Feliz Día del Profesor!

Happy Teachers' Day!  I actually had no idea that it was a holiday at all!  I remember seeing a couple weeks ago an ad at the mall for it, but quickly forgot about it.  I had better things to think about, anyway, like the fact that we had Monday off from school!  I slept in late, spent the afternoon at the park with my friends, went out for pizza, and finally reluctantly did some lesson planning at the end of the day.  I was even starting to look forward to going to school the next day, because I had some pretty fun lessons planned out.  Or so I thought.

Of course, it happened to be "Career Day" at the university, and of course I was not aware of it beforehand.  This meant that the entire bottom floor of the main campus was filled wall to wall with booths set up by employers looking for new hires.  It also meant lots of promotion in the form of very loud music and lots of yelling from loudspeakers.  The room for my first class directly overlooks the courtyard in which all of these events were held, so as you can imagine, it was slightly difficult to maintain the attention of my students.  The few that even showed up.  We didn't even manage to get started until about half an hour in, and even then the whole next hour was a struggle.  Most of the kids just wanted to get back downstairs to the festivities, and the ones that were trying to participate couldn't very well because of the noise.

Luckily, I only have two classes on Tuesday.  I made it through the first one and was looking forward to getting the other one over as well.  Fortunately, my second class is held in the annex, so at least I wouldn't have to deal with the noise.  Unfortunately, because the passing period between classes is only one minute and I have to walk down three flights of stairs, down a block, and back up three flights of stairs to get there, I'm usually a couple minutes late.  And the students know this and use it as an excuse to show up late themselves.  Except that they're usually about 20 minutes late.  I've learned to accept it.  After all, it's not me that could use the extra minutes to practice English.

When I first arrived, there was only one girl in the room.  She's the only one that is consistently on time.  We chatted while we waited for the others to arrive.  By about fifteen minutes later, five more people had arrived.  There are only 14 people enrolled in the class, so that's actually a fairly good ratio. I was surprised because there are usually a few more people, especially a group of four girls who are all pretty quiet but do good work.  I thought they might have decided to go to the job fair instead.  I started class with the few people who were there.  It took a while to warm them up, but eventually the energy started to rise and we started to have fun.  We even danced a little.

Finally, about half an hour into the class, the four other girls showed up.  They're not usually very late and I didn't question them because I just assumed they were at the job fair.  They sat down and got straight to work.  Even though the subject matter was a bit tedious (we're learning how to talk about health problems, not the most interesting or useful topic to a group of vigorous 18-year-olds), everyone participated and even laughed at my stupid jokes and crazy antics.  By the time we finished, I was feeling much better and could tell that the students had enjoyed the class, as well.  I dismissed the class, and everyone filed out, saying their "good-bye"s and "see you"s on the way out.

I'd turned my back to the room to clean up my supplies before heading out myself.  I assumed everyone had left, but when I turned around, I saw the four girls that had showed up so late.  Like I said, they're all pretty shy so when I asked them what I could do for them, they all just looked at each other to see who would speak.  After a bit of an awkward pause, one of them got up the courage to ask me if she could speak in Spanish.  It was after class, so I agreed.  She told me that it was National Teachers' Day and the reason they were late for class was because there was a long line at the store.  At first, I didn't make the connection between those two statements, but then the girls pulled out a gift-wrapped bag and handed it to me.  They said they were glad I was their teacher, and had a gift for me.

I was shocked!  I didn't even know it was Teachers' Day, and even if I had, I wouldn't have expected anything for it!  But here it was! I opened the gift, and laughed at what was inside.  They pay more attention in class than I thought!  The gift was a pink, girl notebook with a cute cow on it.  I tell my students that cows are my favorite animals because its something that both my "hometowns" have in common.  They told me they knew my favorite color was purple, too, but that there weren't any notebooks in that color.  To go along with the book, they also gave me two rainbow-colored pens.  Do my students know me, or what!?

I was still so surprised that all I could do was keep saying, "thank you, thank you!"  I wasn't quite sure of the protocol after that, and they seemed a bit unsure themselves.  Are you allowed to hug your students for a gift?  I think it would be acceptable here, but I've been so conditioned against it in the states that I just kind of stood there.  I felt very awkward, but just said, "thank you," again.  The girls smiled and acknowledged, and then headed out to their next class.  I hope I did the OK, because I really do appreciate that the students take the time to do things like this for me!  Although I guess my awkwardness is part of my gringa charm.  Or so I'll say.  So, I know it's unlikely, but girls if you read this--THANK YOU!  You really made my day!