Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day

I guess 'dull' isn't exactly a good adjective to use for my days this past week, but they're lyrics and I do feel like time is going by very slowly but at the same time, quickly?! In the moment, at school, I often feel like there is forever of the day left, but at the same time I cannot believe it is already school day #8 today.

So first week - check. It was an alright week, it definitely went uphill at least a bit, or even if it plateaued at some point, it didn't go down! By Wednesday it felt better. The first two days I thought I could just die. It is SOO SOO difficult to get 5/6 yr olds to listen all day long in a language they dont know! Evidence of growth in their language skills is already there though and that seems to be helping things along. There are of course still times, and still children, who refuse to listen, but we are getting better at getting silent, getting in from recess when the bell rings, and walking in lines. All hope is not lost!

This weekend was a good, relaxing break after the stress of the first days in our careers! We actually started a bit on Thursday with $8 pedicures!
Friday night we went to a Spanish tapas place down the street. It was fun to eat food from Spain :) I got the tortilla de patatas for old times sake and we all got margaritas. It was even more fun that we were the only ones there so the owner and the waiter talked to us quite a bit. They asked what we wanted to listen to and even brought out their cd selection for us to choose from. Of course we ended the affair with with a group photo!

EmilyJenna Me Malita Charlie and our new friends waiter Charlie in front and owner Manuel

Saturday brought us a family outing! The Chulas family, as we lovingly call our clan - Malita, Charlie, Emily, Jenna, and I, all made our way over to Malitas grandmothers house. She lives here in Torreon, just a short taxi ride away with her sisters. They made us an authentic meal which was very fun to have again. They are all so sweet, not only did they drive us to the market downtown so we could get Santos (the local futbol team) apparel, but they kissed us all goodbye saying we were welcome anytime at 'our house' as it now is.
We changed into our newfavoriteteam jerseys and made the trek to get some necessities from both Waldos Mart and Soriana. With 5 people eating in the house it was easy to load up the food cart! It is fun though that we cook for eachother (well most daily verbs together, work together, plan together, eat together, walk together, I mean really..) thus a family name is justified.
Saturday night was a celebration for a fellow teachers birthday. Reservations at the Cantanita, a sweet lucha libre themed bar/restaurant. The wrestling paraphenalia wasn't over powering though, it was a cute place and had live music. We were seated directly in front of the speakers though and while sitting on my chair I could feel the hair on my arms vibrating with the music! I believe fun was had by all.

...

Yesterday was a very busy, long day for me. I had school like normal from 7:30-3:00ish, tutoring from 4:30-630, and a parent open house at 7:45. Then I had to finish up my plan book for next week to turn in tomorrow. Whew. Glad that is behind me now. Another week almost gone... thank goodness :) We are all looking forward to a little four day weekend we have coming up after next week! A beach may be in the future! Hopefully something fun anyway. Tonight I am going to hit up the aerobics class again... get ready to sweat!

First Day!?

wow. teaching english to 5 yr old spanish speakers is TOUGH work. It helps that they are so darn adorable, and that I can understand spanish, but it is SO hard to get anything across first day wise to people who don't speak that language! I am not allowed to speak spanish to them as that would defeat the whole idea of immersion, and I am not technically supposed to answer questions asked in spanish either. Im going with 'if I repeat the question in english before answering then its ok to do it sometimes.' honestly, sometimes I just forget. Its hard to hear spanish and understand it and then change back to english only, sometimes I think of what I am going to say in Spanish too but then I realize...

Anyway, details on the day. The beginning of the morning went pretty well. We made nametags, they had a special (religion), and then we had flag salute, no biggie. The hour after that was not so great at all. I got them playing a game that practices "I am ___. Good Morning, (another student)" and they pass a ball while doing this. My coordinator comes in and sits in the circle so all the kids immediately start speaking to her in spanish (remember this is supposed to be an english only classroom?!). they ask her to play hot potato so when she got the ball thats what she did! I couldn't believe it, so for about 10 mins my classroom was taken over by my superior in a language she forbade me to speak. I lost them after that, all they wanted to do was play with the toys, the listening skills were turned off.

