I went to see Maria tonight after dinner. I told her I was fine but a bit tired, because preparing for classes is a lot of work.
I still can't decide whether she jumped to conclusions or she is seeing me more clearly than I am. She said, "you are agobiando". It means something like you are freaking out/stressing out/worrying too much. She said she had a friend that could help me, and she was going to give me this friend's number. Then she got on the phone and called up the friend. Said friend is cathedratica de Ingles at the University. The other night we had a discussion as to what cathedratica means. I think it must be "dean" judging from how they described it to me. Anyways, Maria said, "now I'm going to pass you over to my friend Ana. Toma, Ana" (take the phone). So I end up talking to Julia, who is really lovely, and I tell her I think I'm doing okay but Maria thinks I'm agobiandoing. Julia spent quite some time with me, asking me what I was teaching and my experience and what the problems were. Then she simply reassured me that I'm qualified and have experience and I'm a native speaker besides and that she's sure I'm an excellent teacher, and that if I ever have any problems, I can come over to the university and meet her, and she can introduce me to her colleagues who know more about applied linguistics, because she really teaches the history of English, and hasn't actually taught the language for a long time. She says there is an Irish fellow who has all sorts of methods for teaching, and so on.

My class went very well today again. Maria probably is right though. I am spending an awful lot of time, because I am solely responsible for this, and I need to do a good job. I am motivated, it interests me. But I truly am overwhelmed sometimes. Textbooks don't try to teach what I'm teaching. I can't simply pick one up and follow it. The trouble at the moment is I am trying to remember or rather collate from scratch, rules for pronunciation based on spelling. I think this has gone out of vogue in schools, for native and non-native speakers of English alike. They taught me some simple rules that have many exceptions, when I was in school. They actually are helpful. The reason they don't teach them is because there are so many exceptions. But my students today were thankful. If there is a double consonant, it means the vowel in front of it stays "short" rather than turning "long" due to the added e (or other vowel) after the double consonant. That is why "letter", is pronounced with the same e sound as "bed" and "meter" is pronounced with an "ee" sound. Why cat and sat sound one way and gate, fate sound another way. Nobody teaches these any more, and especially not for ESL students, who desperately need anything they can get their hands on for indicators of pronunciation. Anyways, when you start getting to double vowels, there are some that are complicated, because they don't really follow the rules. Still, there are a majority of words that are pronounced either of two ways, when there is an "ea" in the middle of a word, or an "ai".
I think these people that don't bother are just lazy. There is no good information gathered in one place on all this, on the internet, so I am trying to figure it out myself. Then I am trying to make up exercises (I don't make them all up; the one below isn't mine.)

Today I made them all go "rrrrrrr" "deh.... deh.... deh..." "vvvvvvvvvvvvv", because they can't do good r, d or v sounds. Especially not when r and d are combined at the end of a word, like "bird". That is very hard for them.
Bid, bed, bud, bead, board, beard, bard, bared, bird. You take these sounds for granted!
Each of those gets assigned a number. They try to tell the other guy their phone number, by saying the word that corresponds to each number. All of them had at least one mistake, more like 2 or 3. Spanish speakers can't distinguish well between bad and bud or beard and bird (and a few others, but mostly those).

Things are happening very easily here. It is scary because it is a lot of work and serious planning which can't just be done on the fly, and I have never done it before, really.
I have a second serious client. He is a very lovely gentleman from Barcelona. I knew to wear proper dress pants and heels because, when I told him how to recognise me in a red jacket, he wrote back that he would have a long black coat and a grey suit. Indeed, Marcelino is responsible for making sure Nokia and whatever cellphone service they are attached to here in Andalucia, work properly. While we were discussing English class he got a call that 19 towers were down in Granada.
He is a proper and distiguished gentleman, and I am not used to working with such people. But this particular guy seems to have a good heart and to even take the time out of his cell phone towers going all to heck, to ask a crazy Canadian girl about her interest in flamenco. In fact I feel like I fit in with these sort of people (business people, proper) when I manage to dress somewhat better than usual, and feel that my reserved nature lends itself to interactions with them. On the other hand, I have a pronounced sense of being very, very weird to somebody like this.
He is very serious about learning English, as quickly as possible, and wants an hour a day. He would like to further his career and says it is literally impossible without English. Even if he applies for a job in South America where English would not likely to be very necessary, it is a requirement, just to filter people out, he says.
Our conversation started out actually with something about the Euro problems and he told me that one European telecommuncations company is using bailout money to buy technical teams from China to add to their company - that with European taxpayers' money, they are doing this. He says that China is going to own Spain soon and they will start calling the shots, due to the Spanish debt that China has bought. And that they may eventually have to speak Chinese here.

