Workshop, Party, Fair... A wild Saturday

We had our workshop on materials design yesterday and ten English teachers came.  It was a little smaller, but a lot of teachers take classes on Saturdays or teach on Saturdays, so that was a bummer.  We had a good size group though for what we were doing so it worked out just fine.  Andrea and I did demonstrations on different materials we use for the teaching lessons in our English classes and asked for ideas from the teachers.  Then, we had a workshop for the teachers to make the materials we demonstrated.  We had enough money in our budget to purchase glue sticks, rolls of packing tape, and scissors for them to use, and I brought my HUGE stack of magazines that my family and friends have sent :)  The teachers loved it all!  They had a lot of fun making the materials and we actually couldn't get them to stop.  I had to take away the scissors... haha 

 

There was a fair going on this weekend so we cruised around to check things out after the workshop.

That day I got invited to one of my Embassy program student's birthday party.  My counterpart went with me and we arrived on time, which meant WAY too early!  I sat around for awhile and then talked to Frank on the phone.  He kept me company from afar :)  

Side story: When Andrea and I were going to the place where we were having the workshop, we took all of our supplies out of the taxi and then later realized that we left a lot of poster paper in the taxi (a roll of 40).  We hoped that someone would see it in the backseat and say something to the driver and he would bring it back to our workshop.  Nope.  Well, we remembered what color taxi it was and what style car, so we kept our eyes open for it while we walked around the fair and Boaco later.   We didn't see it. While at the birthday party though, I was sitting inside the house and my counterpart came in and said "Megan, the taxi's here."  I thought he meant there was a taxi to take us home or something, which was weird because the party hadn't really started.  Oh wait, he stopped the little red taxi and the driver said he had my poster paper at his house because he didn't know who it belonged to, but he would drop it off at my house.  I did have to pay him the fair to go to his house to pick them up and then take them to my house, but I was just thankful that he was honest about the whole thing and that we got them back. 

Anyway, back to the party...it was a calm party for Nicas and it was neat because I got to see my students from the Embassy program whom I haven't seen in a few weeks so that was nice.  We chatted and I suggested we practice English but they were all too shy.  They did say some things, but we were at a party, so I didn't bug them too much about it ;)  Because they're in the second level of the program, a different teacher is working with them (not my counterpart).  I've been trying to get ahold of that teacher to see about working with them again, but she hasn't returned my calls, but apparently has been telling the students if they see me to ask me if I'm going to work with them.  Not sure why she won't answer her phone...  Anyway, I'm going to try to go to the class on Friday.  I wanted to meet with the teacher before just showing up as a courtesy, but I guess they know I'm coming.  One of the other reasons why I wanted to talk to her first is that I wanted to see if I could teach on Wednesdays instead of Fridays because I tend to have PC meetings on Fridays and have to go to Managua.  We'll see!  

 

We ate lots of food and cake and drank juice and coca cola.  It was great!  Then, the boys invited me to go to the fair with them, so I said yes.  Hey, they wanted me to hang out with them and I was having fun catching up with them.  They really like asking me questions about English too, so that's fun :)

We met up with Jasser and some of our Nica friends at the fair.  The boys rode the ferris wheel type thing and I went and browsed the items at the fair.  One the way home, I say one of these posters that I like and finally took a picture.

 

"Que Tuani" is a program promoting respect for women and showing young men that they don't have to be macho and disrespect women.  This culture is known for being very "machista", which means male chauvinistic.  This poster says "How cool it is to respect women.  How cool is it to not be macho."  They have a good message and I like that there are people (men included) standing up for the women in this country :)