My head is still whirling from last night.
First off, most of y'all are very aware of the fact that calling me a night person is a gross understatement; it would, in fact, be far more correct to say that the ground is made up of crumbled oreos and the sun is liquid Gatorade. After about eight o'clock, I'm completely useless to the human race as a whole. Like a giant wet noodle named Katie. Or Kati, as my name is apparently used by those who can speak Spanish. Yeah.
So imagine my panic when I walk into my Spanish class and see this middle aged woman talking ninety to nothing in what I assumed to be Spanish (she could have been talking in Swahili for all I knew) and gesturing wildly at us, her bewildered pupils. When Aubrey leaned over and started to translate for me, the teacher suddenly broke out of her Spanish gibberish and squawked like a Catholic nun who's teaching naughty third graders how to multiply fractions. "No translations!" she screeched. Aubrey and I shrugged sheepishly, each grabbed a syllabus, and went to our chairs. I figured out in a brilliantly timely manner that this class must be one of those instant immersion doohickeys. Oy vey.
For all her faults (such as glaring hideously whenever Aubrey leaned too close to me, suspiciously close, like she might be about to gasp! translate something!), I like Senorita Tina McBee. She lived in Mexico City for five years, so she certainly knows what she's talking about, pun intended. I picked up quite a bit from her in just a few hours, even though a migraine accompanied said learning. It must have been every bit as exhausting for Senorita Tina, to be fair. To stare at completely blank faces for hours on end as you talk a language that seems perfectly easy and simple to you now and have to mime hugely at a chair or at a boy and a girl to demonstrate masculine and feminine forms of words must be excruciating. Like trying to get pizza dough out from between your fingers.
Honestly, I'm totally freaked out by this class. For one, it requires an obscenely expensive textbook. Obscene like the parts of the movie that your mom claps her hand over your eyes so that you can't see. Joy! *sarcasm dripping* For two, while I like Senorita Tina, I think she's expecting a lot out of a night class. We're supposed to learn all the pronunciations of the Spanish alphabet and greetings and times of day and all sorts of stuff in one week. It's a lot to ask of kids (and older folks that are trying to get their degree) that already have full loads. I guess she hasn't experienced the famous Crichton work ethic, or lack thereof, yet. For three, for as much as I like Senorita Tina, she scares the mierda out of me. She's not the kind of chica I see myself crossing and living to sing the ballad. And I'm no softy, mind.
*mob from Monty Python* Get on with it!
Okay, okay, I'll stop whining now. Or I'll try, anyway!
Anyway, the evening progressed and eventually Senorita Tina started talking in English, so that she could explain the syllabus and stop one older lady's head from exploding. However, it hit about 8:30 and we were all dying to get out of there, even Senorita Tina. We learned that, in true Crichton fashion, she hadn't known she was teaching this class until last Saturday. I have to say that I'm really impressed; she was very well prepared if she'd had that small an amount of preparation time. The caffeine supply was drying up, and the natives were getting restless. So Senorita Tina let us leave once she had heard us having a small conversation with our class partners. Aubrey and I greeted each other, introduced ourselves, explained where we were from, and were gone.
Funniest moment of the night: when I almost thanked Senorita Tina for a handout by saying, "Danke!" That would have ended really well, for sure.
Vaya con Dios!
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