Nada interesante

Look what I found in Real Travel magazine this month- not like I ran into the shop to get a copy at the earliest opportunity or anything!

I seem to spend a lot of my time running into old students who may be in Colombia when I get there. Which would be cool. Now I am just looking for one my height! They tell me that I have to learn to dance salsa but is hard when your partner only comes up to your shoulder.

I was in O'Neills last night and my student was telling me that I have to dance salsa because in Colombia they don't usually play the same music as there. He said that they don't play music that you can't dance to-- I tried to point out that I was dancing but he just looked at me with scorn- and rightly so, what kind of dancing is shuffling from side to side? The thing is, I can move my hips and I can move my feet kinda in time but I find it almost impossible to do the two things at the same time.

I wish that we did dance like that in England- it would be great to be able to take to the dance floor confidently, knowing that I was not making a fool of myself (the nagging paranoia when I strut my stuff here).

I went out last week with my old Spanish teacher, classmates and a bunch of Colombian students. We were supposed to speak in Spanish all night but, as I pointed out, I am just not funny in Spanish-- yet! I thought that I had done a pretty good job of speaking as much Spanish as I could but at the end I was told that I could have made an effort! :(

I am reading in Spanish



and listening to music in Spanish but I find actual real conversations tricky. My teacher tells me that I am great at writing (what he actually said was 'fucking brilliant') but the talking really holds me back. I think that it is hard because I spend the whole day getting really into English and can't just switch languages that quickly. Now I feel guilty when I tell me students not to use their own languages in my class- knowing how much English I speak in my Spanish class. This week I will try harder.

Last week I went to an 18th birthday part- well, a couple of drinks with a kid reaching adulthood and celebrating by getting so drunk that he fell over and smashed his chin up and was absent from class for three days. Here he is before the incident

tonight I am going to a 30th birthday party. It is varied life indeed.