Challenges but Blessings...always

This is La Iglesia de San Diego.  (Church of St. Diego)  I went here for mass, and it is gorgeously decorated in gold over the whole inside.  Since they had a sign with a camera crossed off at the entrance, I didn't take a photo of the inside.  This is the church where my host parents were married....neat, huh?

This week seemed to fly.  I can't believe I have literally one month left.  This week was full of some challenges but also blessings.  The students in one of the classes were caught copying English homework from each other in another class, and my cooperating teacher reprimanded them by telling them that they will not be able to take the trimester exam.  This made me think about how I will handle this kind of situation when I have my own classroom and have to give consequences.  I'm not exactly sure what I would do, but I realize now that rules and consequences is something I need to give more thought to before setting up my own classroom some day.  This week was also challenging in that we are under pressure to finish the February book.  There are honestly too many pages in the book to cover in depth in one month to the extent that students will really understand the content.  Unfortunately, I think my math presentations will have to be cut.  My cooperating teacher told me that we'll likely only have enough time to share the answers.  I think I will have to adapt my original plan, and instead, maybe I can have students share their general problem solving strategies as a large class.  This won't allow everyone to share, but I'd rather do this than just share answers and move on.  I'm definitely learning how to be flexible with my lesson plans so that I can still follow the curriculum and school requirements.

Despite some of the challenges, I do enjoy teaching, and I feel like I'm getting better with time. One day this week, I gave the students a list of pages in their book to work on independently after I explained them.  I really enjoyed giving them work time, since it allowed me to circulate the classroom and help individuals or small groups with specific questions.  This is another way I've found that helps me differentiate.  Students can work at their own pace, are always active doing something, and I'm able to meet their individual needs through 1-1 conversations.  In one of my classes, I also realized that over half the class understood the math page we were doing well, but a chunk were still confused.  I set them to work on the page and pulled a semi-circle of students up to the board for further explanation.  I think this was really helpful, because just about everybody seemed to know how to do the math problems (multiplying decimals) when we were done.  The only tricky part about this independent work time is that I have to eventually pull everyone back together, so that we're on the same page.  Overall though, I think it made classroom management pretty easy.  Only near the end of the day did I have to remove them from partner work to go back to their own seats, since I could tell they were starting to get chatty and unfocused.  The students are responding well though.  When I have them move from teams to their own seats, I tend to include a countdown from 10 so that they move more efficiently and know that I'm serious.  So far, this seems to work well.

Next week, I'm moving on to full time teaching.  I'm excited to see what the week will bring!  I need to finish the Feb. book, start the March book, and do reviews for the trimester exams that start March 9th.  I think I'll learn a lot about time management and balancing priorities!!

This weekend, I'm going to be doing a bit more planning than normal, since I decided to take advantage of some cultural opportunities this week in the evening.  Wednesday night, I went to El Museo del Estado for a torito exposition.  I learned that they throw painted egg shells filled with confetti and closed with tissue paper at the torito and on top of each other's head as a way of celebrating.  My host aunt was so kind as to make sure I was able to have a head covered in confetti.  :) I saved a confetti filled egg, and I'm hoping I can travel with it uncracked back to the U.S.  in a small plastic box I have.  Thursday night, Sonia and I went to a concert at el Teatro José Rubén Romero.  It was a woodwind quintet playing classical music.  I was surprised that maybe only 40 or so people attended, and it was in this fairly decent size theater.  Maybe classical music isn't so popular here?  I learned from my host family that these places have cultural or music events like this EVERY Wed. and Thurs.!!  There's also a place that has cultural events on Fridays.  The best part about all of this?...Todo es gratis.  (Everything is free of charge!)  What a blessing it is to live within a 15 minute walk of all of these amazing cultural places and events that are generally free or very minimal costs!!  Moreover, I feel really blessed to have met Sonia and be able to share all these things with her.  Our host families often are busy with jobs, house chores, and their every day lives/responsibilities, so it helps that we can go out and explore the city together often.  We live 5 blocks away, have some basic things in common, and get along really well...what a blessing!  Plus, we can talk Spanish together at a rate that we both understand, but we're still learning new things, since we can share new vocab. that we picked up.  I feel very privileged to be here and be taking in all of the cultural experiences in addition to teaching.  Even when some days are hard, something good follows it and I am always, always surrounded by a lot of really great, caring people.

I'll close with some fun cultural tid bits.  I must say first though that some of these may just be the culture of my host family and not the culture of all Mexicans:

• Here, we put salt on fruit to cut the acid and prevent canchor sores (How intelligent, eh?)
• The people here seem to eat a lot more parts of the animal (and not just in sausage form!) One comida this week included tamales with entire shrimp inside (yes, the legs, heads, and shells).  I picked these parts off, but my host dad definitely ate the head.  My host brother ate out every part that was edible other than the shell. 
• I drank a really red water that had shreds of lettuce, orange slices, and peanuts in it.  At the end, I asked why it was so red.  I found out it was made with the juice from raw BEETS!  I do not like beets, but this water was actually pretty decent!  (I learned that it's just best if you try something and eat it all before asking what it is....best to avoid any preconceptions.)
• Chile and limón go on absolutely everything...meat, fruit, vegetables, and even french fries!
• Oh, this is all of Mexico:  PDA is not acceptable within the house.  That's why you see it all over the street and in parked cars.  My host mom told me that it's completely taboo for unmarried couples to be in a bedroom together at all and if you're really traditional (like my host grandma), it's completely taboo for unengaged couples to even be in each other's houses at all (even if it's just with the whole family for a meal, visiting, etc.!)  At night, couples will be outside the girl's front door saying good night or spending their more intimate time on park benches, quieter streets, or in vehicles.  This is pretty much the opposite of our culture in which the joke is always, "Get a room."  I think if there were a saying like that for here, it would be "Get a quiet street." However, it seems more acceptable to have PDA here.  Couples constantly walk the streets with the guy right behind the girl and his arms wrapped around her (as opposed to holding hands side by side).  Sooo interesting.  My "norm" is their oddity and vice versa.  Such is life.