Circus Time

Today was a nice day, we went to the circus :) it was my daughter's first visit to the circus, and I was so happy to see her face with the whole show.

My daughter got up really early today, and she wanted to go to the movies, and because she has been doing well in school and she has been behaving, we decided to go, but when we got to the movie theater  there were no kid's movies, so we went for lunch to Mc, while we were walking my daughter changed her mind and decided that she wanted to go to the circus, so we said ok, but we had to go back home to leave some stuff, and ever since we got there, she was just saying how much she wanted to go to the circus and that we should hurry or we would be late :) so we left early and got there on time, there were a lot of people, this was the last day the circus was going to be in town, so the ticket was cheap, it was Q.10.00. My daughter was so happy and she was entertained the whole time, every time the acts began she would open her eyes and pay a lot of attention to what the people where doing in the show, after the show I asked her what her favorite act had been, and she told me that she liked the tigers :) so it was a great day, cause I saw my daughter have fun.

But that is it for today, I wish you all a great week. Till next time.

WOW it's Friday!!!! Where did Thursday go????

Amazing, time flies, I don't know why, but I have the feeling that I skipped Thursday. It's like I am conscious about the things I did on Wednesday, but Thursday is.... distant, but oh well, I still have two more days off, and then on Monday, it's back to school :)

Today was nice, we went to my in-law's for lunch and had fish, it had been a long time :), and we had a couple of drinks :) Vodka, it was fun, then we came back and did some house cleaning, and I also went outside to take some photos of things :)

 This is a Mayan altar that is in my back yard, it has been a part of my wife's family and now that we moved, it is part of our family too, I don't believe in those things, in fact I am not a spiritual person you might say, but it is part of history and culture so I respect the believes. In my town there are some Mayan altas, 5 I think, 2 arms, 2 legs and a head and the one on the back yard is a leg, people say that it brings luck, and there are a lot of people that still practice the Mayan beliefs, I wish I could explain more, but as I said I am not an expert. On May 1st a lot of people ask for permission to come and do the ceremony here, we always agree :) and most of the time they give us something to drink or to eat as a thank you token.

 This is a peach flower, I like the color and the fruit too :), they still haven't grown, but I hope this year we get some big peaches.

And here we have a snail, hate those things, the weather has been humid so we see a lot of these on the back yard, it's awful to walk and step on them cause the sound you hear is not pleasant. If you ever step on one, don't look, just clean your shoe and keep walking :) trust me you wouldn't like to see it :D

Well gotta go, I have to start reading :)

Holy week

Well this was my first day off :) I didn't do much, I was suppose to go hiking with some friends, but I got a bit sick, so I had to stay home. In the afternoon we went shopping with my wife and daughter, it's not my cup of tea to go shopping but it was nice to see my daughter have fun :)

Went for an ice cream and talked a bit. I wanted to buy some chocolate eggs to hide, so my daughter has some fun searching for them :) but I think I will do that tomorrow.

It's nice to get up late, watch t.v. and play video games :) but I have to start doing other things to keep myself busy :)

 

I am trying to do a bonsai with "Misperos", it's a fruit I like. It was actually funny, because I was eating a mispero once and the trash can was too far away for me to get up and throw the seeds there, so I stood up and left the seeds in a flower pot my wife has in the living room :) I was being very lazy :P but the interesting thing was that the seeds started to sprout, I was really happy, because the weather here is not the appropriate one to have these trees, they might grow, but it is extremely difficult, but well see, try to keep your fingers crossed, maybe in some time I will show you the tree :) I hope :) 

With my daughter we decided to do a couple of handcrafts.... well not a couple but one :) we did this with a plastic bottle, yarn and a zipper, we started doing it on Saturday but unfortunately there was no electricity. Stupid truck driver didn't see the electric wires on the road and cut them off, we called the light company in the morning but they didn't show until very late at night, so we had electricity at 11 pm, terrible day, and the worse part was that I used up my laptop's battery, and my Nintendo 3ds' and I had finished the book I was reading, plus there wasn't enough light to read :)  so I didn't have much to do :( .... but I think I went another way here... so were was I, Oh yeah, we finished the bottle today, my wife was out so I decided we would finished the bottle with my daughter, she liked it and she filled it with some candy I bought her :)

