Word of the Day:
procer- national hero, "great person" according to my dictionary
Surprise! School is a hot mess right now, in preparation for the September 14th and 15th Independence Day celebrations. As a result, this week I washed a lot of laundry, made a lot of plans for workshops and classes and started reading a 1000+ page book in Spanish. I thought it would take at least a month to get through it, but I'm already 300 pages deep....
Is this the part of Peace Corps when the madness sets in??
Too much honesty: Say whatever justified comment you want to make about how bad public schools in America can be, but I'm pretty sure that even in the worst school district in America, students are in the building for more than 2.5 hours every day. I have gotten way too snarky lately. I was not having a particularly good week, and was feeling way to inclined to be real with everyone, students and teachers alike. When I walked into the wrong classroom because the periods had been shortened and my 9th grade students gleefully told me that they were done for the day (it was 9:30 am) I commented aloud "You have no idea how easy school is here. No idea." It wasn't nice, it wasn't (entirely) necessary, but it was true.
That's definitely safe: On Thursday, during the entirety of a school day that ended after 2.5 hours for some reason or another, several students were using power tools to saw large logs to create a "table," the legs of which were dug into the ground. Supposedly this was for the technical training class "OTV" that they all have to take, although I'm not sure a)why they were allowed to skip all the other classes b)what the table is supposed to be used for c) NO ONE WAS SUPERVISING THEM AT ALL WHILE THEY WERE USING DANGEROUS POWER TOOLS.
Welcome to Rainy San Juan- My classes in Las Palomas so far this semester have been challenging to say the least, due to band practice. The students in the band do not have to attend class right now. Therefore, when the band director didn't show up, the kids in the band complained that they couldn't work in class because they didn't have their notebooks or pens with them. I ripped out paper from my notebook and made classmates share pens with them. "No Excuses!!" (A reasonably good cognate) said mean Teacher Emily. Teacher Emily shouldn't have bothered. A massive downpour broke forth from the heavens, with big drops of rain pounding against the zinc roof with a vengeance, rendering our lesson plan useless. We were trying to introduce new vocabulary on clothing. We ended up having the students copy from the board, but when the students copy vocab without hearing it first, the results are usually not too good when they try to pronounce it. O well, what are you gonna do?
Possessive " 's " and "of"
According to a book that one of my counterparts has, and the curriculum for Saturday school, saying "a bag of rice" or "a box of pancake mix" implies possession, ie that the rice belongs to the bag. The way you form the possessive in Spanish doesn't vary if you say "la casa de la mujer" (the woman's house) or "las patas de la mesa" (the legs of the table).
I don't think native English speakers think as explicitly of possession when we are talking about "the rooms of the house" or "the carton of cigarettes," but the idea that you could is really intriguing to me.
Not related to school but story worthy: The bottom of the door to my room spontaneously fell off one day. Fascinating what a little mold can do. My host family fixed the door within a little over a day, but in the meanwhile, a chicken got into my room through the giant hole and pooped on the floor. ASSHOLE. Chickens are insufferable when they are in their awkward teenager phase: not only do they look like freakish dinosaurs, you can't even eat them yet. They think it's perfectly acceptable for them to hang out in the house and I spend half my day chasing them out, as they awkwardly squawk away. WE ARE NOT FRIENDS.
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