somewhere under the sky

aqui pasando la vida

TEFL continues. This week is absolutely terribly stuffed with work. So I´m writing in my blog because I´m unmotivated to finish this horrible "research" paper i started that is incoherent, disorganized, and lacking a purpose.
The trip to the Amazon was okay. It was much more jungley than the trip with the Ohio group. After getting to the Oriente, we drove half an hour by bus and then walked an hour into the jungle to get the cabins. Everything was really cool, I´m not complaining, but it was about 40 people, and just logistically speaking that causes some...problems. But the food was great, we hiked through rivers, waterfalls, jungle, and mud, so...but as much as i enjoyed it, returning to the mountains felt like coming home.
i must say i felt really weird travelling with a bunch of gringos. obviously i did it all the time with ohio, but since then i´ve gotten used to travelling by myself, to riding the national bus lines, to speaking spanish, etc. so it was weird and i´ll go ahead and be stuffy and say that i prefer travelling on my own, or at least in a small group.
yesterday we switched teaching groups and i taught the beginners. woooooooh is it different from the advanced. everything, the whole environment...you can´t say anything. for instance, to transition in the advanced, i could say things like "now that we´ve reviewed this and gotten some more practice with this structure, and covered such and such topic, we´re going to move on to blah blah." but last night, i sat there for a second and then finally just said "next topic!" it was really difficult not to just...talk. but all the same, i fell in love once again with all the students, especially the adults who are highly and intrinsically motivated to learn.
i´ve gone on about that enough...peace.

posted by leah v @ 3:21 PM