One boy in particular seems to be the trouble maker, he said one of my activities with the alphabet was for babies, so everyone else began to dislike it as well. He never follows directions and when I call his name or ask him to do something he doesn't want, he plays dead on the floor. Great. And through my discouragement, I cut a few of my activities short and therefore felt like I was grasping at the air for things to do a lost of the afternoon. By noon-ish they are done listening to a foreign language. Its frustrating, I understand, I was there, there were times in Spain where we just wanted to speak english so I get it. But as the teacher its very frustrating to have them all talking amongst themselves in spanish because they no longer want to try to understand or follow english. Their ears get turned off for much of the afternoon. I ended the day then doing toy centers, and it felt like a cop out. At lunch though, I honestly thought to myself if only for a split second if I could quit. of course I cant and I wont but it was a frustrating day and I can't wait until it gets better. Thankfully my roomies all had similar feelings after the day so I know it is not just me, first years are bound to be difficult...

at least we looked good :)

El Camino Infinito

This has been such a busy Saturday! Jenna, Emily, and I got up and to the school around 10. Thankfully they helped me arrange and organize my room. I have all these ideas in my head so I need others to bounce them off of and tell me yeah or nah. I think it is basically ready, furniture/bulletin board wise. I, on the otherhand, do not feel ready, tomorrow I need to focus on planning hardcore. I feel like I have a lot of activities for Monday alone, but its better to over plan, right?! I just worry that I will leave something important out, and I'm sure I will! But that is part of learning... keep telling myself that :)

Here's the classroom!

Preprimaria C (aka kindergarten, section C)

They have 2 years of 'Kinder' here before Prepri, so they are about 6 yrs old in my class

note the Miss Breanna also :) they call teachers first names here.

We worked at the school until 2, came home and cleaned the fridge of leftovers, and went out shopping for some last minute items. first stop, a dollar store. A dollar for 80 clothespins, I'm in. Next stop, the Mexico WalMart.. how can they not sell magnets?? So we try the real WalMart, wishing for the best. No such luck. It seems Mexicans do not like decorating their fridges, no one sells magnets! We really just wanted those magnetic clips, but with no luck, we got a printer instead. 34 bucks, should be a good investment. We dont have to deal with the sketchy old teachers computer lab at school. Walking from Waldo's Mart to Soriana to WalMart is quite the trek. By this time we were all walking languidly, and ready for a nap, or at least a long sit, but, alas, we needed to return to school once again. The taxi home was well worth the $2.

I think this one is funny, las montanas in the background and a WalMart and Carls Jr!
There is also an AutoZone down a bit further, what country are we in?

Back at the school for another couple of hours! I made a pretty sweet traffic light for behavior issues - all name clothespins hang on the green at first, yellow is a warning, and red, well red isn't good! The idea was a spinoff of something used in a classroom at my student teaching placement, Jenna came up with good phrases to put on each color too "doing your job" "make better choices" "stop the behavior" I thought it was pretty clever. I stole another idea from there - a 'noise meter.' Voices at 0-3: no, partner, table, and classroom voices. Pretty excited about both, hopefully they work out well.

Tonight we had BLTs for supper! delicious. Last night we had homemade pizza - red and green peppers, onions, and mozzarella, mushrooms for the others but I went without those! Also quite delicious. We watched 3 movies yesterday..one being the Sound of Music (3 hrs long if you didn't know) and tonight we started a Sister Act marathon. You would think we weren't working our little tails off with those facts, but we've been pretty diligent I'd say. Tomorrow will be another all day at school day I'm sure... whoohoo!

TGIF ... kind of

I cannot believe this week is already over and on Monday I will officially have my own classroom! Streeesssssfuuuulll! I have far too many things going on in my head right now, I definitely don't feel ready, but I guess ready I will be.

Off to the great start we all know I am capable of... I forgot the keys to my classroom twice! and didn't remember until after I arrived at school, its only a five min walk but still... AND I had to break into my room once because I went to Jenna's room for most of the afternoon and when I came back the cleaning lady had turned off my air and locked up for me. thanks, ALL my stuff was in there. It was late enough too that everyone was either gone or on their way so we unscrewed my screen with keys and I hoisted myself inside. wonderful. There is also a sliding down the wet stair well story in there too, but I wont go into detail :) Today we were to get our schedules... there was a conflict with two things on mine, one was an immediate fix and another required coordination with someone elses schedule so an hour later I get that correction but in the meantime I had planned my pull outs with the Spanish teacher so now those conflicted... (sigh) so I basically wasted 2 hrs today just on getting my schedule together. This prevented me from getting my planner filled out to turn in so I actually only filled in Monday! (supposed to turn in coming week on fridays) I also didn't get to turn in the form required to get copies for the week, so I may or may not get any of those... we'll see how that pans out.

Sadly, I think most of us are going to go in to school again tomorrow (I'm even debating on tonight yet but I think I need to breathe first). I have 8 bulletin boards to fill up, and if you know about making those, you know its not always as easy as it seems. and at this point, none of mine are done yet! Planned out, mostly, but not put up.

