There’s no place like clean home

Don’t know what to say about the last few days. First I had some sort of stomach bug on Friday and wasn’t able to go to work, again. No biggie, I think, because I didn’t actually have a class, it was only the final presentation with the student. However, my boss wouldn’t be there to get the feedback from him and I’m not sure if the last teacher knew about that.

So I was at home and watched the whole “Hope for Haiti” on CNN. It was supposed to be a show co-hosted by George Clooney, Wyclef Jean and Anderson Cooper but the latter did appear throughout the whole thing, I don’t know, some six times maybe? Well, I watched his show afterwards but the best part was the day before, Thursday, when they were showing a report during which an actual aftershock happened. Saturday was cleaning day. Man, I really hate doing that but once the service is done I just feel better. Clothes washed, floor mopped, balcony swept. So it occurred to me that it’d been one year since my grandmother gave me a hammock to hang in the balcony and I never had used it. So, I put it there and started reading the book my friend lent me, Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope”. The temperature couldn’t be better and there was this breeze blowing that made everything feel just right, it seemed as if I was in the front porch of a beach house, just reading a book and enjoying sounds of nature.

Well, what seemed to be a great idea turned out be bad for my neck. I’ve got this painful stiff neck now on top of my still ongoing stomach ache. I’ve put some Gelol on, took pills and nothing happens, really painful. My sofa doesn’t help either, not comfortable at all.

Some good movies on TCM — classic Hollywood, right? Sometimes a movie is shown more than 100 times on TV and you never get to watch them until the moment you basically have nothing to do because you’re sick and it’s the only option you have. I’m watching “The Empire of the Sun”, with Christian Bale at the age of 12 maybe? So, this is a good example. This movie must have been on TV perhaps 50 times and this is the first time I watch it, and probably last. It’s an ok movie.

I can’t believe another week is starting. Obviously there was a last-minute cancellation and only one person is coming for the immersion, which I don’t mind at all. The week after there won’t be immersion because of the holiday (Feb 2) in the city.

Sorry, wrong door

Ah, the hot, damp summer days… Can’t wait for this to be over! Don’t see it happening for the next three months, so all I can do is put up with it and pray for a quick summer.

When we speak summer, we speak storms, lots of them. And when the rainfall is a little higher than average the first thing that happens in my neighbourhood is… lights out! I don’t know if it also happens to the rest of the city but we just need a few more raindrops or a stronger wind-blowing for the hollow trees go down in no time and bring the power cables with them. Yesterday it rained a lot in the afternoon but it eventually stopped before late night. However, out of the blue a blackout left the entire neighbourhood in the dark for more than one hour, for no apparent reason. Shorter power cuts happen during the weekdays for five, ten minutes maybe, and I can’t figure out why that is.

Tomorrow I’ll have a relatively early start at the school because I stupidly forgot to copy the files from my computer so that I could afterwards print them and have them ready for the 8am class. The fact of getting to the school earlier isn’t so bad, the problem is when I’ll be leaving the school in the afternoon. I would really like to teach either morning or afternoon, not both, because I don’t see all the work I gotta do being done in such a short amount of time and so far I haven’t been, you know, properly compensated for the extra effort put into organising the classes. My boss is coming back from holiday later this week and I’m definitely talking numbers with her, otherwise I don’t see us making any progress.

Being in the South hemisphere — and obviously away from any decent form of civilisation — we see things on TV or read certain articles that are simply unbelievable. The Underpants Bomber might not have carried out his plan all the way through — fortunately!!! — but surely brought back the feeling of panic in people. This morning I read this piece about this incident at JFK Airport about a person that mistakenly entered a place that only authorised staff had access. This was treated as a security breach and obviously hundreds of passengers got stranded for several hours. I mean, if it had happened pre 9/11 the person would have probably got away with a “sorry, wrong door!” and proceeded to board their flight. But nowadays if you happen to belch while going through immigration interview you run the risk of being arrested for emitting an unintelligible sound .

And then I wonder what the media’s responsibility is on that matter. Again, being far away from the incidents doesn’t help when trying to imagine what the situation is like. But I did experience some sort of “panicky” atmosphere in London, since I arrived there nearly a month after the London bombings. When you are bombarded by reports on terrorist alerts and unattended bags found on the street that mobilizes half the contingent of police force, well, you don’t wanna be on the upper-deck of a bus and realise that one guy that has just got off the bus left behind a sweatshirt on one of the seats. What could there be underneath the attire? I know, sounds a little too much but it was exactly what happened to me one day. I totally panicked.

And in Haiti hopes are now fading. This AC360’s report is shocking and only a small part of what’s coming next. There are still thousands of people buried in rubble and after almost a week since the earthquake struck there isn’t much to do in terms of digging up survivors. There will be the miracles, where after 10 days they still find one or two people alive, but it’s becoming scarce every minute. And what’s also shocking is what doctors call the “stupid deaths”, people who were dug up with relatively minor injuries that will die of infection and untreated open wounds because there isn’t medicine or equipment to be used.

P.S.: Yesterday, a little Daily Show marathon at night to have a laugh. I just can’t get enough of Jon Stewart!

Happy 41st, Dave Grohl

I think this week at the school has been good, the students seem interested, teachers haven’t reported any incident, you know, when folks are a little high maintenance and the class is just a disaster. I’m actually looking forward to their final presentation tomorrow, because their project sure looks interesting. One thing that I’m not enjoying, though, is going there on Friday. Coming back to the days that I was the only teacher working on Friday — and for me that was actually the busiest day of the week with a group in the morning, phone classes at lunch time and immersion in the afternoon. But anyway, I might change the schedule for next week.

Speaking of which, I’m trying something new, as an experience, for next week’s immersion. Instead of having two classes in the morning and two in the afternoon, I’m shortening the class length so that we’ll have three classes each shift. I think it’s way better for everybody, the students don’t get tired and it’s easier to prepare the lessons and shorter tasks. Let’s see how it goes.

Tragedy in Haiti is all over the news. It’s really amazing that for several hours the media had access only to what was posted on social networking websites (now being called “social media”) — photos and videos on Facebook and Twitter were the only images available on TV until they were able to send their people to Haiti — an according to the Huffington Post AC360 was the first American journalist to get there, I’m not surprised at all.

So, obviously I’ve  been watching the coverage on TV. Extensive coverage on CNN, and on FNC the only evening programme that has reported news was Fox Report. O’Reilly simply focus on where the money ended up since Clinton administration and trying to make the Executive Director for Doctors without Frontiers US admit that the gangs and thugs and drug dealers that rule Port-Au-Price are giving them a hard time, which obviously wasn’t the case. She was trying — trying, since the interviewee can never finish their commentaries, unless they’re Sarah Palin — to say that at this moment they have been able to do their work and as she wasn’t backing down he proceeded to talk to the other guy. Yesterday he had a guest on the show and she was definitely liberal and again the interrupting continue. When he mentioned that every other network  is biased and only FNC was only reliable source for news, she said that folks should do their own “investigation” — by going online and having different sources — as opposed to relying on a single source. Obviously after this the interview was over. As to Beck, well, I’m not really sure if he knows where Haiti is.

I can’t believe tomorrow is Friday!!! But it’s gonna be a busy weekend for me because I need to prepare material for next week’s class — the guy who’s coming works in HR and I must get familiar with the vocab and also prepare tasks since this is the first time I’m using this material.

Today is Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl’s birthday. 41 years old. Man… I found this video on You Tube and he looks 18… Time is merciless!