7:55a.m.

He's at the door to the stairs at the same time as me, so I decide we're walking together and he seems to not mind terribly. We make conversation, which leads to:

"Well, it's Monday. There's still time for that to change."

He and I both pause, and I can feel a lot of math happening, between the two of us.

"It's Tuesday," he finally tells me.

"It's Tuesday," I reply.

Still, he walks with me the rest of the way to our first class, so it's not so terrible.


Class is...frustrating. One of my group members doesn't listen well, so he misses Profesora giving examples on the "subjunctive versus infinitive" activity, which is already kind of challenging to wrap our minds around. Most of the class bombs the answering portion, and our group--naturally--is dead last. I'm the only one who gets what we're doing in the group--which he admits, after fighting me on changing a totally irrelevant verb--so I go to read and I just want to pee myself and cry, because this professor is intense and takes wrong answers personally.

I do not want to be the victim of her wrath, so I read carefully.

After giving my subjunctive response, I glance around the room to feel for a mood, and a familiar face is staring back. He gives a smile that reads, "Good, keep going," so I read the infinitive response and she just says "Bueno" and moves on like I'm not going to need a pacemaker to survive this semester.

Cute, encouraging men who smile, and intense professors.

At the end of class, we're all packing up when she tells us that we had homework and not one of us turned it in (I wonder why), so some people fumble around in their backpacks, looking for homework that they didn't do. Meanwhile, one of my classmates is scuttling across the room with the guiltiest smile I have ever seen plastered across her face. She looks like she's trying to smile her way out of a shooting gallery. By the time I manage to escape the room without Profesora seeing, tears are welling up in my eyes, I want to laugh so badly.

In my second class, I realize that the homework I thought was due today is written up on the board for next class. My heart stops, further proving my earlier point about the pacemaker, and I rush to check the syllabus.

There was no homework.

I learned an entire section on my own in order to do the homework.

This is very good.

The entire class, I know all the answers. Are there more phonemes than phones? Nope. What's an example of a minimal pair? "Perro" and "pero." Oh, that's a great example? Awesome. I certainly didn't remember seeing it on a worksheet you created.

I even told the same joke she did, to my group, five minutes before she had the chance to tell it--this is just a teaching thing, though; students new to Spanish don't do well with the sound of the "�" so they tend to (GET LAZY AND) pronounce it like a normal n. This is a problem because you express age by saying, "I have ____ years," or "Tengo _____ a�os." So, say you're eighteen. Tengo 18 anos. I'm eighteen, right? Same diff? Anos = a�os?

Close but no cigar.

You have eighteen assholes.

Every time I think about this, I laugh. Even though I told the joke five minutes prior, hearing her say it makes me laugh all over again. I'm laughing writing this, thinking about all the students I've tutored who have admitted to having nearly twenty anuses.


That's a good place to leave this entry.



Also, I managed to accidentally write an e-mail completely in Spanish to my only non-Spanish-speaking professor, today.

"Dr. __________,

I realize I have just sent you an e-mail in the wrong language. It's going to take me a minute to translate it, but I just wanted to let you know that I'm aware and that the English version will follow. Sorry about that.

Best,"

Unicornasaurus

Tengo uno anos.
» middaymoon on 2013-09-10 11:04:10

Dang it I just can't win.
» middaymoon on 2013-09-11 01:24:53

hahaha ...well..that's embarrassing for those lazy kids... sigh.
» dont-see on 2013-09-15 12:54:38

hahaha ...well..that's embarrassing for those lazy kids... sigh.
» dont-see on 2013-09-15 12:54:50

hahaha ...well..that's embarrassing for those lazy kids... sigh.
» dont-see on 2013-09-15 12:54:50

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