LAS MINAS HERE I COME!!

10/04/13

Off to my new home place for the first time. Here I come Las Minas I hope you're ready. I don't know why I was so hesitant at first... I think it was one of those awkward post christmas/post birthday funks, but MY HOST SITE IS THE FREAKING BOMB!

I met my counterpart at the conference the other day and she is fabulous in every sense of the word. She is this spunky little twenty somethin latina and she knows her stuff, plus she's excited to work with me, so that's something. I will have two teachers in the Primaria, Sonalis, my primary counterpart(grades 4-6) and Itzel my secondary counterpart (K-3). Sonalis lives in Chitre the regional capitol about an hour and some change away from Las Minas. I stayed at her place the first night since we missed the last chiva back to my site, she lives with her husband, his kids, and his parents and they all welcomed me warmly into their home, mentioning that I can stay over any time I need somewhere to crash in Chitre (AWESOME!) The ride to my house is stunningly beautiful, mountains on mountains on mountains with beautiful trees and plants and ranchos and horses and things. Sonalis told me that during the rainy season everything blossoms making it look like a jungle but that it won't start for a couple weeks.

My host family is freaking awesome. I live with literally a house full of women five generations to be exact; my host great-grandmother, my grandmother, my host mother, my host sister, my host cousin and her daughter.... holy hell. It is a little awkward only because my 96 year-old host great-grandmother is really sick and I have a feeling she won't be here when I come back in a few weeks; which is unfortunate because you can tell this woman's got a lot of stories to tell. My host sister (who is also named Melissa) is in Texas visiting her dad, she's been there since December and still refuses to learn English, we'll see about that.

The first few days of classes were awesome, I figured out a schedule with both my teachers so that I can work with both equally. Observing Sonalis was amazing because it was clear that she's worked with peace corps before since she was already implementing PC activities and skills, which is exactly what we want- to make things sustainable. On the other hand I am SO excited to work with Itzel because she is such a new teacher; I was frustrated at first observing her classes because I saw her getting so frustrated because her English isn't where she wants it to be, which is going to be all the more fun for me to work with because it's like starting from scratch.... in retrospect that might sound pretty harsh but it is an awesome opportunity to work with a new teacher who hasn't yet gotten stuck in bad habits.... so YAY.

HIGHLIGHT: Making some progress with one of the Chinese students in the fourth grade. We can call her Ana. She immigrated here when she was super young but her family only speaks to her in Chinese, so she hasn't progressed to the level she needs to in order to participate in her classes. She speaks pretty good English and it is so clear that she is brilliant and just frustrated that she can't express herself in Spanish. Apparently today was the first day they even knew for sure that she was actually from China, no one actually knew for sure, they just assumed because there are a lot of Chinese immigrants. I was surprised that none of the English teachers thought to try talking to her in English, which is pretty sad but I guess that kind of thing happens. I offered to help her with after school tutoring in Spanish and English and she seemed to like that idea so that's rad. I am glad I could start off right.