6 Days

Day 162: 2/10/09

I went to school, but I can manage with school now that I’ve gotten rid of all of my school stuff and will probably be going to school for only two more days. I don’t even attempt to try anymore. In biology, I was reading, in English of course. I was in the middle of a sentence, and then my teacher started yelling at me and asking me how my nap was. By this point, I am fed up with her accusations. I told her that I was reading in English, and not sleeping, and that I don’t sleep in class everyday, like she seems to think. Then she just laughed. The only reason I don’t tell her to fuck herself is that Belén has a cousin who works at my school and who knows my biology teacher, and I’m sure that type of information would get back to Belén very quickly. I don’t want to make Belén mad, so I won’t say anything that mean to the tutor. I will, however, walk out of her class and make a bunch of noise on the last day that I am in school and tell her to have a nice life.

I got a 9.2 on my English test, which is the equivalent of a 92%. Here were the two things I was marked off for. The instructions were: Fill in the blank with the appropriate verb form.

1. Justin said that they _______ at the restaurant the other night (eat)

2. Jennifer told us that she ______ shopping yesterday. (go)

I looked at these two sentences and filled in “ate” and then “went”. I know that both of those are correct. My teacher had corrected those and filled out “had eaten” and “had been”. Okay, so both of those are correct as well, albeit a bit more verbose. That means that there are two different correct answers, and I just happened to choose the one that I would use in normal conversation. I thought about arguing with the teacher that the instructions were vague and that I did conjugate the verbs correctly, but it wasn’t worth my time, so I just let it slide, and now I can say I’m an A- student in an ESL class.

Other than that, everything went normally today. I did get a nice e-mail from Tommaso, one of the heads of Rotary Spain, who everyone knows I’m so fond of. Rotary US, throughout this past week as I’ve informed them of my decision, has treated me with respect and understood how I am feeling. Tommaso, on the other hand, sent me an e-mail saying that I was not mature enough for the program, and that “you better return under your mum’s protective wings. And the sooner, the better, since your stay here is an [sic] useless waste of time and money for everybody.” That’s his direct quote from the e-mail, in English, so that’s his tone and his words. There was some other good stuff as well, but it’s not as insulting. He also forwarded this to the head of Rotary US. I don’t know how she will react, but even with the language and cultural barrier, Rotary should not be acting like this. I don’t care what he has to think about me, but you can be sure that when I get home, I will be making some noise about the way I’ve been treated. Even though my flight out of here is already confirmed, I don’t want to upset Rotary until I’m home and don’t have to deal with them anymore. Peace.