So we started teaching a few days ago, and we love it. We've helped decorate the classroom inside and out and are planning a thematic unit on "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," but in Spanish, of course. Sixth grade is kind of hard to control sometimes, but with some help from our teacher, we're doing really well. Sometimes it's hard to give the whole class in Spanish, but we're getting better at speaking too.
But the best part is how relaxed things are here. I don't really feel stressed out and we're mostly having fun planning the unit. So after school, we can just go swimming. And I'm not sure I've ever been swimming in January before, but it was so nice. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and we swam around the pool, laid out, then put our feet in a little more. We're looking nice and tan now :).
We've also been watching a lot of Modern Family and other shows on hulu. We don't have a TV in here, like most students would bring, so we watch some stuff on our computers. After watching a few things, we got Mexican for dinner but their Mexican restaurants are a little different. We all know that Mexican food can be made really quickly, but the restaurants we have in the States are always sit down with a waiter and everything. Well, here every Mexican restaurant I've been to is one where you order at a counter and then they call you when the food is ready, which is kind of weird to me, especially since I was a waitress at a Mexican restaurant. Over all, the food is a lot cheaper at these restaurants but it's never spicy, Puerto Ricans don't really like spicy.
On our way to dinner, we ran into one of the teachers from our school and she was with 2 girls from Boston that will be teaching English with here. The teacher is a little intimidating, she actually sent Jenn and I an angry e-mail before we even got there saying to beware, because if we didn't "have full master of Spanish" we were going to be moved to teach English. Rose Marie, our teacher, has stood up for us though and always shares with her how well we are doing in Spanish. So there. Anyways, we are curious about the new arrivals and hoping we can make some new friends, since most of the people that want to hang out with us are creepy guys haha.
Well plans for this weekend are: Sushi with a new friend, beach, Plaza las Americas (which is a mall) and church.
Which reminds me, I didn't write about our church experience last week. But we went to a small Lutheran church where we were the talk of the town. Everyone had something to say to us. Afterwards, they were having a lunch for everyone, so we stayed from some real PR food. We had pork, rice, beans and salad and a sausage. While we were having the sausage, they decided it'd be a good idea to share with us how it's prepared. Oh you know, the meat is just ground up, placed inside the intestines and cooked in the blood from the animal. Blood sausage. If there's one thing I hate to think about while eating, it's that 1. my food was once alive and 2. it was prepared in a weird way. Just don't tell me that, and I can enjoy myself. The people were very nice and wanted to help us, but I think we're going to try a baptist church next. We haven't really found Pentecostal at all.
After church Sunday, we decided to go back to Old San Juan to visit the artisans in the festival of San Sebastian. We thought it'd be relatively calm since it was Sunday, but actually it was crazier than the weekend. We could hardly walk through the streets with all the people around. We had to just shuffle through crowds to get to the artisans. Then we went to a Spanish restaurant where they had flamenco and tapas, some of which I got to try in Spain, so I was excited to eat there.
Well that's the update. The only thing hard about this experience is getting up at 6:30 to teach in the morning, but since it get's dark around 7 anyways, it's not like I want to stay up late all the time.
I'll be looking for you on the beach!
No comments:
Post a Comment