Wrapping Up June
Welcome back to another blog about my week teaching in Brazil. This week was amazingly busy again and I'm ready for my break coming up from July 14- August 9. The first week will be spent in Salvador for a mid-year orientation, but the rest of the time I will spend traveling around Brazil and exploring.
Anyway, on Monday we had a meeting with Raquel to get ready for the teacher development course on Saturday and then we had conversation club. I only had two people come, so we joined Alexa's class where they created a 3 minute presentation on anything they wanted to talk about. One student wrote his own short story, one group presented on nutrition, and one group talked about Anitta, one of the most famous Brazilian singers right now. After conversation club, we ate really quick and then got ready to present to a tourism class about colonialism in the US and our US introduction powerpoint of the main cities in the US that we created at the very beginning of our time here. It was a lot of fun and most of the students were very engaged. I was surprised the teacher asked us to present in English because I don't expect everyone to know English, but I think a lot of the students understood our presentation. They were very glad that we came and asked some great questions at the end. I think my favorite question was: if there was something Brazil could learn from the US and the US could learn from Brazil, what do you think that would be? I think that was such an amazing question because I think sometimes we forget to look forward to cultural exchanges and learning from people different from us. Overall, it was a great presentation and it was a lot of fun.
Tuesday was my free day, but Alexa and I had a bunch of stuff to work on. We met at a coffee shop that I love and got lunch before we worked on upcoming presentations, workshops, lectures, and other activities. It seems like everything is happening all at once now as we head towards our break and it seems like we are busier than ever. But its good because it keeps me busy and I really look forward to all of the activities we have going on.
Wednesday was a bit more relaxed. I just had conversation club and then went home to Skype Frankie. I spent the rest of the day working on my master's class and the other activities we worked on the day before.
Alexa had her first lone lecture on Thursday. Before, we had either done lectures together or I had done some by myself. The strike changed our schedule around, so Alexa had planned on doing some lectures by herself before, but they got moved around and pushed back because of the strike. She did her lecture this past week over the electoral system of the US. On my way to the lecture, a truck backed into my bus. We were stuck for about 15 minutes waiting for the drivers to look at the damage and I think exchange insurance and then we were on our way again. About 5 other people on the bus were going to the lecture, so we all showed up a little bit late, but I was glad we all still went as not many people were there. I thought the lecture went really well and was very interesting.
After, I had class with Lauro the professor where the students had to present their parodies they had come up with. Two groups forgot, but four or five other groups went and it was a lot of fun and very funny. I was asked to help with a group as one of the group members had gotten a tooth pulled and wasn't feeling well. Their parody was to a scene of Shrek and I only ended up having to say "no", "no", and "yes". It was fun, but I was glad I only had to say a few lines as I had no time to look over the script or rehearse.
My Friday was very relaxing as I only had class at 7pm. The students did a debate on whether public or private schools in Brazil are better and I thought the debate was very interesting and it went really well. After class, we went out with Lauro, his girlfriend, and his cousin. Some of Lauro's family came to visit this past week and it was fun talking to his cousin and getting to know her a little bit.
I had an early morning on Saturday. From 9:30-11:30, we had our teacher development course, but I was up earlier getting ready and doing a few last minute things. The purpose of the course is just to work on helping English teachers improve their English and instruction in the classroom. Alexa and I took this first meeting to have the teachers get to know each other and practice listening and speaking. I hope this helps them feel more comfortable talking with each other in future courses and also helps them learn English. Everyone seemed to have a good time and they all said that they were so excited to have this opportunity to improve and also be taught by native English speakers. They are so enthusiastic and grateful and it makes me even more excited to do this project.
Alexa and I had another meeting on Sunday to work on some things that are coming up this week. When I was walking home, I ran into an aunt of the family that we always hang out with and go to barbecues with. She is very nice and speaks very slowly in Portuguese to try to help me understand. She invited me to cafe de tarde (afternoon coffee) at her cousin's house. I agreed and ended up in a house with about 20 other people who were watching a world cup game. It was one of the boy's birthdays, but I'm not sure if people were there to celebrate or just to hang out. Everyone wanted to talk to me about the US and what I am doing here in Apucarana, but they always talk so fast and talk over each other so I generally have a hard time understanding them. One of the girls I'm friends with who was there invited Alexa over to hang out and also help translate for me. We had coffee, carrot cake, cornbread cake, little ravioli-like things called pastel, and some bread with meat and cheese. It was all really good and I enjoyed it even though I couldn't really communicate with many people there. Afterwards, I went home and just relaxed as that is what the weekends are for.
Thanks for reading!