Week 5'ish 20th of February 2008
February 17, 2008, Happy Birthday Miss Melanie, she is entering her final "teen" year, the 19th birthday! She sounded happy on the telephone and her dad made tuna casserole as requested!! I was able to really enjoy a very nice conversation with her, so that made my day!
On Saturday Feb. 16th I went up to Mexico City with the kids in my program to visit the home of Frida Kahalo and what I thought was the home of Diego Rivera, the incredible muralist. I have been to Fridas house before but we didn't see Diego's home we saw some sort of huge giant lava rock building, sort of castle like that was apparently created by him to hold all of his pre-Hispanic artifacts. This was a building full of rooms with about 20-30 foot ceilings and he made mosaics in each of the ceiling of figures from the Aztec culture. All the floors were made of marble. Up on the balcony he created more mosaics out of the marble, more of the Aztec symbols along with his fave communist symbol. I was a bit baffled as to why a supposed communist would create such a grandiose building to hold stuff that belong in a real museum not personal one. I guess that is the dichotomy of artists…?? Supposedly he died before the completion of this building and so it was finished by his pals, and open to the public free of charge.
Sunday, Feb 17th, I went with Mercedes, (my host Esmeralda cousin who asked me to tutor indigenous college students English). She picked me up at 9am and as we drove the 20 min. to their dorms, I really doubted that a bunch of 20yr olds would be getting out of bed to practice English. Boy, was I wrong. Slowly but surely, there ended up being about 15+. All with eager faces and seemingly genuinely interested. Between Mercedes trying to explain to them in her broken English what I was saying, my Spanish, we all ended up having some really good laughs. About half of the students kinda understand really basic English and the rest don't really understand anything. I tried to engage them in speaking but just like me, they would get all embarrassed and shy about it (although I am way better about that now). They seemed most puzzled about past tense so I practiced a bunch of irregular verbs in present and past tense!
Overall, I was there with the students for about 90 min. and I told them that next Sunday, I hope to bring 3-4 friends from my program so that we can break up into small groups for conversations. I was so impressed by their interest, enthusiasm and the fact they got out of bed at 9am on a Sunday morning. For this next Sunday they have requested 10am! I am okay with that too! 10am works better for my friends in my program, I think I have recruited 3-4 gals to go with me next week.
School part is going fine. I finally got approval to drop down from Level 4 grammar class to the Level 3. I am very happy about that, less stress. I also just found out that Level 3 is the writing class and had I known that I would have taken it in the first place as I really wanted to focus on my writing skills. Better late than never. So starting next week, I will be writing small essays every week which I believe will really improve my writing and I hope also my speaking skills.
My speaking skills are coming along. Although at times I think that I am caught between basic speaking and intermediate. At times my sentences get all tangled up but somehow I get my point across anyway. This trip I am so much braver about speaking than ever before. I do still get nervous and intimidated but I just push through it and go for it! My supervisor at my internship, Maricarmen tells me that I am improving, so I will take her word for it! She took me out Sunday evening to see a art exhibit, but it was closed, so then we wanted to go to the movie but all the good ones were way to late, so we just strolled the mall and ate some dinner. I just enjoyed visiting with her and practicing my Spanish.
I am posting photos on my flickr acct as my internet speed permits….
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