No teaching today!

This picture shows the Rio Parana (which forms the border between Argentina and Paraguay), the Costanera (promenade and road along the river on the Argentina side) and the bridge to Paraguay. Maybe I'll have a trip to Paraguay at some point.

No teaching?!?!?!?!? I'll explain....

Yesterday, our timetable was a free morning followed by a relatively full afternoon. So, as I do roughly every other morning, I had a run along the Costanera. Even at 7:30/8am it is roasting and humid and the circa 5 miles I do is a real challenge. At least by the river here is usually a little breeze and yesterday there were unusually a few other runners.

The morning passed without anything further to report and after lunch I walked the 20-25 minutes to school. I came across Emma and Olie on the way and we arrived together to find the place almost deserted. This is not normal as during break time there's usually lots of games and chatter going on.

Our fears were confirmed when we found someone in the staff room who said there would be no more teaching this week! Later we discovered that this was due to a teacher strike on Wednesday and Thursday and a fiesta on Friday.

I think I already mentioned teacher strikes in another post. There have been a number of strikes this year it seems and although the article here I found adds on some political motivations, what I have heard here is that the main reason is pay.

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?CategoryId=14093&ArticleId=366636

It's a bit frustrating for me as I'm here to teach but in the wider context who am I to say what a reasonable level of pay is for a teacher here? I don't know the history or context and don't want to take any sides in something I know nearly nothing about. I'll let you read the article and make up your own mind.

So what am I going to do with all this extra time this week? Well, yesterday was unbearably hot so I actually had a very long and delightful siesta! 3 hours off and on of afternoon kip. This is not normal for me but, you know, Cuando estes en Posadas....!

Later on I started to plan a lesson for next monday, looked into some of my post teaching travel and I'm still learning a lot of spanish.

It's the unexpected bits of conversation that bring things my Espanol to an abrupt halt. I can get a table and food at a restaurant no bother. I managed to go into a sports shop today and have a little chat with the guy about footy teams and a shirt I was looking at buying. I can say a few phrases in class so the children understand roughly what is going on and often understand lots of what they say in spanish. However, the other day in California (hold the phone - there's no time warp - the big supermarket in Posadas is called California!) I bought a few things including a large 1litre bottle of Quilmes local lager. I was trying to pay when the assistant gave me a barrage of espanol. I couldn't latch onto any words in it. Sometimes I get a verb or something I recognise to get a clue. This time I recognised not a jot. She repeated and then got her supervisor, who I think just said exactly the same thing! Thankfully an English speaker was nearby (this is actually very rare here and the first time I've come across an English speaker apart from our co-ordinator) and could tell me that they were saying there was a 3 peso deposit for the bottle. That was it?  I'm sure they were trying to be helpful but it's not great for my confidence. I'm sure they weren't saying "tres pesos deposito", I think I'd have got that, or maybe its just because they speak very quickly. Anyway, I'm sure I'll get better in time.

I'm afraid the checkouts posed a problem at California again today. I thought I'd got through safely when the assistant said a word I didn't recognise. I had handed over a 100 peso note and thinking back and looking up slang for 1 peso I expect they said something like "tiene un centavo?" Which means "do you have 1 peso?" I didn't get it but when I looked at the read-out and saw an odd number of pesos I guessed they might be after a 1 peso coin so the could give my change all in notes (the lowest note I've seen is two pesos). Thankfully I was right. I was not looking forward to seeing the supervisor again!

Maybe I can really kick-start my spanish by going to California a few times a day! I'm not sure if I can handle the humiliation though.

Oh well, no teaching this afternoon...what shall I do?....Cuando estes en Posadas....siesta...? Tal Vez!