have to have a habitat

So, today I went to school feeling really sluggish, unprepared and overall grumpy. The first 45 minutes with my students felt like I was teaching preschool and I found myself getting increasingly more frustrated with the fact that none of my students seemed to be listening to anything I had to say. The same kids kept asking the same questions that I had just answered for another student, kids were forgetting to do part of the morning routine that we had been doing all year, and students were strolling in to class ten to fifteen minutes late (not that they can control what time the bus gets there, but still).  I couldn’t believe how much I was letting it get to me.

During snack time, my kids asked if we could listen to our “Habitat” song. Since I love the song myself I turned in on and pumped up the volume in hopes that it would calm my frustrations. Then, Tom came into the class and the kids were SO excited and asked that we start the song over so they could perform it for him. They all started clapping their hands to the beat, waving their arms in the air, and singing as loudly as they could! Tom was loving it and started dancing with them. It was such a hilarious scene that it totally snapped me out of my sour mood and reminded me that this is supposed to be fun. If the kids are being crazy, it’s most likely because I didn’t give clear instructions.  If the kids aren’t enjoying school, they probably won’t be learning very much. And if I’m not in a good mood, my students won’t be either. These are all such simple concepts that I needed to be reminded of today and watching Mr. Tom dancing with a bunch of eight-year-olds who were going crazy for an educational song about habitats was just the right medicine :)

Here is the chorus and the first verse to the Habitat (pronounced Hab E tat) song that my kids go gaga for:

            Habitat, habitat, have to have a habitat.

            Habitat, habitat, have to have a habitat.

            Habitat, habitat, have to have a habitat.

            You have to have a habitat to carry on!

            A forest is a habitat, a very special habitat.

            It’s where the tallest trees are at,

            It’s where a bear can scratch his back.

            It keeps the ground from rolling back,

            Renews the oxygen, in fact.

            The forest is a habitat we depend on!

I thought I would blog about some funny things that my students have been saying that I was able to write down without bursting out laughing. When I take attendance in the morning, I usually ask the students a question that one of them comes up with like “what did you do over the weekend” or “what is your favorite day of the week” etc.  The other day I asked them to tell me their favorite state in the U.S. Here are some of the best responses…

            1. Mamhatten

            2. Miami (prounounced Mee Om E)

            3. Disney World

            4. Canada

            5. Germany

            6. And from the brown nosers, Seattle

Looks like we may need to do a little work on learning about the United States, no?

Before giving the students their first math test…

            Miss Hannah: “Clear your desks; it’s time to take our math test!”

            Class: “HOORAY!” (in all seriousness)

At the lunch table…

            Student A: “Miss Hannah (pronounced Mees Ana), Student B call me a alane”

            Miss Hannah: “A what?”

            Student A: “A alane”

    Miss Hannah: “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Can you try to use other words to describe what you are saying?”

            Student A: “He call me the name of the people who live in space.”

            Miss Hannah: “An alien?!”

            Student A: “Si!”

    Miss Hannah: “Oooh, I’m sorry! You are not an alien! I will make sure to talk with Student B about this.”

While going over the graded math tests…

   Student C: “Miss Hannah, you said I got this problem right on the test but I really got it wrong” (from a student who got a 100% on the test!) INTENSE HONESTY!

Writing this out really made me happy. My kids rock, eh? Have a great night!

El Salvadawesome

Okay, I don’t know if it’s possible to update you about the last 6 days but I will certainly try my best. Bullet points may be necessary to keep my thoughts together, however :) Here it goes:

1. Drive to El Sal: So on Saturday morning, Tom picked up Aubrey and I at 5:30 in the morning to start our 4.5 hour drive to our next Central American adventure. We made five cds to listen to, packed a load of snacks, and Aubrey made some bomb.com M&M cookies for the road. I really love traveling with Aubrey and Tom because it just seems like the perfect mix of personalities and enthusiasm. The drive there was absolutely beautiful. We stayed coastal and drove through dense trees for probably 75% of the trip. It’s really amazing how much the temperature changes all around this region based on how close one is to the water and the various differences in evaluation

2. Border “Control”: Moving between El Salvador and Guatemala was hysterically easy. We had a crap ton of stuff in our car, including 26 bottles of hot sauce we smuggled in to El Sal for Tom’s friend, and all the border patrol people saw was the surf boards and said, “vas a la playa?” As soon as we confirmed their theory, they took one look at the passports and we were in.  BAM! Coming back to Guate was not quite as easy but still much less of a hassle than anywhere else in the world. The only difference was this time Tom has to actually get out of the car to show our passports at a little booth thingy. Hard life!

