5 posts tagged “instituto cervantes”

I'll miss the campus, the activities, the library, the festivals, the fairs, the food, the coffee, but most of all, me classmates!

My classmates are awesome. It just sucks that only half the class showed up for the last day. Kamote kayo! Last day na nga lang e!!! I'll miss you guys! Yan tuloy kay Emil lang ako may remembrance:

Apir Emil! Kekekeke.

For me, at least.

I decided to just free myself of the once-every-Saturday classes at Instituto Cervantes, so I can have a freer weekend. I need lots more downtime now that I've actually got a regular day job; I can maintain my Spanish on my own. Besides, the past few levels have been rather disappointing in terms of having good teachers, save for Meri in level 9 (she was really good in simplifying and conveying ideas to students).

I'm not willing to pay hard-earned money for classes where I barely learn anything unless I self-study (which is coincidentally one of the reasons I dropped out of La Salle, but that's another story). Just because a teachers has awesome credentials and has a lot of head knowledge doesn't automatically mean he/she will be a great teacher. If ideas cannot be simplified and conveyed to students in an effective manner, all that means nothing.

Lately, that's what's been happening to the quality of the teachers in Instituto Cervantes.

The only thing I'll miss there are the my friends, they're a cool bunch of people.

This Saturday was the last day we'd have Meri as our nivel 9 teacher. The class started two weeks late due to lack of students, and she had already made advance travel plans to go back to Spain, so she had to leave before the class finishes.  I thought it would be good to take some photos for posterity.

No tengo ganas de traducir o escrbir un articulo entero en español, y por eso, que me disculpen. Os dejo con mas fotos en lugar de eso. (God I hope that sounded right).

Have a nice flight Meri!

I made the mistake of drinking coffee in the evening Friday night. So for Saturday, I only had two hours worth of sleep to get me through the whole day.

Saturday's the busiest day of the week for me. Gotta go to field service in the morning, School in the afternoon, and the mall in the evening. So once the sun rose, I immediately made myself three cups of strong coffee to at least get me through the morning - but just an hour after drinking, I was already groggy again.

I only had two hours for lunch, another shower (it was a hot, 35 degree day), and the commute to school (good thing the train was on time, tho). I got to the Instituto slightly early, and almost fell asleep on my chair as my profesora came in on point. We talked a while, and then Gretch came in with a handful of bags (a sideline business?) and Maridol came in with a headache. The rest of the class trickled in, and besides the curriculum, we talked mostly about subsidizing the class since we lacked a few students to make the minimum requirement of 10 per class. Finally, the break.

We scurried over to Le Coeur de France (see? I don't hold grudges... that... long... well...) for some coffee and pastries. I asked for an extra shot of espresso, hoping to keep awake until way into the night. Unfortunately, the drip and the espresso lasted me even shorter than the coffee I French pressed for myself this morning, and by the time we were finished with the class I was walking around even more metrosexually than Johnny Depp playing Keith Richards on crack (and/or rum, or both).

Come 5PM, I just dropped dead on my bed. Never mind the steaks dad was cooking up or the fact that I had a movie ticket in my name for the evening, my thalamus was having none of it. Traitor.

15 hours later, here I am - coffee on the desk, hands over the keyboard. It's a quiet Sunday, and just the ambience the day itself brings is purging (cathartic seems too strong a word, connotations considered). A search on Vox groups for insomnia yields a mental disorders group and a group for people who work better at night.

I guess this post is going nowhere. Oh well, there's always twitter.

Well, that was the end of the 15-hour review class for us at the Instituto Cervantes. Some of us will be going on to nivel 8, others to nivel 16, and the others to... I dunno. Some other level. We tried to get everyone together for an end-of-class dinner, but some of us had some appointments to attend to, so we all just settled for photos.

Shoutouts to Allan, Peter, Juanito, Arnel, Dicky, Violy, Fritzy, Maridol, Gretchen, and our prof David - It was a blast! Catch you guys at the Instituto next time!