Rant #3

And so I have survived two weeks of school.

The history classes are interesting, although I find it hard to stay awake in the three hour evening class. The Spanish class is a terror. Being quite determined that we learn to speak Spanish, our teacher absolutely insists we speak nothing except Spanish in class, and I only understand about half of what he says. That is why I found myself wandering around the room one afternoon, not knowing where I was supposed to be. I knew he had split us up into groups, I just didn't know what group I was in or which side of the room I was supposed to be on. As it turns out, I didn't need to move from my seat at all; I was already where I needed to be. So I had wandered around the room like an idiot for nothing.

My Spanish teacher thinks I brought a sex book to class. It wasn't a sex book. Really. It wasn't. It's called "A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband", written in 1917, and it is a cookbook. Most editions go on to say on the book cover "...With Bettina's Best Recipes". My edition does not.

Our assignment was to bring to class tres cosas (three things) that were important to us. I agonized over my choices, finally selecting a picture of my grandson, my great-grandmother's birthday book, and the first book in my collection of old cookbooks. (Many students chose their phones and iPods; talk about a generation gap!). We then broke up into groups of four and were instructed to tell each other about our tres cosas and ask each other question about them (all in Spanish, of course). Chins hit the floor when I held up my old cookbook, and the entire group started laughing. As I was holding it up, my teacher was looking at it intently (from several feet away), and I guess was reading the cover. He then quickly turned away and headed rapidly in the other direction. Apparently he did not want to know about my book or why it was so important to me.

I wasn't worried about what he thought because I knew we would all soon have a turn in the front of the class telling everyone about our tres cosas. Of course, I was too chicken to rush up front to take my turn before I absolutely had to and then, guess what? My turn never came. We ran out of time and at our next meeting we moved on to the group thing where I wandered around the room like an idiot. So now he thinks I'm an idiot who brought a sex book to class.

I can always count on Spanish class for adventure and outright terror. And whenever I feel the need to make a fool of myself, I know exactly where to go.