Today is the best day of my life, Tomorrow will be so much better

February 22, 2013. First time teaching in a classroom yesterday! It was pretty terrible lol. I was co-teaching with a really nice profesora named Maritza in noveno, which means ninth, but it’s not the same as 9^th grade in the US. Here, they have 1-9 educacion basica and then 1-3 of bachillerato. So 9^th is equivalent to our 8^th grade. The kids are great, they’re very interested when a gringa is teaching, but they can’t understand me! They’re not used to native speakers so when I would give an instruction, they stared blankly. Maritza would repeat (in English) almost exactly the same way and they would go “ohhh” and immediately do it. So I’m learning to slow down, repeat, and use physical gestures more often. I had 2 classes yesterday and felt like I already improved in learning from the 1^st class, but it still felt pretty stressful. Today, I had 1 class and I got to run a couple of vocabulary games. It went really well! I think they learned a little and they had a lot of fun, they’re very competitive!

This was at the same military school as our observation before. They all wear little military uniforms and the school is all ages. Today, as I was leaving, a little girl, no more than 8 years-old was passing by and looked up and said, in pure astonishment, “wowwwww! Gringa!” 

 

Here, instead of the students changing classrooms after each period, the teacher goes to the next classroom. So when the teacher enters the English class, she says “good morning, cadets” they respond with “good morning, teacher”. She asks “how are you feeling today?” and they reply, in unison, “Today is the best day of my life. Tomorrow will be so much better.” I’m not sure if they know what this means, but I like it. A lot.

After classes, we had time to go out for lunch so we got pizza and capped it off with ice cream, which we ate in the rain waiting for the bus. We ended up having to take a taxi because the buses had people hanging out of them, they were so packed. They built a new airport and it’s close to our town so half the buses that are normally in Tumbaco are now sent to the airport. It’s proving to be a huge hassle so I’m glad there are no permanent site assignments in this area.

This whole week was pretty stressful for all of the trainees so we had a party to celebrate our hard work. There is a trainee whose host family has a HUGE house with a separate house for parties and a huge yard. It was so nice to just relax and hang out, drink and dance. Especially because next week is our tech trip, which means we’ll be splitting up and visiting new cities and having another really busy week. (I’m going to Ibarra, Chota, and Otavalo). We have planned charlas (lectures) with teachers, we’ll be teaching some high school classes, and receiving language and culture classes in the afternoons. It’s exciting but it will be a lot of work. Wish me luck.

Thank you for reading. I hope you’re having the best day of your life, too.

<3 Chels