Good Morning

Hello everyone, it is 7:30 in the morning, and I am in the class waiting for the meeting to start. I took my camera today to take some pictures of my town, and share a a bit more :) I hope you like the pictures and if you have questions about it don't hesitate to ask. 

This is the view I have when I am walking to school, from this point, I have to walk 2 more blocks. It's really foggy near the mountains, and you can barely see the volcano we have here, I will try to take a better photo later. The name of the volcano is Santa Maria, it's not active right now, but it has a smaller volcano next to it called Santiaguito, which is active, but it's ok it's safe :P

This is a photo I took of the theater in Quetzaltenango. People here love to go to the theater when they are presenting comedies, and once a year we usually have a Jazz festival, so different countries come here to show their jazz, people love jazz and the tickets run out fast. 

This place is also used to host the election of Miss Quetzaltenango, it's a comfortable place.  

Classes

Today was an interesting day :) I taught a part of Fox in Socks to the students. They liked it, and I liked teaching it too. I didn't have any flashcards that could represent it so I had to make mine :) they are not perfect but I tried :P

 Drawings I made :D I am not an artist but the kids didn't mind

:D the poodle I did looks really bad, I have no idea on how to draw, every time I tried, I didn't like my drawings so I never practiced. but the good thing is that the kids tried saying the tongue twister and that they had fun doing it. Here is the part I taught:

What do you know about tweetle beetles?  Well...

When tweetle beetles fight,

it's called a tweetle beetle battle.

And when they battle in a puddle,

it's a tweetle beetle puddle battle.

AND when tweetle beetles battle with paddles in a puddle,

they call it a tweetle beetle puddle paddle battle.

AND...

When beetles battle beetles in a puddle paddle battle

and the beetle battle puddle is a puddle in a bottle...

...they call this a tweetle beetle bottle puddle paddle battle muddle.

AND...

When beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles

and the bottle's on a poodle and the poodle's eating noodles...

...they call this a muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle

bottle paddle battle.

Dreams

I was thinking about a couple of things, Dreams to be more precise, and I thought, what happens when a dream seems so hard to reach?, do you let it go? do you forget about it? and I discovered that you shouldn't. It doesn't matter how difficult it may seem to reach a dream, hope is always a great thing to have. I have a dream that I will not let go, and I will do everything I can to reach it.

I wanted to say that it is okay to aim to the stars, the only thing is that you have to work hard to achieve your dreams.

Don't let go of dreams as they are what changes the world 

Parade in Quetzaltenango

Well hello everyone, I wanted to show you some pictures taken today. This was a Christmas parade, it stated in the afternoon. and ended at 9 pm it was nice, there were a lot of people, it was a bit difficult to find a place but in the end we managed to stay in front :) People in Guatemala love parades, and at the end of the parade, there were fireworks.

This is one of the bands, they were playing Christmas songs, all the kids were dancing and laughing.

Sometimes they decorate cars, this one was decorated as a mushroom and on the back they had kids dressed as smurfs

Here are some of the smurfs that were waving at the people.

These kids had Christmas clothes, and they were waving at the people in the parade.

This was the float a music school had, they were playing some songs and asked the people to participate singing.

This was one of the clowns that was here, he took a kid and placed him on his shoulders and took him for a ride on the mono cycle, the kid was brave, then he was going to take another kid, but that kid started crying, so he gave him a stuffed bear instead.

This float represented when Jesus was born, as you can see the sheep is real. So are the kids.

A float they were not giving gifts but they gave candy, I caught some.

Some of the people that were on the parade, it was fun and as always, when boys here see girls they always whistle at them.

Well gotta go I am about to go to class, Have a good day, or as they said in Boone, "Have a good one"

So you can Know about me

Well I wanted to show you a little bit of my city, I thought about sharing first about the place where I work. My school is located in the center of the city, and it is in the historical part of Xela. We are using two buildings now, but starting next year IGA school will be located in a different building, and IGA courses will remain in the same building, I work in both programs.

 

This is the side of the building, I took this picture in the morning, that is why it seems so quiet.

This is the front of the building, you can see the poster that has some information about the vacation course we have in school, courses are always started in November and they end on December 7th, these days are the noisiest days, because we have a lot of kids in school, ages 5 to 15, but we miss the noise in January :)

 this is inside the school, you won't see any students because it was taken at 6:50 in the morning and classes start at 7:00. 