3. La Mizata: The first beach we stopped at upon arrival to El Sal was in this quiet little town called Mizata. There were a bunch of locals there playing soccer on the beach and jumping in the waves. Tom was having trouble taking the broken end of his fin out of his surfboard and when the people there saw he was struggling, they all RAN to come help. They went out and found some tools in their truck and yanked the pieces out. It was so amazing. I mean, they literally stopped what they were doing and rushed over to see how they could help. Sometimes kindness like this completely overwhelms me, like almost to the point of tearing up (what a baby!).

Once his board was fixed, Tom went out and surfed and Aubrey and I played frisbee with some of our new friends and gave them all the cookies we had made. It was one of the coolest feelings I’ve had since I’ve been here; just being in the sun, interacting with incredible people through anything but spoken language, breathing in the fact that I was in El Salvador when a few hours before I was eating oatmeal in Guatemala City… it was surreal for sure.

4. El Tunco: After Tom had got his surf on, we headed to the real place we were staying for the weekend, El Tunco. “Tunco” is the Mayan word for “pig” so the whole town had a little pig theme going on (made me think of my Bacon relatives!).  The surf there is apparently some of the best in all of Central America and it definitely showed in the little surf village that was created around shore. We stayed at Tom’s friend’s hotel but he was out of town so it was just the three of us and the family that works to maintain the place that were there the whole weekend. We walked around the town, ate some amazing burritos, took a few naps, played in a sweet pool, and then Tom and I went out surfing…

Look! We're in a jungle!

5. Real Live Surfing: …So this weekend was apparently a huge one in my surfing “career” as I caught my first real live wave. Tom and I paddled out almost a kilometer from shore and were out there with the legit El Salvadorian surfers. It. Was. Amazing. I cannot even describe all the emotions I had. It was intimidating, exciting, exhausting, scary, and addicting. I learned all the rules about surfing when other people are around, learned how to turn my board around while sitting on it, which directions to paddle, which waves to go for; basically a TON of learning. But then when it was actually time to go it all came together and made so much sense. Tom is doing a great job coaching me and I think he is enjoying it too because I’m learning so quickly (so I’m told). The worst part is that I can only practice about every other weekend so it may be a slow sport to catch on to.  I’m going to try renting a bunch of different kinds of boards until the spring and then maybe look into buying a cheap used one for myself, that is, if I do indeed continue with this path :)

6. Hurricane Mateo: No, we were not actually in a hurricane, but we did feel the aftermath of all the rain that came with it. While we were surfing it was raining really hard but I didn’t seem to notice or mind because of all the adrenaline, but that night it poured like I had never seen before (even coming from Seattle). When we woke up the next day, the rivers in town had completely flooded and broke into the ocean making it a disgusting brown and yellow color. Tom said that the river water was really contaminated and that swimming in the ocean with that water in it was recipe for sickness. So, we decided to save our stomachs and avoid the water that day. The night before, however, we were walking back to our hostel from the beach and the river had just been broken right in the path of our walk. We had to hand our stuff over to some macho El Salvadorian’s and Aubrey and I held hands as we walked through a waist deep dirty river with an intense current with rocks at the bottom. There was a string of restaurants lining the beach that had a whole bunch of customers watching this whole scene unfold. Hopefully we were able to provide entertainment for some nice people that night.

Airing out our safari vehicle

7. Heading Home: Though it was hard to head back to school after such an awesome weekend, we were able to make quite a few more memories on the trip back. First, Tom let me drive for part of the way so I could practice driving a standard since Aubs and I are probably going to be buying one of our own in the next few weeks. It was relatively uneventful until we came up to road construction that required us to pull over to the side and turn the car off completely. There were a ton of locals trying to sell us junk while we waited there, a little girl convinced Tom to give her all his silly bands, and a few random people who were in charge of moving the cones when it was our turn to go. We were second in line though I’ve learned that Guatemalans care little about what order they are in in these so called “lines.” All the sudden it was our turn and people started zooming past us as I struggled to start the car and just as the little girl who took Tom’s bracelets was walking towards our car for more goodies, we took off. The locals all started cracking up and yelling things at us but little did they know I had the whole situation planned as a get-a-way attempt from that greedy little child who wanted to rob Tom naked.

