The Birds & The Bees

The first day back to preschool post-Easter vacation, my basement English classroom was transformed into a party room for a baby and bridal shower (not for the same woman, ha). By the way, the phrase in Spanish for 'bridal shower' is 'despedida de soltera.' The phrase for 'baby shower' in Spanish is 'baby shower.'

After five hours of dancing spastically and pulling borderline-abusive wrestling moves on small children, I sat next to my colleagues on midget chairs as they talked about breastfeeding/in-law horror stories, me understanding most of their rapid, enthusiastic Spanish and laughing when I saw everyone else laughing. The mix of me having no such stories to contribute nor the desire to try to tell them in Spanish left more time for me to eat the delicious chocolate cake and tuna empanadas.

Another fun experience I shared with my colleagues and the school administrator was making phallic banana sculptures. Of course these women-oriented events always devolve into sexual and/or perverted discussions, but normally this happens with people from whom I don't receive my paycheck. Anyway, they passed around a basket of bananas, and we were meant to make the best "sculpture" with our teeth. I mostly understood the rules but felt insanely awkward, so I bit polka dots. Nobody laughed when it was my turn to show my work, and they didn't laugh when I explained it was an 'enfermedad sexual.' However, we did manage to put down three bottles of wine by 5 p.m., though there was like 15 of us so I guess it's not that impressive. We couldn't find a bottle opener, so one of the teachers used a pen to push the cork back into the bottle, using my apron to cover any resulting splashes. I finally got a group laugh when, after I revealed that they were indeed using my apron, that wine is better than the food and snot already crusting over on the denim shield.

I like to think bonding moments like this can erase in their minds my inability to teach.