A Typical Day
so this is the room and the house that hav
e become my new home. one of my biggest concerns when i decided that i was going to do this was the idea of living with a family. i was concerned that i would have to tiptoe and that i couldn't come and go as i please. G
od completely answered my prayers in this area. i have my own entire section of the house with my own door and bathroom and bedroom and i can definitely come and go as i please. whenever the front door is open though, i make a point to go through the house and spend time with my "mama tica."
Each morning i get up and have fruit, coffee, and some sort of sandwich, or pancakes, or banano br
ead (no i didn't spell banana wrong- it's different)... i carry my banano to school with me each day. i leave at 7:40 to meet brandon on the corner (i did for the last two weeks at least), and we make the 15-20 min. walk to school. the hottest time of d
ay is in the morning and we're usually sweating to death because of the humidity by the time we get there. this is also the only time of day that we usually see the sun though, because it rains the rest of the day. our school is a little white building with a plastic sign on the front that says, "learn spanish." hillarious! despite what the school looks like from the outside, the teachers are amazing and surprisingly enough, i really enjoy my classes.
this is the slow time for the school so there are very few students here. in fact, my first w
eek it was just myself and one other person in my class. the past two weeks i have had classes by myself. i have two hours of grammar classes and then two hours of communication classes. i thought that the biggest struggle for me here would be the Spanish classes but it is actually my favorite part of the day. strange i know! and it's just me and the teacher for 4 hours! i have a different teacher for each class and my teachers sometimes change each week. it's good because it gets me used to talking and working with other teachers. i have classes from 8-12 each day. after cla
ss i find a place for lunch then walk home, and by about 2pm each day it is pouring down rain and that usually lasts most of the night. it has rained EVERY day that i have been here except for one day when i went to the coast for the weekend. at first the rain added to my feelings of being stranded, but now i've gotten used to just going out in it; because it's always raining. this pic is what it looks like most afternoons.
the past two weeks there were only 5 students in the school and i found myself h
anging out with the most random group. it consisted of myself, brandon, a catholic priest in his 30's, a 54 year old kayaking and special-ed teacher, and a 27 year old high school Spanish teacher from Boston. random, i know! sometimes we would get together at a Chinese restaurant in our neighborhood where the people that own it don't speak Spanish or English. this just added to the strangeness that has been my experience here thus far! myself and the Catholic priest are the only 2 from the group still here. Two other new students came in last week so now there is a total of 4 people at this school, and a couple Chinese kids. not so great for making friends or finding people to travel with, but i definitely get one on one attention in class. which is great, because i have been so surprised by how much harder it is to communicate and get around down here then in Juarez. i've realized that even when i get the words right, my pronunciation is usually completely off and they look at me like i'm crazy. on the border about anything goes and it's so much easier to get by.
e become my new home. one of my biggest concerns when i decided that i was going to do this was the idea of living with a family. i was concerned that i would have to tiptoe and that i couldn't come and go as i please. G
od completely answered my prayers in this area. i have my own entire section of the house with my own door and bathroom and bedroom and i can definitely come and go as i please. whenever the front door is open though, i make a point to go through the house and spend time with my "mama tica."Each morning i get up and have fruit, coffee, and some sort of sandwich, or pancakes, or banano br
ead (no i didn't spell banana wrong- it's different)... i carry my banano to school with me each day. i leave at 7:40 to meet brandon on the corner (i did for the last two weeks at least), and we make the 15-20 min. walk to school. the hottest time of d
ay is in the morning and we're usually sweating to death because of the humidity by the time we get there. this is also the only time of day that we usually see the sun though, because it rains the rest of the day. our school is a little white building with a plastic sign on the front that says, "learn spanish." hillarious! despite what the school looks like from the outside, the teachers are amazing and surprisingly enough, i really enjoy my classes.this is the slow time for the school so there are very few students here. in fact, my first w
eek it was just myself and one other person in my class. the past two weeks i have had classes by myself. i have two hours of grammar classes and then two hours of communication classes. i thought that the biggest struggle for me here would be the Spanish classes but it is actually my favorite part of the day. strange i know! and it's just me and the teacher for 4 hours! i have a different teacher for each class and my teachers sometimes change each week. it's good because it gets me used to talking and working with other teachers. i have classes from 8-12 each day. after cla
ss i find a place for lunch then walk home, and by about 2pm each day it is pouring down rain and that usually lasts most of the night. it has rained EVERY day that i have been here except for one day when i went to the coast for the weekend. at first the rain added to my feelings of being stranded, but now i've gotten used to just going out in it; because it's always raining. this pic is what it looks like most afternoons.the past two weeks there were only 5 students in the school and i found myself h
anging out with the most random group. it consisted of myself, brandon, a catholic priest in his 30's, a 54 year old kayaking and special-ed teacher, and a 27 year old high school Spanish teacher from Boston. random, i know! sometimes we would get together at a Chinese restaurant in our neighborhood where the people that own it don't speak Spanish or English. this just added to the strangeness that has been my experience here thus far! myself and the Catholic priest are the only 2 from the group still here. Two other new students came in last week so now there is a total of 4 people at this school, and a couple Chinese kids. not so great for making friends or finding people to travel with, but i definitely get one on one attention in class. which is great, because i have been so surprised by how much harder it is to communicate and get around down here then in Juarez. i've realized that even when i get the words right, my pronunciation is usually completely off and they look at me like i'm crazy. on the border about anything goes and it's so much easier to get by.
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