learner

Leah says...
I think that if I had to describe myself in my past (almost) two weeks here in Ixtlán in one word, it would be learner. This is sort of ironic I guess, since I'm here to be a teacher. But, I'm pretty sure that I have learned far more than I have taught because… well for a variety of reasons since these two weeks have been full of "first times," from the moment that I left to come down here…

It was my first time flying by myself. I think it's safe to admit now that I'm down here that I was a little nervous about this (and got progressively more nervous as dad and I got closer and closer to the airport). But everything went smoothly, with the exception of almost forgetting, well actually forgetting half of my boarding pass at the printer machine thing, and then having a lady that worked at the airport bring it to me while I was in line for security. If it wasn't for her, I would have found out that I didn't have half of my boarding pass in Houston, where I had a layover, so I was very thankful for her!

I think the lesson I learned in flying by myself is that if you follow the signs at the airport, eventually you'll get where you need to go and if you look a little clueless people tend to be pretty helpful!

It's my first time being in Ixtlán. As I write my blog post, I am listening to the loudspeaker that's attached to a truck that's driving down the street trying to sell cleaning products. This is a daily occurrence. Anyone can sell anything they want, I think. Anywhere they want. I've really been enjoying it so far and because the guest house is right in the middle of the town, you don't have to go far to see the culture and daily life of the people living here. We've taken several walks around the town, which I enjoy, although I have to try and pick the "right" greeting to say to the people that we pass along the road.

The lesson I'm learning from just being in Ixtlán is that I'm very blessed. Very blessed. 

I got to see (and hold) Ivory for the first time. Ivory is one cute little girl (especially when she smiles, but even when she doesn't) and she is growing like crazy (even in the two weeks I've been here). It's so much fun to see her get stronger and stronger each day and be able to hold herself up more. This picture of Ivory and I makes it look like she really doesn't like it when I hold her, but I promise that she (usually) does! Ivory and I got to have some serious bonding time on Tuesday night when Grant and Hannah went and got Dean and Dawn from the airport :).

I think that the lesson I'm learning from Ivory is that babies are pretty cute… but they're also a lot of work and sometimes you have no idea what they want.

I'm teaching for the first time. Actually, it's probably more like the kids are teaching me (as I said before). In the past two weeks that I've been teaching, I've perfected the "I-have-NO-IDEA-what-you're-talking-to-me-about-but-I'm-going-to-nod-and-then-tell-you-to-sit-back-down-since-you're-not-actually-supposed-to-be-coming-up-to-me-while-I'm-trying-to-teach-you" face. Actually, understanding the kids is getting easier and today for the first time I felt like I could actually sort of communicate with them in Spanish. I do a lot of demonstrating though to show them what I want. I've learned a couple crucial verbs too - portarse (behave yourself), guardar silencio (be quiet), sentarse (sit down), and levantar tu mano (raise your hand).
Everyone I've talked to back in the States asks me how my first day teaching was so… here it goes. It was interesting. And challenging. First grade went pretty well (that's my first class). They're probably the class that I have the hardest time understanding, so after teaching for the first day I just felt really overwhelmed and I also felt bad because I just wanted to be able to explain things in Spanish if they didn't understand something, but at this point I was still dealing with the realization that being here is nothing like reading a textbook. Second grade was really talkative. I shouldn't say was. I should say is because they are by far my chattiest class (now). So if you have any wonderful ideas on how to get them to be quiet, I'd gladly listen! Third grade was very well behaved - I'm pretty sure that their teacher threatened them. Fourth grade was a teacher's worst nightmare to be quite honest. From the moment they came into the room, there was chaos. Every time I turned my back, there were a couple boys throwing crayons and anything else they could get their hands on. Let's just say, afterwards, when Matt came to check and see how my day went, he thought we had done a crayon project and he was rather surprised to learn that actually, we had done nothing with crayons that class period. BUT, there's a happy end to the story - they got a talking-to, I have removed the boxes of school supplies from the middle of the tables, I'm slowly getting more crayons from students that destroyed them, and fourth grade has been VERY well-behaved ever since. Yesterday, they were working on a worksheet and it was so quiet, you could have heard a pin drop. I know I'm probably not supposed to have favorites, but I'm pretty sure that fourth grade is my favorite class right now.

There are multiple lessons that I have learned and am learning, obviously, from teaching. I'm learning about discipline, classroom management, lesson planning, social and emotional problems, and all sorts. I’m learning that I really do enjoy teaching :). And, I'm learning how much Spanish I don't know.

I had to think about where to put my used toilet paper for the first time in a long time. And no, the answer is not "in the toilet." It's "in the trash can beside the toilet." They don't flush their toilet paper down here.

For the first time, I haven't had water whenever I wanted it for several days in a row. The city water comes on in the mornings and afternoons and the past week, it hasn't come on at all. Down here, everyone has tinacos (water storage tanks) on the top of their houses that fill up whenever the city water is on so that you can have water when the city water isn't on. Well, you can guess what happens when the city water doesn’t come on. The tinaco only lasts so long. You know, honestly it hasn't been that bad. It's just made me more thankful for the water that I do have and made me realize how much water I waste at home. Last night, I took a 5 gallon bucket shower. And you know what? I didn't even use a third of the bucket. Today we have water though because Grant, Dean, and other guys have been diligently hauling water and they filled up our tinaco again.

So, obviously, I am learning just how much water we use on a daily basis (a lot) and how thankful I should be for the seemingly endless supply of clean water at home.

I killed a cockroach for the first time. I'm not a huge fan of big insects. Now, I don't have a phobia of them - I won't run away from them screaming and hyperventilating - but I'm really not a big fan, especially when they invade your "safe" spot. Let me explain. The first one I found was in my bathroom shower. Now I'm not particularly fond of the idea of showering with a cockroach, but Hannah helped me kill that one, so I felt much better. The next one though was huge. And I found it because right as I was drifting off to sleep one night, I suddenly felt something rather large crawling down my arm. Let me tell you, I have NEVER gotten out of bed so fast. There, in my bed, was one of those nasty cockroaches! IN MY BED - where I thought I was safe from those things! I wasn't too eager to get back in bed and go to sleep after that and I could feel it "crawling" on my arm for a long time after that. Yes, just to let you know, I did kill that one by myself. I killed another one in my bathroom this morning. Cockroach count: 3

And finally, I've now written a blog post for the first time! Hannah says that I can post whenever I want… I'm not sure how often that will be, but I figured I should at least post one while I was here!
Not sure that I've really "learned" anything from writing this post though….