Teaching English

Oct. 13^th – 15^th, 2010

Since I will be teaching English and have no idea where to even begin, I requested project-related travel to another site to observe how another PCV is giving her classes, and to obtain some materials. I was gone for two nights, arriving on Wednesday and returning to my site Friday. Wednesday Janet and I made a delicious tuna fish salad with toast and melted cheese, and she showed me the plants she had been growing during her service here. She had oregano, cherry tomatoes, lemon grass, celery, coffee, basil, and sunflowers. Later in the afternoon we headed over to the school to prepare for class. She gives class from 3 – 5 pm Wednesdays and Thursdays to groups of about 20 adults who will teach their own groups of students, and has English game night also, once a week from 6 – 8 pm. What I learned most was to keep the class interactive and have fun because that keeps people interested and wanting to participate. Just standing in front of class lecturing or treating the students like children can create an uncomfortable boundary between the teacher and the students and doesn't seem to foster a successful learning environment. She had students come to the front of class to present to the rest a grammar activity they had prepared, other students presented to smaller groups around the class, they sang, they did dialogues, quizzes, and other fun activities.

Thursday morning we hiked about 2 and a half hours to an aldea up in a mountain to visit a Kindergarten class. The hike was beautiful. We passed corn fields, coffee plots, banana trees, rivers, parts of the trail that had been affected by mudslides, and we had to cross one river walking over some trunks of a tree.


 A couple ladies from the school came down the trail a ways to meet us and help carry our bags up the mountain. When we arrived, the children were already waiting, looking excited to have guests. We took a look at the small room that housed all their school materials and artwork, and also saw the small adorable chairs that were made out of wood and leather for the children to sit on.
 They didn't have chairs before and as plastic was too expensive, they used local resources to construct these chairs. It was suggested that in the future, the people of the aldea continue making chairs like these of whatever size as a business.
 We sat outside and the teachers gave us a generous helping of a banana and ciruelas. Ciruela is the word for plum, but it is completely different from what we have in the states. They taste like deliciously tart mangos.
 They then brought out plastic bags full of even more bananas and ciruelas - one bag for each of us! After snacking for a bit, we used felt hand puppets to tell the story of "The Three Little Pigs" then we switched it up and had the kids use the hand puppets to tell the story. There was a lot of blowing involved as we tried to blow all the houses down, and we asked several questions to see if they remembered what had happened in the story and which house was best to live in. They laughed a lot and seemed to really enjoy themselves :).
 We were only there for about an hour then left back down the hill, going down another way which saved us a lot of time, but which we would not have liked to climb up.


Janet and I had a lunch of banana pancakes and eggs, using the bananas we had just received. Then we headed back to school for another English class, then after that, prepared for English game night at her house. I baked banana cookies and she made popcorn.
 We had Scrabble, Scrabble Slam (in my opinion, a lot more fun than Scrabble), Boggle, and Monopoly set out on two tables. A good group of students showed up and started playing Scrabble Slam first, and then we switched to playing Monopoly. One guy had the misfortune of being sent to jail probably at least 4 times >_<. It was a fun night.
 After everyone left, I got to packing and Janet was extremely generous in giving things away! She is leaving site soon and thus is trying to get rid of stuff. She gave me several books, an external CD Drive since my Netbook doesn't have a disc drive, a big long plastic box filled with teaching English materials, another box with placemats, and other goodies, ground cinnamon (hard to find here! The most common form of cinnamon is the bark), Queen size fitted sheet and regular sheet, plastic containers, empty wine bottles to use for putting flour, sugar, whatever, and will give me her speakers when I go back to visit. It really was a great trip overall and her site, while small, is very beautiful and I enjoyed talking with her students and seeing that they were self-motivated and determined to learn.

ArcGIS Training and Karaoke!

Right now I'm working in the Catastro office (equivalent to Cadastre in the states?) because they need people to help get it organized by the end of the year. I'm not quite sure of the whole story, but I think they had an old office that was very disorganized and so wasn't recognized by the government as official. Now they're working to organize everything and have even brought in several high school students working sort of like interns, but I'm pretty sure they get school credit. Because I can type super fast and can pick up on things quickly, like how to use computer programs, they enlisted my help and are going to have me train other people. I'm also helping to input some information into ArcGIS, one of the computer databases.


I woke up bright and early at 5:30 one Friday to get ready to head to an aldea about an hour and a half from here for training. My municipality is super large and extends even as far as that aldea, which surprises me. I walked to the Alcaldia only to find that it was locked and nobody had arrived yet, so the cleaning people let me in and I sat and read my book (The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton, already done with it!) and listened to music for half an hour until the trainer called and said he was outside. Got into the truck with him and one of the other guys that works in the Catastro office and we headed off. We passed through one of the larger cities and they went through the drive-through at Burger King (which is like a treat here) and they got me coffee and a small croissant sandwich even though I had said I already ate breakfast, but they insisted! People here are really nice when they invite you to places =]. We finally arrived at the aldea, which also has a Catastro office that is smaller and in worse condition than ours. There were four guys there who were going to be trained. I sat in on the training and learned how to fill out a form called a ficha, which people use to collect information on residential buildings, empty lots, and other pieces of real estate to calculate taxes. The office already had forms filled out for certain areas but we were making new ones based off the old information because this needs to be done every 5 years. We filled several of the fichas out and I also received some training in ArcGIS. Even though the offices here have the program, it doesn't necessarily mean that they understand how to use it and even if they have a general idea, the areas they map out aren't accurate. They don't seem to care about the incorrect numbers anyway. The main thing I guess is to have the areas plotted and the information relating to each in the system.


The guys ended up treating me to lunch as well at Tio Dolmo, which is a pretty decent restaurant. The set up is kind of like you choose whatever you want to eat and they put it on your plate but every food item has its own cost. After being in the aldea all day, we headed back to my site and the two stopped by a gas station to buy beer. They drove back drinking and blasting music and singing and I was just like ohhhh great. Please don't let us get into an accident >_<. This one song called "Chupa tu Paleta" came on and it was pretty much the Spanish version of Lil' Wayne's "Lollipop". Translated, it means "suck your lollipop" (paleta could also mean popsicle or ice-cream). I thought that was pretty funny. Then I got a text from Amanda that she had just passed a pulperia called "Hung Wang". Anyway, the guys and I went to a karaoke bar/restaurant, had dinner, and I taught them how to play Texas Hold 'Em. They picked up pretty quickly but I think it's because they already had an idea of how to play a different kind of poker. They then taught me 31, which is pretty much exactly like Black Jack except you try to get 31 instead of 21. We headed upstairs to the large karaoke room and it was empty except for us, so we put on some songs and took turns singing. I didn't know any of the Spanish songs that they had, and the ones that I wanted were too new so I ended up only singing American songs. A couple other groups trickled in and started singing as well. I was surprised myself that I didn't mind singing in front of other people, because I am super shy when it comes to that, but I figured these are all people I don't know and they didn't know that I used to not sing in public sooooo why not, give it a shot. It was kind of fun too.

Training in the other Catastro office

That was the end of a good Friday and I got to know a couple people I work with better. The karaoke place is super nice too. It's free to sing as long as someone at your table orders something, be it a drink or whatever. I can't wait to have visitors!