I know everyone’s dying to know, how’s the job going? Well, to be honest, with only 12 hours a week, it’s not exactly what I would call time consuming. But it definitely has its rewards, as well as trying moments.
The most challenging is dealing with the discontinuity. Even though I’m working at the same school all week long, every day, I see 12 classes per week, one hour for each class. In addition, I only work with half of the class while the teacher keeps the other half with him/her. So in the end, I see every student once every other week, for one hour. And this is only for 7 weeks, which gives us a grand total of 3 or 4 hours per student for the year.
Basically I don’t know if I’m really helping them to improve their English, but to be honest, our more important job appears to be to spread our culture. The more photos I show of San Francisco, the Sierra Nevadas, or the beach in California, the wider their eyes get. Almost every class someone exclaims, “It is beautiful!” Although admittedly sometimes they mean, “She’s beautiful,” when they see the photo of my sister. I guess you don’t realize how exciting it is for them to hear about California, especially when you see what they have here: beaches, sun, nature. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, or at least on the other side of the planet. I sure wouldn’t mind some cool winter rain right about now, admittedly. The more rain here means the hotter and more humid it gets. This is going to be one crazy November.
