I haven’t been that busy in a long time… but I kinda like it because the summer is almost over — thank God! — and so is the Immersion Program season 2009/2010, and I’ve hardly noticed. This week there are two people at school having classes and they are simply the kindest folks ever (I do hope we’ve left a good impression on them as well!). Obviously there were a few problems with schedule, but they didn’t seem to be bothered by that.
Apart from the usual Immersion routine, my co-worker and I have been preparing activities to be done during the Immersion “Special Edition” that will take place at the folks’ company, for five days. We’ve already finished four complete activities and another one is on the way — the one that’ll wrap up the visit. We decided to make them produce their own podcast based on everything that they’ll have seen during the four days of classes. I’m really excited about it and so is my co-worker, but I’m not sure if the students will like it… I mean, it’s something different and they’ll still be working on business content, and we thought it would be nice to, you know, loosen up a little on the last day because they’ll definitely be pretty beat by then. The classes will happen in two weeks’ time and it will be a daily 9-hour journey.
Speaking of classes, I’m teaching a regular group this semester. It’s gonna be a Prime 4 — my personal favourite level — and these guys were my students at the very beginning, during Prime 1. They are willing to pay extra to be a customized group — obviously I won’t see the colour of the extra cash in my bank account — to have classes with me. How flattering is that? The down side is that the class starts at my favourite time: 8am! Twice a week! I have to confess, though, that for a couple of weeks I’ve been working mornings and at the end of the day it isn’t that bad. I get to go home earlier — occasionally… — and have time for other stuff. Well, time for some stuff but not everything that I want to do. You can’t always have what you want, anyway, as Mick would say…
For instance, haven’t had time for the news. At all. Something that I like doing is to read the headlines on the web and haven’t had time for that either. During the few brief moments I have to catch up, I basically favourite some for later. Also got a pile of Guardian Weekly waiting to be read on my nightstand. TV is on when I’m around the house but I’m usually so tired that don’t really pay much attention to it. I was talking to a student this morning during phone class and I don’t know why he brought up the subject of dengue epidemic in the country. He said that in cities upstate there were hundreds of people with the disease and he was hoping for lower temperatures so that it could curb its spread. I told him that I haven’t watched local news in more than 6 months, so I wasn’t affected at all by this piece of information. However, a year ago, during summer, also as hot as this one has been and watching local TV news, I would get absolutely terrified every time I saw a mosquito hovering around my living room.
Well, I do think now that summer is getting to an end. We did suffer on a daily basis with 37ºC+ temperatures and it’s time now to cool it! But last weekend was still pretty hot, so I decided to crash at my mom’s flat, which is much bigger than mine, — she’s been at the beach for a week now — with a selection of movie channels plus an air conditioner in every room. It couldn’t have asked for a better time and the cherry on top was to find ice-cream in the freezer! I was definitely a kid in a candy shop… So, I must have watched some ten movies during the weekend, one better than the other — including old stuff such as “Scarface” — but there was a down side to it. There are lots of films that I want to see later in the month but won’t be able to since my cable pack doesn’t include these channels… So, needless to say that coming back to my tiny-flat-and-no-good-movie-channels reality was pretty harsh…
-- Never too many beers -- 