Teaching English

One of my favorite things to do each week is teach Franki (19) and Oswaldo (20) English. Oswaldo has a job in the city in the afternoons and nights, so it’s sometimes hard to find time to do it with him. Franki works at the Home during the day, so I teach him Monday-Friday for an hour before dinner. Lately, we have been spending the majority of the hour just talking in English. This is really encouraging, because in school, they mostly learn just vocab. A lot of our kids understand some English, but don’t like to speak it, because the accent is difficult. Franki can now have conversations about what he did that day, work, what he is going to do that night, and the things that he likes to do. Franki and Oswaldo also learned some verses and can say them perfectly.
This was also a great way to improve my Spanish. I have spent a lot of time looking up different topics and trying to figure out how to teach English concepts in Spanish. They also teach me new vocab. Their excitement and persistence gets me excited to improve my Spanish.

Cultural differences:
Oswaldo was telling me about a friend from work who showed him a picture of Boston. He was talking about the differences in Boston and Guatemala City, when he suddenly got uncharacteristically excited. He said that his friend told him that there are little animals that run around Boston and get really close to you. This of course confused me and I told him that there are no little animals running around Boston. He assured me that his friend said that they’re everywhere. I was trying to think of what he could possibly mean when he said, “They’re called squirrels!” I tried to explain to him that they are sometimes pests, but he remained convinced that they are pretty cool.
I guess it’s a little like how we Americans get so excited when there is a lot of smoke coming out of the volcano or how you can see the lava at night when it’s clear. The kids always make fun of us for this, because they are so used to seeing it. I never thought of squirrels as exciting, but I guess they would be if you had never seen one.