August 25 &26: trying to figure it all out

Thursday morning I got up to teach my first English class at the segundaria. I think it went fairly well. Teenagers in large groups don’t warm up super quickly, but at least they are more familiar with me now. I think I’m going to teach some English classes throughout my diagnostic in hopes that the students will get more accustomed to me (and me to them, let’s be honest.) Later that morning Kyle stopped by to see me. It was nice to show someone around my site and it’s always nice to talk to someone who has been in the position I’m in now. Apparently everyone is confused for a little while when they get to site, so I shouldn’t feel alarmed :-P Thursday afternoon I went for a walk. Exercising doesn’t seem to be very common around here, but since everything I do will be perceived as somewhat strange I might as well add it to the list. My goal is to actually be able to jog some, but at this point I’m just still working on breathing. I also went to Yungay with Dona Norca and Faviola. It’s a larger city about ten minutes up the road. There seem to be a lot of interesting places near my site and I I can’t to start visiting them.
Friday I had two more English classes. The fourth year of segundaria is broken up into three sections so I taught the same lesson to all of them. My second class on Friday was the best of the three by far. I’m sure I felt a little more comfortable by then, but also the students seemed more interested in participating. Not a bad start I guess. During lunch my host mom handed me a Spanish cook book, so I spent some time reading that. I think I might try out a few of the recipes sometime, they looked easy enough.