A little bit later Tom was driving again and he suddenly asked with great urgency that someone grab him his video camera. We looked ahead of us to see that the bridge we needed to cross to continue on the road was completely gone. No signs, no road blocks, just road then river. BAM! This river was probably close to 100 yards wide too. So we turned around and found a detour that we had overlooked the first time and carried on. Only in Guatemala!

Welp, see you later, Road!

The best part of the trip happened next. We were driving on the highway and Tom suddenly slowed way down and pulled over to the shoulder. He had a little smirk on his face but never provided an explanation. He put the car in neutral and just let that car roll backward on a down slope. He tried to tell us that there was an optical illusion on the road and it looks like you are moving forward but really you’re moving backward or something like that (Aubrey and I did NOT get it). But anyway, the whole time Tom is entertaining himself there is a cop truck (all cops drive around in these massive 4 door pickup trucks here) slowing way down in front of us, pulling over to the shoulder, and then flipping a u-turn and driving right towards us against traffic. Tom tried to just drive off and hope that they weren’t interested in him but sure enough they turned their lights on and signaled for him to pull over. When they came up to our car, they told Tom to get out of the vehicle. Aubrey and I were in the car ready to pass out; we’ve heard a ton of stories of corrupt cops that suggest you pay them a certain fee right on the stop to get out of getting in serious trouble. But the whole time Tom was out of the car he was explaining to the officers exactly what he was doing, in all honesty, and the officers loved it! They were saying things like, “oh yeah! I’ve heard of that optical illusion!” or “you need to get really close to the edge of the road if you really want it to work out well,” etc. I really couldn’t believe my ears. I thought for sure we were going to be intimidated or threatened and instead Tom made some new friends.

Arrre we going to die?

Okay, this blog has got to end it is WAY past my bedtime. I will put some pictures up tomorrow after school and maybe continue with some new stuff that’s been going down around these parts. Hope all is well!

Happy birthday, Guatemala!

Guatemala Day!

So I’m about a week late in blogging about this but last Wednesday, September 16^th was Guatemalan Independence Day. Though I still know very little about the significance of Guate becoming free from Spain, I did get to learn a whole lot about the country and the pride that people have here. My students unfortunately did not know as much about the day as I had hoped but after some serious prompting I was able to get some information out of them. People in Guatemala are very tuned in to the national symbols and songs; the Ceiba tree, the monjablanca flower, the quetzal bird, the Himno Nacional, the colors and their importance to the flag, etc. The school had an hour long assembly on Monday to celebrate and we didn’t have school on the actually holiday. It was pretty fun to have focus on important national pride issues for a week rather than drilling and killing standards made up by who knows who.  Guatemala also has the second longest national anthem in the world coming in at a little over five minutes long. Its really beautiful but so hard to learn. Aubrey and I have been practicing it at home but haven’t made it past the first two verses. Maybe by the end of the year?

Since we had Wednesday off of school we decided to take a mini-weekend trip to Antigua. We went with a huge group of teachers and stayed at a nice hotel for the night and though it was nice and relaxing, Tom, Aubrey, Blake and I agreed that we would have been just as happy staying at a cheap hostel.  We met some interesting people that night and got to witness more than our fair share of “torch races.” On Independence Day, huge mobs of people run through the streets blowing whistles and following a leader who carries a hand-made torch. It was pretty cool to see but it made traffic quite obnoxious (it took 3 hours to make the 45 minute drive to Antigua).

Antigua fun

For dinner that night we went to a restaurant owned by some Americans and we kind of learned more about the realities of North Americans exploiting the economy in Guatemala. Many people come here as “real estate agents” or “restaurant/bar managers” and live in this weird little bubble of their Guatemalan success. They live much more comfortably here than they would in their hometowns, never learn Spanish, and hang out with other gringos all day. Its super weird! I wonder what these people were like back in the states and what brought them here in the first place. Anyway, the owner of this place was totally wasted at 10pm and trying to run a bar and restaurant on a holiday, which basically meant chaos. It took over an hour for us to get our quesadillas and we never got any checks for anything we ordered the rest of the night. When we decided to leave, the guy was nowhere to be found. Sooooo, (and I’m not proud of this) we just left without paying.  Some people left some bills on the table as we walked out the door but essentially we stole from the place. I am laughing as I am typing this because I really don’t feel that bad about it anymore (I know, that’s terrible!) but this guy was a total jerk and clearly didn’t know how to manage his place after living there for 5 years. Hopefully he learned his lesson from us cheapskates!

