Haircuts, teaching, and planning, planning, planning
It's crazy to think I only have two and a half months left here; the time has just flown by! There are many exciting things coming up and I'm going to be busy for the rest of my time in Brazil. I always feel like I didn't do much, but I'm sure I'll manage to write a long blog anyway. Let's pick up right after I got back from vacation.
The first few days I spent at home relaxing, washing clothes, and getting my life back together after a month of traveling. On Friday, August 10th, I went back to class. This is one of the new classes I have; it's still with Lauro, but I'm with the third year students this semester. It was a lot of fun getting back into teaching and getting to work with a new group of students. After class, I hung out with one of my friends and we had a girls night with burgers, wine, and movies. That weekend, I spent a lot of time hanging out with people I hadn't seen for a while. I went to one of my favorite burger places and spent all day on Sunday at a barbecue.
Monday was a chill day at home and preparing for conversation club. I only have three or four students who regularly come to that, so I usually combine with Alexa's class. We played spoons, but instead of using playing cards, the students had to come up with five items that fit into that round's category. They also came up with the categories before they knew what we were doing, so it was fun since they didn't know what to expect. The categories ended up being things like music genres, professional athletes, famous celebrities, colors, and animals. Then they had to write five items down that fit into the category before they grabbed a starburst (I didn't have enough spoons and I'm sure my roommates wouldn't have appreciated not having any spoons at home). I think everyone liked the game and it was fun to teach them a new game.
Tuesday was an adventure. Every day, I have mini adventures whether it's not being able to correctly communicate with a roommate or trying to find something I need to buy around Apucarana. This day, however, I got my hair cut and dyed. I had my friend Maraina come with me to translate and she had her friend Bruna come to help translate too since she speaks English really well. I showed the hair stylist a picture of what I wanted and they got to work. Two hours in, and they finally were done bleaching my hair. It took another hour and a half to wash and brush out my hair. They tease your hair when they dye it, I'm not sure what that does, but it was an absolute disaster to brush out. I also told them that I had to leave in about an hour to catch my bus to go to school, so they started working frantically and not caring about how much they were hurting me. I think that was the worst pain I've been in in a while as they just brushed and brushed through the tangles without trying to be gentle. I almost cried and will never go back there to get my hair dyed. Finally, it was time to get my hair cut and styled so I could be on my way. It didn't turn out how I wanted it at all, but now that I'm used to it, it doesn't look to bad. It was also nice to fix my hair after I used a box dye on it. Overall, I like my hair but I'm not going to put myself through that pain ever again as my scalp was sore for days afterwards.
I also got to be with the first year students on Tuesday. I am now teaching with another professor named Fernando, but he's a different teacher than the Fernando I taught with last semester. He had me introduce myself and, as the students have to present a biography of themselves in a speech in a few weeks, he had me demonstrate. We spent basically the entire class with me talking about myself and then having the students ask questions about me and the US. It was a very busy day, but class was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to the semester with them.
The rest of the week was not very busy. I had my conversation club on Wednesday where we did the same thing as Monday as it's a different group of people. Thursday was my relaxing day as it's my day off from school activities and I got a massage. They're extremely cheap here so I'm taking advantage of that while I can. I didn't have class Friday because the school was hosting a lecture series. From Wed-Fri, different speakers came in to talk about many different subjects. I attended the hour long lecture series on Friday about teaching English, but it was all in Portuguese, so I didn't get as much out of it as I would have liked.
I didn't do a thing over the weekend except run a few errands and work on a few things that were coming up like planning my conversation clubs.
On Monday, the school hosted an event where high school students came to check out the university and the courses it offers. Each course had their own room to decorate and show off what their course is about. It was the very first time the university has done this, so we didn't have a lot of materials and no one knew exactly what to expect. I ended up making a poster about the countries that speak English and I was the highlight of the English course. As students came in, my English students would basically become their tour guide explaining the course and the items we had in the room such as the books and posters. My students also enjoyed showing off that they had two American teachers and will have two more next year. The high school students enjoyed speaking with me in English or just listening to me speak while my students translated. It was fun but tiring. I also walked around to see the other courses' rooms. The tourism course had an alumni come back and bartend non-alcoholic drinks, which was a big draw for people. The Portuguese course had a little maze with information about the course and famous authors. The math course had a bunch of math games. One room was set up as kind of a club with a disco ball and flashing lights. Every room was very different and it was cool to see what every course had come up with. I had conversation club after the fair and then I headed home.
