First Class

Well here I am, at the high school. I just had my first class with 15-16 year olds. I talked about where I was from, what I studied in College and about myself. Then I asked them questions and got everything from, do you have a boyfriend (a girl asked this, thankfully) to what is your favorite food. I answered all the questions as basically, yet thoroughly, as I could while speaking very very slowly. It´s strange, the English teachers can barely understand me, but said that it was because of my American accent. Although I did expect better English from English teachers. But everyone is trying. I then asked them what they thought of when they thought of America. The first response I got was ¨when the airplanes crash into skyscrapers¨. I was pretty shocked, and said, ¨You mean September 11th?¨ and they said yes. I find it fascinating that 8 years later, this was their first response. What does this say about us? I doubt that when we think about Spain the first thing most of us think about is the train bombing on March 11th by terrorists. The first response to what do you think when you think of America was September 11th. Take a second and think about what this implies. It´s incredible really- has our presence in the world been narrowed down to this single event? Sad, tragic, yet fascinating. The next things were baseball, big houses, expensive cars, parties, hamburgers and Obama (after which a student made like an entry into heaven noise). There was one section of students that sat to one side and kept talking in Spanish to each other. The teacher told me that these were students who were not as smart as the other students and in all classes they had lower expectations- I´m guessing it´s some kind of ill formed special ed program? She told me that while she´s teaching the class I might be working with these students. I have two more classes today. I don´t have internet at my apartment yet, hence the lack of posts. Alright going to get some pan con tomate at the cafeteria.