11-14/07/2011

Classes steadily... well, maybe "improved" is too strong of a word, but there was definitely a sort of structure developing, the students and I were becoming more familiar with each other, and my spoken Portuguese, as botched as it was, was coming out more fluidly. We had gotten into the routine of having class for an hour and then going down to the field to play some sort of game. Until now, I had been teaching them different games with varying levels of success (the popularity of "Pato, Pato, Ganso"/"Duck, Duck, Goose" being the high end, the abysmal and nearly injury inducing failure of "Red Light, Green Light" being the low), but today we tried something new that was so exceedingly popular and obvious, I respectively continued this activity everyday for the rest of my time teaching and smacked myself in the head for not thinking of it before: soccer. It's hard to even begin how successful it was: everyone participated and was actively involved, it could last an entire half an hour without any major fights breaking out (!!!), and all I had to do was chill in one of the goals and watch my students play.
There were two new PCV's who, having just completed their period of homestay training, were now doing their site visit (visiting some current PCV's and seeing how they lived their lives at site) at Ann's house, so one night we all met up to give them a proper welcome to the Peace Corps experience. We cooked up a storm of vegetable tempura, red curry, and carrot cake, and watched Modern Family on Scooter's computer. Her computer was having some problems and would occasionally freeze up, but between the good food and company, it hardly damped the mood.