I had class again with the first years on Tuesday and conversation club on Wednesday. Thursday was relaxing for me. Alexa and I have our lecture series and they are scheduled on Thursdays, but this week, Alexa gave a lecture by herself on Trump. He's a very popular topic as he's in the news a lot and Brazil also has a presidential candidate that is very much like Trump in his political views. The lecture was really good and informative and the people who came, I think, found it interesting. After the lecture, Alexa, me, and a few friends who attended got a few beers before Alexa had class and I headed home.
I had class with the third year students on Friday again. This class, they worked on improv by doing a talk show. Students would volunteer to be the host of the talk show and the interviewees. Then Lauro, the professor, would give them a topic and some questions to talk about and they all had to try to create a fun talk show. The students made me be a host one time and as I don't find myself very witty or funny when put on the spot, I was nervous and thought it was an awkward talk show, but we all made it through.
Remember the course that I am doing with Alexa for the English teachers in and around Apucarana? Well we had our second class with them yesterday. The focus of this class was teaching listening skills. We had the teachers fill out a questionnaire about the listening strategies they use in their classrooms and what their students liked to do the most. Then we had them listen to a song and gave them the lyrics, but with blank spaces for some of the words that they had to fill in as they listened to the song. Some of the teachers found it hard, but most of the teachers said they have used this activity with their students and the students love it. We then had half of the teachers read one story and the other half read a second story. They then got with someone who had read the other story and each told the other teacher about the story they had read. This was to show the teachers that all skills can be used in an activity such as vocab, listening, reading, and speaking. To finish up, one of the teachers had brought in a big book that she uses with her class. She made a short picture book about Little Red Riding hood and decorated the book and pictures herself. It was a really cool book and it's always nice to share materials and ideas with other teachers.
Alexa and I were supposed to go to an English class with our friend Maraina later, but she was sick, so I had the rest of the day to myself.
Today has been another lazy day just working on a few things on my computer. I finished and sent in my application for the Fulbright for next year. I'm still thinking about if I want to do it or not, but I wanted to keep my options open until I make my decision. There's a lot to think about. I also have a few exciting things coming up this week. I enrolled in another master's class and it starts tomorrow! It's about curriculum differentiation for high ability learners. It should be very interesting and I'm excited for it to start.
On Tuesday, Alexa and I are going to Londrina to give our presentation on Feminism. I believe this is a very important topic to talk about here in Brazil. Now, some people here are very progressive and see women as equal human beings. However, there is still a machismo culture where men think that they are better than women just because they are men. They are entitled to more rights and more freedoms. Dating and spousal abuse and murder come from attitudes such as this. Women are victims of rape, abuse, and murder because of this mindset and it's important to talk about feminism to help support women. To let them know that this behavior is unacceptable. To help spread the mindset that women are not sex objects, but human beings who have ideas, feelings, and goals just like men. Now obviously these aren't problems that only exist in Brazil. This mindset exists all over the world. But as I'm in Brazil, I'm working on raising awareness about these issues here. I'm excited to see if this topic is as well-received as it was when we talked about it at UNESPAR.
On Friday, we are hosting our first-ever English day at UNESPAR. We have 150 students from schools in and around Apucarana signed up to come. Alexa and I have planned the activities we are going to do; we first planned on having 50 students come, but we had a lot more interest than we thought. I'm a little nervous about the amount of students and I just hope everything goes as planned. So many students and teachers wanted to participate that we had to stop registering people for this event and we are thinking about having another one in October for the people we had to turn down.
Well, thanks for reading! I'm excited to see what the next two and a half months bring. I'm not sick anymore so hopefully I stay that way and get home healthy. Come back in a few weeks for my next blog!