One Week Later...

Having arrived last Thursday, I've been here for right at one week now. So many things are familiar to me: the house, the school, the youth center, and especially many of the people. But there are a lot of changes, too: new stores, new roads, new political uncertainties, and even new people. I'm settling in, but of course that takes time.

Yesterday, I started spending time in some of the classes at the school. Initially, and probably for the rest of the school year, which ends in November, I'll be working with the 6th, 7th, and 8th graders. I'm going to teach a Literature class, but it will cover reading, writing and conversational skills. Since there are only 9 weeks or so remaining in the school year, I've decided not to try to dive into a novel with any of the classes. Short stories, it is. I found some good resources on the Enlaces library shelves and even have a basic skeleton of lesson plans for my first two weeks with each class. That's a start, at least. The rest should flow pretty easily. I hope.

In addition to all the new classes that have been built, we now have a computer lab on site. There are 20 computers in it and each is running Windows XP and has Microsoft Office installed. I haven't checked to see which version of Office, yet, but the whole lab is pretty darned nice! I spent two class periods in there yesterday, just to get a feel of what's being taught. The curriculum being used is actually provided by Microsoft and seems to be geared to having the children achieve a high level of computer proficiency. Impressive.

I need to get back to the grocery store and start replenishing my shelves. Although many highly processed foods are available here, they're pretty expensive and I've been sticking, so far, to mostly basic items: beans, rice, tortillas, chicken, veggies and fruit. I did find Sriracha sauce among the hot sauce selections, so I had to grab that. I'm sure the time will come when I have an urge to walk across the street to Pizza Hut or head to Wendy's, but for right now, my cooking is satisfying me just fine.