my first blog and teaching job ever

Jeff inspired me, well that and mom's subtle suggestions...
Anyways it is something I had thought about doing before, not so much for the benefit of other people to read, but more as a record for myself. I have a traditional travel journal, but I have to force myself to write in it, and when I do it is basically point form and nearly illegible. I write much better with a computer. Sign of the times I guess.

Like I said Jeff's blog inspired me to try writing my own, and all though I am not nearly as good of writer as he is, the content about my life here in Ecuador may keep you entertained for awhile at least...

This week I went by fast, mostly beacause I was extremely busy. I have recently started giving english lessons to both kids and adults. I have a group of younger kids between 6 and 8 or so in the morning starting at 8.30, then a groupd of kids from 9-13 in the afternoon at 4. This is from monday till thursday. Mondays and wednesday nights starting at 5.30, I have a group of adults as well. The kids are terrible, both groups. The adults were worse but in a different way.
The kids have absolutely zero patience, and are on vacation from school so don't feel like they need to learn anything, it is a consant struggle to keep them entertained enough to pay attenion.

The first adult class i had on monday was worse in the sense that they didn't say nearly anything. There was about 10 of them and they just kind of came in and sat there looking at me. I had planned on finding out how much they knew and going from there, helping them out with things they didn't understand, so I didn't have any lesson prepared or worksheet to give them. I tried to explain something like the past tense to them, they said it was perfectly clear and then continued to sit there silently. The silence made me get nervous and sweaty and I couldn't think because of it, and that just made the lesson get more awkward. I tried asking some question but they were all one word answers and nothing else. I ended the class early by saying that on wednesday i would be better prepared and have actual worksheets etc...
So I spent both tuesday and wednesday before the class stressing out about how to teach a bunch of people who don't want to talk. I looked for games and lesson plans on the internet, I called Marcela asking her for advice, and by 5.30 on wednesday I felt like i had enough material to get me through an hour and a half.
Turns out I didn't need any of it. There were two or three new people and two or three people missing from the class on monday, and that seemed to make the difference. The entire class I never got to the material cause they always had more questions. It was great, and because there were no awkward silences I wasn't nervous and I think I taught a lot better as well. At the end of the lesson I asked them what kind of things they wanted me to prepare to teach thm on monday, and they basically came up with a lesson plan for themselves, I simply have to print off a few sheets from the internet and I am set.

Anyways apart from this, which, as it turned out caused me way more stress than it should have, I also had to prepare a presentation on canada, and finish translating my bosses letter of recomendation for my application to grad school (haha how perfect is that). I finished the presentation last night about midnight, and presented it this morning, to mixed reveiws I think...
I'll have to see if I can post files on here or not, maybe people reading this can see it. I was quite proud of it, but I don't know if my spanish explanations of the picutres etc.. really did them justice. Anyways its done.
Just before my english class today I also finished liberally translating my bosses letter, I only hope their suspicions aren't aroused by his excellent command of the english language, haha. so anyway those were the big things I had to finish this week. I am still trying to work on my letter of intent but simply haven't had time this week, so it will be my goal for next week.

Tommorrow morning I leave on a trip with some people from the project to some hot springs about 4 hours away. From what I understand the town they are near has no electricity, and the persons house we will be staying at, and is near the the springs, is a good kilometer or two's hike from the town. Should be interesting. The people from my office have gone their a few times in the summer when a group of german volunteers come here for a month to teach music, so they know this guy who owns this house/farm. Anyways it had better be good because I won't get back till late on sunday and will likely miss the finals of the australian open. (tennis is the only sport I follow nowadays since vancouver decided to retire from the nhl.)

I guess that is enough for one blog, hopefully the prospect about hearing how this weekend goes is enough of a cliffhanger to get you to read another one if you were falling asleep during the english lessons. It's almost seven, I should get home just in time for a big plate of rice, some greasy meat and a bottle of coke (you will see the results of this diet when I get back to canada). i thought i would get sick of rice but I am actually looking forward to it at the moment, and ice cold coca cola has never tasted so good as when its 30+ in the evening....