I Prove My Critics Wrong, or "Lucas Has Class(es)"

Things have been busy in Sonseca, and that surely is not a sentence often heard.

When I first got here I put up fliers around town hoping to fill the extra hours of the day and perhaps to fill my wallet as well. Now I have to turn people away, as my days are in fact full (although the other has not behaved accordingly).

One new student is Natalia, who studies psychopedagogy at Toledo University. She plays viola in a Sephardic folk band and is trying to make up for a few years of taking no English classes. She always wears a hat of some sort, and we spend a good deal of the class time laughing over her mistakes.

Four hours of my week are now additional classes with my students from the institute, except I am the only instructor and I plan all of the lessons. The students are even wilder than normal, and are eager to turn the time into Sex Ed vocabulary sessions. I somehow managed to change the subject enough that one class ended with us huddled around my Bible, and I was glad.

One of my favorite new classes is with four professors from the Institute who knew absolutely nothing of English before we started. We began with simple things like numbers and salutations, and I have to giggle when I stop to think that I taught the town's priest to say "What's up?" This is how he now greets me in the hall, as well as all of his catechism classes. So far, though, he has yet to begin a sermon this way in Mass.

But I'm keeping my fingers crossed

(no pun intended)