The more positive part of this blog
I will have 19 students, I have already met two. I have a cute, large carpet for sitting on the floor fun, and I will have an almost full time assistant. The assistant I am supposed to share with the teacher next door but she said today that she only needs her for about an hour a day, so she's pretty much mine. The only thing is I am not that good at delegating, at least not this week. I just wanted to be in my classroom by myself and figure out what I wanted where, I have changed my mind so many times though I couldn't really tell her what to do. Which means I pretty much ended up doing everything myself anyway.
Basically I need it to be two weeks from now or so when I am over the awkward beginning stage.... Wish me luck!

Oh, and this is my class puppet, Jolly the giraffe :)

Escuela... here we come!

Sunday
A bunch of us decided we needed groceries today so we ventured off to Soriana, the Mexican WalMart. They are actually competitors but this is 100% mexican owned and I think cheaper as well, I vote we never go to walmart again (hate to admit we went the first time), though Sunday afternoon is not the time apparently. Shopping day! Let's all get carts and push everyone around while getting our groceries, it'll be fun!

Later we all gathered at the boys house for a little Phase 10. We played in partners for extra bonding :) Afterwards, we got some ice cream and rice and beans. Yep, that order. There is an ice cream shop on the corner, Bips, which we have seen hoppin busy every night so we had to test it out for ourselves. Pretty tasty treat, cheap too of course. The rice and beans were homemade by Emily, buen trabajo amiga!

Monday
First Day of School!!! Kind of. We came for a day of fun filled with orientation and insurance dealings. The school is a lot bigger than I imagined, there are I think three large areas, a courtyard in the middle and an outdoor gym area, and the preprimaria section has its own courtyard/play area. It is fun that it is all open and basically outdoors. I will have to get some pics later. Jenna's room especially has a great view; she is on the second floor and walking out of her classroom you can see across the courtyard with the mountains in the background! I am unfortunately in a section all to myself, well mostly. The majority of the people are in elementary 1-6, but I am through a little gate off the courtyard and in the preprimaria section which houses all the young'ns.

This wonderful morning meeting ended with 'a talk.' you know when someone says that it probably isn't positive... "There was a mistake and we need houses C and D to switch. OOOOOHHHH ok. Geesh, it took me days to unpack the first time! and I had just finished. So thankfully we really are working with a bunch of nice people so everyone volunteered to go right over to the houses and help us all pack up and swap. It only took an hour or so, but then I had suitcases to unpack again. They went untouched for at least 24 hrs. There were positives and negatives, no a/c now but also no cockroaches. It does have an air cooling system though that really works well enough with the fans going. I'm always cold anyway so I am golden here.

Another stop at Bips with others that didn't get to try it out the first time. I got nachos this time, and when asked if I wanted everything on it I of course said yes. This includes: chips, cheese, sour cream, ketchup, chili, corn, and jalapenos. They definitely cannot be judged based on description or viewing though because I rather liked them. Jenna and Jenn both got cones and both had trouble eating them. Jenn's fell off her cone twice and Jenna's melted all down her cone and onto her hands/arm! Comical, but they still liked it. We ended the night jammin out while watching the movie Hairspray with the roomies plus Charlie :) I went to sleep early, it's apparently getting to me, and we have another day of school work-ing to do tomorrow.

And a few pictures ...

Megan and I out front, note pink neon roof, my room is just behind there somewhere

Too bad you can't clearly see the nachos, nor Jenna's treacherous scoops :)
L-R: Malita, Emily, Me, Jenna aka Casa C

This is the whole gang at orientation!
L-R, Backrow: Tom, Victor, Charlie, Lesley, Megan, Erin, Jenn
Frontrow: Natalie, Me, Malita, Emily, Jenna, Joanna

This one's for you, Michael Phelps

Friday night was quite enjoyable. Natalie, Jenna, and I made our first homemade quesadillas. We grilled some onions and used panela cheese, its a crumbly cheese that is used a lot for tacos and such here, it doesn't melt well but it tasted really good. And of course we washed it down with a 2L of Coca.

Around 1030 or so we went over to Casa E where all but Malita (gone to the grama's) hung out for Catch Phrase and some chips and salsa and margaritas. After a few rounds of real play, we added our own rules, like 5 word limit just to keep it interesting. Many laughs had by all.

