Sorry everyone! I meant to post sooner, but it's been a very busy week. On Tuesday I started working at the school Caupolican Marin, which has probably around 150-200 students in total. There I work with the English teacher, mostly as an assistant. I basically help with specific clarification (should I use "have" or "has" in this instance, etc.) and making sure the students stay on task. The kids are between 5 and 14, and we probably have around 20 students at a time, so it can get a little chaotic, but with 2 people it's pretty manageable. Although my Spanish is slowly getting better, it's very difficult to understand the kids sometimes because they speak very quickly and mumble a lot, but at least at that school I have the other teacher to help. On Thursdays and Fridays however, I'm at a different school. This other school (whose name I can't remember to save my life) only has about 30 kids in total, all between 5 and 10. Each grade only has about 5 or 6 kids in it, and there are only 4 other teachers in total, none of whom speak English. So I've been teaching classes by myself, which has been very interesting. Within the first hour of my first day one of the children started crying and I had no idea why. He was trying to explain it to me but between his sobs and my awful comprehension, I still have no idea what happened! I tried to calm him down as best I could, but I gotta say, I was feeling pretty lost. Then, after lunch a teacher brought in the youngest students, who didn't even know the alphabet in Spanish, let alone any English. This presented a whole new challenge for me. How do you teach someone English without writing anything? I did my best to remember some simple songs from my childhood, but I could only remember about half of "Head, Shoulders Knees and Toes." The next day, I came more prepared and taught the kids Simon Says, which I think was a really good way to teach simple English. Turns out there are a ton of suggestions for simple games for teaching English on the internet. Who knew?
But aside from that, I've also been volunteering at a local travel agency/hotel where they book cruises for the islands. There I mostly answer emails and questions from English speaking tourists. They don't pay me in cash, but I believe I'm going to be getting some free trips to the other islands out of it and it's only about 3 hours a day, most of which I spend on the computer, so I'm ok with that! Everyone on the island has been extremely nice. No one seems very stressed out about much; one of the first words I picked up when I got here was tranquilo. The English teacher I work with even let me borrow her bike for the weekend, which has been great. Yesterday we took a sort of field trip to one of the student's houses, where they raise pigs and process milk, cheese and yogurt. It was in the middle of a massive field and surrounded by fruit trees, which was beautiful. After that, I went back to Tortuga Bay, which has about the softest sand you can imagine, and tried to snorkel for a bit, but the water wasn't very clear and you couldn't see more than 3 feet in front of you. Today, I went back to the Charles Darwin Research Station and took a few pics of the tortoises, and went down to the water just to walk around. I walked to the port and looked over the railing and instantly there was a sea lion below me! I was excited, because it was the first sea lion I had seen since my first day here. I watched him for a few seconds before he jumped up onto the cement landing about 20 feet away. I took out my camera and snapped a few great shots. I stepped out onto the concrete to get closer, but didn't realize it was covered in sea slime and I slipped! I then had to walk back to the house covered in green muck. I'm sure it was a pretty funny sight for the locals to see this stupid gringo nearly fall into the water while trying to get a better picture!
Otherwise, I've pretty much been spending what free time I have talking with the family here, playing soccer with the 6 year old who lives here, and just exploring the town. Hopefully, I'll be able to post some pics soon. Well, that's about it for now. Tune in next week...
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