Oh Ya, I Am Supposed to Fail Miserably

Teaching began about 4 weeks ago. That time has gone by very quickly; tests are scheduled for the week of October 6. It still feels like my first week teaching. And then I realized that what my professor in college told me was right, you come here with hopes and ideas of how this is going to work, and then you fail miserably. Lol. It actually made me feel better to remember what he said, "Oh ya, this is supposed to happen". So I emailed him to say that he was right (he has a doctorate for a reason). He quickly replied to me and reminded me of the second part of what he said, that after you fail, you change a few things and yourself, and start to make a difference. I'm not sure what part I'm at now, I know that I have failed thus far, but I have started to make some changes and I believe things will be getting better.

Part of me has fallen back into the stage where I am constantly thinking about American food, man that sounds good. A good beer would be nice too, although that will be strange too, because the beers here are a little bigger than half a liter. Someone's gonna hand me a 12oz beer and I'm going to be like, "What is that? Your sister's beer?" lol. I imagine that will soon pass again, most likely because there were some lovely people at home who have sent me some packages!!! Thank you, you have no idea how much I appreciate that. Another thing that keeps happening to me is that I temporarily forget how old I am and have to ask myself, "am I 25?" Then, I realize that I'll be 27 and I think, "Holy crap, when did that happen?” I've done this like 3 or 4 times.

Life is certainly slow here, but the days go quickly, especially the days I teach. I've taught some of the kids in my neighborhood to say my name instead of nassara. I asked them what their names where but I don't think they understood me. It's funny because they are actually pretty young kids that are just outside unsupervised, hanging out like it's no big deal, some sell food. I guess it isn't really a big deal here though, it's normal life.

I've also found that after a long day at school, it really makes me happy to "hey" the students. For those of you who do not understand what "heying" is, it is when someone is walking by or walking away, you simply yell, "hey" like you are talking to them and turn like you said nothing. I learned this trick from a previous job at a car dealer (thanks bill) and have found that it is universally funny. At least to me it is. It works because "hey" is still understood in French as an attention getter. But the main attention getter here is the "hiss" sound. It sounds the same as letting air out of a tire. That sound can call a taxi from at least a block away and/or street vendors selling anything. So that's fun to do too. It's the simple things that keep me entertained.