23 Jun

Hot


sunglass hot

The above is one of the classics. There is a Mc.Donald’s (the dot is important) near the grocery store at the bottom of our hill; there is a Victoria’s Secret for you (the “for you” is in the fine print on the sign) in the Mariscal; and these Sunglass Hots are all over the place in the more expensive malls. Good stuff. We still haven’t been able to find the t-shirt that says “trash up your ass,” though.

Eileen woke up with a sore throat, so I’m not sure where we stand with our plans to go to Mindo or Papallacta this weekend for an anniversary get away. My Basic class officially ends tomorrow and we start “Intermediate 1A” on Monday. Preeti is leaving this Saturday and I just found out that I’ll be gaining about 12 of her students. It will make the next three weeks interesting, depending on which class they join. My students yesterday were already begging me to not allow a certain student named Ligia to enter the class. Students like Silvia and Gladys say they left Preeti’s class because of Ligia, who is apparently obnoxious in her attempts to monopolize the teacher in class.

I’m a little worried, mainly because Preeti had claimed earlier that none of her students wanted to go to class in July anyhow. So, I pretty much switched the June and July material for class, since June was review and July was a new grammar point (present perfect). I figured I’d want to end with review instead of something new. Anyhow, now I’m gonna get 12 students who know little or nothing about present perfect; and one of them is rumored to ask a lot of questions, especially about things she needs clarified. I may have to lay down the law, which is seldom fun.

The only consolation is that apparently nobody likes this infamous Ligia. I guess the rift is such in Preeti’s class that Ligia is not attending the going-away party for Preeti. So if she truly ends up being annoying as hell, my efforts to shut her up will probably only gain me respect from the rest of the students.

The other current SECAP headache is that we have been entrusted with the task of revising the curriculum. We were supposed to meet last Sunday, but one of the teachers completely forgot, and another claimed we needed to enjoy the sun. We have yet to meet, and as of Saturday, Preeti is leaving the country, so we lose one fourth of our ranks. In the meantime, I’ve been busy planning the Grand Finally Review and the Big-Ass Test that will be taking place within the next few weeks.

Why is it necessary to post such mundane details as the SECAP Lamentations above? I’ll tell you why. Because we only have 8 readers anyway, and judging from the amount of email and comments we’ve been getting in the record-setting past couple of weeks, 75% of those readers have either given up entirely or are on vacation. So I’m hoping the above will scare off the remaining two readers and I can finally use this site as a fan site for Piccachu.

Other news: Eileen might post a blog within the next few days!