6 Months!

I can’t believe half of a year has already gone by. February was like a bat of an eye and now it’s March. Whoa!

The school year has started out slowly, as I had expected, and today we had an assembly where the principal gave a short speech about completing the first month of the school year and starting month two. It’s kinda funny because the students have only had about 9 days of school so far, and most of it is review, but whatever. The assembly lasted about an hour, meaning that the entire first period was gone and about half of the second too. Along with classes starting late and doing a prayer, singing the national anthem, and taking roll for a 40 student class, there were only 20 minutes left of what should have been a 90 minute class. This drives me crazy, but I just have to get used to not following a schedule and losing class time.

This past weekend since I was feeling better, I traveled over to Leon to visit friends and hang out with other volunteers. We had such a good time and there was only one other TEFL volunteer (Sam), but lots of environment PCVs. We went to a movie, the beach, shopped a little in town, and danced into the wee hours of the morning. I’m extremely sun burnt, but I’m still glad I went. It was a nice weekend to celebrate 6 months of being here in Nicaragua.

Today I went to the Instituto (I missed the bus by a few minutes so I had to take a taxi) and observed classes and helped out a little. I was informed by one of my counterparts that since I came in the morning and I was staying for an afternoon class, I got to eat lunch with the teachers…for free! Woo! That means I’ll get free lunch 2 days a week. :)

One of the teachers in my school came up to me in the afternoon and asked if I could help her with some English work from her weekend class she had been taking. I agreed, and met her after her class. She was really sweet and excited for me to be helping her because she said she felt lost in her class. I had already been at the Instituto since 7am, and it was about 4pm when I told her that we would have to continue tomorrow or another time—the students came into the classroom for their next class so that allowed me to make the transition and leave. I invited her to my community English class that I’m starting next week, so that should be fun. I’ve also been helping my host cousin (who has a daughter in one of my classes at the Instituto) with her English homework from a weekend class and she’ll be attending my class. I’m excited to get it started. We’re going to meet for about an hour and a half, 2 days a week. I’ll let you know how it goes…