La historia del zoo

Okay, so today was day two at the school and it went okay. I started off my day a little later since I got there pretty early yesterday. I left my house maybe 10 minutes later and still got their 20 minutes early, but I think that's a good schedule so I'm going to stick with that. There are just so many factors to account for when commuting. For example, will I walk down the stairs, stand on the escalator, walk down the escalator? Will I have to wait a long time for the train? Will there be something else that speeds me up or slows me down? Anyway, I figure I will just continue to arrive early. Nothing is wrong with that.

Once the other teacher's arrived to school, I received my schedule. I have Mondays off, I have partial days on Tuesday and Friday, and I work all day on Wednesday and Thursdays. The schedule is pretty good, but the only unfortunate thing is that I'm working with five different teachers and four different classes. I have a feeling that this is going to make planning difficult. Also, I still can't figure out my role in the classroom, but it still is only day two. I will tell you about my day and my classes though. All of my classes have animal names so I have the Leones, Tigres, and Osos..oh my! Just kidding, I have the patos, jirafes, monos, and gatos (ducks, giraffes, monkeys, and cats). I started my day with an English class and boy was that class crazy. They are noisy and the lack of discipline is quite different from that in the United States, plus I know it's hard for a bunch of first graders to sit and pay attention for an hour. They were practicing numbers and we attempted to teach them how to ask "How old are you?," but I don't think they got it today. It's going to have to be reviewed tomorrow.

My next class was Science. Although it doesn't really seem like Science, the students were learning classroom objects. I'm sure it constitutes as Science because it is about their surroundings/community, and to be honest, I have no recollection of what I learned in Science in the 1st grade. Also, I learned some differences between British English and American English today. For example, an eraser is called a rubber and a trash can is a bin. Also, this class was slightly noisy, but better than the first. However, it took a turn for the worst when the students got ready for snack. The teacher I was working with was explaining to me that they have to bring a meat snack on Monday and a fruit snack on Wednesday, when a girl came up and didn't feel well. She went to run to the bathroom, but let's just say she did not make it and there was then a mess on the floor. I thought it would be gross (well, I mean, it was gross), but somehow I think you just have to get used to it when working in schools. Although I will say that this is the first time that it's happened to me. I think the grossest part was the fact that the school did not have that powder stuff that my elementary school had to throw on the mess. So I watched as the teacher cleaned it up with paper towels and a mop. Well, that's enough about that. After that class, the students had recess and again the teachers had a spread of food to eat. Looks like it happens everyday, which is pretty exciting.

After break, I got to work with a kindergarten class and they were excellent! The teacher read them a story in Spanish and then they sat very well while I read them a story about a Zoo in English. I read it once and then the teacher asked what they understood from it. The students actually understood quite a bit and then I read it again so they would understand the language and story even more. It was really cool to see their brains working. After the story time, they asked me a bunch of questions about where I am from, how old I am, how do you say rainbow, unicorn, floor, etc. in English. It was a really well behaved class and they seemed really interested. After this class was lunch, kind of. Like I said yesterday, there is a two hour break for lunch, where the students can go home or stay at school. For the first hour, the teachers had a meeting and I asked to join them, since I was in the education program at school and I was curious to hear what they were doing for programming, but I was told it was an official meeting and that I was not allowed to attend, which kind of stinks. So for the first hour, I sat and did nothing except for talk to Julia about how our morning classes went. Then, we finally ate lunch with all the other teachers. Everyone gathers in the lounge to eat lunch together and to talk, which I think forms a nice sense of community.

Then, it was on to my afternoon classes. Again, I had a Science and English class and again I had one crazy class and one well-behaved class. It's a little bit exhausting to work with children, especially since I am not the full time classroom teacher so I can't really discipline them and even if I did, they wouldn't understand me because I have to speak in English. Plus, I don't want to step on the classroom teacher's toes, which again brings me to my point that I don't know my role yet. I haven't been told anything about the classes for tomorrow so I am not able to help with planning yet, but as I said before, it is only the second day, so hopefully I can do more as time goes on.

After the day was over, I took the train home and bought a few things from the store. I hung out for a little bit and now I am at Karin's watching The Ghost Rider. I'm not really paying attention to it, but it seems like a good movie.

Okay, now I am going to tell you about a few things that I have forgotten to tell for the past couple of days. For example, my roommates said that they are not great cooks, but that they would cook a Spanish meal sometime and I will have to cook them something from the U.S. Can't decide what that meal will be yet. Karin said horseshoes are pretty U.S. and I agree with that. Also, the dos besos thing is really tiring. Instead of a one "kiss" greeting, they do two. Also, you have to watch out for people with glasses. Definitely got stabbed in the eye by some glasses. Luckily, it only needed to happen once for me to know to watch out. Lastly, for today, lighting a gas stove with matches is quite terrifying. I am already pretty used to it, but still don't like playing with matches and gas..wishing there was a pilot light. It's all good though, haven't burnt down anything yet.

Well, it's that time of night to say goodbye. Have a good afternoon and I will talk to you tomorrow.