So, I just got home from teaching English for 11 hours straight without breaks. Which seems a bit illegal, but.. Come to think of it, everything about my employment here is under the table, so whatever. I'm alternately so sick of thinking about/talking about teaching English but then it is kind of the majority of my life here - all of my friends are either English teachers or students. And it has such lovely moments. Like today, I had a new student who is a total beginner, doesn't know how to say hello or how are you, who I was kind of dreading, but then he turned out to be totally sweet and adorable AND, has one of the most amazingly hilarious situations that I have ever heard - after about an hour of struggling through English we took a break and switched to Spanish so we could get to know each other and chat. He showed me a picture of his beautiful wife and three gorgeous daughters and told me that they are
all English teachers. Except the youngest, who is fifteen, but she speaks English fluently. I guess they like to chat in English when they want to leave him out of the conversation! He is also very well-traveled, so I can't imagine how he's managed to escape English for so long.
Anyway, after that class I had a student who makes Jude Law look like Quasimodo, who I kind of try to behave normally around but get distracted by his gorgeous green eyes while he's doing the TOEFL speaking section. He's the student who I had a running joke about with the director of my institute, because he has been my student for weeks and weeks and had never brought up his girlfriend - which doesn't sound strange, but if you are studying for the TOEFL, you pretty much have to discuss every aspect of your life with the teacher, and he is a family friend of the director so we knew he had a girlfriend. I like to think it was because he was flirting with me, but who knows. He finally did mention his girlfriend, last week, in the sentence, "My girlfriend's dad is the president of Banco Nacional." Guess I can't really compete with
Señorita moneybags, le sigh.
And speaking of my institute, it's totally become like a little home to me, which is really lucky and really rare for English teachers in BA. Most never meet another teacher at their institute and one girl I know picks up her salary from the institute's director once a month
on a designated street corner. Safe
and classy. But my institute is like a fun, cozy little clique of girls and women. There is hilarious Lili, the recepcionist, who jokes (?) about loving much younger men and recently called one of the students "feo pero,
feo feo!" Pobrecito.
There's always celebrity gossip on the computer, various chocolate and candy, and someone to giggle with when the hot students come and go. "Bonbones!" as Lili would say.
There are things I love, and don't want to leave. But then, I kind of remember that I am getting paid so little that it feels more like volunteer work than a real job. Saving money is not an option. It's too bad that that that matters so much, but it does. C'est la vie of being an English teacher.
P.s. (unrelated) Sorry, this is like some horrible stream of consciousness creative writing assignment, but I'm exhausted and ranting. So here's some more: I've been kind of playing the 'naive foreigner' card with this whole political situation, because I don't want to offend anyone that I talk to, but I'm over it. Not that anyone in the United States will know what the heck I'm talking about, BUT - in my opinion, Julio Cobos saved this country's ass, for the meantime at least. If that tax law had passed, there would have been a total crisis. A disaster. I'm sick of seeing all these Pro-Kirchnerista posters about how he's a traitor and "real democracy" would have been to blindly do what his party told him to. Are they serious? The Argentine girl I live with is Kirchnerista and was telling me that it is the president's right to do what she wants and it should be that way, and that the farmers make a ridiculous amount of money. Well. I kind of just said, claro, claro, and smiled when we were talking, because I don't want mala onda, but! I so completely disagree with that. The whole point of a federalist system is that the executive branch doesn't have all the power and can't just act on its own, unchecked. And well, maybe the farmers make a ton of money, but shouldn't the taxes be distributed by income and not by industry then?
Okey. Ya basta. Besoooos...
Talento Argentino may be the greatest show of our time. I've never watched America's Got Talent, but I can't imagine that it holds a candle to the Argentine version. I searched youtube for a video of the guy to the left, "El Rey," but unfortunately couldn't find one. All I can tell you is that I laughed until I cried. And well, I do that pretty often, but everyone else I was with laughed until they cried as well. Judge Catherine (below) was obviously moved to tears as well. But not by El Rey - by a group of breakdancing kids from the street. South America really does silly reality tv shows a lot better than the United States. We have a lot of trashy shows about famous-for-being-famous people where nothing happens (The Hills/Girls Next Door*) while South America has a lot of shows that just make absolutely no sense, but in a completely awesome and unapologetic way. There is usually some vague gameshow premise, but, in addition to the host, there will also be, like, a random guy in a full-size panda sui
t, a male model wearing tiny tightie-whities, a squirrel, and a geisha wandering around, or possibly dancing. Or a guy with a comb-over dressed in a hot pink unitard with huge fake boobs stuffed into the chest (picture the Principal in Billy Madison.) I'm not making any of that up, I saw all of those things on one show alone last night. And then they all jump into a swimming pool at the end. Amazing.
