Lectures, English Day, and Planning Like Always

In my last blog, I talked about all of the things I had coming up. Well, they've happened, so now I can tell you how they went. First, the lecture we gave in Londrina went really well. It made me sad, however, that some women asked how to create a safe space at their school for women to talk about these topics since a safe space didn't already exist. They also talked about the murders of women that are happening all around Brazil and asked if that was also something that happened in the US. I think we ultimately had a good conversation about feminism and that women all over the globe face some of the same issues, but together, we can support one another and make the world a better and safer place for women. Most of the people at the end came and thanked us for talking about feminism as they find it an important topic that doesn't get talked about enough.

We had our English Day at the university a few days later. We only had about 75 students show up, so that made it a lot easier to organize everyone and get them through the activities we had planned. It was stressful and felt a bit unorganized to me, but in the end, I think all of the kids had fun. We had them do five different stations- musical chairs, jeopardy, an obstacle course, duck duck goose and human knot, and finally the game 500. We had enough monitors to help with the stations and even though we didn't have very much time to explain the activities to them, they all did a good job and hopefully had fun as well. At the end, we had a garage sale of candy, pencils, notebooks, other trinkets, and items we brought from the US. The students really enjoyed winning the prizes and a few students got to go home with the coveted US dollars.

The rest of my week was filled with classes and conversation clubs like usual. Saturday was fun because I went to get Sushi with Maraina and Bruna. It was rodizio style so the waiter just kept bringing different kinds of sushi until we were full. It was a lot of fun and was a good time to practice my Portuguese.

As you all know, everyone in the US had labor day off of work, but that doesn't exist here in Brazil. I still had my conversation club on Monday. I only had three students show up, so we just played Apples to Apples the whole time. The students really enjoy the game but little do they know they're working hard on vocabulary and also learning about American culture as most cards in the game have to deal with famous Americans, US movies, and US culture.

I had class with first year on Tuesday like usual. They are preparing to give a presentation on their own biographies they wrote last semester. They have to talk about their lives for 6-10 minutes, but it shouldn't be too hard as they wrote a whole paper to use as a guide. I got frustrated because the teacher gave them an hour in class to practice their presentation and make sure it was good and fell within the time frame. However, most students hadn't even started writing their note cards and instead chose to use the hour to catch up on gossip, read, or draw. They've also had three weeks since they've known about the presentation. I know Fernando is worried about how the students' presentations will go, but my view is that they didn't use the time given, so we really couldn't have done anything more for them except write their notecards and give the actual speech. I know some students are very prepared and did a good job using the time, but I'm nervous to see how the other presentations will go.

During my Wednesday conversation club, we talked about speaking tips with the four students who came. One of the students put it down as a topic they wanted to talk about, so talk about it we did. First, we talked about 10 speaking tips I found online and whether the students agreed with each tip or not and whether the students actually used them. We then played taboo to practice talking around a word that you've forgotten or don't know how to say in English. I think it was fun for the students and it makes me excited to go home and play it again during Thanksgiving.

On Thursday, Alexa and I made lunch and then planned out things that are coming up this month. I was supposed to have an English hour with Maraina, but she didn't come to Alexa's house until a few hours later. I also was supposed to have my Portuguese class for the first time, but my teacher canceled it as she had a family emergency. We will have to plan a make-up class for this week.

I've also just been plugging away at my master's class. It's going really well so far and I'm excited to learn more about gifted education. I spent today cleaning, doing laundry, working on my master's class, finishing our upcoming workshop on football, and planning my lessons for this coming week. It was nice to get all of that out of the way so that this week will be as relaxing as possible. Tonight, I'm going over to one of the professor's house to drink and do karaoke. We will see how that goes; it should be a lot of fun too! I'm enjoying my care package that my family sent me as well. I'm a bit homesick, but with only two months left, I know I'll be fine.

I love to hear from people back home, so if you're still reading my blog, feel free to call me whenever!