Sights of Morelia

This is La Casa de La Cultura.  It is an ex-convent and now houses some cultural events and Mexican art work.  The pegs sticking out of the side of the top of the building are the rain gutters.  These is a pretty common style of gutter on the older buildings.

This is the gaspacho that Sonia and I ate.  It is just a cup of fruit, but it is covered in limón and orange juice, chile, and cheese.  Most of the fruit here is eaten with condiments on it (in shops, at parties, at school, everywhere).  The flavor was a bit strong for me, but I ate it all!

This is the fireworks shooting off from the Cathedral.  There are fireworks from the Cathedral every Saturday night and sometimes other nights, too.  I can't believe I saw fireworks in February!

This is the Cathedral downtown all lit up at night.  You can see all the people packed around to see the fireworks!

This is the aqueduct in Morelia, one of the most famous architectural structures.  It is a very long structure, probably spanning at least a mile long.  It used to carry water within the city but is no longer in use.  I ride along this structure every day on my way to school.

I can't believe that this is my fourth week here, and I'm coming pretty close to the middle of my time here!  Wow! 

This weekend was fun.  I saw more of Morelia, since Sonia and I walked around Saturday night and Sunday morning/afternoon.  I love that I am within walking distance from all of the major cultural/historical attractions.  I will have to check more of them out during my time here!  I have photos of some sights above.  Other places I've visited include El Museo de Dulces (museum of sweets) and El Museo de Arte Colonial.  Since you can't take photos in many of the museums here, I don't have photos from these places.  However, I learned a couple interesting things.  Sweets/candies is a major product made here, and it has been since before the Spanish colonization.  Sweets are still made with natural ingredients like the pulp from fruits and sugar. At the museum, we got a little test taste after watching how the sweet was made. :) At the art museum, the Colonial art was all Christian and included many crucifixes.  I learned that some of the crucifixes were made from the husks of corn (how resourceful!).  Something I find sooo interesting is that all of the images of Christ and the saints in all of the churches and museums here have completely white skin, even though we know that Christ wasn't actually white.  I think it must be the Spanish colonial influence.  (As an aside, the toy dolls are all mostly white in stores/markets.  It bothers me that I haven't seen more images of Mexicans represented in the dolls, especially since they're clearly the majority here.  It really opens my eyes to the "White" power/privilege on a more global level.)  Well, that's about all for my cultural update.

On the school front, I'm keeping quite busy.  We're a bit behind in the February book.  It is hard to keep up with the breadth of material and still make sure students are understanding the content.  Today, I went back in math to review one of the pages and answer questions students had.  At the same time, I need to think of some additional activities for the advanced students.  When I gave the students work time, three of them had already done the page.  I have some sudoku puzzles (A puzzle in which you have to fit the numbers 1-9 in each box, each row, and each column) from a book I brought along, which I think might work well for them.  It would still relate to math, since they'd have to practice thinking logically.  I also think it could offer them a challenge, since the puzzles are sometimes challenging for me!  As I take over more of the classes, I want to integrate more activities for students to do when they are done with their work.  Too often, students have dead time as they wait for others to finish their work.

I asked my host teacher if I could convert some of the workbook pages into activities or games to complete them, and she said that would be fine.  I plan to find some ways to do this, since I think it would be much more motivating and engaging for the students.  I also think it would make classroom management easier.  Many times when there are behavioral problems in the class, I can tell it's because the students are bored and not interested in the content or the typical lecture/worksheet way in which it is always presented.  

As far as classroom management, I've begun trying out some non-verbal ways of managing the class.  The students are used to hearing a voice telling them to stop doing something, but instead, I've been trying to use the "teacher look" and proximity (walking closer to/standing next to those who are talking).  This has been fairly successful so far.  Students notice that I'm watching them, and they snap back to attention most of the time without me having to say anything.  Since students are slow to move back to their seats from group work, I've started giving them a countdown from 10.  This seems to help a little.  As time goes on, I hope to experiment with some more classroom management techniques.

I'm going to get going.  I think either tonight or tomorrow I'll be helping my host cousin make some baby shower invitations, since she is expecting in late March!