Immersion Season 4 Finale

I can’t believe it! It’s over!

Usually Fridays are “fresh days”, as Blind Melon would put it. Even if the week is long and dull or busy and without enough hours, Friday is the day that I feel like working more. More hours. Harder. Because I know that, regardless of the time I leave the school, the moment I step out of the building I switch to beverage mode.

And for the last five months, with a brief hiatus during the holidays, every Friday I had the same ritual: prepare the material for the following week’s Immersion. I’d print a bunch of things (schedule, tasks, assessments, reading material) and would go on to organise everything in binders. Oh, the binders… I don’t know how many times I had to rush to the stationery store to buy 10, 15 of them, with all the partitions. I’d inevitably pay much more because it was a last minute thing. Speaking of money, it’s great that I don’t need to ask for the lunch and coffee break cash anymore; I always worried about running out of cash. And worried about overspending or teachers not getting the receipts in the restaurants. As there are no plans for a new season until August, I hope I can use the next six months to “tidy up the house”. I had great news from on of the teachers. She’s come to me to talk about working exclusively with Immersion. That’s fantastic! It’s really hard to find people willing to teach those classes and she seems interested in a long-term thing. The hardest part here will be convincing my boss that this person is the way to go. She’s reliable and had great feedback from students, and that’s the reason why I don’t think my boss will give her up so easily.

I decided to call it a day earlier today. I let the guys with the teachers to organise their presentations and went home. Needless to say that it was definitely 45ºC outside, and the extremely hot air felt like a punch in the face. I really wanted to start walking home again, but I don’t see myself doing that for the next three months. I remember that in Krakow I’d do that every day during the summer, and the Polish summer can be pretty cruel… But the humidity factor here is almost bizarre.

I got home and didn’t feel any better. I had the impression that it was hotter inside than outside, and the fan that I’ve got here doesn’t do shit other than revolve hot air around the house.

With everything being beyond my control, I decided to do the one thing that was still able to control: breaking my own rule of having the 1-day buffer between drinking days. This weather just calls for, or better, demands beer. So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the supermarket to buy some.

Movie marathon… mixed feelings about it!

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…

Desired temperature: -5ºC

I don’t remember experiencing such excruciating heat in years. I don’t know, it’s 10pm now and the temperature must be seriously above 35ºC. There isn’t one tiny blow of air, a half of a weak breeze or anything that resembles some sort of wind to ease this extremely uncomfortable situation.

This might be the Sahara desert, but it accurately portrays Porto Alegre at 4pm

One way that my mom describes really hot summer days: “it’s Senegalese hot”. I don’t know why she chose Senegal, I don’t know if she heard it somewhere and started using it, I only know that I grew up listening to that sentence. Obviously I’ve never been there so there’s no way I can tell it’s accurate or not, but it’s sure funny. So I googled the country and saw this image. For sure it doesn’t resemble not even for a second our southern Brazilian coast — which is a piece of crap (that’s actually the colour of the sea down here) — and with that Senegalese view before me I don’t think I would mind the Senegalese hot days. But being more realistic, for the past few days I’ve envied the guys that could make it to our crappy beaches because at least the temperature there is 10ºC lower.

A beach in Senegal

It’s the end of a holiday in the city today — obviously we weren’t granted with a long weekend and we all had to go to work yesterday. But honestly, it was better to spend the day at work because at least we had air-conditioning. It’s basically going to be a pretty busy February. Even though my work hours have been expanded I don’t think I’ll be able to finish everything in time without doing some overtime. In fact, I had to stay for almost two hours after my shift and I don’t know how and when I’ll be compensated for the extra hours. So, I was kind of thinking about asking for the 17th off since it’s Carnaval’s ashes and, well, my birthday, but the answer that I got, after all those weeks doing overtime and not being paid, was that we had to see with HR first but it’s not likely to happen. That really put me down, seriously.

After a few days watching some different programmes, I watched Beck earlier. What am I supposed to say? I can’t understand why people seem to enjoy what he does on the show, I’m actually shocked by some things. Today he “explained” the metaphors he used on a previous show about Obama leading the country to a plane crash and people being taken to be slaughtered or something. So there were people on other shows — O’Reilly included — that were disagreeing with the way he delivers his opinions. Why use all that crap? Is it entertaining? Is it amusing? Is that what people are really looking for? If so, well, I think the future is bleak. I think it shouldn’t be about this or that network; people should be getting the information from a variety of sources, listen to different opinions from both right and left, liberals and conservatives and put everything into perspective and base their decision on different sources. Well, if they are doing whatever they want on TV, they should be open to criticism as well, without throwing a fit on the air. I don’t think Beck likes when people don’t agree with him… hum… isn’t that what dictators do?

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!

White Xmas, not for me

Not in the Xmas mood at all. It’s so wierd watching the news about the super cold snap that’s been going on in the US and Europe while experiencing temperatures way into the 30s. Last night was particularly difficult for me, took me a long time to fall asleep and at about 5am this fucking mosquito woke me up — and I simply can’t go back to sleep knowing that this fucking think will fly over my ear every 10 seconds, so I got up and waited. Started smashing everything inside my very spacious bedroom and there must be now some 20 shoe marks on the walls, but I eventually got the little bastard! However, after that it was virtually impossible to go back to sleep. I kept checking out the time and realized I was doing that every 20 minutes. I heard the alarm clock go off after 8am and Ipanema’s schedule on Sunday isn’t the best one. They have this programme between 8am and 10am playing regional music, which isn’t my cup of tea. I switched to another station and felt better and like getting up.

I turn on the TV and all they show is the snow in the US. I couldn’t help but wish I was there, away for this heat and non-Xmas spirit that we have here every year.

Washington DC

Alexandria, VA -- ok, I think this is a little too much...

(Pics from The Guardian)

As we are all going on vacation, we’ve got paid a couple of days ago and all I wanted to do was cry. Cry non-stop. That means I’m only gonna get paid again late January — almost 45 days from now — and I don’t see myself being able to pay bills. I’m particularly worried about the credit card bill since I had to paid the flat’s maintenance fee with my card, otherwise I’d be way into the overdraft limit.

I would like some day to have a white Xmas. I remember in London we had snow in the first year only on Boxing Day and back then it wasn’t actually common to snow in London. This tropical heat just doesn’t feel right for the holidays spirit and what really makes me annoyed is that for years and years we’ve had to accept the whole Xmas decoration that just doesn’t suit our climate. It’s ridiculous seeing Santa in a shopping mall and fake snow knowing that in a few moments you’re gonna get out of there and this excruciating heat will hit you in the face like a punch. But what should we do then? Dress Santa in shorts and flip-flops and have him sit on the beach kiosks drinking caipirinha? That’s a tough one, man… But anyway, maybe some day I’ll have the chance to see a white Xmas. What I will see for sure is a blank Xmas, all right: no money, no gifts, no joy, no prospects… just blank.