16 Sep

busy

Hey everyone. This is the first chance we’ve had in the last few days to get to a computer/internet. We have Spanish classes in the morning from 7 to 8:30 then seminars on culture, teaching, health, etc. during the day and from there we go to teach English classes from 5 to 7:30 pm. Generally we get home around 8 or 8:30 and eat, lesson plan/complete spanish homework and finally get to bed. It takes us about 30 to 40 minutes to commute, so sometimes we can get some work done on the bus, but we’re looking forward to being closer to our work when we move. Yes, we have rented the apartment we looked at last weekend. They are going to furnish it completely – we made a list of everything we would need down to pots pans silverware, bathroom rug and they will provide these for us. We are sad to leave our host family… but it will be nice to get out of some of the pollution and be in a nicer neighborhood.

Teaching: I taught my first class yesterday. We are practice teaching in groups of three, rotating what days we teach. I was a little freaked out before my class because the first day didn´t go that well and I REALLY didn´t want to fall flat on my face. So I planned the heck out of the lesson, spent 3-4 hours working out a lesson for a 90 minute class and it went well! There were maybe one or two rough spots, but the class really seemed to like the lesson and there were no classroom management problems,so I felt pretty good about it.

We´re starting to get to know the volunteers here pretty well, it is nice to be around some intelligent funny people.