Year Two!

Today marked the first day of my second year working at the schools in La Boquilla.  Although the actual one year mark was January 15th, I only just started realizing how fast the time has actually going.  I caught myself day dreaming in a class today (I was not teaching at the time) about first meeting the other PC volunteers in Miami.  However, those memories were cut short as two students started fighting with each other about getting to throw the mango pit out the window.  The fact remains that when last year everything seemed new and unpredictable this year I feel more prepared for what is in store.  For example, the past two weeks there have been teachers meetings and miraculously.......I still don’t have a schedule.  But HEY like I said, I have lived through this last year and was expecting nothing less.

In these four hour meetings, a number of school faculty would take the spotlight by standing up and then giving a fiery speech about the where to put the welcome sign (My thoughts during the discussion: “ Probably a good idea to put it infront of the entrance so all the students see it....END OF DISCUSSION”) or if the children should be able to leave the school during their 25 minute break.... you know, finer things in life.  Sometimes these speeches would be short (30 minutes) and others would run upward of two hours.  But again, after a year here I knew exactly what was going to happen when an enthusiastic faculty member stood up.  At the conclusion of these meeting we would get to my favorite part of the day and split up into groups according to subject matter.  However, like I have mentioned before, elementary English is a bit different in the fact that there are no English teachers.  So I just pulled two of my counterparts aside and we planned the elementary school English curriculum for the year.  Now that was efficiency at its finest!        

The first day of school was great!  Partly because a nice breeze has been sweeping through La Boquilla and the temperature is quite mild, sitting in the mid 80s.  This helped prevent the sweat from dripping into my eyes and onto the dozens of students that swarmed to give me hugs and fist pounds like they hadn’t seen me in months. And partly because there was a great energy surrounding the school!  I can only hope that it will transfer into the English classroom this year.  Pictures of some of my classes will be up soon; As I plan to take pictures on the first and last days of the school year.