Ok, I’ve been pretty slack here recently, sorry about that. I had a good excuse at first, but then I was just being lazy.

So what’s going down?

Well, I’m practically a full-time art teacher now, somewhat weirdly… on the other side of the job, the bit that’s supposed to be more important, we got our dates that the kids have to take their English exams this week and it’s coming up fast… super fast. I have a bunch who at this stage are definitely not going to pass and I’ve started doubling the number of classes I do with them, hopefully I’m going to get some up to speed. It’s a problem that there are vast differences in ability between kids in the same class, and a particular problem that I came in so late in the school year after they’d been without an English teacher for a couple of months. I hope though that we can work hard and push them through, not that I’m particularly down with this way of working with kids so young, but whatever.

On thursday I skipped out to Alcala de Henares where the students are celebrating their graduation. It was somewhat weird being in an undergrad student environment again, particularly as I came straight from work and was in full-on teacher attire, I kind of miss being a student again, which is strange, because I pretty much thought I was over with that after last year… who knows though, I guess I’m fairly certain that I’m going to study again at some point in the future. But it’s a big ‘ol future for sure.

That ‘for sure’ come because I’ve been watching The Wire, don’t ask why, it’s complicated, I’m now dreaming in Ebonics and I want to swear a lot, a lot, who says what you watch doesn’t have a psychological effect? Thankfully I haven’t grown the urge to deal in class-A drugs or pop a cap in anybodies ass.

I’ve got a whole bunch of little projects on the go at the moment, but I don’t want to talk about them for fear of jinxing something.

It’s mega-hot here at the moment and I’m already roasting… if at some point I stop posting again it’s probably because I’ve melted onto a pavement somewhere… June looms large in the future like a slavering beast.

There’s other, more exciting stuff going on too, but I’m keeping mum about all that :)

[[titulo:knits up the ravell'd sleave of care]]

I’m semi online again, but I’m stealing my connection and it’s a bit shaky, don’t expect it to last.
Things going on, other things not so going on…
Thinking about things.

60 * 60 = 3600
3600 = 360 * 10

I am poor right now, for reasons I may mention in a later post (nothing to do with gambling, or prostitution, or drugs or anything like that, don’t you worry) and partly because weirdly, randomly, all my private classes got cancelled this week – that’s the money I’m living off, so you know… pooh sticks.

[[titulo:To Read is To Fly - Happy World Book Day Everyone]]

I’m more or less offline at the moment, with a malfunctioning internet in the flat. I shall hopefully be back soon

I don’t know why it didn’t occur to be before but this weekend I had a wee google for English-speaking churches in Madrid and there are a bunch. I wound up going to Immanuel Baptist Church, because it shares a name with the church where I was dedicated. It was weird. It was basically a Black Southern Baptist church from the US plonked down in Madrid (though without Sister Act scale histrionics). It felt like one of those American Mega-churches in miniature, which is probably a silly thing to say but whatever. It was a fairly small building, but snazzily kitted out as far as audio visual gear goes, and standing room only, I’m guessing about 250 people, 80% of them African Americans (is that a politically correct term, I’ve no idea) most of the rest were of Asian origin (I felt very white). Weirdly though, despite this mix, nearly 100% of the leadership, pastor, ushers, musicians, deacons, etc were white (and male), don’t know what to make of that.
It was ok, they had a choir that was very good, it was strange singing songs to the wrong tunes and with american accents, the sermon was a bit, I don’t know… irrelevant? halfhearted? I’m not sure, but it didn’t click.
I might have a buscar for another one next week.

[[titulo:Llwyn-yr-Eos]]

Yesterday was an interesting day at work.

I’m thinking of starting to tell people I’m an Art rather than an English teacher as that is what’s taking up the majority of my time at the moment.

We haven’t got to the computers yet, but we started making our frames:

Due to unknown emergencies I ended up having to take a class on my lonesome – it was bedlam – they are not the least rowdy group of kids anyway, but things went downhill pretty quick and came to a head when they started cutting each other’s hair. Oh jolly days!

Best RPG Ever

I don’t normally find the time or inclination to play computer games, this is different though.

[[titulo:Brompton Oratory]]

Oh yes… he rises to great heights.

Ok, not my greatest artistic achievement, and a bad workman always blames his tools, but still, I was painting with the biggest brush on earth, and with Lurid™ paints, and under intense time constraints.
Whatever, this is a demonstration picture frame for the computer portraits we’re going to make.

