Daily routines
Now that we’re both working, we’re trying to establish some routines. I teach from 7:30 to 9:30 and then I have a little over an hour to kill before I go to my terrible Spanish class at the CEC (Eileen’s school) at 11:00. I think I’ll usually lesson plan a little at SECAP before heading over to partake in one of the most impressive models of pedagogical inefficacy I’ve ever seen. My teacher’s pretty nice, but a) no two classes have had the same students yet; b) yesterday, we conjugated verbs for the entire hour (actually no: we started class at 11:10 and we ended at 11:50, so not quite an hour); and c) the two times I asked her to give me an example of how a particular verb form is used, she couldn’t. I’m bored out of my mind, and I’m not getting any real Spanish practice.
So then at 12:00, I meet up with Eileen, who has a wonderful Spanish teacher, and we go to lunch. We’re learning where to go. Today and yesterday, we paid $1.50 for a pretty good lunch (though not really enough food). We’ve figured out we can stay under $3.00 each, but we still need to up our restaurant vocabulary. We don’t go far from the CEC cuz Eileen has to teach again at 2:00, at which point, I haven’t really figured out what to do with myself. I’ve been meeting Eileen at 4:00 after she’s done; I spend the interim (is that the word I’m looking for here?) two hours either on the internet or making copies or eating pastries. We’ve now found about three places that have some pretty phenomenal baked goods. After I gather Eileen from the CEC, we usually either go get pastries or check the internet.
Or make copies.
Then I teach from six to eight and Eileen goes home and gets good and stressed for tomorrow’s classes.
We’re finding we need to rearrange our eating schedule a bit. Lunch is at noon. But then dinner is at about 8:30. Various pastries are consumed throughout the day (you know the guy on TV commercials who quietly and quickly reads the fineprint, such as “Offer only good while supplies last”? You should read “various pastries are consumed throughout the day” imitating that guy.). Anyhow, dinner hasn’t really been happening. It’s usually another breakfast. Last night we mustered the energy to make pancakes; the previous couple of nights we ate cereal. Only one night did we really eat dinner food, namely potatoes.
I’ve been starting to write a little bit more in my free time, but our odd split schedule doesn’t leave us feeling like we have a lot of down time. Though in comparison to working full time, of course, we do have a lot of down time. Nonetheless, I should warn all y’all that I’ll probably go through a stage soon where my writing is more esoteric and pretentious. Your seeing hints of it here already with my use of such words as pedagogical and inefficacy and esoteric and pretentious. Bear with me.