Day 18: My Finest Student

It's a nice day and I'm sitting outside with a student after class. She studies, but its just so hard. The quiz had eight words. She never studied. No, those were hard words!

Four of the words were cognates, they were not hard words. Nope, she sticks to her guns. Clearly I just don't understand. English is like totally super hard.

Why is she determined to convince me of this? If you want to learn, great. Come to class, pay attention, and study. If not, great. Come to class, listen to headphones, and play games with everyone afterwards. She thinks for a minute.

I'm finally getting through to her how much I don't care.

Noooo, but she iiiiiiis trying!

Never mind.

She demonstrates the early warning signs of a lengthy tirade. Trying to follow a thirteen year old on a tangent is difficult in any language. They rarely make sense."Jeans" on the other hand, is "jeans" in every language. It was not a hard quiz.

I give up and interrupt her with two claps. Hector's instantly at my side. "Sit" Hector sits. "Lay down" he lays down. "Stand up" he rolls over. oops.

"uh.. Roll over?" he stands. I switch to Portuguese and praise him on a perfect four out of four. "All right, now go away before you screw up on something she knows." He goes back to hide from the sun under a car.

She asks me which soccer team I like.

Nice work Hector.

Day 6: Hector

Last year the school had an intern who took in a stray dog. When he left, Hector became a stray again. I'm the new intern, so it seems to me that I've inherited a dog. He's not allowed inside, he has no collar, and I can't justify feeding a dog who's been content with garbage cans for so many years. To the untrained eye Hector is still a stray, but every time I go outside he's at my heel within a minute. He knows three commands: "Stay" "Go away" and "Relax dude".