We start at nine and end at five, so there's very little time to wallow and worry about my loneliness too much. I will admit to having McDonald's for lunch, but did manage to find a nice tapas place to have dinner. It's REALLY hard to eat in Spain when you're a selective vegetarian, don't eat seafood, and can't eat pork. Half the menu is swine, fish, or red, red meat. 
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First day of classes wasn't too bad. We did some methodology in the beginning. They don't really lecture in class, but force you to participate in group discussions, which was something I was dreading. For some reason though it wasn't too uncomfortable. I didn't feel as intimidated as I thought I'd be.

We're a group of 18 trainees. They broke us up into groups of three, with six people in each. All 18 of us are in class together in the morning and then we break up into our groups in the afternoon to teach classes to real students (poor guinea pigs). My group starts the first phase of this course teaching elementary students. We each had to teach a 20 minute lesson which, while you're up there, might as well be a 20 hour one.

Wasn't looking forward to going up there (and I was the first one as well). Stood in front of the class, saw all those eyes staring at me, caught a glimpse of my tutor in the background and started sweating from every single pore in my body. It was as if someone had turned up the heat and I was still wearing a heavy coat.

Couldn't get the class to follow any of my instructions. I started speaking to them the way I would speak to anyone who understands English and assumed that they'd understand the exercise I was trying to get them to do. I mean, the directions were pretty simple and I couldn't understand why it was that they just couldn't GET IT. They didn't understand me, they couldn't follow the lesson, and I was getting so exasperated with them. I felt myself losing patience as I couldn't get my point across. "Why the hell can't they understand me, what the hell is wrong with them, why can't they fucking follow directions" were the only things going through my mind.

I had no control over the lesson (a mere 20 minutes!!! What are future lessons going to be like!??). I felt incredibly frustrated afterwards. Blamed it on the students ("they're just stupid") but I know the fault does not lie with them. The patience thing is something I definitely need to work on if I want to become a teacher! I won't be too hard on myself though because this was, after all, my first time doing something like this.

Making a comment like that is already a huge deal for me. I usually feel sick to my stomach when I fuck up. For some reason I'm okay with my performance and am looking to see what I can extract from it to do better next time. I suppose being here is working already.

Came back home with a really bad headache. Funny...in high school I would come home with a headache after the first day of classes all the time.