Internships are a Ludicrous Concept

Yesterday was my actual first day at my internship, and it was quite exciting.  Basically I am supposed to follow around the English teacher at this elementary school about two klicks from my house.  She hops from room to room every 40 minutes to teach the same lesson to every class individually - so it's good practice for teaching high school where I'll have to give the same lesson multiple times each day.  But even at the biggest high school, one teacher would never give the same lesson seven times in a row.  It's an exhausting concept to me, but this teacher just plows through it like a champ.  Classroom management is a foreign concept here, so the classes are always a huge rowdy mess and the poor teachers just keep teaching.  I think I could handle the chaos if it was English-speaking chaos, but having 20 kids shout random Spanish words is just a little bit overwhelming for me.  My fake-smile muscles are quite sore.  Supposedly the school is bilingual (or at least that's what it says on the sign) but none of the kids speaks more than 20 words of English.  This will be quite a challenge.

Kids are so funny, though.  For one thing I was asked no less than 18 times if I had a boyfriend, and when I responded that I don't, the kid's would all look shocked like not having a boyfriend was just the worst way to exist.  I asked them if people usually have boyfriends when they are 20 years old, and they said sometimes but not always.  "Why is it so weird that I don't have a boyfriend, then?"  Their response, word for word: "You're a white chick."  So new stereotype to add to the list of Things Americans Supposedly Do: perpetually have boyfriends.  They also thought that I was the teacher's daughter.  This woman is 5'0'' and has a lot of thick black hair.  I guess that means I look like a Costa Rican, though.  That is, until I open my mouth.  The kids would pretty much ignore me until I started talking and then they would just stare blankly at me until I explained that I am an American.

This should be a pretty enlightening experience.  I am predicting that by the end I will be teaching every lesson myself.  The teacher had me do more and more as the day went on.  I thought she was just trying to gently introduce me to the classes, but by the last group she just handed me the whiteboard marker and plopped wordlessly into a chair.  I guess I must have seemed relatively competent.