Teacher, Teacher!

I survived my first 'week' of school. I had a tour of the school on Wednesday and after that was finished I was sent off to sit in on a few classes. My first class was with 4 year olds and the one after that was with 5 and 6 year olds. I pretty much sat in a chair the whole time in the front of the room while the teachers conducted their classes. The next day I had 3 classes. This time I participated a little more. For the 4 year olds, I had to say parts of the body and they had to repeat them. Then we listened to and acted out a song similar to head, shoulders, knees and toes. During my class with the 5 and 6 year olds we attempted to teach them how to say "Hello" and ask someone's name. My final class was art class and I basically watched students cut pictures and was instructed to ask them to "please put their scissors and glue back in the box". Then I put a B on their pictures...for "Bueno". All of the students seem scared of me and never want to answer questions when I ask them. Also..they all call me teacher. Whenever they want something they yell "teeee-chair".

The whole situation is kind of frustrating in a way. I don't feel useful. Sure, I can say "fingers", "nose", "tummy", and "toes" a lot better than their teacher. And yes I knew how to tell the kids to put away their glue and scissors in English. But every time I speak, all of the little faces staring up at me clearly read "what the hell are you talking about?". And an art class? I know for a fact that there are other English classes going on during my "break". Why can't I be an assistant for those?

Last night we planned to go out to a bar. We had heard about a get together for all of the international students and language assistants living in Huelva. We thought we would hang out and drink at the apartment for a little bit and then head over to the bar. We left for the bar around midnight and didn't arrive to it until 1:30 in the morning. We walked around in circles and circles ALL over Huelva trying to find the bar. We know the city center very well but once we get outside of it we aren't very familiar with anything. The bars here stay open until 4 or 5am. We ended up leaving sometime around 3. Overall our night wasn't very successful but we did end up finding the hot spot in Huelva for night life.

The washer is all fixed up now and we bought some detergent. We started doing laundry yesterday. The clothesline that hangs into the courtyard of our apartment building is, and has been, broken since we moved in. We didn't really see this as a big problem. We just bought one of those portable drying racks and set it out on our little balcony. Our balcony hangs out to the front of the building. Yesterday we learned that our neighbors have been talking and apparently don't like that we dry our clothes on our balcony because it is feo. That's Spanish for ugly. So far, two of the neighbors have voiced their opinion. One lady told our maintenance man and the other lady told our roommate.

The maintenance man is coming next week to install a clothesline for us in the courtyard. To make our neighbors happy. Sorry you have to look at our ugly american clothes until Tuesday :)