First Week in Apucarana!
As I ended the last post right before going to do a presentation, that is where I will pick up. Raquel, one of the English teachers picked us up from our house and took us to the campus. The university is called UNESPAR and is a very small campus with just a few small buildings. I will be teaching night classes; they go from 7:10pm- 9pm and then 9pm- 10:40. We are able to eat at the school cafeteria and I think I will generally get dinner there because it will be easier and then I will always be on time for class. Anyway, Raquel gave us a tour of the campus, we met many different professors, and then we went to the auditorium to attend the opening ceremony for the Letras (teaching) courses. Several people introduced themselves and three professors gave a 30
minute presentation each. It was all in Portuguese, but Raquel translated the main ideas for me.
Finally, it was my turn to get on stage and introduce myself along with Alexa. I did my presentation in English because I don't know any Portuguese yet, but Alexa did hers in Portuguese. All of the students were so excited to hear us speak and they cheered when we went up to the stage and again when we went back to our seats. I am very excited that the students are so welcoming and I can't wait to actually begin teaching them.
Tuesday I went exploring with Alexa. We both needed to buy a few things to help us get settled into our house. We got acai first and then stopped at a few stores before heading home to relax for the rest of the day. It's been nice not having classes yet as I had some laundry to catch up on and now we have time to explore Apucarana a bit. It's a great city and it already feels a bit like home.
Alexa and I wanted to get our nails done on Wednesday. We found a nail salon online that was open, but when we walked there, we couldn't find it. Alexa asked a lady where we could find one and she took us all around and asked the workers if they could get us in. The first place only did nails in the evenings and we had a talk we wanted to go to, so that wouldn't work. Then the lady took us to another nail salon and they were so lovely they fit us in right away. I got acrylic nails a few weeks ago, but most nail salons here don't do acrylics, so I had to take them off before they could paint my nails. That took forever and was an adventure in itself. In all, it took us about 3.5 hours to find a nail salon, get our nails done, and then get back home. However, we only had to pay $6 for a manicure, so I was extremely happy about that. Everything is still an adventure and it was fun getting to know the city, but I was glad we didn't have anything to do until 7:30pm because it was a lot less stressful and we had time to get lost and wander around.
We got home, I watched a documentary about feminism that a talk at the university was going to be on. The documentary is called "She's Beautiful when She's Angry" and was very interesting and informative. It talked about the history of the feminist movement and the good and bad that happened during that time in history and how the movement started and changed. I would definitely recommend watching it no matter how you feel about feminism; it's very educational for everyone. Alexa and I then took the bus to school, ate dinner, and then found the room the presentation was in. It was all in Portuguese, except for the bit of the documentary we watched, but I could pick up some of what was going on and it helped that I had watched the entire documentary before in English. We only watched part of it at the talk and then a teacher gave a presentation. I think it was a great talk to go to and support and it was a great way to meet new people.
Alexa and I went to the bus stop after to wait for the bus home and ran into one of our English students who recognized us from our presentation on Monday. He asked us what we were doing on campus and we said that we went to the feminism talk. He just laughed in our faces. If that doesn't tell you why we need to talk about feminism and what it stands for, in the U.S. as well as Brazil, then I don't know what will. Watching the documentary would be beneficial for a lot of people.
Dan, the student, was really nice besides that. He went on the bus with us and told us which sidewalk was safer to use to get home. It was nice meeting one of the students and having a conversation. It kind of feels as if I am famous here because he walked up and asked if I was Hannah; I think I will have to get used to people knowing who I am but not knowing many people myself as I am pretty recognizable from the presentation.
Friday and Saturday were just chill days around the house.
Sunday was another chill day for me. Four of the girls from my house went to the lake. I needed some alone time so I stayed home to call my boyfriend, but the wifi wasn't working well enough. They all came home sunburnt and I was glad I was able to get some things done around the house like laundry and lesson planning instead of being sore and red. Later that night, I got invited to go out with six of the girls. We went to a restaurant and shared some plates of food and got drinks. It was fun and I'm learning Portuguese just from listening and asking questions. The conversation was a mix of English and Portuguese and I had a lot of fun.
Today will be my first day teaching the students. I am very excited and I think the lesson plan Alexa and I made will be fun for the students. We will mostly just be introducing ourselves, having the students introduce themselves, and then we will play games to get to know the students' language skills better. I think it will be a blast and I look forward to letting you all know how it goes!