Teaching Anecdotes, Week 5

I was done teaching for this week at 8:45 on Tuesday morning, due to Fiestas Patronales, meetings, and other various events. It's been bone dry here this week. Even in one of the rainiest parts of Nicaragua, we haven't had rain in nearly a month, which is pretty normal. When I washed my clothes today, the water immediately turned coffee brown from all the pent up dust they'd acquired. Despite the dryness, many different fruits are coming into season. Jocote, a cashew relative that can be eaten green before they ripen or once they turn pinkish orange are being sold everywhere. And the sweet yet tangy, slightly sulfuric smell of mangoes practically dripping with ripeness permeates the various sites of produce purchase. The sunsets are becoming even more spectacular as the sun inches closer to the island of Omepete day by day...So there are a lot of nice things going on, even if there isn't a lot of teaching.

Class cancelations: I don't even feel like counting there are so many.

Oops: I  accidentally asked the principal of my school to borrow a record player instead of a cd player. Can't translate that one directly.

Most fun: To have 10th graders practice talking about their likes and dislikes, my counterpart and I combined the games "Cocktail Party" (ie go around and ask other people questions) with "Taboo". We taught them other ways to say yes and no, like "Absolutely", "Yep", "Nahh" and "Nope". Then we gave them candy. They had to ask each other about different types of music they like, but if they answered with "Yes" or "No", they had to give the other person one of their candies. It sure got them talking, especially after they had been barely participating for the earlier portion of the class.

Runner Up: Teaching "Very good friend" to the 7th graders in San Miguel was a good time. This song never fails. Kids love it and it's annoyingly catchy, which is great because it helps them master verb to be.
"I am am am a very good friend....you are are are a very good friend...etc......."

Longest wait for transportation: 1.5 hours. I finished teaching class in El Tule at 3 pm, a town that's roughly halfway between San Miguel and the department capital, San Carlos. Usually, there's a bus going north that I can take home that comes right away. For some reason, it did not come. Nor did anything else for a looooooooooooong time. I wandered around for a while, because I was bored out of my mind and impatient. It was interesting to see more of the community, since I usually don't make it much past the school, which is right off the highway. And I ran into some of my students from Saturday school. When I visited El Tule for the first time, I was overwhelmed by the poverty I saw there. Now, I didn't really notice it anymore. El Tule is actually on the rise, growing more prosperous because its proximity to the recently constructed highway makes it an excellent point for trading and transportation. It was good to remember that you can err in your appraisals of things without careful speculation.

Best interaction with children: I taught my 3 and 5 year old neighbors how to say "Hello" and "Goodbye". They previously had known only how to say "I'm sorry" which is endlessly entertaining on it's own, but they thought "Hello and Goodbye" were the funniest thing they had ever heard, and they almost fell over they were laughing so hard.