Changing impressions...

May 6, 2010

This morning ending feeling like the worst day of my life :(
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We went to the school for the second time--this time we taught a class. The 5th grade (we think). Our lesson plan was to have the kids cut and decorate hearts and butterflies as a decoration for mother's day at the school on Friday.

It was complete choas. They couldn't share the paint and we gave them sparkles (which was a horrible, horrible idea). It mostly ended up on their faces and all over the school. The older boys were really rough with the other students.

The teacher at the school yells at the kids a lot... She has a lot of trouble controlling the kids and they don't seem to listen to her all the time. It's difficult for the children to pay attention to us, also. They have trouble waiting their turn. So far most of the day, it was quite frustrating. After we attempted crafts (which was semi-successful, because they did decorate hearts and butterflies) we took the kids outside to play games. The boys tried hitting a beach fall as many times as they could without it touching the ground (they really liked the ball) and the girls tried "What time is it Mr. Wolf". Just as they were all getting into it, the teacher called them to form a line (tallest to shortest) and then asked them to look for their song book. No one was able to get it and we ended up just standing around for a bit. The song was for Friday; for the kids to sing to their mothers.
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Today I switched classes with Anisa so that I could be free for El Sinai's film festival. I feel like I learned more from her teacher in 2 hours then I did since I arrived. The key differences were was the use of flash cards (which were really helpful).

At 5:00PM we met at Arte Accion but didn´t end up leaving until an hour or so later. Kelsy and Deanna got some fries, they were willing to share but I ended up going without dinner tonight.
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We took the projector equipment to the school by motortaxi and set up a white sheet as the screen. The children all grabbed their chairs and little by little the parents came out to watch the movie, too. They started with 2-half-hour short films by Arte Acción about Maya Chortí culture. We couldn´t understand much but laughed a lot and the children turned to watch us some of the time. After we watched some super old movie about ´The Indian Maria´ (a 1940ish movie). It was definitely a comedy. We think that about 120 in total came out for the movie night.

During the movie until clean up the kids really opened up to us. I made funny faces and I aksed some of them if they liked Maria. They laughed and they smiled and eventally started poking and tickling us. We helped Lóndon clearn up and we came back around 8:00PM.
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We meet the rest of the group at the bar that plays music. Even after we were all exhausted. I danced a lot so people commented on that and we meet two girls. One from Norway (but for the longest time I thought she was from New Zeland) and the other from England.

I was telling the other girls what started out as feeling like the worst day EVER suddenly became the most fun because of the film festival because the kids really opened up.

Tomorrow on my way to Arte Acción I need to buy 100 plates, cups and napkins because the mothers will be coming to the school for Mother´s Day.

We prepared a few games and a craft just in case but tomorrow we´re just going to wing it.

Completely exhausted.

P.S. cockroach in my room this morning. The black sandals I bought from Mt. Co-op did an excellent job of killing it :)