First Weekend and First Day of Class

Well we all knew that it would happen eventually... yes... I ate guinea pig, one of the national dishes here. It was for Father´s Day and surprisingly, wasn´t bad. It kind of tasted like a really salty rabbit, and I don´t know if I´m going to have to eat it again while I´m here, but I wouldn´t mind in a smaller portion. I apologize to all of those people who had guinea pigs as pets... I meant no harm. Then yesterday before class I actually ate a whole crab, one that I had to rip off the legs and all. It was an interesting experience, but it was delicious! I would totally have some more crab while I´m here. However, I did see the crabs crawling around in a box before I ate them, yet that didn´t change my opinion about eating them at all.

My first weekend was full of emotions. It was really overwhelming being in a house where they really only spoke Spanish to me and I didn´t understand them at all. I was finally alone for the first time on the trip, and that definitely scared me. However, my host family has been great and they have done everything they can to make me feel welcome. My Spanish is improving every day (pero papi, no quiero escritar in espagnol ahora), and I even had an hour long conversation with my host mom last night IN SPANISH! It was amazing!

However, my first day of classes did not go exactly as planned. I have beginners in both of my classes (I thought I was going to be teaching intermediate and advance classes), and so all of the lesson planning that I did completely went down the toilet. I am going to have to be very creative in getting them to participate and understand what I´m saying, because they speak about as much English as I speak Spanish. They all also want to learn irregular verbs... and much to my dismay I did not quite know what an irregular verb was in English. That´s just one thing that I never exactly had to know when I was growing up. However, I now have a list of several irregular verbs, and am confident that I can tell the difference. It will be a definite learning experience for everyone involved, and I ready to face another day. I was actually kind of bummed after yesterday, but after talking to my mom and getting some more teaching tips, I am much more ready and have a few ideas up my sleeve. We´ll see how it all goes, but seriously... nothing can be how uprepared I was yesterday. I had so many cool activities planned and all of them ended up being too advanced for them. But I will say, we went over colors in both of my classes, and by far purple is one of the hardest words in English for them to say. They all got a kick out of it, which made it more fun for me.

I am currently trying to upload pictures and will have them up as soon as possible. I am also trying to multitask and plan my lessons for today, so hopefully everything will work.

Chao!