Lunes (Monday)

The Virgin Mary of Immaculate Conception.

This morning, Lauren and I went with Tino to the school at Concepcion.  This time Lauren and split up the younger students into two groups.  I took the older of the two groups.  We had to make do without a whiteboard, which was a little bit hard.  They all seemed to be doing well, although I'm trying to think of some ways to make the class a little bit more interactive and fun.

After my younger class, I went upstairs to help teach the class with the oldest students.  I really like teaching this class because Tino sits in on the class.  At one point he said that the class was more for him than the kids.  They know a lot of English, but they have trouble with the pronunciation.  We are thinking of giving them homework and Tino suggested doing an oral exam.

This is the statue of the Virgin Mary that is above the town of Concepcion, where I teach in the mornings.

When we came out of the school, I took a picture of the statue of the Virgin Mary that is on the hill above the town.  Tino said we could walk up there one day if we had a little bit of time.

Pretty soon I am going to have my first Spanish class with Tino's niece Leslie.  I'm excited to be able to speak in Spanish more and get better at harder verbs and vocabulary.

Instead of going to the mountain school in the afternoon on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I am going to help Tino with his websites.  He wants to sell his art on a website and also the volunteer who helps maintain the volunteer website is glad that I will be able to help him out.  Tino also wants me to help his daughter Pilar to learn how to use Dreamweaver so eventually she can maintain all the websites.  I told him I'd need a week to get to know it myself!

Tino told me that on Tuesday and Thursday, when I go to the mountain school, he would like me to help organize the students.  For instance, he wants to know who isn't going to school and why, who's acting up in class and not paying attention, and who is doing well.

Also, I am going to teach Tino and Mari English during the evenings.  I think that some of the other volunteers may also take turns doing this.  I think I might be better at doing this than some of the other classes, since it is easier for me to work one-on-one with people, plus they know what they want to learn.

Things are going well overall.  I'm enjoying the people most of all!