The school week continued as planned after the holiday and we had quite a bit of fun in third grade. I went to my first birthday party for one of my students (almost every kid invites their teacher to their birthday party here, its great) at the bowling alley on Thursday and boy was it hilarious. Picture 40 kids running around trying to earn as many tickets as they could from the arcade, an R2D2 piñata, pizza, French fries, cake, and pop for everyone in attendance, and myself talking to a bunch of mothers throughout the evening. My student was SO happy I came and that made the whole thing even more awesome. In Guatemala, when the kids sing happy birthday instead of saying “happy birthday to you…” they say “ya queremos pastel, ya queremos pastel, aunque sea un pedacito, pero queremos pastel!” which means, “we want cake, we want cake, even if its just a little piece, but we want some cake!” Hahaha! THEN the best part is when the kiddos all start chanting to the birthday boy “face in cake! Face in cake!” aaaaaaand then of course he did it. And yes, it was also a Star Wars cake. Overall it was a pretty great birthday and I’m very glad I went.

Star Wars Cake Face Kid

This weekend Aubrey, Tom and I went to Paredon again to play at the beach. It was way more fun this time because we were the only ones there. Kristoff, the owner of the place and Tom’s surfing buddy came with us and we just surfed, slept, ate, played guitar and cards all weekend; pretty amazing. I’m getting better at surfing and was able to go out be myself the whole weekend. I learned some new tricks that will make it a lot easier but until I master the moves its pretty frustrating. This weekend the three of us are going to El Salvador (!) to a sweet beach and Tom says its a good place for new surfers to practice. I bought a rash guard the other day with a monkey wearing sunglasses, sitting on a surf board, flashing the shaka signs. How perfect is that? I mean, what kind of a monkey wears sunglasses, geesh?!

Well, that’s all the update you’re going to get for now :) I’ll try to write again before the weekend because we won’t have any computer access for a few days. Hope all is well!

Twenty-One(K) Fun Run

Okay I really can’t believe how long its taken me to blog about this race but this week has quite literally been NUTS. So on Sunday, I ran that 21K that I have been training for so well since I got to Guate (not!) and it was AWESOME. I am so happy I did it and am really looking forward to more races to come.

First, on Saturday, Aaron (the third grade teacher from the American School of Guatemala) picked me up so we could head to the race expo for our t-shirts, chips, and other various information. I saw a bunch of runners I had met the day before when running with Walter plus some teacher from Americano that we play frisbee with on Sundays. It is so great to feel like I am actually starting to get to know other people in the city besides those that I work with (not that there is anything wrong with my coworkers!). At the expo, there was a North Face Guatemala stand that was advertising an Adventure Race they are hosting next month. The race includes mountain biking, sailing, trekking, rappealing, and navigating and is an over night competition with checkpoints and fierceness. One of the ladies who was explaining the race to me said she had a friend whose partners bailed out on him and needed someone to compete with. I told her I didn’t know how to sail, didn’t have a bike, and was generally not in the best of shape. She seemed to think that none of these factors mattered and we exchanged information with the intent of getting in touch with this guy who needed a partner. I’ll finish this story after I talk about the race :)

Anyway, I did all the things I thought I was supposed to do prior to a race like stretch, drink a ton of water, and go to sleep at a decent hour. I had a cab come pick me up at 6:00am because I had no idea if it would be late or if there would be a ton of traffic. Turns out the cab was early and there was no one on the road so I got to the race at 6:15 when it didn’t start until 8, haha. It was kind of weird being there all by myself since there were not many people out and I had to walk a ways to get to the start line since the roads were blocked off. I felt a little uneasy for a moment but then a man came up to me with his little daughter and was really excited about something and speaking really quickly. I really had no idea what he was saying but I just smiled and nodded. Then his little daughter gave me a huge hug and said “buenas suerte!” It was so cute! Even though there is a lot of crime and violence in this country, there are also a whole bunch of genuinely kind people.

Fast forward to 8am, I got in “line” at the start only to find that people in Guatemala have very little insight as to how fast they can actually run 13 miles. There were over 5,000 people running, many of whom had super fancy expensive gear and insisted on pushing through the line to get as close to the front as possible. Those same people were walking by kilometer 4.  It ended up taking me almost TEN minutes to run the first kilometer because I was so far in the back and there were just so many people to push through.  Once we got out of the initial swarm of sweaty Guatemalans, the race was actually quite pleasant. It was a really flat course with lots to look at and plenty of fans cheering everyone on. I finished in 2:00 exactly, which even though its pretty far off my best time I was actually pretty pleased with it. Considering I was running about 35 miles a week before my last half marathon and I have maybe run 35 miles in the last SIX weeks before this one, I’m not too concerned. I’m also really pumped to see how the altitude affects my training when I run back in the United States.

