Clases

Monday I started up with English classes again. I did very little advertising, but people came in last week to sign up and lo and behold they did show up this week. In the past, Monday was a basic class with a bunch of 10 year olds. It's still a basic class, but this first day had four students that were all older. The youngest was maybe 12 or so but her two cousins that also came were my age, and Jesús, who is a maintenance man for the parish, came as well. I would guess he's about 30. Yesterday, for the advanced class, there were four new people which is cool. For both classes, I felt more comfortable than I did the first time around. I got some ideas from some of my teachers at CDH, and Mrs. Zobitz had an ingenious way of making portable whiteboards which I used in both classes! Now my problem is finding markers...
I will also be continuing with the Saturday morning classes in a different parish. I had an interesting texting argument/discussion with the priest from that parish. He contacted me Friday night at 9pm asking if I could come the next morning at 6am. I wasn't too excited about that, I was actually a little annoyed and didn't respond. I texted him the next day (by the way, texting is the preferred method of communication here because it is a lot cheaper than calling, so even though usually this should be a phone call convo, here it's not an issue to text people like a priest). So yes, I texted him explaining that so early every Saturday morning was too much, that I want to do other things here in my parish on the weekends and at night, and that I would really appreciate if we could figure out a different schedule. His response: "Ok, how about 7am?" Long story short, the classes will now be at 8am. Which is better. Those will start this coming Saturday.

I've been talking a bit with Dr. Watson from CDH these past few days, she is in charge of Justice Week each year. She's asked me if I could talk to a group of students in the commons during Justice Week via Skype, I'm really excited about it. The theme this year is Rights of the Child. She asked if I could basically just share what I'm doing this year, and I'll be able to talk a bit about both teaching and my experiences at the Casa Hogar. Should be cool, hopefully the internet connection works smoothly! Ellie Roscher and Ben Tierney are the big speakers this year and will be talking about education. They are a dream team and their presentation is going to be awesome, I wish I could be there for it. I'll have to see about getting a video of it.

Wednesday is a day without a class and I was able to sleep in today which was needed and felt great. My air conditioner stopped working yesterday though which will be an issue if it doesn't get working again soon. I'm going to go eat a great lunch prepared by the one and only Janice, and then figure out what I'm doing for tomorrows class. This afternoon I think I'll go to the Casa Hogar and play some soccer. Should be a good one!