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@Teso dos Bichos

My friend works for Carnival, the cruise operators. She offered me a brilliant deal for a cruise next March to Amsterdam. 4 nights including 2 days in Amsterdam for £100. Normal price is £312. Happy days. And obviously that is all the food chucked in on the ship free as well. Never done a Cruise before so well up for the experience and as my missus hasn't been to Amsterdam, it'll work out well. And obviously the beauty of that is the ship leaves on our doorstep in Southampton. Lovely little weekender that.

Who'd move from one third world country to another?

Oh damn. I was hoping you'd say, 'Atlanta, of course!"

Moving out tomorrow Spent the whole day taking care of some final things like canceling the Internet contract, arranging the transportation, getting back the deposit from the landlord. And the worst part - PACKING

I've been offering some of my students extra practice for their English exam which they have coming up at the end of June where I've been giving them a meeting type thing where we discuss their essays and where we mostly do some speaking practice for the exam. In my work of teaching English to English learners particularly in the context of academies in Spain, for teachers to offer their students something like this (as far as I know) is very rare. It's not something like where you're at university where it's common to see students have meetings with their teachers for example. What I've offered my students is totally free for them and entirely for their benefit. I've done this for two weeks so far (there wasn't the opportunity last week) but I will try to continue it up until their exam. So far I've done this with two students in this particular class, one was very thankful both times. First of all initially when I offered it to him and after every 'meeting' he was very thankful and this is for a Spaniard (where their concept of saying thank you is a lot different to us Brits). I'm not saying one culture is right or wrong, just there's a cultural difference in this context of manners and behavior which is worth mentioning before I go on. So student number one was very thankful, he'd recognized what I was doing and what not. Student two however a different story. It was one Wednesday which is my busiest day teaching, it's the day where I have the most classes and where I also teach young kids. So I finish work at 21:30, tired and then I spend nearly an extra hour with this student, intense speaking practice for him, one on one, useful for his exam which he has paid a lot of money for and we finish the 'meeting' and not a single 'thank you'. I wasn't waiting for it at all, I'm not expecting them to love me for it or anything but I walked off from the meeting and realised I've just basically given this guy an extra free class on top of what he's had this week at the academy and I didn't even get a thank you. It's worth mentioning when I offered him the opportunity of this extra practice a few weeks before, he was very grateful in that moment but still to do all that on that particular Wednesday and not get at least a 'thank you' after the meeting. Jeez. It's true this bloke is a bit of a character and there's the context of him conducting himself in a second language but still, he's an advanced student and he's been banging on all year about how he loves Britain and how polite we are. I really enjoy teaching but teaching English (depending on who you're teaching and where) you're generally underpaid for what you do so you can throw that in there as well hence me offering something like that, it's asking a bit more from me. It's not as if I'm earning loads and then offering these classes if you see what I mean. I also have a big thing for manners.