Drooling over the diving boards

Aubrey, Ashley and Makenzie came to the race to support me which made me super happy since they were for sure the only friends who have ever come watch me run. After the race I took those ladies out to a fancy lunch at McDonalds to thank them for their support and we started to head home. As we walked to find a cab, we strolled past an Olympic-sized pool! With a full stack of towers AND two of each spring boards! I was in heaven! We walked in and asked some lady what the deal was and she said it was really cold water but only Q. 50 a month to use the pool. That’s a little more than $6 USD. I am totally going to scope the place out and take Allison there when she comes to visit next month (Ho, bring yo swim suit!). 

So the race entry fee was about $13 USD and with that money I got a neon green, dry-fit shirt, a neon green running hat, a neon green backpack, and neon green bracelet, and the biggest medal I have ever seen. Plus there were water and Gatorade stations at every kilometer and bananas and apples at the finish. We got the HOOK UP!

My fan club representing!

Celebrating with Happy Meals!

After the race we all went to Keira’s (Colin and Laura’s daughter) birthday party and then came home and were completely worthless the rest of the day. I got a call later from the guy who needed a partner for the adventure race, Alfredo, and we talked about getting bikes and other materials for the race. I should know by next week if I’m for sure doing the challenge but it looks pretty promising! He was a super nice dude who told me about all the cool places we should visit in the country and he even offered to take us places later. He graduated from Inter 5 years ago so its cool to see graduates from the school doing so well in life. A lot of the other girls were laughing about how I would be the person to sign up to do an extreme challenge with someone I’ve never met; hopefully that’s a good trait?

Sweet card made by Aubrey :)

Anyway, that’s about all I have to say about the weekend. I still have to blog about Guatemalan Independence Day, our mid-week weekend getaway, my first birthday party experience, and plans for the weekend. Maybe this will all happen tomorrow? Probably not :)

Running outside

Okay I wanted to blog about this before the tiredness and soreness settled in and I forgot how awesome this morning was. I woke up at four, packed up the rest of my stuff, and then walked to the end of our cul-de-sac to meet Walter. He was there at 4:30 sharp and we drove to the gym in Zona 10 in the pitch dark. I was so surprised to see that we were meeting a group of ten other runners that were also running the 21K this weekend and are running the Chicago Marathon next month. We ran in a pack, some runners were doing 16 miles and we were doing 8. It was totally dark when we got started and everyone was running really fast. I was really scared I was going to die since I really haven’t been running much down here but I think they all just like to do a quick warm up before the start pacing themselves for the rest of the run. We went through some cool neighborhoods, saw some neat stores, and overall had a great run. Some of the people who ran only spoke Spanish but others spoke to me in English so they could get to know me better. I didn’t mind for the first day but I told them that as soon as we become acquainted, they have to speak Spanish only on the runs so I can practice :)

After the run, I was pretty much high off of the endorphins from the run and had such an incredible day teaching.  Even though I had been awake since 4am, I didn’t get tired throughout the day and I felt so alive and energized. If I can figure out a way to get myself to the meeting spot of the runs I am going to try to go everyday that they run. 

Mudslides and Dentures

So, if you have a minute, send some good vibes to Guatemala. Things have been pretty rough for the people here since the sinkhole, volcanic eruption, and tropical storm that happened in the spring and the economy just never really recovered. This weekend, we had a crap ton of rain that created mudslides throughout the lower half of the country. One slide went right over a bus near the Pacific coast and killed everyone on board. Today, we found out that one of the major highways the buses take to get to school was blocked from a mudslide and the buses had to take an obnoxious detour. Some of the kiddos were on the bus for FOUR hours! A few of my students just didn’t come today because they could not get out of traffic for several hours. There’s talk that school may be canceled tomorrow since 5 of the buses will not be taking kids to school tomorrow because they physically can’t get through the route. I won’t lie, it would probably be better if school were canceled because if half of my kids are gone tomorrow I’ll have to reteach everything when they come back to school anyway. But I guess whatever happens, happens.

