So Ecuador got a little crazy the last couple of days... I woke up on Thursday to news of a police strike in Ecuador. I soon realized that this meant the ENTIRE police force in the whole country. It also took me way too long to realize that the President had bee kidnapped... my family laughed when they realized I hadn´t caught on to that, but then preceded to give me a much needed run down of the situation. I quickly got a call from WorldTeach and was told to stay in my house all day (unfortunately there is no internet there...sorry for the late report). This was all a little alarming, but everyone was pretty calm about the news and PortoViejo was pretty calm. Basically, everyone in PortoV just stayed inside to avoid getting robbed and all of the craziness stayed in Quito. I was home with my host family all day completely safe. Now everything is back to normal and the police are back to work...
As far as teaching goes... I am starting my third week on Monday! I have 3 classes: Beginner 1 (17 students), Beginner 2 (10 students), and Intermediate 1 (6 students). The numbers are lower than expected since I was told I would have 40 students, but I am very glad. The class of 6 is a little hard to plan fun activities for so unfortunately that class is more boring than the rest, but luckily they are advanced enough to be able to do some writing and reading activities. Lesson planning is tough... I have developed a whole new respect for all teachers. It is quite time consuming, but it is also really exciting to see the activities play out in class and see the students actually using the material themselves. My students who barely knew the ABC´s can now say things like "The book is next to the desk." You guessed it... last week we focused on classroom objects and prepositions.
My beginner class has been going great and I have been using the same material for beginner 1 and 2. The students are very close in ability, however I need to start finding ways to challenge my level 2 students more as the cycle goes on. My intermediate class has been my biggest struggle... it is hard to figure out what they already know and what they need to focus on. I got excited about being able to do more advanced activities with them and COMPLETELY BOMBED trying to teach in depth weather vocabulary...wrongly assuming that they would know the base vocabulary and understand the difference between adjectives and nouns (ex: cloud and cloudy). It was rough, but good to learn this lesson so early and now we are continuing with our weather theme, but in a much more appropriate way.
On a fun note... I am enjoying living on the coast. Last weekend a few volunteers and some friends we met in Quito met up in Montañita... a beach town about 4 hours away. We had a great weekend that involved a lot of dancing and a somewhat successful beach bon fire. Today I caught a ride to the beach for a day trip with Krista, the other PortoV volunteer, and her host family. This one was only about an hour and a half away... not quite as close as the beach in Charleston, but I will take it!
I already have my lesson plans for Monday so I am starting this week feeling prepared!
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