Viernes

We've been here about a week and things are going well (how do you summarize a week of living in a new culture?). It turns out one of the members backed out yesterday so BECA is scrambling to figure out how they will replace her. She, Nora, was scheduled to teach 3rd grade. Tim may end up teaching 3rd grade or we may have to bring in someone new (so if you read this and you're interested don't be afraid to apply). All this week we've been doing training with two teachers who are trained in ESL teaching. We split into upper (5-9) and lower (kinder-4) school in the afternoon and talk about different things such as theory and direct lesson planning ideas and activities. It's been really helpful for all of us and I think we're all feeling more adequately prepared to take on the task. This is the first year BECA has done this I believe. In the morning I have private spanish tutoring sessions with Ms. Sandra for 2 hrs. The time really flies by and I'm starting to pick up on the language. Ms. Sandra doesn't speak a lot of english, but this is good for me. The only time we really speak english is when we're going over vocab and she can't communicate what the word is. Yesterday we went to the supermarket and walked around and she'd point to stuff and hold it up and say it's name in spanish. The hands on learning is really helpful. We had a party the other night at Don Will's house. Don Will is part of the administracion/ the board of people who help make decisions for the school. He's a really nice guy who does a lot for the school. The administracion is throwing a party for us tonight at school that should be fun. Hopefully i'll be able to puut pictures up of the school at some point, cause describing it would be difficult.