Day 13 (6/14/11)

Today we had a lot to do. Our day started out with our first two hour English class. In these English classes we’re supposed to work as a team to teach the little niños English through games and any other ways we think of. Our first English class started around 10:30am and when we got there we were expecting around 25 kids. To our surprise there were only 4 niñas in the room. Even though there were a small number of kids we still were able to have fun and help them learn English through playing games and singing songs with them.
Following our first English class (which ended around noon) we headed straight upstairs for our second Spanish class of the week. During our second Spanish class we were asked to listen to a recorded conversation in Spanish and decipher what the speakers were talking about. Understanding what native speakers say in Spanish has never been my strong suit so this was a difficult task for me. I was quite frustrated with myself as I could only catch a few words from the conversation and everyone else on my team seemed to know what was going on. I just need to have patience I guess. I hope that I’ll be able to understand what the native speakers are saying soon.
After this Spanish class we had an hour break and then we got to teach our second English class. In Mexico there is usually two times that children can go to school during the day. One session is in the morning and one is in the afternoon. This is why we do two different sessions of our class throughout the day so that both types of students can come to learn. Not surprisingly, we had more students in this second session, which started at 4pm. Once again we played games and sang songs with the students to help them learn English. It was cool to watch them as they tried to pronounce words in English and see how happy they were to learn the language.
When our class ended we came back to the Carpenters’ place and got to work on our Spanish class homework and enjoy some Taquitos (the frozen Americanized rolled up tortillas). I’m very tired today as I’ve had a long day and still am getting over my sickness. I decided to start taking the antibiotics (Cipro) today as I’ve had enough of being sick. Hopefully this will help get rid of this bug in my system!