Quickish recap:
Back in September
I won a generous grant from the Public Affairs office of the U.S. Embassy
aka cash-money to develop an English for Tourism course focusing on English, cross-cultural communication, and basically investing in people so that the region can have a better trained workforce for when tourism blows up in Northern Morazán with all those extranjeros who speak Eeeeengles trekking up to the mountains. They can successfully order a bucket of beers with a side of guacamole all in English J have amazing service, tell their friends, and come back again soon!
Oct/Nov: formed sub-committee from tourism association
And interviewed students, collected grades and attendance and gave aptitude tests to H.S. students to give then the opportunity to attend the classes. fingers crossed they can get hired after the course by one of the various hotel/restaurant owners who are both in the association and taking the course themselves! I have 4 hotel/restaurant owners and one general manger of another hotel/rest co-op attending classes along with employees of these establishments.
Dec/Jan: created coursework, manual, and gave prep course to get the students ready to hit the ground running in mid January.
Currently we are in week 6 of classes (out of 8) and the students are freaking awesome and I love them. Teaching adults is really fulfilling. I had close to no idea how to teach English but after seeing their enthusiasm I did a load of research and created a task driven course where I only teach half the time and the other half they are practicing their ever growing language skills in various ways.
Here are some photos from Feb. 14th… known here as Dia de Amor y Amistad (day of love and friendship)
Apologies for the horribly blurry photos but I’m still using my little camera that fell prey to last rainy season and has some moisture fogging things up.
My new lens will be here at the end of March as Hinkle’s mama will be visiting and bringing me down a spankin new lens. Thanks Mama Hink!
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| AM class with our heart shaped cake courtesy of the Hostel "Posada de Don Manuel" where we are having our class |
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| who is this young chap? Well...he is Daniel a great friend of mine and many peace corps volunteers He works at a cafe at Playa Tunco (where most PCVs go for some R&R) he works with 80% foreigners and agreed to come up to Morazan and share some of his wisdom with my classes He is a salvadoran himself and started with basic english but now is pretty fluent he talked about how he learned english, how to deal with foreigners, and answered questions that I as the fluent english speaking gringo couldn't really answer or they didn't feel comfortable asking me... such as why do foreigners not like sugar in their coffee or why do they drink so much or so young? |
They all wanted to do something called amigos secretos… I said sure what the heck sounds fun…kinda like secret santa … but better I would soon find out
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| afternoon class. I'm hot, sleepy, sweaty and a bit grumpy after an hour in the back of a pick-up but then EVERYTIME my students lift my spirits :) |
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| I know I'm a teacher and can't have favorites BUT if I did... maybe she would be in this photo ;) |
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| the PM class they are rockstars |
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| amigos secretos begins with everyone standing in a circle then someone starts by describing their amigo secreto such as they are tall, fat, mean, nice, light skinned (no joke) there is no such thing as politically correct... just as I begin to be horrified... they go into such lovely things as saying this person also inspires me, has a smile who cheers me up, dances great and someone I admire ...then they say the name |
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| THEY HUG |
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| HUG |
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| HUG |
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| HUG. |
I must admit...I got a little misty eyed at some of the lovely words of amor y amistad that were exchanged.
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