Well that is it for today, I will write some other day :) have a great Holy week everyone :)

11:10 and I am still not sleepy

It's late and I just finished writing a comment on the blogs my students are doing. I feel really happy to see what they are writing, and I hope they keep up the good work. I thought about giving them this assignment cause after starting my own blog I realized, how much it helps, not just on the writing skills but also that it is a way of expressing what is on your mind, and it is nice to go back and look at the older posts and remember all those things that have happened in life.

Here are the links to their blogs, there are still some missing, but I will try to include them as soon as I can :)

http://langandcom.blogspot.com/  Mitzi
http://sschoollife.blogspot.com/  Leslie
http://daniiruse.blogspot.com/  Daniel
http://sarasproject12.blogspot.com/  Sara
http://0mayra.blogspot.com/ Omayra
http://emilip.blogspot.com/  Emili
http://justmesophiearroyave.blogspot.com/  Sofi
http://www.allanlcn.blogspot.com/  Allan
http://mariajose221295.blogspot.com/  Majo
http://aleurizar.blogspot.com/  Ale
http://interestingthings2012.blogspot.com/  Mauro
http://lucky-iga.wallinside.com/  Lucky
http://marianoedl.blogspot.com/  Mariano
http://pierreascoli.blogspot.com/  Manuel
http://yessi1995.blogspot.com/  Yessi
http://pcrodrigo.blogspot.com/  Rodrigo
http://magomez12.tumblr.com/  Marco

Today was nice, when I got to school, we had a small earthquake drill, some people came to talk to the students and tell them some safety tips, then they had some time to see how much time it took them to go outside of the class.

 These are the kids outside, they have the spirit week now, so today they were all dressed as how they imagine themselves to be when they turn 80 it was fun, there were some really good costumes.

Then I went to the other building and I had to wait there for like 4 hours for my next class!!! :) but it was ok, I had time to check some tests and to read "the girl with the dragon tattoo", I have to say that it is a great book, every time I can I read it.


Well that is it, I will keep posting things as soon as I can. Have a good time.

It Has been a long time :)

Wow, haven't written in a long time, but since I told my students to start a blog, I decided to continue with mine too :)

This was an interesting week, we started in school some clubs, I was worried that the kids wouldn't like it because that would mean staying on a Friday at school, and let's face it nobody likes to stay in school on a Friday, but I was so surprised to see that they were really eager to participate, and when I left the lists on the bulletin board for them to write their names, I was shocked to see that a lot of people were ready, almost half of the school. On Friday I was waiting for the time to start, I was nervous, even though the students themselves were going to conduct the whole thing, but I stayed outside and watched from the window, I was so happy to see that they were having fun and that even though they had people from different grades, they were getting along just fine, the students that volunteered to be organizers did a wonderful job and I am so proud and happy to be working with them.

So far we have 3 clubs opened, a drama club, a photography and modeling club and a dance and art club. What I want with these clubs is for students to have a good time, to build leader skills and for them to do something that they like.

So far it has been a wonderful experience.

Well I will try to have more things for my next entry, and hopefully I will show some of the projects the clubs do in the future :)

Been there

Well it's been a long time since I wrote, but I wanted to write about something that happened to me, I was watching the movie "the Ultimate gift" (I have seen it like 7 times or more) and it caught my attention because as the movie went on, I could notice that many of the places shown there were from Charlotte, in North Carolina, and it felt amazing cause I saw some of the places where I had walked.

This is the movie I was telling you about and if you have a chance watch it :) the story is really good, and it can make you cry, it is a bit emotional so be ready.