This picture is from the other building, it is also an old house, by the way most of the houses in the past were built this way, they have all the rooms around the patio, and the bathrooms were in a different room, that means that at night you had to go outside to get to the bathroom, scary right.

This is upstairs in one of the big rooms, the view is nice from that part, most of the rooms are small but the environment of the house is calm and at night it gets a bit creepy, old houses are scary by nature.

This is inside one of the big classes, we have a maximum of 30 students in this room, and we do that cause the house is old and the floor is made of wood, so it's not safe to have a lot of people there :)

This is one of the halls, in the house, because the house is part of the historic center, we can not change anything in the building, we can restore it but not change it.

This is Central Park, it was a sunny day and there weren't a lot of cars because they were going to have an activity there.

This is our City Hall, it is located in front of the park, in the past most of the main buildings were built around the park, and in all of the cities in Guatemala you can see the same thing.

This is another picture of the park, the place you see there is used by a lot of people to play songs, juggle or just hang around with friends, it's comfortable.

This is one of the things they use to make the fabric that is used in the traditional clothes here in Guatemala.

Pictures of the park, it's a nice place and you can feed the birds that have their nest on the trees.

This is the Church, well part of it, you see in 1976 Guatemala had an earthquake that destroyed some buildings and what you see is what was left of the original church, just the front part, then inside if I am not mistaken, it was rebuilt.

Well that is it for today as soon as I have more pictures, I will post them and tell you a bit more about my city. I hope you enjoyed reading this post. Take care.

Work >:(

Well I am working as a substitute teacher, if someone doesn't come then I have to give the class :) I am ok with it, one of the teachers was feeling sick so it Me to the rescue!!! I gave classes to little kids, I had forgotten what it was to teach :) then it was recess and now I am in a class writing my blog, luckily she doesn't need my help :)
so I can keep doing this for a bit more.

As promised here are some pictures of my school, sorry about the quality but I took the Picture with my Nintendo 3ds :P

 This is our teachers' lounge it's small for the number of teachers working here but it's ok, this is were we make jokes and talk about serious things once in a while, most of the time we just laugh.

 This is the hall the lockers are out, I couldn't show you a class because they were all occupied but I will try to do it later :)

 This is our patio, it's very small and when the kids are not playing there it is really quiet, in the mornings you can see the birds looking for food on the ground, and you can hear them sing too.

This is the other Hall, as you can see it is small, but school will move to a different place, I don't know exactly where but as soon as I know I will let you know. It's a small place but the people working here are very nice and friendly, I wish you could all meet them.

Reporting for Duty

Well I am back in Guatemala, I started working yesterday, it was interesting to come back again and to see my friends, I missed them, but I am missing my family back in Boone a lot. I am helping in the classes now, not teaching yet :) I believe that after the trip I had and the people that I met, I am a different person, I don't think the same way and I have different goals.

At night I feel really sad, so I go outside and look at the sky, I imagine that no matter where my Boone family is the sky will always be the same, and for a couple of minutes I can feel them all next to me, it gives me comfort and peace.

I want to thank them all for being part of my life and for showing me a great time, I will miss them all and I hope that in time we will meet again and share once again as a big family :)

sorry I haven't taken any pictures now, but I will take some of my school and of my town, that way you can share a bit of my city.

Best wishes to all. :)

One of the toughest challenges ever

I am back in Guatemala. It was nice to be back, but I am feeling really sad about leaving my international family. I shared so many days with such wonderful people and I leaned so many new things from them and from the Appalachian University.
Yesterday was my last day in the USA, and I had all these mixed emotion in me. It was so hard to say goodbye to them. They will all remain in my heart forever.

It was so difficult. As I am writing this I can feel the tears trying to go out. I have this image in my head of my new family, saying goodbye and standing in the entrance of the hotel waving, I can see their faces, but at the same time it gives me strength, because I promised to see them again and that is a promise that I will keep no matter what.

Great memories they all helped me so much and had a great impact in me.

I am really lucky to have found someone that will always be my inspiration, someone that I will have in my heart forever a person that showed me that life is not measured by the breaths we take but by the moments that take our breath away. I love you and I will always love you 

What a great day!!!