Today, I was trying to explain something to my students when my retainers gave me the most intense lisp. I had so much trouble saying the word and my kids started cracking up. I told them that I wear these things called retainers on my teeth that make it hard for me to talk sometimes. They had blank looks on their faces with that explanation so I took them out to show them. Before I could get them all the way out they all screamed! They legit thought I was pulling my teeth out of my head. It was SO funny I about died. I made sure they knew that it didn’t hurt me at all it was just a way of keeping my teeth straight. They still looked panicked and shocked so I told them it was like putting a sock on your foot; it fits tightly and you can’t even feel it. I took them on and off a few more times to show them it was all good but they still looked really uneasy. Some of them were laughing pretty hard but no one was laughing as hard as I was. Its weird to think that they can’t even conceptualize retainers. There’s a cultural difference to the extreme.

I talked to Walter, my Spanish teacher, today at recess about running because he is running the Chicago Marathon in October. I told him that I only run at the gym because I haven’t really found a safe route in my zone just yet. He said that where he lives in Zona 10, the streets are safe and beautiful and he runs every morning at 4:30. Then he offered to pick me up on Friday morning so we could go running together! I am super pumped to get out on the streets and have someone to run with. Plus, Walter only speaks Spanish so it will be awesome to try to carry on a conversation with him while we run a 12K.

Anyway, that’s about all that happened today. Oh, we also don’t have internet in our apartment because we never received our bill and thus never paid it, haha! Natalio, this guy that kind of guards our building, thinks that since our apartment is new that it hasn’t made it on the mail route yet. So we have no idea when they will turn it back on, or when or how we pay for it so in the meantime I only have email access at school. Hopefully we don’t get covered with mud in the next few days and that everything is well for you all in the USA :)

Poop-uh and Independence!

Today in science we were studying the life cycle of a butterfly and my students kept pronouncing the word "pupa" as "poop-uh." It really probably isn't that funny at all but my immature sense of humor that laughs when people make farting noises and when people fall down made it really hard for me not to burst out laughing at those kids. I kept correcting them because its a hard word to say but they could not get past the fact that the word looks like it should be read "poop-uh" and carried on with their cutie selves. Luckily my kids think its pretty great when I laugh and they don't take it too personally because I always reassure them that I am laughing because they are just so funny. 

My kids also took the science portion of the MAP (measure of academic progress) test this morning. It took almost an hour and half for all the kiddos to finish so it totally messed with the rest of the school day, including the kids missing Spanish and technology. Some of the questions these kids had to answer were so ridiculous. A huge percentage of them were worded so poorly that it will be impossible to determine whether the students missed the problem because they don't know science or because they didn't understand the English being used. One of my students had the following question on his test:

What would most likely be measured with a ruler?

a. The length of a football field

b. A pencil

c. The distance from your house to school

d. The distance to the moon

e. The length of a semi truck

My student, of course, said the distance to the moon. ARGH! Well, at least this test will help me decide what my kids do and do not know to an extent and it has already told me that we have a lot of work to do with rulers.

I ran a 15K today (on a treadmill, I know it doesn't really count) at the gym about 4 miles from our house. Though its a pathetic victory, I was incredibly proud of myself for going to the gym by myself, paying for the session, calling a cab, and telling the cab driver where I live all. by. myself. It felt so great to be independent and self-sufficient for once and I am so much more confident now knowing that I can do this on my own. The better my Spanish gets, the cooler things I'll be able to do. I am going to continue lessons with the Art teacher at school, Walter, if he lets me. And Aubrey and I are going to try to speak Spanish at home after school at least three days a week. We did it yesterday and I learned some cool things but I'm sure its a pain in the butt for Aubrey to teach me when she teaches little ones all day. We'll see. Maybe by the end of my two years here I'll be able to write a blog post in Spanish :)

Okay, I'm off to bed! Hope all is well!

1/10 of the School Year Complete

Okay, so it’s been less than a week since my last blog post—not too bad! We just completed week four of school which means we are 1/10 of the way through the school year (but who’s counting?!). This week went well and my kids gave me plenty of reasons to be proud of them.

