Animal Sacrifices

So we have been trying to integrate some meat into our diet. Attempt 1: Mr. Pollo frozen chicken. Standard. Attempt 2: Christina and I went to a local chicken vendor and ordered a couple pounds of breast meat. At this particular establishment chickens arrive in trucks every morning and those which we don´t see in the streets being trained for cockfights turn into somebody´s dinner. At least we know it´s fresh; our little bird was hacked to bits in front of us and still had pieces of feathers hanging on it when we brought it home. We soon turned little chicky into Coca Cola chicken (recipe for this and many others courtesy of Christina´s friends at the soup kitchen where she works) and it was delicious! Attempt 3: Yesterday we walked over to the least developed area of Arbolito, Sector 4 (we live in Sector 3), for a birthday lunch for Leo, one of our kiddos at Semillas. The family killed a pig for us. Background information: the mother had previously told us she was going to kill a duck for us and, thinking something was lost in translation, we thought nothing of it until a couple of my community mates walked the kids home after Semillas and their mother, Maria, presented them with a fully prepared duck dinner (seco de duck) to-go. So this time when little Melena told us they were going to kill a pig for us we knew they meant business. The first course of pig soup was a little tough to get down (intestines or sausage?) but things got better with the second plate and the cake. We have been working on venturing out into the neighborhood more so this weekend was a success in that department.

We are planning out first weekend trip to Puerto Lopez and Isla de la Plata, a national park on an island that fancies itself the poor man´s Galapogos so I´ll keep you posted on our travels.

Visual Confirmation

Here are Mark, Celso and I at Nuevo Mundo in our glorious uniforms. Note that I was not lying about the summer scarf.

Happy Hump Day!

Howdy all! I finished lesson planning for next week- we turn them in by Thursday for the following week. Classes at Mundo are going much better now that we have split the decimos and novenos into smaller groups. The idea is to get them speaking and writing more and it was too tough to get the shy ones to say anything in English in a class of 30 kids. My own speaking skills (or lack thereof) are still struggling but my comprehension is coming along (thanks to La Catrina and Destinos I am sure). I am 3 classes in with my adults and they are always a ball- the 2 hour class goes by quickly. We started very basic- Hi how are you? (to which they respond How are you?.. not understanding I have just asked them a question) They are also quick to tell me which English grammar rules are stupid or unnecessarily confusing and I fire back with things I do not for the life of me understand about Spanish, so it works well.

I only have 2 classes at Mundo today and then am headed back for Semillas in the afternoon- I am there Mondays and for an hour on Wednesdays and that time is still the highlight of the week because the kids are hilarious. Monday we made newspaper hats with the little guys and tried to explain who Peter Pan is.. no dice.
That is about all for now. Sorry, I just noticed this post is really boring. Have a great day!

Back to school, back to school...

Here is a pic. of all of us at AJS (birthday kids in tie dye front and center)

I have officially survived my first week teaching! I have 2 sections of 8th graders (here they are called novenos) and one section of 9th graders (decimos). Starting this week Celso and I are splitting the sections so we can work with the kids in smaller classes which will be a big help because there is such a range of abilities and comfort levels with speaking English. We will be teaching history to the decimos and English, lit. and grammar, to the novenos. The first couple weeks will definitely be an adjustment (prep. work is not the most fun in the world, duh). We also assigned an absurdly difficult story to the noveos before we had a chance to gauge their reading comprehension levels and one of the kids told me ¨you´re a nice person but my class has a terror of you.¨ Aside from that things are going well and the kids are a lot of fun to work with. I am definitely going to have to seek out other outlets to practice my Spanish though- our classes at Mundo are all English immersion and the other teachers treat us a little like outsiders because we are the new uncool kids who have yet to learn the language. It´s great fun talking to little kids on the school bus because my grammar doesn´t bother them at all- they just keep climbing all over me and blowing bubbles in my face. Needless to say the bus is awesome.

I am also going to start teaching adult classes this Tuesday. My boss has a pretty awesome mullet and knows lots of English swear words so I think things will work out just fine. The classes are at the John Drury School (same place we have Semillas in the afternoons, 2 blocks from our house) and from what I´ve gathered it´s a pretty strange place- it´s a tech. school that never exactly opened. The guards, who struggle at doing their job of opening the doors (I have jumped the fence before) usually let Capitan and Principessa, killer attack dobermans, wander around with the small children and periodically they bring a goat as well? All standards for ¨normal¨ must be adjusted here which has actually been a pretty refreshing process- it keeps things interesting.

Aside from teaching we have been meeting some people in the neighborhood, being fed some delicious food, and learning some vegetarian cooking of our own (any recipes appreciated, the meat here can be a little sketch so we just have to be careful about where we but it). I believe we were fed some questionable parts of an ox´s body for lunch last week at Mundo but I´d rather not think about it.

Yesterday was spent baking bananna bread for our 150 closest friends for a church fundraiser where we had to, get this, perform a dance to Rock Around the Clock (not a joke and, yes, I warned them about my dancing). It was a ball. I will have to find the video.