Always the last to know...

I’m living in a haze of misunderstanding, and it’s not always due to my lack of fluency in Spanish. One of the phrases I have heard most often in my school is, “Oh, no one told you?” This has been followed with endings such as “…that we’re having a party tomorrow?” “…that we don’t have class?” “…that we don’t have school on Monday?” etc etc. Sometimes it turns out to be a nice surprise: I found out that I don’t have my weekly English conversation time with teachers tomorrow since they’re having a fish fry instead (and thus I can use the class I already planned for them for next week).

Sometimes, though, it’s more of a panic-inducing surprise, like when I went outside today to meet up with Ana, whom I assist in her first-grade English classes. Instead of Ana standing at the front of the line, Javi-the-gym-teacher was there.

“Where’s Ana?” I asked.
“Not here,” he said, shrugging (the implicit message: “no one told you?”).
“Oh…so are you doing P.E. with them now?”
“No. You are the teacher! You will do the English lesson!”
“WHAT?!”

Luckily Javi stayed with me for the whole hour, because my Spanish is definitely not good enough to control a roomful of screaming five-year-olds. The first few minutes were a little scary, though, because Javi kept asking me where different supplies were in the classroom—teacher’s book, CD for listening exercises, flashcards—and I didn’t know. But we found all these things, and soon got the kids on track (the nice thing about five-year-olds: activities need not be very difficult to keep them entertained; they spend their days counting, coloring, gluing, and singing). By the end of class we were having so much [educational] fun I almost didn’t want to leave. With all my frustration of feeling constantly out of the Spanish loop, being with the first-graders is the best reminder of why I love this place and this job so much.