First, on Wednesday Colin “challenged” the students at school to say hello to as many staff members as possible, not just the ones who teach them. There are dozens of people who work at the school whose hard work goes unnoticed. People are mopping the floors, cleaning the bathrooms, microwaving food, fixing technological difficulties and very few of the students even notice the work that it takes to keep the school looking great. So I ran with the challenge and told the students that we would count how many people we said hello to throughout the day (with a smile on our faces, of course!) and then add up the total before it was time to go home. I told them that I would email Colin our total so he could see how friendly our class was.  The kids were so pumped for this challenge. They went around school saying hello to everyone; it was awesome! Every time they said hello, it was so sweet and genuine that the people receiving the gesture were shocked. I even had some teachers come into my classroom and mention how happy it made them that my kiddos said “good morning” or “Hello, Miss So-and-So.” At the end of the day we added up the class total and my 22 students said hello 755 times (yeah, I know, that's probably not accurate at all but I trusted them and they got a nice little math lesson in when they had to add that high)! Colin came by the class to congratulate them and they just couldn’t stop smiling. It was one of the best days I have had with my kids so far :)

Then, for science on Friday, I asked my students to “study” the parts of an egg for five minutes because I had an egg drawn on the board with blanks for all the labels that I would randomly select students to fill in. They studied SO hard and then I started to pull popsicle sticks for students to fill out each part. They were really nervous but really excited to show me what they had learned. A few kiddos weren’t able to fill in the blanks when I called their names but the rest of the class was very willing to help them out. We took a class photo in front of our egg because they worked so hard on it and I knew it would be erased by the time the weekend was over.

Then, I had a student who got in some trouble at school for not following directions. I wrote a note in his agenda for his mother because she informed me that he had difficulty listening and that he needed some motivation at home sometimes to remind him to stay on track. This kid was SO upset that I was writing to his mom and he told me that he would have his toys taken away if he got it too much trouble. We talked about how his behavior can be changed if he works hard and takes responsibility for what he learns in school. The next day he worked his hardest to follow along and listen in class. It was amazing how much of a difference it made when I didn’t have to constantly bring him back to the lesson or repeat the directions or remind him what he was supposed to be doing when he does the same task everyday. I was so proud of him and made sure he knew what a great job he had done throughout the day. He just couldn’t stop smiling and I think he learned a lot more too.

On Thursday, we had our first soccer practice that ended up being rained out (surprise, surprise). Now, the school is saying that the soccer field has been so rain damaged that we cannot use it for three more weeks-- lame! After school we went to Katie's apartment to throw a surprise birthday party for Trevor. The party was complete with awesome bday cake, lots of fruits and veggies, a piñata, and great company. It was a fun little get together after school and it was great to celebrate Trevor since he is an incredibly humble person who didn't even tell a sole it was his birthday :)

On Friday, I went to watch the high school boy’s basketball game at another school in the city. They won single-handedly and it was pretty cool to see them so excited about playing as a team. The school the game was at was incredible—they had an indoor basketball court with hard wood floors and plenty of seating, an outdoor pool, tennis courts, huge classrooms; pretty much everything our school doesn’t have.  Even though I’ve had opportunities to see other schools in the city, I still really love ours. I think it has a lot to do with the people we work with and the kids we teach. They make it all worthwhile.

We had another ITRRC dinner, this time at a Mediterranean restaurant. The food was not as good as it was at the last place but the service and the atmosphere were great.  I had a Gorgonzola pasta and a michilada. Michilada is a Guatemalan version of a Bloody Mary only instead of vodka its made with beer (Mike told me that apparently they have these in the US and they are called “red beers” but I’m going to pretend that its authentically a Guatemalteco drink).

On Saturday, we were told that there was a 50% chance of a tropical storm so we decided to stay in the city instead of risking getting stranded somewhere.  We played volleyball with a bunch of teachers in a park in our zone. The park was pretty ghetto but there were a crap ton of kids there. Blake and I were playing on the monkey bars at one point when a guard blew his whistle at us and yelled, “Solo para niños!” Oh man, it was so funny I couldn’t stop repeating that phrase all day.

Aubrey, Blake, Tom and Tom’s friend Noemi and I made vegetarian lasagna, bruschetta, and tiramisu and then went to Laura’s house for game night. This morning Aubrey and I cleaned the apartment and then went to play ultimate frisbee. It was much more enjoyable this weekend! There were FIVE girls playing and the most sexist males from the pervious weeks were not in attendance. I also found out that a few of the other players are running the Guate City 21K next Sunday as well and they said they could give me a ride (I’m not sure if I mentioned that I signed up for a 21K a week ago. For some reason, the only time I ever run half-marathons is when I spontaneously sign up for them at the last second. Also, I think calling it a 21K sounds nicer than a half-marathon). Some of the same people who are running next weekend also do super awesome activities outside of teaching and frisbee. They do open water swims, adventure races, rock climbing, mountain biking and much more! They also go swimming after school at the pool at their school and they said I was more than welcome to join. Oh, and guess what else the pool had? A DIVING BOARD! It was pretty sketchy looking but it’s better than nothing at all. We exchanged phone numbers and they said they would let me know the next time they did something awesome.

