English Week

So just about every waking moment for the past two weeks has been devoted to preparing for the MEDUCA-dictated English Week. I’m pretty lucky because the teachers at my school got really into it.

Every Monday there is the weekly school meeting called the Civic Act/National Hymn where they say the Lord’s Prayer, Hail Mary, the Pledge to the Flag and the Student’s Promise. They did all of this in English for English Week! Each one was led by a student – one student from each of the grades participated. The pre-school and kindergarten students hoisted the flag, the first grade student said the Oath to the National Flag, the second grade student said the Student’s Promise, the third grade student (my former host nephew – Roderik) said Hail Mary, the fourth grade student said the Lord’s Prayer, the fifth grade student read the program, and the sixth grade student read a short speech about the importance of English.

Afterwards, we gave all of the students certificates (that I made and printed, that was a formatting ordeal with the tienda that prints things that took an hour…) and I baked the Funfetti cupcakes that Mom sent me for my birthday and gave one to each of the students as well as the English teachers and a couple of others.

Then on Wednesday we had contests for each of the grades. The teachers had competitions in each of their classrooms to  choose one per class who would compete against the others in their grade. For these students, I also printed certificates and Eliseo, Rafael and I went to Santiago to get small gifts for each student. The contests were everything from reading a story, to picture identification, to reciting a poem, to a spelling bee.

Then Friday came the main event -  Talent Show! It was definitely stressful to prepare for, but the kids loved it. I have a whole new respect for those teachers and camp counselors who try to organize kids’ performances. Each grade ended up doing a different performance from songs like 5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed, to plays like The Three Little Pigs, to modeling and dancing. I put together a slide show that had the words to all of the plays or songs as well as translations into Spanish so the other teachers could understand more.

The last act – the 6^th graders – did a dance to the song “Follow the Leader” that I helped them put together. All of the other students loved it – I think it was the favorite act of the show!

I was happy to help out and put all of this together, but since I have a computer, speak English natively, and am a girl, a lot of the things fell to me like the powerpoint, the certificates, putting the gifts together, teaching the dance, making the houses for the Three Little Pigs, etc. So it was a very stressful couple of weeks.

One of the things that has started bothering me especially because I’ve been stressed is because of the primary school kids, when they want to say hi to me (which is every time they see me, no matter how many times in a day) they just say my name “Savannah! Savannah! Savannah!”. Normally it makes me smile, but the past couple of weeks since I’ve been kind of stressed, it sounds to me like it’s someone wanting my attention or wanting something from me. So when I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off this morning trying to get everything together at the last minute, having the kids calling my name every 5 seconds was more than I could handle.

My primary goal over the next week: teach the students to say “Hello, Savannah” instead of just calling out my name in order to greet me.

I’m also going to try to implement phonics with my primary school teachers over the course of the next 2 weeks that I’m with them. I’m worrying already about changing over to the colegio in August, but I guess it has to happen. I just wish there were two volunteers here so that I wouldn’t feel stretched so thin. But I’m lucky that I enjoy working with so many of my teachers and that I’ve had a warm welcome here. There are definitely worse feelings for a PCV!

But for the exciting news – my parents are coming to visit! They’ll be here for a week, and then I go to In-Service Training, which will be great to see the rest of the PCVs in my group. So July will be a good, if busy, month with all of the traveling I’ll be doing.

I'll upload photos soon of the kid in the Vandy shirt, English Week performances, and my house! I'm at the mall right now and I need to go buy some groceries and head back to site - I spent the night at my friend Miranda's last night for her birthday - there were 9 of us together, which was a lot of fun. Now back to work! And my PC TE boss, Joel, is coming to visit on Tuesday, so it'll be an official week. Busy busy busy as usual. 

Love and miss you all - I hope everyone has a very happy 4th of July!

Sav