monday, march 21st

monday, march 21st.


the day i became super excited because one of my classes got the "st" part right, or rather, remembered it... instead of saying march twenty-one.


it's been a great day. a very long busy tiring day. but a good one. i would venture to say a great one at that. 


~i finally got one class to finish an exam, or rather sat by listening as another native speaker talked with them, mentally routing for them and groaning with them at triumphs and mistakes... 
~i sat through some teacher training and was instantly taken back to my first week in Peru sitting through that same training with the same boss. it was weird to see myself in the girls going through the training and also for lack of better words, nostalgic? i was happy to be able to add to the training instead of just listen. 
~i ran into a mother of one of the kids that i thought last year. whom i saw outside the doors of the same school where i taught and am now teaching the.. well, teachers. she asked if i was returning and told me that she was sad that i wasn't because her daughter had learned so much when i taught her, and sang all the time at home (we sang A LOT of songs) it made my heart happy to finally know that i had made a difference in someones life, be it only their capacity to sing silly songs in english. i needed that kind of feedback when i was actually working there, then maybe we wouldn't be having this blogpost today.
~i also randomly ran into a teacher I used to work with at that same school, although I never saw her very often since she worked with the older kids and I the younger. it always lifts your spirits to randomly run into someone in the street that you haven't seen in a long time and you were starting to think you might never see again even though you live in the same city.
~somehow God opened a door or a window or an ability to control yourself for someone, i'm not sure who... because my teenage students were a little less bickery today. it might have had something to do with me throwing my hands up in the air and saying "o c'mon man!! you guys are killing me!!!" i think they were a little shocked at me and intrigued by my choice of words. because i got asked how to spell c'mon and killing. and us spending 15 mintues trying to figure out how to get them to stop calling me "miss" and calling me Julie or even Ann (which an old student decided to call me) but they won't budge since A: the older student just wants to pester me since he knows I dont want them to call me miss, and B: the younger student is too used to calling his teacher "miss" or "mr" since thats what they use in the schools... or as he put it himself "miss... i just can't accustombrate to calling you Julie" to which everyone burst out in laughter. i even got them to enjoy a louis armstrong song today, and ask for another. although they did assume it was ray charles, even after i corrected them. did i ever mention that this has been just as much a teaching of what is politically correct as it has been an english class?


and now i am enjoying a cup of tea and thankful that the weather is cool enough now, at least in the evenings and mornings, to enjoy a hot cup of tea without sweating. and listening to this artist, Eduardo Mano, a christian musician from Brazil (his music is in Portugese)... I think he mainly sings in churches in Brazil, but I found him on NoiseTrade. And no, I don't understand Portugues but it's close enough to Spanish, although I have found that I like relaxing to music that I don't understand.