Day 65: a good day

Today.

More details and an update on the internship.

On Thursday the whole administration went to a meeting outside the school. Mitch had repeatedly tried to talk to some of the sub-directors about finding more work for me. They would say, "yes of course we have plenty of work for Hannah!" but then they would never follow up and give me work. On top of that, when one of the English teachers was sick, the director asked if I could teach her classes. He still thought I was a student-teacher!

Fed up, we decided to skip the talking and we marched over to the main office, where profe Kenya was trying to keep the school afloat by herself. She's the one who everybody goes to when they need something: parents, students, staff, everyone. And she had plenty of work for me.

The office will be my new place. Mitch and I realized that the best way for me to practice Spanish and be useful to NCA is to get out of the English teachers' lounge. I still help with the kindergarten English classes, and coming up next week the secondary students have an English writing workshop that I'm excited for. Mitch wants me to help mark the papers for grammar and organization, which is right up my alley.

Today I wasn't bored for one minute. I finished checking the new student ID cards off the list, cut out letters for signs, played hoky-poky with kindergarteners, kept Dulce (who has Down syndrome) entertained so the teacher could teach, and then went through a sea of manila folders with the nurse.

I feel like I was just making friends with the English professors, and now I have to figure out how to understand the people in the office. With new people, my Spanish acts like an animal that's about to be roadkill. Give it a few days and I get used to their voice and can understand them. That means that during first impressions I come off like an idiot who doesn't know anything, and have to spend the next month convincing them that yes, I do understand Spanish, just not at 6 in the morning or if you're mumbling. I can't understand 70% of what the director says -- that man has the Yorkshire accent of Spanish.

Kinder 2, 4-5 year olds. There are three kindergarten classes, the first only has seven students and is more like preschool, and the third is a full class preparing for primary school. They're not wearing uniforms because we have casual Friday, or día de colores. As you can see, coloring is no simple task.

I also had a really good weekend. Friday I saw Deadpool with two ISEP students and learned how to swear in Spanish. Rude language is more fun in English, in my opinion, because the F-word is so versatile. You can stick it anywhere in a sentence, even in the middle of a word. That doesn't work in Spanish. Saturday and Sunday I hung out with Camina and her host-parents... who are more like big siblings. Top that all off with history's first good Monday, and you have a happy Hannah.

More to come soon, I promise! Oh wait, is that the sound of a 10 page paper needing to be written? Noooooooooooooo (at least it's in English).