Quisiera volverme pulga

This is Camaron (the greatest flamenco singer of the last 50 years, as far as innovation combined with connection to his roots and as far as far-reaching influence. was like a rock star as far as filling concerts, but without attitude. my description would be: angel from heaven, whose singing can bring the dead to life)
singing a less serious form of song: Quisiera volverme pulga (I would like to turn into a flea).
The words go: I'd like to turn into a flea, and put myself in a mattress, to sleep with whoever I wish, who gives me warmth. Tonight it's going to rain...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWqgjrZWCHk

I don't know if I said it but my hair is like 3 different bobs and I realised yesterday it needed doing something about. You don't cut layers, apparently, by sectioning off levels on your scalp and cutting the hair there to end at different points in space. Oh well.

Today I am going hiking with Mara and some of her friends.
...
And I just got back from an utterly fabulous day hiking in the Sierra Norte de Sevilla. A misty day that felt like Vancouver turned sunny, and we could hike part of the time in long sleeve t-shirts. Mara, Daniela, Ricardo (both Brazilenos) and Felipe (Belgian but of Spanish ancestry) as well as Faro, fit in Mara's car and once there picked up bocadillos (sandwiches made out of an entire small loaf of bread - me and Mara has serranitas - roased pork, jam and roasted pepper (green, fresh roasted in a frying pan without oil). The town was El Pedroso, and the countryside was like that (rocky). It was rolling and quite dry with a mix of olive and alcornoque (oak), both of the bellota (nut) and the cork kind. It was cool to see Ricardo so fascinated by seeing cork for the first time. We were all pretty excited by the pigs we came across. Not wild, but they were Ibericos, by Mara's estimation. Being a biologist, and familiar with this area, she was able to tell us about various things. All of them are biologists, actually. The pigs are the grey kind, of medium size. They were very funny, as I've rarely seen pigs firsthand. Daniela, Felipe and I even climbed a tree.

This is well worth your time if you feel any frustration with the state of the world in general (its relevance extends far beyond this issue) or care about BC. It will also give you hope, because it is a young person, and it might give you a kick in the pants (which you deserve) if you are unaware of or have not imagined what tends to go on in the world in general to support the status quo.

http://www.vancouverobserver.com/blogs/earthmatters/2012/02/20/oil-executive-sons-testimony-prince-rupert-northern-gateway-pipeline?page=0%2C3

Unfortunately, it did not sway the decision of whoever it was (Mr. Harper I presume) who had the final say.

I just had a bout of paranoia and erased a bunch of stuff I wrote. Just ta let you know. 

A madwoman has been awakened. A crazed preacher, a zealot. Unfortunately, it's not timely, and I don't have a venue.

I am awake at 6 am after only sleeping a couple hours anyways. Dreaming up ways of sending MR. Steven Harper a letter. Images of myself screaming onto video.
A friend posted a link to an Avaaz petition about stopping En-whatever. The company with the oil pipeline, and all that's connected to the tankers that will, as of yesterday, be allowed again (since when they have been disallowed, I am not sure but perhaps since the last very serious oil spill) to go down the coast OF MY PROVINCE.

As somewhat of a disclaimer, I do not know the issue very well. I do not know for sure that I should necessarily be freaking out, but this is a purely illogical response which I will explain soon.

My letter would say something like this: Mr. Harper, if you are a Christian like my parents believe you are, then you should go spend some time in the forests of Coastal B.C. because you would re-connect with God a bit better there. Then you need to go live in China. (Especially since that is who this issue concerns). You would then be very, very careful what you let happen to these forests or the coast nearby them.

Let me explain something. When someone comes near your body with something dangerous to you, you make them stop (self censored here for fear of a scary big brother world out there)
When I came back from my year in China, something had snapped. When the air AT THE AIRPORT smells like chlorophyll, the green needles of trees, and pure oxygen like you were dying of thirst and did not even know it until you took a sip (a breath), when you see mountains rising from the North Shore of the city upon which you can make out enormous, healthy trees, and you see that they are uncut... and seem to rise up from the edge of the houses completely un spoiled by anything, and you know because you've been there, that there really is NOTHING of civilisation (no clearing of the land for cultivation, no herders herding) beyond that; when you see Cedar and Douglas Fir tree trunks all around you in a dense, moist forest and this has been nowhere even within reach for one whole year, some part of you other than your brain and eyes recognises it. When you have cried just to look at pictures that showed bits of remote coastal BC wilderness where you have been dropped, and sat far from everything with utter peace and only an eagle, bears nearby...
There is a kind of thing that exists: if you have any connection or experience of the nature of the place you live ... it is part of your body. It may be that only immigrants or those who have spent a large amount of time away from their place of origin would understand me.

Last night I went to bed excited about my breakfast of specialty lard and top quality white bread. First thing this morning it didn't appeal to me. I have a pancake based diet. So I reverted to it; made myself a small pancake. Whole rye flour, whole wheat, olive oil, whole cane sugar, the usual recipe: the right amount of flour in a drinking glass. Amounts of baking soda, salt and sugar that seem right for that amount of flour. Same amount of water into drinking glass as flour. Mix. Pour in what seems like a spoonfullish amount of oil. Fry in olive oil in the "tortilla-only" frying pan (as designated by Rocio, who hasn't the rat's ass of a clue what a pancake is).