November 19, 2012
Good morning! I
know it has been awhile since I put up any type of update, but life has been
pretty normal for the past couple weeks.
I’m taking the time and opportunity to write this because our internet
is currently down and writing this is better than that stack of 8th
grade science papers that have been staring at me all morning…They can wait a
little while longer! After my
birthday things returned to normal for a couple days and then on Saturday
November 10, we had parent teacher conferences. I had a good experience with parent teacher conferences when
I was student teaching except for one parent who went off on me. I was not very worried about that
because all of my 10th grade students are really great people and their grades
are all quite good, plus I wouldn’t understand a word they were saying. So I went in to them feeling pretty
confident.
The way they do parent teacher conferences here is a bit
different though. Instead of
visiting all of your childs teacher you only visit their homeroom. So I represented all the teachers who
taught the 10th grade.
Likewise, I had to give my recommedations and comments for students to
their homeroom teacher. I also was
in possession of the only copy they could get of their report card so it was
incentive for the parents to show up because their kid was very interested in
what their grades had totalled out at.
One of the volunteers from England sat with me and did my translating
throughout the morning and we enjoyed hanging out between parents because I
only have 8 students so I had a lot of extra time. The one thing I experienced that I didn’t in the states was
the pure gratitude from the parents that I was here and working with their
children. They were so thankful
that I had chosen to come here and that I am a part of their child’s life; it
was a great reminder of the reasons I’m here. The last difference I will make note of is that the parents
were less concerned with their students actual grade than they are in the
states, but every parent asked the same question…are they well behaved in
class? I found this very
entertaining, but a sign of a cultural difference. Here they concern themselves a lot in showing respect and
conducting yourself in a proper manner (atleast in school) and it would be very
troubling for a parent to hear that their child was disrespectful or rude.
Waking up early to go to conferences really put a damper on
our Saturday and didn’t help that the weather was cold and rainy and we were
all completely freezing! We
decided to do what we know best and we plopped ourselves on the couch with our
down blankets, a bucket of popcorn, and a bowl of cookie dough and we spent the
afternoon watching movies cuddled together. Cassidy and David then cooked a spaghetti dinner for
everyone and we played games…more Settlers of Catan. Sunday we went over to the Brits house to watch football
because the Lions vs. Vikings game was being shown. It was a disappointing loss for the lions but I was able to
get some work done while watching so atleast I had been productive.
Last week went smooth and many of my students had tests
which they all did quite well on especially Chemistry. I was concerned because it was a
difficult unit on molar mass, limiting reactants and percent composition, but
they proved to be the wonderful students I have come to see that they are. I did several demonstrations with
multiple classes and they enjoyed actually getting to see and experience
science rather than just hear about it.
My creativity skills have been greatly improving as I constantly look
for things that I can do with the few materials have in my teacher toolbox
here.
This weekend was a rather relaxing one once again. Lenny and Kara ventured back to New
York City for a wedding they were both in. So we were short a few people from our group plus Cassidy
and David left Saturday morning to take him back to the aiport for an early
Sunday flight. We had girls night
Friday and watched a couple episodes of Downton Abbey complete with more cookie
dough. On Saturday Brooke and I
came up to the school and got a lot of work done for the week when we come back
from Thanksgiving, so that we have less to worry about over our break. It also helped that the internet wasn’t
working then either so we had no other choice but to work on stuff. We then ventured over to the Brits and
watched some wedding shows including Say Yes to the Dress and then went out for
some fried chicken for dinner.
Sunday consisted of church and then a nice brunch of omelettes that
Brooke and I made. We then laid on
the couch and watched a couple movies while eating popcorn. Since we had time we decided to cook a
nice dinner and enjoy some wine that I had gotten the last time I was in
Gracias. I helped her grade papers
while our Cajun shrimp cooked and then we enjoyed this fabulous meal while we
awaited the election results.
Yesterday was election day here. Which is why we had planned a lazy day Sunday because we
didn’t want to go out since the parties were supposed to get pretty
intense. We were told it was
actually calm all afternoon and things didn’t get crazy until the results were
announced. At which point we could
hear the celebrations and there were tons of fireworks going off well into the
night which made it difficult to fall asleep. Last night was also one of the colder nights we have
had. I woke up several times and
was quite cold, I was told this morning it was less than 50 degrees. This seems like I have become a wimp
for cold weather, which might be partially true, but then you can consider the
fact that I have no heat and no insulation in my house. Not only that but our roof is tin and
the walls cement so the cold just surrounds us.
I am looking forward to a shortened week. We were supposed to have school on
Wednesday but after asking our permission they decided to cancel it. Us teachers were probably more excited
than the students because not only do we not have to teach that day but we will
get to leave a day earlier for Tegucigalpa and will get to see a concert that
is being put on as a benefit for the La Union School. We are all very excited for our trip to Teguc and I’m sure I
will have an exciting blog post when I get back that will include lots of Thanksgiving
food, Thai food, paintball, bowling, movies and the best yet, WAL-MART. I never thought going to Wal-Mart could
be so exciting but I have been feeling deprived of such American things and I
have a list of things I can get to help with my science experiments a bit.
I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving and is reminded
of all the wonderful things they have to be thankful for, I sure will!
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