Moving Day!

We lost another good one but at least there is a nice picture of her eating some dreds.



TREE OF LIFE!



So I'm slowing moving my way into my new house/ office. Almost everything was set from the beginning which was great but I have to buy kitchen stuff and things like that. I need to buy gas for the stove because it was supposedly jacked by the people who administered the building last. Hmm... I'm really excited to have a place to sort of call my own.

I'm teaching a lot of classes and running an "English Club" at nights. It's essentially another class because people are too pena-ed to participate but we do more fun stuff like translate "A Change is Gonna Come" by Sam Cooke. Awww yeah. I used it to talk a little about American history and racism and stuff but nobody looked too interested. I need to get the hang of making stuff seem important. I'd like to blame my students and say they don't care but a good teacher can make anyone care about anything. ANYhow, I'm looking forward to putting a more cultural aspect on the English Club. As far as my classes at the school go, I'm hanging on. About half the kids seem to have attention/discipline problems so it means that the others can't learn even if they wanted to. If I hear the phrase, "Mire que el me pego!" one more time I might flip. At first I thought it was a cultural thing... in Peace Corps you try to develop different (sometimes lower, sometimes higher) standards for host country behavior... but then I did a guest teach in a neighboring town and the kids were so GOOD! Nobody even talked over me. I got through my hour long pronunciation lesson without ONE hitch, without anyone grabbing my stomach telling me to give a drawing assignment, without anyone just walking out of the room, without anyone hitting anyone else! My mind was blown. I'd like to sit down and figure out why my students are having so much difficulty paying mind but I think it's beyond little old me. They're great kids, I just don't have the chops yet to maintain a positive learning environment.

Well... That's about all that's on my mind. I'll leave you with some Spanish phrases I really like now.

Echar cuenta - to toss stories - to chat
Echar arroz - to toss rice - to serve food
necio - means bratty as far as I can tell
Acha? la vida, or my favorite, Acha la - Oh drat!
Estamos refrescando - we are refreshing - we are drinking beer

My favorite of all time: WAH! This versitile interjection is used to express joy, displeasure, anguish, surprise, anger EVERYTHING. It's wonderfully useful.

and one that gets on my nerves:
Mire que - kinda like lookit! It only is annoying because my studest always use it to preface telling me that someone is being necio.