Toki Alai

Donºt to mind the odd characters...I am having issues with this portuguese keyboard....so bear with me.
also, SS is code for San Sebastian from now on.

So for a volunteer project for USAC, I went with three other students, Michelle, Diamond and Jason to a high school in SS´s neighboring Irun, where we taught English. It was fun to prepare a lesson on literally whatever we wanted. We were split into twos to do the teaching, and I was paired with Jason. We decided to teach a class about music, in English.

This was all planned for Friday morning (since i donºt have class on fridays). Jason was upset because the previous week when he did this activity, the other three usac students were 45 minutes late to meet him at the SS train station and they were therefore 15 or 20 minutes late to the teaching thing, which was just embarrassing. To fix this, he wanted to meet up at the SS station at 6.45am to get on the 7 or 7.15 train, which takes about 30 mins, then take a taxi to the school, as planned, since the taxi takes about 10 mins. That way weºd have plenty of time to settle in and get organized, as well as have a cushion in case there were issues.

Well, i wake up at 6.20 and eat and such and strap on my rollerblades to go to the station. I get there at about 6.50 and only diamond is there...michelle is 4 mins away via bus, and jason is supposedly going to be there 15 minutes from then.
When we all arrived, we hopped on the train and went to irun. Mind you, it is pitch black this early in the morning. We got to Irun just as cafes were opening and grabbed a croissant as we walked in a general direction where we thouht the taxi stand was located. We wandered until we found one, then of course there werenºt taxis there. We called the number on the sign, then waited, then some man was like ´need a taxi, come this way!´´ then we walked a block or two then saw our taxi pass us so we ran back to catch up with it. We hopped in and got to the school just in time.

We then split up and were led to the classrooms. The first class was pretty rowdy, but once they settled in, we began.

We began with an activity where Jason and I write 4 items about us on the board, then the class has to ask questions about them to figure out what they were.

For example, I wrote: Eric, August, Kate Nash, and Anna Levon.
The class then would ask ´´ís anna levon the name of your mother´´ or ´´ís kate nash your best friend´´ until they got it right.
Then, they had homework before we arrived to come up with a list of questions to ask us. It was fun to answer them, and many were repetitive. Some questions included, ´´what do you think of basque food´´ or ´´how long are you in spain´´ and of course, being from the USA, ´´have you met any famous people?´´ of course, when I said i met John Goodman at the LAX airport, they had no idea who that was. Nor did they know Shia LeBouf until I was like, ´´hmm, Transformers?´´Then they all nodded in acknowlegement, then oohed and ahhed.

We then moved onto our activity. We first had them list as many typed of music they could think of, like Rock, pop, flamenco, reggae, rap, country, etc.
Then we had them think of specific artists. Then, they each had to come up with a sentence to describe the sound of one of the artists they listed. We gave them a bunch of examples on the worksheet, and by far my favorite was ´´I donºt like Pinkºs music because it sounds like crying babies!´´

Then, the best part was when we gave them a list of adjectives to describe music, then we played a few songs on Jasonºs iPod. Radiohead, for example, was not well recieved by the first class who thought it was loud, repetive and annoying. The second class, however, thought it was catchy and cool.

Then we moved on to the next class, where we did the same thing and got some different responses. We called on one kid who was shy and asked him a question (of course, in english) and he stared and was like ´´mmm...no entiendo.´´ The kids in the room laughed and were like ´´Heºs...how do you say...short?´´ Then Jason was like ´´óhh, you mean SLOW.´´ It was funny.

Then we had a 20 min break, as well as the students. We all met up again, with Michelle and Diamond and had some coffee. We then went to the last classroom where we were told the kids had a very low level of english and that some would have to be spoken to in Spanish. One girl stood out as seeming very knowledgable about English, outshining most of the students. I only stayed for a short period in this class because I had to leave early to catch my 12.40 train to Bilbao from SS.

I left and got in a taxi that the teacher called for me. She also handed me a gift as a thank you, which i wasnºt expecting. It included cookies, sausage, cheese, and 2 cans of paté. I took the cab and realized that i only had 8.50 euros left, and i knew the train costed 1.50. I took the taxi as far as about 6 euros got me, then hopped out. The driver insisted the station was a bit further but i avoided explaining the sitch and told him iºd be fine right there. I walked a few more blocks and got to the station at about 11.05. I got on the train, strapped on my rollerblades and went home, where I got my luggage and headed off to the SS bus station...