feel so happy that my love of English linguistics and the history of the language are finally paying off and actually have turned into something that can help others!
My first day with her I worried I would be no more useful than a normal textbook - I don't really know all the intricate rules to my own language, nor in what order to teach it all, or really what to specifically teach at all. I could teach a Spanish class just find, because I studied it myself, but English is a little trickier! But at this point, I'm starting to see just how useful I can be. After five months of teaching and listening to Spanish speakers use English at varying levels, I know what is difficult for Spanish speakers and what I can nip in the bud from the beginning to set somebody apart from all the others and explain it in a way that sticks. It's incredible to realize I have a surprisingly vast knowledge about my own language that can come in handy for teaching it. I don't just tell a non native speaker they are wrong - I tell them what their mistake literally translates to in English, followed by a historical, phonological or other linguistic reason for the correct answer. ^_^
After my lesson with her, I went to a bar a few metro stops away to meet some Couchsurfing guests of his. Weeks before, I'd been there when he'd received their request and I'd told him to accept it, even though it was during the week. I was curious to see if I'd given him the right advice, and he'd invited me out to a bar to meet them.
As it turned out, the late 20-something married couple were pretty cool. :) They were from Poland, but had been living in England for six years when they got the idea a year ago to take six months to just travel South America. They had flown to Madrid for a few days and to get a cheaper flight and were leaving tomorrow for Colombia. They asked me all about my trips to Argentina and Brazil and were clearly way excited for their journey ahead of them. :) Brave, travely type people are just so cool! Clearly a little crazy, but cool.
But of course the most interesting part of the day came much later. I honestly wasn't expecting it, but all of a sudden the "What exactly are you expecting from me?" question popped into the air. Hello, non-sequitur! I was caught completely off guard, so Debate Chelsea took over and I immediately threw the question right back like a BAMF - bahaha! >_<
I mean... okay... like, how is a girl supposed to respond to that question? "I expect relatively little of you because you are of the male gender"? Or, maybe, "I am pretty sure this is a trick question to gauge what the minimum amount of required attention it will take from this point forward to keep me just interested enough not to write you off is"?
Is this question ever asked sincerely, or are there always ulterior motives? In my experience, it is a test (not that the person asking consciously realizes it, of course) and there are definitive correct answers and incorrect answers...
Incorrect answer: "What do I expect from you? I have no idea. I try really hard to live without expectations. But what would I like from you? To feel appreciated and adored. To talk every day or two, to see each other every week or two, to go on mini adventures around the city every once in awhile. To have somebody I look forward to being silly and myself with, and for you to be happy and grateful I'm a part of your life. To be helpful whenever I can be, and in return feel supported in the things that matter most to me."
Correct answer: "I don't expect anything from you. You do whatever you want," said in an Emma Stonesque uber aloof and self-confident tone.
I went with the second response, and in turn was actually told I was cold! I couldn't help but laugh - I mean, duh. But it's not that I am cold, it's that I feel like it's another level on a video game that I have to beat, and being upfront is the only sure way to lose a life and go back to start. Typing this now, I realize how immature that sounds - but the thing is, I still feel like I'm correct.
I feel like the general MO of every girly girl in the world is to be crazy possessive and demanding - two qualities that I wish never, ever to possess again. And so I react by trying to be as polar opposite as humanly possible. Perhaps there is a more sane way of going a out it, but if there is, I have no clue what it would be.
My other issue is believing that every person of the male gender in the whole world has absolutely no feelings. None. In my personal experience, it's always been more the girls who lack sensible emotions as compared to the guys... But good luck making that empirical evidence stick in my brain. In my self constructed fantasy land, the only thing guys care about is seeing how many girls they can sleep with. That's it. Maybe this belief comes from having listened to B for two years bragging and bragging about his many conquests. But it's certainly not fair to use one guy to generalize about half the human population. Plus, I know firsthand that B is plenty emotional, he just is selective about to whom and how often he shows it.
I guess I really am going off my experience with him, though, as it's my only guy experience in the past five years. I remember quite vividly the night he asked me the, "What do you expect from me?" question and I remember his long speech about how he was abroad to have fun and didn't want anything serious with anybody, even though he really liked me, but he just wanted to meet lots of people and have a good time with everybody in a really casual way. I could tell he'd used the speech on about a million girls before me, and I could tell he was waiting for a certain reaction of desperation or disappointment or SOMETHING, but if there's one thing I'm not, it's being like other girls. And so I nodded, chipper as could be, and smiled. "Cool!" was my whole response to his fifteen minute speech. His shock was apparent, and he tried to explain himself again, as if thinking I must not have understood, but I just grinned and told him I got it and no problem.
My cool, calm, and collected nature and self-confidence was exactly what kept him so interested in me, even when he had more intelligent and more attractive girls begging to be his girlfriend. My calculated words and actions paid off, but I always felt a little like I'd "won" his affections based off my cunning. Had I not tried so hard, would he have still felt the same way in the end? I was only 20 at the time... And I'm happy to report I think I'm growing out of that phase of seeing relationships as a challenge I must beat and conquer. I don't want to have to feel like I need to work to win somebody's affection... by telling people what I think they want to hear, keeping my thoughts to myself when I'm worried they might make me too vulnerable, spending buckets of time just to write back a perfect text or a message. It's all so silly.
I rather be adored for just being effortlessly me.
But the most real part of the whole thing was after I thought the conversation was over and out of nowhere he turned around so he wasn't facing me and told me in a softer voice, "You know, I'm not always really that self-confident. Sometimes I have no idea what to say or do."
My first thought was "Shit, me either, dude. Glad I'm not the only one." And that was quickly followed by the jarring realization that this guy that I've been hanging out with for a month is actually really cool. ;) I knew he was a good dancer, had impressive knowledge of cute cafes and bars around Madrid, made me feel comfortable enough to practice Spanish around and had a weird obsession with his Yoda hoodie (Bahaha)... but (as blunt as I'm sure this sounds), I couldn't ever quite ascertain how much depth the guy had until that moment, and the few other comments that came after.
A pleasant perspective-changing way to end the day. :) Haha...
XOXO
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