October 23rd

October 23rd, 11:31p.m.

Woohoo, half term!
The last assistant wasn't lying when she told me that British people love their school breaks. It's only been 3 weeks since I started working and I already have a break.

Seeing as my monetary situation hasn't changed, I couldn't go out on holidays, two other assistants that I know are on their way to Edinburgh right now, others are going to France, or planning to go to London. While I did do good on saving my money, I did not save enough like to go out on a trip. Hopefully, my check will be here soon and I might be able to do something fun next weekend. Next weekend is Halloween! I did forget my costume back at home, but I don't think I'd have used it anyway seeing how cold it is here, and I don't think I'll be buying one here either so it seems like no costume this year.

I did get to go to Manchester this weekend tho. We had a spanish assistants meeting/session with the other assistants from around this region. My mentor teacher recommended me not to go, I was surprised and I asked him why, if he thought they weren't that good and he said that the information they will give me would be the same I had already got before and while I was here, that my travel expenses would be paid by me and last but not least that it was on my day off and he thought it was awful that I had to spend it on this kind of thing. I decided to go anyway, based on the fact that some of the mexican assistants that I met in Mexico city were going and well, on the fact that I had never seen Manchester at all.

I have a friend who lived in Manchester for a while and another friend who went to uni there, so naturally I was a bit excited to meet the city and walk through the streets they once walked, but I must say I was a bit disappointed. The city is beautiful, don't get me wrong, but it made me appreciate more the 'little' city I'm calling home right now.

First, the meeting/seminar-thingy, we lost the train, had to get a later one. Once we got to Piccadilly station we didn't know where to go, found other assistants and realized it was Manchester uni, took a free city bus that only took us around the city center and never saw the uni, eventually we figured out we had to go back to the station and just walk 5 min from there. lol The meeting itself was, as my mentor said, pointless. All they did was telling us this is us and this is what we do and we can provide you with resources to use during your classes but oh, yeah, they're in Manchester AND London, which is no use if the teachers I'm working with only tell me what I'm doing either just before class or a day or two before.

What got me a little off was that they told us 'oh, did you know you can use videos/songs/puzzles/games during your classes' I was like, 'no, reaaaally?!' that might have helped guys who this is their first teaching experience but honestly I have planned 5-hours lessons all from scratch, and I didn't even study to be a teacher. Even if they hadn't given a single lesson in their lives, these assistants HAVE taken lessons to learn a second language, they KNOW the type of activities you do in order to practice languages.

On a happier note, we found some mexicans! Haha, it was funny because there were around 10 of us and we inmediately got together, I remembered most of their faces from the mexico city seminar but I had only really met a couple of them. We bonded over the fact that here coke doesn't taste like coke because we don't use the same kind of sugar to make it, 'spicy' food doesn't taste hot at all to us, and even if it does, it's missing a bit of flavour, how expensive public transportation is and how bad the weather is. Hopefully, I might see them more.

After the meeting we decided to get something to eat but only ended up walking around the shops and taking pictures.

-'What's this bulding you're taking pictures of?', said someone.
-'I don't know, but it's Manchester!', replied another.

All in all it was fun, two other mexican assistants and our adopted colombian friend and I had to leave the party to go find our hostal. Now, seeing as I don't have internet, it was A's responsability to find and book our room, most of the places near the center were taken, so she booked something a bit further away. We went around the city center twice on those free buses, we couldn't find Victoria's train station and every person we asked for information was not helpful at all. We got lost and missed our train, one police officer at the station did help us but said the next train wouldn't be there until 10:40pm and it was only 6 and we were already tired, hungry and wet.

So we decided for the bus, but the bus driver, who wasn't nice to us at all, said it was almost five pounds for the ride, again we changed our minds and went to take a taxi. The first one we stopped wouldn't tell us more or less how much it would be to take us to the hostal unless we got on the car. Being from where we are we told him goodbye, and tried to stop another one, this one did say how much and it took us around 25min to get there.

When we first saw the hostal it didn't look like one at all, it was a pub! We almost got back to the street, tired and feeling cheated on when this friendly guy came outside to ask us if we had a reservation, when we said we did, he told us the rooms were upstairs but ours wasn't ready because his girlfriend, who is pregnant, wasn't there at the time to clean it but that he could offer us a very nice room in his other hostal, just down the road. He seemed nice so we followed him, he took us through the back road and for a bit we were scared it was a set up and he was gonna try to murder us all, but he did take us to a very very nice room with 3 beds, full bathroom with a bathtub, big shared kitchen and living room, the only bad thing is that we were on top of another pub and they had loud music, but seeing as it was good music, I didn't mind at all.

We followed Will, that's the nice guy we met, back to the original hostal and he took good care of us, sent the cook to take the order for our dinner, came around every once in a while to ask us how everything was going. Will also seemed interested to know where we were from and he said it was bullshit how the bus driver and the other people wouldn't give us directions and everything. He explained that most people around the city center aren't even from Manchester, that most of them are there because they moved there to study or work and that people from Manchester are really nice, we had to believe him. He even said that he would give us a ride (for 10 punds) back to the city center next morning, that all we had to do was call him and tell him we were ready.

He was also really proud of his pub, he even showed us this back garden that they use 'when the weather is good', he said. They even have a playground for the kids, the garden has a lovely view to the river and then we understood why he was so proud. He sent us back with bowls and more bread and more milk and he even sent us a heather when he saw we were freezing while we walked outside. We couldn't have found a better place to stay, really.

The next morning, this morning for me, we got up, had breakfast and got a ride back to the city center. We talked to Will about the place, how he lived in Italy for a lot of years, how he was going to the sauna to relax a little bit after dropping us off, and about how beautiful yet dangerous Mexico is. When he helped us get our bags out of the trunk he even gave as a present to one of the other assistants a bottle of a 'locally' made beer. I thought it was hilarious, the kind of thing you would expect from a pub owner, to have a bottle of beer just laying around in his car trunk.

We went around the city center, sightseeing and stuff, being tourists and taking pictures. We went to Manchester's chinatown and ate chinese food which wasn't that bad at all. Two of the girls went off to Edinburgh (insert sad face) and the other went off to France to visit her boyfriend, I came back to Sheffield exhausted but happy. I'm planning on going to church tomorrow and do my laundry. I hope hope hope our modem AND my paycheck will arrive on Monday, so I can finally use the internet and buy more food and so I can (at last!) stop worrying so much about both of them.

I'm not sure what I'm doing next week, probably sleep, plan some activities for the kids, catch up on my tv shows and more sleep but who knows, I might change my mind once we get there.

TTFN

Sexy: Half break. What can I say, not only British people love their vacations, I love them as well. Also, these crepes my French housemate gave me, SO good. I might not like her that much for certain things that I won't say here, but she's redeeming herself with these kicking-ass crepes.
Unsexy: The number of gay guys we found in Manchester. Will told us there were so many of them there, that 90% of guys with facial hair were gay and he was 'guessing' who was gay and who wasn't while we were riding in his car. Don't get me wrong, I love the gays, they're lovely and lively and make everything more fun, but what's a single, straight girl to do in England when most of the guys we find prefer to bat for the other team?
Song of the day: Everlasting Love by Jamie Cullum.