The interesting thing is that after being in a place, you see things in a different way. I remember reading about NY in text books, and reading about the touristic places there are, but it wasn't as special as it is now, you see all the information with the students, but it represents nothing to you, but after being there and meeting the place, you can feel something completely different. I am glad cause now I can tell my students what the weather feels like, what it looks like and the feelings that you get, it's not just a text anymore, it is meaningful.
I hope that in the future my students can also get the opportunity to travel and experience something like this.

It is the feeling you get when you hear the name of your country in a famous movie or show, or when you hear the name of the country where you have friends :)

Like in the movie RED where they mention the name of Guatemala several times :) and like when you see it for the first time and you hear it, you say wow, and you feel good cause it is your country :)

This is the movie RED also a good movie, action and comedy, it is really good

And after meeting so many wonderful people from different parts of the world, I see things differently, like when I saw in a store a Polish vodka, or when I saw in a magazine  the words "Koer Lotte" which are Estonian, I remembered all of my new family and the moments we spent together, and how much I miss them.

Sunday

Well today was a tough day, I got up at 4:20 am and I was supposed to get up at 3am, I had to do this because we had a camp today with the kids at school, anyway I got up, I took a shower and I headed to the gathering place, when I got there, there were a lot of students waiting, so I took list and checked that everybody was there. The bus was supposed to leave at 5 but not everybody was there so we waited and ended up leaving at 5:20, and I was worried about being late J

 This is a photo of the kids we had in the bus, ours was bus number 3, they were feeling sleepy, it was really early in the morning.

 A photo taken early in the morning, you can see the fog covering the city, believe me it was really cold.

 We got to the place really early, and there was no one from the staff there to give us the information so we waited a couple of minutes.

 We got to the place really early, and there was no one from the staff there to give us the information so we waited a couple of minutes.

 Then they took all of the kids to the auditorium in the University and they gave them the welcome and they explained about the order of how things were going to be, there were 8 groups of 44 students each, from different regions of the country.

 I was in charge of the rally, they gave us some activities to do, but the time they had predicted was not the correct one so we had to improvise a bit, it was good cause the kids didn’t get bored. We divided the groups into smaller ones of 15 students and each volunteer was in charge of a small group.

This is me after ending the first group :) a bit tired but I was just posing that face of exhaustion :)

 Then we all had lunch, by the way they gave us breakfast and lunch and on both occasions we got a big sandwich, I would call it American size, cause portions here are smaller, and they gave us juice and fruit, it was good. After lunch we had the award ceremony and they gave the students their diploma for participating in the program, they gave the teacher one too and the volunteers got one as well, I got two because I was both a volunteer and a teacher J

 Some of the kids I gave classes to, they are very bright and they were really fun to be with, I will miss them.

 By the way this is a "chicken bus" I think the nickname came because they used to, and sometimes still do, transport chickens or other animals inside, with all the people, and they are usually crowded too.

 After the ceremony we went back to the bus some kids were sad because it was the last time we were going to see each other, but when we got on the bus, everybody started teasing and having fun, the trip we took was a 4 hour round trip, approximately, we didn't feel it cause everybody was laughing and taking pictures.

 The view in the afternoon on the way home, this is the landscape you can observe when you travel from Quetzaltenango to Panajachel.

 No corn or plantations, cause it is too cold on this time of the year to harvest anything.

When we got back, we had to wait for the kid’s parents to pick them up, so we waited like 2 hours, finally when the last kids were picked, I walked to the bus stop, I had to go through the park. In the park something amazing happened to me, I was thinking about life as always, and then I heard in the park a group playing, and for my surprise they were singing the song: “Luz de dia” by Enanitos Verdes, it’s a very special song for me, I like it a lot J I love signs

The group singing the song Luz de dia

 This is a picture of the decoration in the park, Christmas is coming so they always decorate the park with lights, they do it in almost all the parks in Guatemala.

And here is the Christmas tree; it is at the beginning of the park.

well that is all for today, have a good day and take care.