¿Dónde está el baño?

Reason #1 why I don't use the bathrooms at Universidad del Atlantico, and hold it all day if by any means possible:



This is taken from the outside of the door looking in, in case you can't tell. Nice.

Face Lift

No, I'm not thinking about taking advantage of Colombia's world-renowned plastic surgery.

I just thought my blog needed some sprucing-up. Actually, the idea was to change to a template that allows people to comment, but unfortunately none that I tried allow it.

So if you're blog-savvy and can help me out, feel free to leave a comment with instructions. Oops, you can't ;)

A Second Wind

Maybe it’s that I sense my time here is running short—the finish line effect—but during these last two weeks I’ve had a renewed energy and excitement about living here in Colombia.

The start of this semester has been completely different from the last one. In August, I arrived in Barranquilla on a Friday, was given my teaching assignment on Monday, and began work on Tuesday—without knowing anything about the class, the students, or the text! This time around, I was ready before UniAtlántico was; classes didn’t really start till a week after they were scheduled to begin.

The first day of class felt like going back to high school after summer break—reunions in the hallways and cafeteria! It’s been such a joy to see my students from last semester and to be able to maintain friendships with them through eating lunch together or them participating in my English club or VPU group.

And my new students are adorable. As a means to evaluate their progress at the end of the semester, I had them take a written diagnostic test as well as record themselves speaking for two minutes. My favorite comments:

“I like the teacher, because she is a native speaker. I…um…I..heard her and I want to speak like her! I know that I…that I…that I can speak English very well, like her.”

“Well, I’m here because I’m studying foreign languages, I want to speak more than four languages. Well, I’m going to talk about the class. I’m a little bit scared of you, well, because you’re a native speaker and sometimes I don’t understand you…but I’m going to do my best.”

“I like English, I hate French. Maybe you tell me, ‘Why are you study foreign languages if you hate French?’ I don’t know…I just hate it and that’s it. Um, let’s see…let me look at the time [picks up the stopwatch, laughs]. Oh $#%@, I don’t believe it, this is amazing! [Holds clock up to video camera; it shows 0:00] Do you see this? I forgot to start the time].” [This was at the 1:30 mark…then he proceeds to start over!]

So I seem to have my work cut out for me: the beginner student who wants to speak like a native, the advanced student who is afraid of me, and the class clown. This is what I love about teaching college students, though. They’re unique, they’re motivated and they’re honest.

La Teacher de Inglés*

Though I was in the vast minority of professors, I started class today. My enrollment list for each class is over 20, but I only had 5 students in each class. My 3rd semester class met first, and I was happy to see a couple of students who came to my English club last semester. We did introductions and went over the syllabus, and spent some time getting to know each other. With the handful of 8th semester students who showed up (by the way, all 5 I met today have excellent English), we chatted for about 20 minutes but then decided to call it quits and begin for real at the next class meeting next week.

Here are a few reflections on my first day of the semester:

•Though I might have looked spiffy in a pencil skirt and high heels, today was probably the only time this semester I’ll don that outfit. I was reminded of my dear Spanish professor from Lee, Dr. Ortega, who looked like a million bucks every single day in her dresses and stiletto heels. I don’t know how she made it through even 10 minutes on her feet.

•The semester’s off to a good start when one of your students gives you an apple on the first day of class :)

•I’m going to love the room my English 8 class meets in. It’s a little too big for comfort, but it’s on the corner of the second floor; large windows panel two sides of the room, and an enormous palm tree is right outside one of them.

•White boards that are actually white, and erasable, make me very happy.

•I LOVE TEACHING ESL. Yesterday I spent some time looking through ESL resources at a bilingual library, and seeing all that’s out there in the field confirmed my interest and made me want to learn, practice, and grow more in teaching English. But even more fulfilling is stepping into the classroom and connecting with real live students. Each one of them has his or her unique background, interests, personality and goals, and I truly look forward to getting to know them.

*The blog title comes from a new telenovela (soap opera) airing here in Colombia. It’s seriously called that, and people have been kidding me about it for the last few weeks. I watched one episode, and it’s the same old same old of soap operas to me. Mildly entertaining, but predictable and overly dramatic.