I am here sitting in the "living room" of the hotel. I had a great time yesterday. We went to Sara's House it was beautiful, her house is up a mountain in a quiet and relaxing place. We had dinner there, Aida, Margaret, and Tea cooked some dishes from their country. Aida prepared Carbonara, it was delicious. Margaret prepared potato pancakes, which were my favorite. Tea prepared a dessert from Estonia, I don't know its name but it was delicious, and Sara had chili which was also really good.

In the morning a lot of people were weighting their luggage, and those who discovered that they still had a lot of space went shopping to fill it up a bit more :)

 This is the view from the balcony at Sara's house.

 As you can see there were a lot of people at the house, one big family :)

The house is up the mountain and there aren't a lot of houses nearby, a great place to relax.

I took this picture to show the difference between the trees, when we got here to Boone the trees were still green and as the days passed by they got yellow orange and red and finally they lost all of their leaves. The landscape changes a lot in these days.

This is me experimenting with the camera, I am not really good at taking pictures but I will keep trying.

  Everybody in the kitchen preparing food and tasting. I was full after this :D

I got up today with a big smile and really happy to be here. Yesterday I had to go to bed early because I had a headache, but today I am feeling like if I had had 100 power-naps, so my mood is good and I am ready.

Sundance became Raindance

Yesterday I did a crazy thing, I climbed up this:

This was at Watauga High School, it was a great experience, at first I was able to climb fast but when I got to the ladder part I couldn't get up, so I had to take the pole again and climb up, I was so tired when I got to the top but at the same time I was really happy because I was able to fight one of my biggest fears (heights), going down was easy, all I had to do was to let go of the wood and fly down :) 

I was so happy to reach the top and I was shaking like hell :D cause the wind blew the thing from one side to another.

At night we all got together to celebrate Hugo's birthday, he is a good friend here in the TEA program, it was great, we all sang happy birthday in English and then each of the countries sang it in their native language it really good to listen to all the different languages in a familiar song.

My international family celebrating Hugo's birthday. 

I also played the guitar a bit. My host family was kind enough to lend it to me for the week.

Today was a really good day, we had to go to the university and present a mini lesson plan. I liked to see the different ways people teach and the activities they had, I learned a lot from them. Then we came to the hotel and I had a wonderful power nap, then I got up and took a shower, we went shopping and I bought some beers to have in the fridge and we went to eat at Ruby Tuesday. The food was good. Then when we finished we had to walk under the rain. That is an interesting thing about Boone, the weather here is crazy at first it was sunny and late in the afternoon it started to rain. 

We are in the hotel's living room writing blogs, helping people with computer problems, and drinking. It was a great day and I am really happy that things went the way they should have.

Last Day at WHS :(

Well these days have been interesting yesterday we had a forum and the five of us had to talk about our countries and our educational system, and to answer some of the questions the students asked; I liked it they didn't just ask me about education but they also asked me about the hobbies students had and about the things I liked it was really nice, one of the students asked me if I knew who Justin Bieber was, and I answered: "Unfortunately I do" and everybody laughed and some girls were not happy with my answer :) but I was being honest hahaha. All of my friends had almost the same type of questions and we got some pictures taken. I will miss this place so much, the students are really nice and they are very talented, the teachers are friendly and they face the same kind of problems we do, isn't it amazing.

In the afternoon we got to the hotel but then they picked us up to watch a played by WHS it was great, I was so amazed on how the students performed, they are very talented and I wish them the best on their competition and with their lives, to all of them.

 This Photo was for the forum we had and you can see Robin there, she is fun.

 These are some pictures about the play, they had love stories inside a bigger story, the people in the play had to act and also move the objects on the stage to continue with the different stories.

 I will try to explain the stories but I can't promise anything, on this scene the couple was sitting next to each other and the boy said that they were not sitting next to each other because she was on the wrong side, so she had to go around the world to really be next to him.

 On this story the girl goes to this house where she could see the northern lights, and she tells the guy that she had a broken heart (she had it in a bag), the boy told him that he loved her and that he would help her fix her heart.

On this story the man was in love with a girl but she left him, so he had a tattoo that was supposed to say vilan 

In this story He forgot their anniversary. Ouch!

 

They are very talented and they will get far.

Today I gave my classes, and the kids sang the song which was good.