we've only just begun!

I wrote this yesterday...

So I just finished my first day with my precious 4 year olds and I was quite surprised at how well it went! I arrived at the school at 7:20 and talked to the previous pre-kindergarten teacher. She is great and helped me out a lot. I went and got my kids at 8:00 and they didn’t seem to be bothered that I was new. I guess we will see how long that lasts. I must say, they are the cutest group of kids I have ever seen! Their English isn’t very good and my Spanish is minimal so that combination may cause some problems for us but it’s nothing that we can’t work through!

The view from my classroom is amazing! Our school sits on a hill on the outskirts of town. There are trees that hide most of the city from my view but above the tops of the trees are beautiful mountains, including a 12,500 dormant volcano that we will climb later in the semester! Xela sits at just under 8,000 feet so it is cold in the morning and very warm in the afternoon. I hear that it will start being more consistently warm in March.

Oh! Last night we ate ‘chicken that will change you life’ according to Josh Macy. And I must say, it was pretty remarkable. It was called Pollo Asado and it was served out of a truck next to the local soccer, I mean football, stadium. I know Dad, I’m not suppose to eat food off the street but this was seriously the best chicken I have had in a long time if not the best ever. It was cook on a grill but then the sauce they put on it was very lemony with cilantro and parmesan cheese. SO wonderful! I wish I send some to all of you!

On a personal note, I think I have found an apartment! Stefanie (my friend from camp that is down here, well, one of my friends from camp) and I will live together. We are going to go look at the apartment today so I really hope it works out. It sounds like it has everything that we need and we would be in the same apartment group that 4 other female teachers live in so that would be nice to be close to them. We would also be a 5 minute walk to the Macy’s and to McNabb house.

I feel really good about this spring (even though it sounds like there are gun shots being fired in the next neighbor hood over!). I’m excited about learning the language. I can tell a difference in my Spanish just in the last two days. I hope that this continues and it will continue to improve over the next five months.

Playlist:
Through You by Alanis Morissette
God Only Knows By The Beatles
Set the Fire to the Third Bar by Snow Patrol
Southbound 35 by Pat Green
What Am I to You By Norah Jones
Oklahoma Girl by Eli Young
Life for Rent by Dido
Visiong of You by Shane and Shane

Later that night…
So, a funny thing happened to me after work today. I went to see Stefanie’s classroom and visit with her. As we were talking, we decided that we were going to walk home today (it’s about a 40-45 minute walk) and I insisted that we stop at a tienda as soon as we could because I was so thirsty. I explained to her how I was planning on buying water on the way to work today but nothing was open yet. I was a little concerned but I figured I could make it until after school to drink something (I hadn’t had anything all day because we can’t drink the tap water!) At this point, Stefanie looked at me slightly bewildered and informed me that the tap water at the school was drinkable. Much to my dismay, I grabbed a cup and chugged two of them because I was so thirsty (not only because I was parched, but also because of the elevation.) It just goes to show that sometimes the small things that are left out tend to be really important…like, it’s okay to drink this water…I feel like this should be a sign that the school is a little slice of home…because I have now changed my slogan of ‘home is where my bed is’ to ‘home is where my bed is and where I can drink the tap water without getting sick.’