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It’s hard to believe that 2 weeks have already passed. I think it helps a lot that we are busy and enjoying the company of the family we are staying with… and I’m enjoying teaching! I was worried at first, I’ve taught one cooking class and was wary of my abilities to teach English but we have just gone full force and filled our days with classes. We created more English teaching opportunities than were here before and are reaching out to the adjoining neighborhoods as well.

All the classes are going well. A big difference here is mainly that everyone is excited to learn. Our students don’t seem to take attendance seriously, which is a problem because I like to move forward and build on what we know, but at least half of every class is a review to get everyone caught up. Luckily, they LOVE homework and if I assign 10 sentences I usually get 15 or 20 from most students (I have the intermediate adults). Right now we’re working on basic conversation but are past the general greetings and talking more about feelings, food, animals and parts of the body. It’s funny, I realized that I’m encouraging them to talk about their feelings (I won’t let them say “I’m fine” anymore because that’s the generic answer that every single student uses for “How are you?”) and aches and pains in their body. They have their first exam tonight; I hope that goes well. I gave an exam yesterday to my jovenes (the youths) and half of the class showed up and they basically all failed. I just wanted to test them on what they absorbed in 2 weeks with me and the answer right now is not much, which is sad. They are excited to learn and do homework, but at least now I know we need to spend more time talking out loud and reviewing. They are sweet kids, and I’m getting a few new students every class, which is amazing to me. Matt and I have split them up and are now offering 2 jovenes classes at the same time (under 10 and 10-15).

I have about 8 regular jovenes in the older age bracket and I have a feeling our babies (8 year olds) will double because we advertised the class today at the 2 de Mayo school, where we’ve been teaching English almost every day. It takes about 10-15 minutes to walk there and they LOVE to sing. I was surprised when I was in the 5th grade classroom how eager they were to sing. I would have scorned singing at that age. Overall, it’s great because the kids learn faster than adults, especially through song. The popular one is Head, shoulders knees and toes because it’s simple and there’s movement. Most kids can only sit still for 5 minutes before running to look out the window or create a ruckus. We’re also teaching at the preschool for a half an hour a day, just about every weekday as well. These children pick up the pronunciation SO well; they are little sponges. We just taught them a new song about the colors and we’re already hearing it in the streets outside our windows. Children tend to not be embarrassed to practice new words and sounds, and I think the fact that they are learning it verbally helps them with their pronunciation. The teenagers and adults tend to be a little more embarrassed about sounding funny or are shy to say something because it might be wrong.

We’ve also been offering a drop in class twice a week in the evenings as a supplement or catch up for the people who miss classes. It’s ranged from 1 to 7 students so far. We cover and review whatever the students want to work on, from numbers to pronunciation to theory.

So, I’ve been busy but enjoying it. I really like correcting tests, but I’ve known that. I was always the essay editor in English class in high school. It’s another form of organization I enjoy. The week also flew by because I’ve been cooking and things ALWAYS take longer than I expect, especially here with an old kitchen that doesn’t have an oven thermometer (gasp!). Regardless, I’m still making an attempt at cooking because I promised the daughter in law of the owners of the hostal that I’d teach/share my knowledge with her (and she’s sharing hers as well, so it’s fun…she´s 24 and we get along really good). They are building a restaurant to go along with the hostal and she’s compiling a menu to send to the travel agencies (which I’m helping make bilingual and vegetarian friendly). Yesterday we made a big lunch together for the family and we had: Quinoa Vegetable Soup, Spaguetti with a spicy aji tomato sauce (I intended to make a huacatay pesto, but we couldn’t find any huacatay (a local herb kinda minty kinda basily)), puree of black-eyed peas and babaco juice (it looks like papaya but tastes like a thick sweet pineapple).

Also this week I taught Estefani how to make gnocchi, American pancakes, crystallized ginger, muffins (which didn’t come out good b/c the oven is crazy) and whole wheat oat bread. I’ve been building up this week slowly preparing for my attempt at Swimming Rama. I made soy milk a few days ago and turned half of that into tofu. I have acquired a coconut and am currently shredding it to make coconut milk. I toasted peanuts yesterday which will become peanut butter today and need to find spinach. So it takes about a week to make Swimming Rama here. I´ll update with that progress probably on the food blog.

Life in town is slow, but I´ve got more than enough stuff going on. I´m also trying to make a tam hat from some yarn I bought a month ago and have been reading the Dark Materials trilogy. I heard the movie recently came out…anyone see it? I hope it´s good, because I’ve been enjoying the books.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 14th, 2007 at 7:48 pm and is filed under travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.