Spring league, teaching, and SpanAir refunds

Spring League

Last night was our last regular game of spring league.  In the next few weeks we'll have a semi-finals, and then a Saturday afternoon finals event, like in the fall.

Mon/Thurs School

Lately on Thursday mornings I've been teaching the class alone while the teacher works downstairs in her office.  If you recall, at my Monday/Thursday school the students finished their school year at the end of March, and from April - June they have an internship.  So only the students that didn't aprobar (pass) are still in class.  I think there are six boys total that should be coming Thursday mornings, but attendance varies every week.  These students are 17-18 years old.

So in April we started back at unit 1 with the students that failed, and now we're doing unit 2 again.  When we started unit 2 two weeks ago is when I started teaching the class alone.  I actually prefer it this way, because I can break away from the book and make class a bit more interesting and personal for the boys.

Today we played a couple of games to review for their exam on chapter 2 -- the exam that I will write, give next Thursday, and grade.  The students took turns creating a monster on the chalkboard, as per my instructions: "Draw three eyes," and "Now draw two arms with four fingers on each hand," for example. (New words this unit include: head, hand, foot, fingers, toes, mouth, eyes, ears, and hair.)

Later they did some miming of present continuous sentences that I had made up.  The others had to guess what the sentence was.  For example:  "You are eating very spicy food." or "You are taking a cold shower."  I think this was the first time these students have ever played a game in their English class, which is a shame.

Spanish was always one of my favorite classes because we would often play games and do lots of talking with partners.  These students are used to just doing grammar exercises from their workbook.  Which is super boring, gives zero speaking practice, and often results in students zoning out and texting all hour.

Hopefully they will do well on the exam.  I'll probably finish writing the exam on Monday afternoon, when I work in the library of my Mon/Thurs school for four hours.  Only two students failed from the Monday class, but I've yet to see either of them on a Monday afternoon since this recuperation period began in April.  Thus, my two hours of prep followed by two hours of class have turned into four hours of prep in the library.

SpanAir Refund

After class today I stopped by the bank to check up on my SpanAir refund.  Remember that?  SpanAir is the company that went under at the end of January 2012.  I had bought a ticket to the Canary Islands in December for a flight in February - a flight that would no longer exist.  So I went to the bank on February 2 to get the ticket refunded.

I offered a postcard to the person who most closely predicted when I would receive my SpanAir refund.  My sister had guessed that I'd receive the refund by my birthday.  Well surprise, surprise - I still haven't received it.

The man at the bank today had me re-print out my original ticket, and he took down my cell phone number in case he needed more information later.  So hopefully this time something happens.  Anyone want to make new predictions as to when my refund will come?  Leave a guess in the comments; I'll send out another postcard to the winner!