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!

No snowballs, please!

If only I had gone to work yesterday… Need to confess that I’m not used to working Fridays anymore, should I show up in the morning? Afternoon? I do want to finish as soon as possible, but then if I happen to have a lie-in… down the drain! I don’t want to take my lap top tomorrow, really hate having to carry it around, it’s heavy, it’s dangerous and if it turns out to be sunny I can even walk instead of taking the bus.

Today was an ok day. I guess all the end-of-the-year restlessness is finally taking place and everybody is doing their private countdown to 2010. This has been such a difficult year with so many things going on, so many people starting and leaving the school, so many things we’ve had to put up with silently and not being able to unwind. One more teacher is quitting, the fourth in four months, she’s given her notice this week and now we’ll really have some shortage for January and February. And the cherry on top was learning this afternoon that I couldn’t use two teachers in the programme next week because they have to fill in for a guy at another branch. Once again I need to increase my workload and run the risk of doing a shitty job — as has happened before — but at least it is only one guy and his level is Pre-Intermediate. The only problem is that English for Accounting class that I still need to prepare… excellent…

I’m watching Fox Report — yes, I do watch some Fox News programmes… — and they’re saying unemployment rate in Brazil is 7.5%, compared to 10% in the US. However, they don’t show people’s average income down here. Yesterday was paying-the-bills day and these fucking bills set me back almost 90% of my salary. No kidding. I had to pay some stuff with my credit card otherwise it’d be overdraft time for me. But using credit card isn’t my plan at all, because now I don’t know what I’ll do to pay that bill next month and I don’t want this to become a snowball. No snowballs for me, please!

Oh, and now O’Reilly is saying if he were a poor Mexican he’d also try to cross the border illegally to provide for his family! OMG! — He’s angry about Law & Order SVU saying that him and Beck and Limbaugh are the cancer of the nation, voicing their hate for illegal immigration. And his commentator is now saying that the show has really bad ratings and nobody’s really watching it… It never ceases to amaze me…