On the background, we all like to see Berlusconi got back in, I’m kind of worried my Italian friend is going to kill herself.

I mentioned an art project I was planning on doing in this fotolog post and I got the go ahead from the teacher so today I had the kids in one of my classes take photos of each other ready for them to start drawing soon. Then I spent a lesson with the school’s IT guy who taught me all about the software they have in place to help give lessons on the computers, which seems really good. They’re not rolling in IT equipment but they’ve got a nice little set up and hopefully it should all be pretty manageable.
Now we shall see how I cope with teaching the kids about one of my favourite bits of software, Inkscape.
I’m looking forward to it, but I’m a bit daunted at the same time.
I’ve spent quite a lot of time in the past helping people out with their software problems, and teaching a bit on a personal basis, mainly about photo manipulation and video editing, and it’s something that I find quite frustrating at times, but also rewarding.
Just this afternoon a friend called me up so I could guide her through some photoshop problems she was having, which I was able to do, but it was an interesting process going through it in Spanish.

[[titulo:Almost Poetry]]

Birthday!
Mmmmmm…. Sushi…..

After my meeting yesterday I spent my monthly book budget in fnac (a big department store for music, books, dvds and electronics, and not a particularly cheap option) and then sort-of-accidentally wound up at an exhibition of photography by Mario Muchnik, an Argentinian photographer, at the Casa de América. I wandered home and then later went out to watch Inland Empire, which was as pretentious as was expected, and there’s nothing wrong about that.

The accidental exhibition visit is something I love about living here in a big city… I was wandering around looking for a museum that I sort-of, kind-of remembered being in the area, but I think I was mistaken as I didn’t find it, but I saw the exhibition, free entry, wandered inside, and spent a good hour browsing. The photography was very good, although I wouldn’t say it blew me away, it had everything you would expect of Argentina (namely cows, beef, barbecues, barbecues, beef and cows) and they were interesting historically, but something just didn’t grab me about them, and there was a lack of context given. I wish I had the words to really be able to analyse things like that properly… maybe it’s time I did some kind of art course…

[[titulo:Folie à deux]]

First, let me say, I really like Madrid’s Metro system – sure, it has its problems, I’ve been meaning to have a rant for a while now about some of the design of stations, and it has a terrible map, but It’s clean, reliable enough, and easy to use. This little video is meant as a companion piece to This Is England which I made some time ago. It’s a mini-rumination. I was going to call it This Is Madrid, but it doesn’t really reflect how I feel about the city.

Today I had a meeting in the ministry of education, the building to the right, because I’m attempting to extend my contract for another year. As usual with the Spanish government the whole thing was a bit of a farce, but the security guard at the door, who knows me, and I get along very well now and have good little conversations. I’ve got a lot more hoops do jump through, but it seems I should get the job again.

Typically my morning before the meeting was mildly disastrous as the boiler in the flat exploded (ok, that’s an exaggeration, but lots of water went everywhere). It was kind of my fault, the kind of accident that the older two Barnes children at least are pretty good at engineering. But a very nice guy came and fixed it this afternoon and it looks like we’re all alright (in this respect at least, we have other problems I might divulge at a later date).

Yesterday evening I had kind of a random meet-up with a friend of a friend (or, strictly speaking, the friend of a friend of the sister of a friend) who wants to start a language exchange… I’d not met her before and the whole thing was organised over a pretty shaky phone connection (and I more or less hate talking on the phone in Spanish) but we found each other in the end (it was one of those ludicrous – you’re talking to each other over the phone for five minutes trying to specify where each other is before one of you says, “are you the one wearing orange glasses?” and you realise you’ve been standing a few meters apart the whole time – kind of moments. Do you get those too?). It wasn’t much of an exchange to be perfectly honest as we spoke Spanish the entire time, but she showed me a very funky little place – hippy bar/community centre/thing – that I shall have to check out more and maybe write about. Then we went and watched a bunch of short films at a future shorts screening (if I remember correctly, Finnish, Danish, Icelandic, Swiss and something else) – good stuff. And finished off with a drink in a bar where we got nattering to a German and a French guy… it was kind of an oddball conversation with smatterings of all four of our languages – as I was the only one who spoke more than one of our languages with any degree of proficiency I found myself doing some fairly wild and inaccurate translation which is always fun, then I remembered about the meeting and came home.

[[titulo:not quite]]