Una Adventura con los Ninos

An adventure with the kids. When I arrived, the woman who I will typically be working with (who is fluent in English) asked me to take the kids upstairs, get them to take their coats and backpacks off, and seated on the giant mat in the corner. And then I was to ask one student to count the students. She said that she would be up in 5 minutes. Wow, okay these kids are 4 years old. I got the majority of them seated, but a group of kids surrounded me, each with individual problems 1) A girl with a hurt finger (when the teacher got there I learned that she wanted me to kiss it). 2) A boy got a scratch on his shoulder from playing outside yesterday aftenoon. 3) Pepe's jacket zipper broke, so he couldn't take it off. 4) A girl found a plastic frog and I think wanted to know what to do with it. 5) Marcos (a bit mentally slow) just stared at me, not taking his jacket or coat off, not doing anything. A crazy five minutes. After that when the teacher got there, we reviewed the clothes items and weather in English. It's interesting because I swear for 4 years old they would be just starting to work on these terms in Spanish... Then, we played a game where I passed out an image to each student such as banana, cat, etc. and I would tell them what it is, in English. The teacher was laughing at me because I got like four terms wrong, such as saying bunny instead of rabbit, alligator instead of crocodile, etc. It was a fun day.

This afternoon I did some reading for my Managing Cultural Diversity class. I have now read all the material up until the midterm in March. I have chosen my research topic for the final 15 page paper due in April, which is comparing the infamous "American Dream" to the "Spanish Dream". It appears that students go to school and work for different reasons here than in the US, I intend to look into this. I am rather behind in my history class, I have to write a 3-page paper for Managing Cultural Diversity, I have to read a chapter for International Finance, and finally I have to write my resume in Spanish for my Business Spanish class. This weekend is the last weekend that I will be in Seville until April 10 so I need to get ahead in classes. Tomorrow I will try to be devoted to homework and will be getting my bus ticket for a hike on Saturday with Phil, Micah and Rob in Ronda.

Aust