Irish Evening

Folks,

Although we still had some rain this week, it’s definitely getting less. Today was actually quite warm, with the temperature was about 25˚c this afternoon.

Irish evening
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One group of my students were saying a couple of weeks ago that they’d love to know some more about Ireland. So we had an ‘Irish evening’ during class on Tuesday. I started off with a brainstorm on information they already knew about Ireland. It didn’t take long, because they knew nothing! They literally hadn’t a clue. They vaguely knew it was in Europe. They were amazed to find out that it was an island. They knew we liked potatoes and Guinness, but that was only from me in previous classes.

For the evening I wore my green FCEK – The Irish Correction t-shirt. I had a reading exercise around an article about Ireland. We had two music activities on songs, Nothing Compares 2U by Sinéad O’Connor and Sunday, Bloody Sunday by U2. I also had a clip of Riverdance to show them the dancing. The whole class went very well, and they really enjoyed it.

The Intercultura Cup
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The soccer competition is up and running in the school. The Intercultura Cup. It’s open to teachers, students and their friends. Chris, the head teacher, arrived to my classroom with a few students earlier in the week and said they had something to ask me. They asked if I’d like to be on their soccer team for the competition. I politely declined. Afterwards, Chris said that he was sure I’d told him before that I’d like to play. I know most of you will find the thoughts of me playing in a soccer competition as funny as I do. I told him that no matter how drunk I would never have said I’d like to be on a team.

Anyway, we headed out to the competition on Friday. Because of the number of teachers, they’ve now got two teams. The Meltdown’s are the original team, but they’ve now got an offshoot, the Goosecocks. They designed a logo and got t-shirts printed for the three-week competition, only to crash out spectacularly on the first night.

Irishisms
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People are always having a laugh at my Irishisms. ‘I’m grand’, when asked how I am, is mimicked by many of the staff. Monique thought I was talking literally when I said that the sun was splitting the stones for my sister’s wedding. Joaquín’s phrase of the moment is ‘Jaysus!’

I lapse into Irishisms when teaching much to the confusion of my students. We were having a race in a game around telling the time yesterday, when I called out ‘Five past six’ as one of the clues, only to have the game stop as they looked at me blankly. It’s ‘Five after six’ in the book. I’ve confused students talking about footpaths instead of sidewalks. Laundrettes instead of Laundromats. Forming a queue instead of making a line. Opposite the bar instead of across from the bar. Beside the supermarket instead of next to the supermarket. And bizarrely, diagonally opposite instead of something called ‘kitty corners’!

I said to one returning teacher that I hadn’t seen her since we ‘broke up’, meaning since school broke up for the holidays. The others though I was implying we’d had an affair.

The school is delighted to have another accent to the teaching staff. When I arrived there were 5 Canadians and 3 British teachers. Now many have left and all the replacements have been from the US, so the staff is all American except for 3 Canadians, Tom from UK, and myself. And Tom is leaving next month!

Well, that’s it for another week, folks. I’m now off to prepare for a marathon 20 hours set of private classes this week with a new French student.

Today’s headline from La Nación: Mudslide destroys 27 houses in Aserrí