Every Day´s Been an Adventure

I have the feeling I may end up saying nothing in what I write today, because I have to much to say, and so little time. Here goes . . .

We´ve started our training. It´s been pretty intense: 9am-5pm every day since Tuesday, and we´ve had lectures and workshops all about the neurological bases of learning. All in Portuguese. Put that together with lack of sleep, looking for a new place to live, learning how to take the bus and you´ll understand that we´re pretty exhausted. I´m totally impressed by the school atmosphere, though. It´s so much more than I was expecting. The other teachers are so positive, it´s an environment I´m looking forward to working. It looks like I´ll be teaching grade 2 this year, as an assistant teacher, and Jess will be doing grade 3 half the day, and other repsonsibilities the second half of the day.

Yesterday we hit our low. Being immersed in technical Portuguese had tired us out, and then we were supposed to have prepared a two-minute presentation on some aspect of the lectures to be evaluated by the other teachers on our presentation skills. Well, it´s one thing to be able to understand when the lectures go by. It´s another thing to retain the information to be able to speak it back. We had no access to materials to do research (we get home too late every night to be able to go out to use the internet). So we had nothing ready to say. And we felt sick all day. It´s incredible how quickly you revert to childish ways when you become a student again. We were DREADING the presentation all day long, and on our walk back after lunch Jess started making jokes about finding a fire alarm to pull. As three o´clock drew near, we seriously considered getting up and leaving (because technically our attendance is mandatory). I have to give Jess the credit for being the strong one to keep us from leaving. Anyhow, we did what we had to do. We just said we didn´t have a presentation and observed the others in our small groups. And thankfully, in my group I wasn´t the only one, and on top of that, everyone was really understanding. It was such a relief.

Anyways, after all the accumulated stress, we went home and did all things Canadian: ate maple fudge, made banana pancakes for supper, made ourselves mugs of raspberry tea from home, and crawled into bed early and watched part of Pride and Prejudice. It was a good end to the day :)

Today we´ve been invited over to one of the other teacher´s houses for dinner. She´s Canadian but she´s married to a Brazilian and has been here for 7 years. She´s a fantastic person, and we´re planning on bombarding her with all kinds of questions about how to access the things we need here in Sao Jose. Should be lots of fun.

Well, I´ve got tons to say, and only 1 minute and 30 seconds left. If you wrote me an email and I haven´t repsonded, it´s because I can´t get into hotmail for some reason. It´s driving me curiously crazy because I can see I have 6 messages and can´t read any of them. So I´ll write back when I read them. Bye for now!