Today we left promptly at 5:50 to travel to the school to get there by 7am. It is not a very long journey, but we have to leave plenty of time for traffic. We arrived at school to meet Yosepi (the founder) and Tanya (the principle). After a morning prayer and a couple stories the buses arrived. Everyday Yosepi, Tanya, and the teachers greet the children by giving each child a hug. It was such a rewarding, comforting feeling to hug nearly 100 students. After the hugs, we served breakfast. Wednesday is pancake day. My host family insisted that we have oatmeal before we left so we were stuffed, but I'm sure the pancakes were great. A surprising thing about breakfast was that EVERYONE drank COFFEE! Even the preschool kiddos were drinking coffee. It looked to be sweetened with milk and sugar, but still coffee as kids?! Once breakfast is all cleaned up the students go to the classrooms. Today I observed a classroom of students that seem to be in the remedial classroom, as they need extra attention and guidance. While in the class, I felt like I was there forever mainly because I didn't know what anyone was saying. Yeah NEWSFLASH: NOONE SPEAKS ENGLISH!! They did math todays and luckily numbers are the same or I wouldn've been lost. The classrooms are very different. Small rooms, little decoration, and NO RULES! That's right, the kids do whatever they want basically. There is never a quiet moment as the kids can talk whenever they want. I'm sure it's nice for the kids to have such freedom, but as a teacher I would imagine it's exhausting. Guess I'll find out soon enough, tomorrow. I have already learn a lot of Spanish from listening to the family, my friends, but mostly the children. They like to play a game where they say the Spanish word, then we try to figure out what the Spanish words means and tell them in English. There's already a lot of learning going on already. That is why I want to be in an elementary classroom because I know they really want to learn English. The high school classrooms are so confusing and I'm only in there an hour that I feel like it's not enough time to do anything. The classroom I was in in the afternoon was actually 9th grade, and it's even more challenging than the first because the students talk so fast and the teacher talks even faster because he doesn't have to slow down for the students. I can usually understand the concepts, but not the details and if he asks me questions, not so much.
A low from today was that I'm exhausted: from getting thrusted into the culture and trying to understand what's going on, it's exhausting. I also wish I had more time with the older kids to teach them, but maybe it will be a good thing that I'm not there very long with my limited Spanish.
A high from today was getting all the hugs when the students walked in. We also got to nap a lot when we came home from school, which was nice.
Something funny: One of the little boys in the morning class was differentiating between me and another Andrea in the class. His words to make the difference were "White Andrea and Brown Andrea." It just made me giggle because it's not something I hear everyday.
I apologize that there are not pictures, I promise I'm taking them! I just don't have a way to upload them onto my computer right now. I just hope that tomorrow it will go a lot smoother because we will be starting to teach English and I think that will be fun!
-Andrea
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