Impressions from the first week. Feb 15-18

Professor Markens is teaching our Archeology class. I have never taken a class like this and it seems rather interesting. His Spanish is very clear and he speaks slower that the native speakes. This will really help with understanding. Ron is teaching our Mexican Art and Text class. I am really excited about this one. My Spanish teacher, Saul, is by far the best Spanish teacher I have ever had. Since Spanish was his frist language, he understands it like my other teachers have not. He has fun games for us to play too :) On Wednesday we were informed about the volunteer project we are doing during a 4 hour orientation. It was after we already had 4 hours of class without eating lunch. It was rather exhausting, but I am really excited for it! We are going in seperate groups to teach English to a more indigenous town in Oaxaca called Teotilan De Valle. We dont have classrooms. We will be teaching outside on the ground. We get a white board to use visuals. The English lessons are split into 4 levels: kids/itty-bittys 5-8 yrs, tweens, adults with no English knowledge and adults with some English knowledge. And I get to teach the itty bittys!! I am so excited to teach them. I will definately be using a lot of games! :) I am the 3rd group to go, so its not my turn until April. On Thursday, I woke up to a strange sound... I fell in and out of sleep and eventually realized it was rain!! When I had gone down to eat breakfast, Jose asked me if I wanted to go back to sleep and skip school because of the rain... I thought this was so funny! I explained to her that only ice would stop us from going to class in Oregon. She then offered me an umbrella and I kindly told her that we typically dont use those in Oregon either and that I would be fine. I think she thought I was slightly crazy... A little later Chavo asked me the same thing! I thought it was so funny that rain is seen as such a nuisance here. The streets are not designed to handle rain, so there were a lot of puddles. On my walk to school with Libby and PJ, we saw a mother holding her little girl as she peed in the street... oh Mexico, you enchant me so...