Bland rice?

Monday, July 13th

Oh I’m such a baby, but it was difficult getting out of bed at 8 a.m. this morning. I’m pretty sure I snoozed until 8:20. At least it was warm. Maria Laura was up early too, but thankfully our paths never crossed as I got ready. Neither one of us is a morning person. I was nervous about the subte b/c it was early, but apparently I even beat the rush hour, as I was able to get a seat!

This training was with the company that I interviewed with in French, haha. So they just train all the new peeps, and then hire us out as they can. I’m not sure if I’ll actually end up working for them, especially since they only pay AFTER the month you work, and I would probably be working in August, but I wanted to see how their training went. The best way to build a business is to know your competition, eh?

He basically tried to cram what I spent 4 weeks learning in TEFL into an hour and a half. Well, the first hour was spent on their administrative processes, which was interesting because it’s the first company that has been really strict about that. But this is probably one of the bigger ones I’ve dealt with. Then, the second hour and a half was going through pointers on a class. Peter, who I did TEFL with, was there, but apparently no one else in the class had taken TEFL. Oh, and one lady was an experienced teacher. I did learn some new ideas, though, and it also reinforced what I had learned in my other class. On our way out, I was talking to Peter, asking him how the job search was going, because he’s looking for long-term. He hasn’t picked anything up yet, but he did get offered one, but he turned it down because you had to make all the lessons, it was really far out, and the pay was lower than the standard. I asked him where, and of course he said Quilmes. AKA the job that I accepted. Haha. When he asked me about my prospects, I didn’t mention it. However, I’m quite fine with taking the leftover jobs because it gives me something to do, I can read on the train ride, it’s only a twice a week for a month, and I’m sure I’ll learn something interesting out there. P.s. Quilmes is the national beer. I’m going to be teaching some IT guys at their corporate office…which is across the street from the factory.

After that, I headed home, heated up a sandwich, and ate. Then I went out, found a place to print my copies for my class, went inside a Pharmacity to buy some purse-size Kleenex and caused the beeeeeeeeeeeep to go off when I left (thankfully the guards didn’t search me b/c I had made it go off when I entered….something in my backpack), and then went back to Ethernet cable place. Cute old man who refuses to give me a refund simply said to bring in my laptop because the cable works. Well, I was going to, but then I didn’t make it back into town before the shop closed.

Time rolled by, and it was time to head downtown for my one-to-one class with Maricel. I made it to the building with ease, finally having control of my surroundings, and was reading my John Grisham book in Spanish until she showed up. The lesson went by quickly, but it was really difficult for her. We were working on phrasal verbs in the past tense. The tense was a good review, but the phrasal verbs and their meanings were all pretty new to her. After class, my boss offered me another class to take up, this time with an advanced businessman whose teacher is heading back to New York. So I start that on Wednesday! And then I also got another email about a class that would’ve been every day for 2 hours, but it runs too closely with when I need to go to Quilmes, so I declined. I still don’t know how much/how I’m getting paid with this company, so it’s probably better that I went with Quilmes.

Subte’d back without incident, and unloaded at home. Then, went out, this time with Lia, to try to buy tickets to the midnight showing of Harry Potter. I don’t know what I was smoking. The first movie theater said they weren’t showing it at all. The second one said that it wouldn’t be out here until August, maybe the 23rd of July. And I don’t think the idea of a midnight showing translated at all. So that was a fail, but it was an enjoyable hour walk around the town.

For dinner, Maria Laura said she’d make me something bland, which was really nice. So I get home to rice and some meat, which I’m thinking, sounds good! I grab the plate and suddenly find myself balancing the layer of grease that’s running from side to side of the plate. I kid you not, I think that’s the butteriest and whatever else she put in it dish of rice I have EVER had. I took a picture of it to show exactly what I mean by grease puddles. I don’t know what exactly she meant by bland….