At the school, I think I'm regarded as something somewhere between a quiet, well-dressed gentleman and a half-mad, English oddity. Well to be honest its usually when I let my mad impulses and quirky side take over that the kids seem to find me funny and entertaining.... but at what cost? Whether or not they're learning anything is a completely different matter. And then there's the matter of what they're learning. Having no filter between my brain and mouth has engineered some interesting and highly regretful moments throughout the meandering course of my life, and I think at the school the kids find me somewhere between entertaining and baffling. The other day I caught myself talking about Heroin because we had stumbled on the conversation of Trainspotting and films... and then in some desperate act I started raving like a lunatic high on the stuff "look I'm not promoting heroin, I don't want the take-away message of this lesson to be that Tom endorses heroin. Only the high quality China-white stuff...." Well thank god I didn't say that last sentence, but nevertheless I had started ranting about heroin and I just hope some of the topics of conversation don't get back to the teacher cos I'll be hung, drawn and quartered.
This afternoon I was running late for my afternoon lesson which was partly my fault for not giving myself enough time but also because none of the printers seemed to be working in the school.. well luckily I finally found a functioning one and after shouting my head off and cursing all the computers in the school in a state of frantic rage - the sentiment being something akin to Harry's words in In Bruges "YOU FUCKING INADEQUATE OBJECT" - I grabbed my worksheets and ran off to the secondary school, almost piling face-first into a dutiful cleaner on the way, and made it too late to even do any of the work I had printed off. So this is where my frankly astounding talent for talking utter bullshit kicked in; the conversation ran along the lines of the kids telling me their favourite bands, bad impersonations of Brummies as I tried to explain different accents in the UK and me shouting my head off at the primary lot through the windows because one of them slammed a football into it, "you jackasses!!" And then to my students, "That, class, is an impersonation of a typical American accent...." To round it all off I finished the lesson by showing them the one pound fish man, "a typical bartering market man from London on display for you here kids...."
Well somehow I've still got a job, so I suppose all the stress and constant demands of the day is worth it. Its bloody tiring, but luckily I've got some good ideas now. It's just bringing these ideas to fruition.... I wanna teach the kids about sports they don't no such as Rugby and Cricket, which could be good, so I'll have to try and find a cheap basic cricket set and/or rugby ball from somewhere and we can play a little in the school-yard.
Anyway, that's enough ranting for one day. So the past weekend was packed full of vista-points; the spectacular Park Guell on friday, designed by Gaudi, offered some of his unique architectural delights such as a spell-blinding church which looked like something out of a Tim Burton film and great 360 views across the city and the sparkling ocean beyond. A particular highlight was when I first arrived and went up the viewing monument replete with a mounted cross reaching the highest point of the park, visible from everywhere else, and many an american accent drifted on the warm currents of air... well a complete lunatic broke the sanctity of the scene I just painted. But it was hilarious. Here was a madman screaming and thrashing his guitar in some sort of attempt to play acoustic glam-rock. His hair was down to his arms and he wore ridiculous white shades and was fully decked in a leopard-print outfit and would just shout a random word outloud and bash his guitar, every now and then he went into some terrible rendition of an Elvis song... well the video will illuminate all.
Anyway, I'll post some pictures and the video, but I'd better be off, Adeu!
Ha Duff Beers!
Perfect day to see the sights, the graffiti on the building wasn't bad either..
The lunatic
I decided to walk back from Park Guell to see if I could just do it, half because I hate the metro and half because I thought I could do it. Well turns out I could, took about 3 hours mind but then I was stopping for beer fuel along the way. The above statue is on Diagonal. The building below is a now-redundant bull-fighting arena.
And the water bottle building, 15mins or so away from the flat. Pretty funky at night.
Oh and on a side note I've now had my running shoes chucked away by Laura, who thought because they were near the rubbish they were included in that rubbish... I'd put them in a bag to dry out in the laundry area. So that's my nexus and running shoes gone, the last being from San Franscisco bought as a birthday present...how much where they again? Well I told Laura those last two things just to sadistically ram home the guilt, but alas, we made a joke of it and she said she'd buy me some new ones. I'm not sure whether to say just pay half, as they have been good to me and running shoes can be expensive....
Anyway, here's the video;
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