L-R: Lesley, Jenna, Natalie, Megan, Erin, Jenn, Emily, Me

Saturday
Another leisure morning for us all. I woke up and organized my room a bit more, then bowl of standard Azucaradas and a lot more chilling. Its a rough life so far I tell ya. Since we needed our exercise for the day, we went to the Club and swam for an hour or so. The pool is all the same depth, about 5 feet, and a wonderful temp. It was very refreshing and I'm sure we will be back many times. We got a schedule of their classes offered too and decided we are most likely going to try the majority. Yoga, Ballet Jazz, Aerobics, why not?! We all feel like we are members of a country club going there. they have cute little huts with grass roofs, the bleachers to watch tennis matches, ..its a fun place. I even got super lucky and found 3 pesos on the floor of the pool! oh wait, thats like 30¢. I had also found a peso in my closet this am too though so it was funny. 40¢ richer here people, I'm gonna be rollin in it soon :)

For lunch we tested out another new place. I got a sandwich cubana... maybe a little too much chorizo for my liking, and I'm not a huge cilantro fan either, but the milanesa and everything else on it was good. I'm still in the experimenting stage I guess. After showering off the pool, I finally finished unpacking and sorting out my room! I was quite proud. It looks good, all clean and organized, let's see how long that lasts.

Around 630 casas A/B come over and they get into watching the Olympics. The other houses were called and all came over. they said at 8 Phelps would be doing his last race so we kept watching... 2 hrs and 2 grilled cheese sandwiches later it really came on. I wish I had had my camera to capture all 11 of those faces very intently, very enthusiastically watching that 4x100 medley. Of course he got the 8th gold, did you have any doubt? When the national anthem came on and the guys didn't sing along as the previous australian team we saw had, it somehow came up that someone would sing it at a karaoke bar and dedicate it to Michael (hence blog title). You'd think we all loved him, or at least sports quite a bit because almost 6 hrs after starting to watch the olympics for something to do, we decided we had seen all the highlights enough times over and we could finally disperse to get some rest.

Ya Empezo

It's been about a day and a half now! So far so good. I haven't ventured to see the school yet but our houses are quite nice: we are in Casa D (A-E), there are 5 rooms here, 2 large rooms on the first floor and 3 smaller on the top level, along with a pretty large courtyard area with trees, brick floor but still.. Jenna and I along with our new friend Malita are on the top floor while Natalie (also from MN) and a girl who has not arrived yet are on the bottom. Oh, and don't forget Arthur, our lovely new friend the cockroach who is hanging out with Malita in her room. Just out our gate (gateS really, we're quite safely secured here) to the right there is la casa E, this also houses 5 girls. Casa C, to the left houses 4 but so far just 3 boys, one of which is Malita's fiancee. About a block away casas A y B are connected and thus far only house 2 girls. Our rooms are pretty great, complete with walk in closet, bathroom/shower, desk, and the much appreciated ceiling fan. We do have air conditioning here but may get the priveledge revoked as last years chicas used 12,000 pesos worth one month! ayayay! so we are going to use it wisely. truly its not bad keeping the blinds drawn and the ceiling fans in everyroom going. It is 96° today :)

My fellow teachers all seem very nice.. its funny because I find similarities between a few of them and some people from spain, is it just because we are abroad?! No but they all seem great and I'm sure we will have loads of good times :) Yesterday when we arrived we toured the houses and chose our rooms. Jenna, Natalie, and I were without our luggage so we waited a bit while everyone else moved in then went off for our first adventure. The hand drawn map they gave us of the surrounding area turned out to be a terrible mistake. the grocery store is not three square buildings down the road, in fact its a good 5-10 taxi ride. So our search for the Club (gym) to which we have a free membership, took much longer than necessary. it is also not all that close, a good 10 min walk, the warm up i suppose. The facility is much nicer than they suggested, they made it sound like it was all outdated and we wouldn't want to ever go but there is a pretty decent sized pool so hello! worth it right there :) We went out to eat for both lunch and supper (quesadilla and hamburger respectively) and sat around getting to know one another better most of the night. The three of us sin equipaje waited until midnight for our luggage to be delivered, about an hour after the call from Continental, the driver said he made circles for a half an hour trying to find our place. I guess it is hard as our side of the street is all the same gated entrances without numbers... man was it hard to stay up til then after a 530am flight that morning!

Today we have been very chill. We had a little 'inventory' meeting here to make sure we leave the house as we got it, but having gone through that in our pjs we figured we might as well keep em on! We had a cereal party: Azucaradas (aka frosted flakes) and the wonderful cartons of milk that keep in the cupboard for months. This all comes from the stash the school generously provided as a minimal amount of food for us to last us the first few days or so. Then we bonded some more while watching a movie :) We finally showered and caught up with the others to get some comida. Tacos de pastor- marinated pork, lime juice, pineapple, onion, and salsa... que delicioso! A few people were at the pool so we went and dipped our feet as we came unprepared today but I'm all in tomorrow! Looking forward to it. Now back en la casa we cool off and I blog(without a/c! we're acclimating, trying hard at least). wireless in the houses!! So feel free to email, message, or skype sometime! I've got easy access. let me know if there are some details you'd like to hear more about, I feel like this blog was full of very scattered thoughts :)