Prospective Teacher?

'How on earth did they get me into this?' I asked myself as I biked to Merrin School. My thoughts preocupied, I only just rememberd to indicate around the corner. Dad was teaching at Merrin that day and had come home for lunch. He was talking to Mum about a Spanish class he was taking that afternoon, asking her to be a guest speaker... Dad doesn't know Spanish, but Mum, me, and Nathan are doing a Spanish course at Tech... Mum was busy that afternoon and refused. I had walked in the door for lunch and Andy spotted me. 'Why doesn't Lydia do it?' He queried. 'Do what?' And Dad explained. 'But I couldn't teach your class, I don't know how!' You know Spanish, though, and you're my daughter, so of course you can.' He said calmly. The rest of the family got in on it and told me that I should do it. Eventually I didn't have any excuses left, so I agreed and ate lunch. I got the Spanish dictionary and added to my list of nouns, then picked up my music books, the dictionary and a pencil and put them in a bag. As Andy and I biked, I planned what to teach them with growing nervousness.

Andy left me outside Merrin School, and as I biked in I spotted Dad walking towards room 9.
I parked the bike by the chair outside the room, and entered. Probably an ordinairy classroom, but I hadn't stepped into a classroom since I was five and so I found it formidable.
Dad herded the kids out of the room for five while I wrote up the nouns on the board, cut up some paper and found cellotape. The kids came back in and sat down and Dad did crowd control. Then Dad got me to introduce myself. 'Hola, mi nombre es Lydia,' There was an expectant pause. I waved my hands about, 'Well, aren't you going to say hello?' There was a mixed reply of Holas and hellos.

Then I got started for the onslaught. 'Ok, have a look at this list of nouns here.' I pointed to the white board. 'You can see that there is the Spanish word for the object, and also the English. Now what you do is, write a Spanish word on the front of a peice of paper, and the English on the back. Then put a bit of tape on it,' I demonstrated. ' Then you stick it on the appropriate objects. Got it? And Dad, could you chop some more paper?' My hands shook a little, I was still nervous.
There was a lot of whispering at this point, the kids hadn't known that Mr. Moore was my Dad.
They rushed forward, grabbed bits of paper and tape and wrote on them.
After they had finished I told them to sit down...with what I hoped was an authorative tone.
Then they laughed when I showed them the tag on the front of Dad's jacket: Padre...father.

Now what am I going to do with them, I asked myself inwardly. 'Right, now we're going to go through this list, and you guys repeat them after me, ok?' We went through it and after we had I made them do it again, while rubbing out some of the letters so that they had to remember the words.

We had finished and I didn't have anything else. 'It looks like we'v still got some time, Lydia, do you have anything else you can show us?' Of course I did.
'If you were in Spain, and you went to the supermarket, this is what you would tell someone,' I said, looking at my Spanish book. Fui al supermercardo al compre.... I went to the supermarket and I bought....

I turned round. 'What would you buy if you went to the supermarket?' The hands went up. My Spanish vocabulary is limited, so I said: 'Like, something to drink?' I pointed to a boy. 'Yes?'
'Alchol.' A round of supressed giggles. 'Well, yes, wine, for instance, I don't drink alchol but some people do.' Another round of laughter. Vino... Wine. Cheries, asparrogos, chicken, tea and pork, the list went on. 'I think we'll have to stop you, Lydia,' said Dad, ' it's actually a bit late and I didn't notice.' The clock said five past two. 'But what about a round of applause for our guest here!'

I was going out the door and a boy passing me said, ' Hasta la vista!' 'Hasta la vista!' I said.