New Respects

What´s today? Saturday? I´ve almost been in Arequipa one whole week. I was wondering what´s been going on back at home, but seeing as how what feels like a month has only been a few days, I´m guessing not much.

I believe I left off from the beginning of my time in Arequipa, but I don´t really remember the day to day, so I´ll tell you what I´m most excited about.

Thursday night I taught my first English class. It´s a conversation class, because I don´t speak spanish, but it went well. Melissa went with me, because I was nervous (it was my first time teaching). We got to know each other. Which mainly means my class of 6ish questioned me. Then I thought it would be a good idea to play the adjective name game, for me to get to know their names.
The game goes like this (I´m sure most of you will recognize it): You think of an adjective to describe you that starts with the same letter as your first name. I used Dandy Dominique. "Hi, everyone. I am dandy Dominique." Well, that was the only word I could think of that started with D, so they got to learn what dandy means.
Everyone went once. Then Ramses (rigid Ramses), was sad to hear he didn´t get to go again, so everyone went again. Except, the second time we wrote several adjectives starting with their letter on the board. I´d say my first class was successful.

Well, last night was my first time teaching ALL BY MYSELF. We talked about everyone´s day, and then we played a new form of charades. I went first so I acted out Doctor. Ramses guessed it, and then we wrote descriptions and word associations of a doctor on the board. After that, (this is my favorite part), we built a story about the doctor. Everyone added a sentence in sequence. I started, "There once was a doctor who lived in Peru." Then Willy said, "There once was a doctor who lived in Peru. He went to school for 10 years, and now worked in a hospital." It was a good story. Then, since Ramses guessed doctor, he went next. He had to act out cow. That was a better story, because at the end Willy the wolf ate the happy cow. I think everyone enjoyed this class too.

Class went about half hour late until 7:00, which just so happens to be the time of our bible study. I´m very excited about our bible study sequence that we kicked off last night. We´re storying through the bible. Last night, of course, we went over creation, Genesis 1 and 2. Next, on Tuesday, we´ll do the fall of man, and so on and so on, hitting the major stories, until we reach Christ´s death. Then we´ll end the sequence going over the church. The whole thing will last until we leave, at the end of July. But at the end of June and July we´ll host a Jeopardy game over what we´ve storied up until then, and the winner will win a Spanish/English bible. I´m very excited about this, because most of our students are unsaved.

Well, I´ve titled this post "New Respects", because I now have new respect for people trying to learn english, and for teachers of all types. By teaching english I am a lot more aware of it´s difficulty and a lot more thankful that it is my first language. Also, teachers really do work hard. Not saying I work all THAT hard, because I only have two classes, but a teacher that works 9-5...that´s a lot of lesson plans. I already tread being creative for lesson plans. Hopefully, my creative God will just put those new ides in my head...that´s my prayer anyway. The good thing is classes will always be fun, because we´ll be learning about each other.

ok Toodles! I´m off to Cusco Café. It´s just as good, if not better than Starbucks. This is our preferred place to prepare for our classes and bible studies.

Also, next week I will start my spanish class, to improve my spanish. Hopefully, by next month I´ll be able to take on a little bit lower level english class. Wish me luck! Pray for me to learn fast.

Oh also, today we walked to Caymo (a different district of Arequipa). There´s a nice park and spot to over look the city. It was very pretty and I got to see more of Arequipa, like the Chili River. I´m still trying to force myself to take more pictures, but I think the more comfortable I get in this city the more I´ll just wander around with my camera. Adios por ahora. (this is my makeshift spanish)