Onto our next adventure!
As a result of my mid-midlife crisis at age 25, we decided to move to the southern coast of Spain. Join Mason and I as we spend two years in the beachy paradise of Málaga!
Teaching gives me some of the best stories, and it would simply just be selfish of me to keep them to myself. So without further ado, enjoy some 2020 silliness! Read other stories here: Tales of an English Teacher, Little Stories, and Adiós Nájera The Masked Face This year, as we are living in a pandemic, we always have to wear a mask. In the streets, restaurants, banks, and most importantly, in the schools. Because of this, my students have never seen my face (2019 Ellen would have been quite perplexed by this sentence). They've only ever seen me from the eyeballs up. Which, if we're being honest, is one of my better angles. When school started back in October a couple sixth grade girls began pestering me with the very specific request of, "Teacher Helen we want to see your face." Every recess the group grew in number, and with it, persistence. For weeks they asked me to show my face, not resting for a single day. They are a determined bunch. After three weeks of unrelenting bombardment, they finally broke me down and I agreed. Seven or eight masked 11 year old girls stood around me in a semicircle, six feet apart, and waited with bated breath as my hand slowly reached toward the top of my mascarilla. (It should be noted that I was more nervous than them, as tween critics know no bounds. I could only imagine what kind of comments would ensue if they thought I was ugly). With fear in my heart, I pulled my mask down for what could have been no more than four seconds, just enough time to flash them a winning Ellen smile. And good god, you would have thought they had won an Olympic gold medal. The girls started squealing and jumping up and down with the same veracity as me at a Jonas Brothers concert. They were losing their minds, to put it lightly. Amidst all the celebration, one of the girls flung her head back, clenched her hands into little fists, and screamed at the top of her lungs, "I LOVE YOUR MOUTH!" Their response was more positive than anything I could have dreamed of. Strange, certainly, as it was the first time I’ve had to react to someone’s blatant love for my mouth, but it kept a smile on my face for the rest of the day. Of course, no one could see it under the mask. La Teta de Sabrina One of my favorite classes this year is at the academy where I also work. I have a lower level adult English course made up of a 40 year old father of two, a 23 year old shop-a-holic, and a 45 year old Spanish teacher. It’s a small group with a big personality. Every Thursday we spend an hour laughing and conversing about everything under the sun. More often than not, I leave with a couple good stories to tell. One week in particular I decided to teach them about one of America’s most important traditions- the Super Bowl. I taught them about all the essentials- the commercials, the food, and of course, the half-time show. I showed them a couple half-time clips to really give them a taste of the grandeur of it all. A few seconds into the first video, the father of two excitedly shouted out, “like Lauren Jackson!” Confused, I paused the vídeo, and faced the class. The Spanish teacher responded, just as excitedly, “Yes, with the boob!” Ah, I thought, Janet Jackson’s famous appendage slip. We laughed about it for a bit, them explaining it was the only connection they had to the Super Bowl and me expressing my surprise that it had made its way all the way across the Atlantic. Soon they were telling me a similar story about some character named Sabrina. The father of two took the lead and began to relay the legend of la teta de Sabrina. She was an Italian singer who had a televised performance on New Year’s Eve in the 80’s. As the story was told to me, “She sing a song and say boy many times. She jump with all the boys.” (At this point the man stood up and began singing boy, boy, boy, jumping each time he said boy) “She say boy, many times. But many times. And the boob… PLOP.” And with that, the father of two proudly sat down, pleased with his storytelling, and the rest of the class, me included, erupted in laughter. We applauded his explanation and I pocketed the story to tell Mason later. As it turns out, his narrative was pretty accurate, and will probably be the only way I ever retell the tale of la teta de Sabrina. Out of the Mouth of Babes As per usual, I'll finish this post with my favorite student quotes.
2 Comments
Max
12/11/2020 11:39:18 am
Great stories Ellen, I cackled. Can you please go into more detail about Foot? What exactly was this person so thankful for? Their feet? Feet's existence in general? Or something else???
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Ellen
12/12/2020 03:36:37 am
Originally I thought they meant to say "food," but when I pointed to my foot and asked if that's what they meant, they nodded. So? I guess we'll never know exactly what they meant.
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