Buenos Dias and welcome to post number two!

So after my relaxing opening weekend in Manuel Antonio I’m now 2 days into the actual teaching section of my stay here. I won’t lie, my body is not used to (and is unlikely to at any point) get accustomed to the 6am starts, but I am enjoying actually utilising my time throughout a whole day as opposed to waking up at 1 in the afternoon. Is this really how most people do it?

The good news is I’m loving every second of being here. I’m currently working at Paquita — one of the three different schools that GVI is stationed at. I started yesterday with grades 2, 3 and 4 throughout the day. Well, technically it’s a half day. We start around 8 and finish at 12. They weren’t kidding when they said not to go in expecting structured lesson planning. Yesterday one of the lessons ran over by about double it’s intended length, and of course this was before lunch so the kids became suuuuper restless. To even that out though, today the 1st grade kids had their lunch break in the middle of their lesson, so they came in with 3 minutes of lesson time left, to which we fully utilised with a few group ensembles of ‘heads, shoulders knees and toes’ (which the kids got fully into, to their credit). I’m getting frustrated at myself for the language barrier that’s between me and the kids because it’s obviously limiting how much I can actually teach them, but at least it’s making me extra determined to knuckle down on my spanish lessons. Speaking of which, I’ve now clocked 4 hours of my alloted 20 and I’ve honestly surprised myself how much I’m getting into it. I think the location is obviously a big factor, as it’s almost forcing me to speak as much Spanish as possible even though I’m 90% sure I’m just making a complete ass of myself, but hey it’s still progress (and substantial progress at that). I’m pretty sure I’ve learnt as much in these 4 hours that I did over the two years I studied German at GCSE, and it’s made me realise that I actually seriously enjoy the concept of learning a new language. This is potentially because I keep hearing people talking in fluent Spanish and thinking ‘oh that’ll be me soon’ when in reality I’m speaking at about 25% the normal speed of conversation and probably getting almost all of the pronunciations wrong. But hey, another 16 hours of lessons and I’ll be cruising. Me gusta! (see).

I’m still so shocked as to how different this place is to back home. 15 minutes before the end of the school day yesterday the teacher decided the kids should go out and play some frisbee (see above for no lesson plans). Not that I was complaining, I’m always up for some frisbee, and went in pretty confident considering my severe height advantage over my opposition standing at a mere 4ft. So I went out, naively expecting a fresh grass field for them to roam free on. Instead, I saw them all run onto a concrete square filled with stones and dirt and god knows what else. But did it stop them from having fun? Hell no. I’ve never seen people dive so fearlessly onto jagged rocks and then pick themselves up, brush the stones off their legs (they’re wearing shorts of course — no fear) and run after the frisbee for the umpteenth time. I had to admire it. Also, frisbee goes on the roof back in the UK? game’s over. Frisbee goes on the roof here? Well…

I love these kids.

Just before I go, thought it was also worth mentioning that I got caught in THE MOST RIDICULOUS storm ever yesterday. We were on the way back from our first Spanish lesson (worth mentioning the weather was glorious on our way there, so I mistakenly sun-tan-lotioned up and stuck on a vest and shorts) and an the walk back there is just so. much. rain. like I don’t know how else to describe it. I was soaked through to the bone withing about 5 minutes tops, and the walk to the bus station is probably about 10 or 15. This picture probably explains it better

maybe it doesn’t, just believe me it was a serious storm. And when we do finally get to the bus stop there is genuinely a lightning bolt that hits a fusebox no more than 20 meters from us, which then just explodes and there’s this huge flash and this huge bang and everyones like screaming and yeah. It was pretty awesome.

If the next 4 weeks are anything like how this has started I’m gonna cry so much when I leave ☹ ☹

Next post will probably be up sometime around the weekend, pura vida!