Tomorrow the students start taking their MAP (Measure of Academic Progress) tests to see where they are academically and what kinds of information they are missing. It should be another action packed week! I’ll do my best to blog mid-week but if not I hope you all have a great first full week of September :)

Gud Spelurs and Guatemalan Security

So I found out today that my students are actually excellent spellers and that they take great pride in this skill. We had our first spelling test and out of 22 kids, 18 of them got a 100%. Three of the other four only missed one and one kiddo missed two whole words. After they took the test, I had several kids ask me as they were handing it in, “when will you give this back to us with the grades?!” I graded them during recess and handed them back at the end of the day and the kids went nuts when they saw how great they had done. I was happy to see that they were proud of themselves and hope that I can use grades to motivate them in a positive way even though it pains me to think that I have to give these little seven and eight-year-olds percentages for almost everything they do.

School was pretty hectic today and it didn’t help that we got an email in the afternoon from our general director saying that we had a mandatory meeting after school about “security.” Since we’ve already lived here for over a month we thought it was pretty unnecessary to have a meeting about safety at this point but we didn’t want to get in trouble with the big guy.  The meeting was led by a man who is currently working in Guatemala with the UN to try to increase the overall safety of the country. His tactic during the presentation was to scare the shat out of us. The first slide of the presentation read “Guatemala is the most beautiful and the most dangerous country in the world.” Next slide, “last year more than 6,478 people were brutally murdered in Guatemala. Only 1,600 civilians were killed in Afghanistan during this same time.” Okay, mister! Hold the phone! I tried really hard to pay attention to his presentation. My attempts at being a good listener were short-lived, however, when the presenter’s 6-year-old daughter started pointing a laser pointer at his face. I had to cover my face with my hands to keep myself from cracking up laughing. After the presentation, Colin said that we should take the information with a grain of salt. I think I have a pretty good gut instinct about almost all things in life and I’m fairly certain that Guatemala is one of those countries where you need to trust your gut and use your head. I really do appreciate the warnings but I refuse to live my life in fear. Plus, if I start feeling uncomfortable I’ll just ask the security guy’s daughter to fight off the criminals with her laser pointer.

So some funny things my students have done this week and last:

            1. While asking for predictions during a read aloud, one student confidently raises his hand and says, “Miss Hannah! I am blooding!” The best part about this story is I totally lost it and started laughing in the middle of the lesson. My kids did not understand why I was laughing, but they thought it was so funny that I couldn’t stop and they all started laughing too. We had a moment and it was great.

            2. I burped in the middle of a sentence yesterday (I could NOT help it, it shocked me just as much as my kids!) and then my kids just died laughing. It was really hard to get them to focus again because I was laughing too. I mean, come on, it’s pretty funny :)

            3. I had a naughty kid do a sneaky thing this weekend. He was calling people bad names last week and I wrote a note to his mom about it in his agenda so she could be aware of his behavior. When I checked his agenda yesterday to see if she had written anything back to me, I saw that the page was missing! The little rascal tore it out so his mom wouldn’t see the note! Oh, he got is so much trouble. He had to talk to the principal AND we had to call his mom and explain to her what happened. He was in tears for most of the day but it seems that he is already trying to improve his behavior.

            4. Today when we were working with flashcards, I kept asking my students to tell the answers in different voices (i.e. the lowest voice you can make, plugging your nose, a southern accent (which they had NO idea what I was talking about), etc.) and when I got to the “whisper voice” one of my kiddos screamed his answer. This kid is the smallest, funniest kid in the class and I think he genuinely mistranslated what I said and thought I wanted him to scream. It took every bit of strength in my body to not burst out laughing. Like, my lip was quivering I was working so hard to keep a straight face. I just adore my class!

I just got off skype with Allison and she is like 99% certain that she is coming to visit in October. OH MY GOSH!!! I can’t even contain my excitement right now! I’m really hoping that we will have a car by then so I can show her all over the place but no matter what we are going to have a total blast.  My first visitor—yippee!!!

Okay its is really late and tomorrow is my long day so I must go. Lets hope this consistent blogging streak continues!